‘Not even someone who lives in Margate, Kent?’

Charlie bloody Crombie.

‘Ring Grazier when you get to London,’ Elliot said, sounding smug. ‘One of our drivers will pick you up from the airport and drive you to Margate. Grazier mentioned you had a fainting spell.’

A fainting spell? That’s how it was being described to the Home Secretary? As if Bish were someone out of a Regency romance?

‘Dehydration and low iron,’ he said. ‘I’m perfectly fine now. My car’s parked at Gatwick so I’ll go straight from there.’

‘Well, if Violette is with Crombie, tell her I’m spending a couple of days in the outback with her grandparents.’

‘They live in the country, Elliot. Not the outback.’

‘Tell her that Nasrene and Christophe have taken a great liking to me, and if she doesn’t come back I’m moving into her room. I’m seriously thinking of migrating.’

‘With your skin you’ll be dead within the year.’

When Bish switched his phone back on at Gatwick he saw that Bee had rung. He was about to return her call when another came through. A blocked number.

‘This is Holloway prison,’ a voice said. ‘Will you take a call?’

Had the acting governor worked out that one of her officers let Violette and Eddie through to visit Noor? Bish didn’t want to be the one responsible for Lorna Vasquez losing her job.

He reluctantly agreed and heard a click.

‘Did you find out anything?’ Noor asked, sounding even more cool and clipped over the phone. Bish was taken aback to hear her voice.

‘Through Bilal?’ she asked when he didn’t respond.

He was sort of flattered that someone who had such limited use of phone time would call him.

‘Jamal’s phone is turned off,’ she said, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Your mother suggested I call.’

‘My mother?’

‘She gave me her number on Friday. We’ve been chatting for the past two days.’

‘You and my mother?’

‘Yes, Bashir,’ she said.

‘I’m trying to imagine what you and my mother could have in common,’ he said.

‘You mean apart from her father and mine coming from the same city in Egypt?’

‘I’m just surprised,’ he said, suddenly on the defensive.

‘Well, I find it therapeutic speaking to Saffron.’

‘What do you talk about?’

She hesitated. ‘About how much we love our children. How much we miss our husbands and our mothers and our brothers . . . and our fathers. How she regrets never going to university. How one day she hopes she’ll have the courage to ask you to come along to an AA meeting with her.’

‘I might have a drinking problem,’ he said, ‘but I’m not an alcoholic.’

‘No one said you were.’

It took a long moment to sink in. His mother had a drinking problem? Or did have? And had managed to hide it from him all these years?

‘Do you know what’s strange, Bashir? I’m locked up here and I have more communication with my family than you do as a free man. What are you afraid of finding out if you ask the questions?’