‘What has he got to say for himself?’

He’s reminded of her words yesterday. Tell him to be a damn father to his son. How much must it have hurt to say that? Etienne was Eddie’s father. She is his mother. They never had their chance.

‘He’s blaming himself. Says he’s slackened off ever since Anna died, that he said something to hurt Eddie and that’s why he’s not coming home.’ Jamal knows Noor would have pushed John Conlon for more.

‘What’s it like out there?’ she asks.

‘It’s the same and different.’

‘Yimi’s grave?’

‘Beautiful,’ he lies. ‘Taken care of real good.’

He can tell she’s crying.

‘I wish I hadn’t seen you, habibi,’ she says, and it makes him weep himself.

‘If you want to fight this, Noor, just tell me. We’ll get you out of there. The family will find the money to try again. You know that.’

‘Just find Violette and Eddie safe,’ she says. ‘That’s all I want in this world.’

When Bish returned from Strood he settled in for another session with the brain-numbing, Kardashian-inspired, selfie-obsessed Instagram photos. To make matters worse, his search was unaided by alcohol and his body was telling him loud and clear to rectify that. His dull headache tapped out the request in a taunting morse code as his hands shook on the keyboard. But he resisted, and the patron saint of two-day sobriety rewarded him with evidence.

It was a photo of Manoshi and Lola sleeping, heads together, dribbling. Bish had determined that the bus carrying the British kids arrived at the campsite at 5.45 pm on the day before the bombing, because the time was displayed on a selfie taken by one of the twins from Ramsgate on the front steps of the bus. Serge Sagur had playfully photobombed it, which was surprising because most of the other shots of the ill-fated driver showed a seriously irritated man. The photo of the two girls sleeping was taken at 5.40, after the bus had turned off the A16 onto the narrow stretch of road leading to the camp gates. The road Bish and Saffron had walked the day of the bombing. Surrounding the bus were rows of Scots pine trees that looked close enough to touch from the window beside Lola’s head. When Bish zoomed in to analyse the shot he could make out the shape of someone in the copse of trees.

The doorbell interrupted his find and he thought about ignoring it, but the second ring was accompanied by a text from Grazier.

I’m outside your flat.

He went to the door.

‘How are things, Bish?’

Bish figured that a personal visit, and no longer being referred to as Ortley, meant either something was wrong or Grazier was about to ask him to do something else he didn’t want to do. He felt bone-tired. Had covered more mileage in the past few days than he had in a year. He wanted a drink, but wanted more desperately to resist having one. An order from Grazier would send him over the edge.