Come on, Dad!

And Stevie was shouting out to him, laughing, just as he had on that holiday in Cornwall, and Bish would have followed his boy anywhere. Anywhere. So he ran with his lungs exploding, feeling the way Bee had described the last five metres of a two hundred.

Come on, Dad!

And when the ground shook beneath him and Bish felt himself being thrown into the air he could still hear his boy laughing. It was the further tragedy of the past three years: he hadn’t been able to remember the sound of Stevie’s laugh. But right now it was ringing in his ears. The entire world was ringing in Bish’s ears.

When he came to he could see black plumes of smoke above him. Voices were shouting in French. He needed familiarity right now. It came in the form of Jimmy Sarraf.

‘What the fuck, Ortley? I thought you were going to drive that bus to Belgium.’

He tried to sit up. Sarraf was gently pushing him back down.

‘Stay there.’

Then a paramedic was replacing Sarraf and asking him questions in French. Bish closed his eyes to shut her out. He didn’t have the strength to tell one more person in this country that he didn’t understand a word they were saying. He pushed her hand away and gingerly got to his feet, miraculously undamaged.

He looked around. A couple of firefighters were dealing with the bus, completely destroyed and smouldering. Bish could smell the sulphur in the air.

‘Anyone hurt?’ he asked Sarraf.

‘Yeah. You broke the bus driver’s wrist. He complained to the coppers that you didn’t have to use so much force.’

The paramedic must have understood, because she chuckled.

Laughter. That didn’t happen where death was present. Bish felt as if he could take on the world. Zero body count.

Regardless, the place was chaos. Parents were arriving in droves, pushing past police, hysteria in their voices. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket and retrieved it. The screen was cracked. His ears were still ringing and it got worse when he answered the phone. Someone was asking if he’d take the call. Then Noor’s voice: ‘Where are you? All I can hear are sirens.’

‘I’m in Calais. There’s been another bomb —’

‘What?’

‘Jimmy’s here —’

‘Oh God!’

‘No one’s hurt.’

‘You’re slurring your words.’

‘I haven’t been drinking.’

‘I didn’t say you had.’

He could see her brother being questioned now by a couple of uniforms. He hoped they wouldn’t do something stupid like arrest him.

‘Slow down and tell me everything,’ she said, her tone gruff. Not hostile, not tender. But gruff belonged to the caring family.

He gave her the shortest version he could. One with an optimistic ending in which he hoped Benoix’s people got caught. ‘This means Violette and Eddie are safer out there now, and once they realise it, they’ll ask for help,’ he said. ‘And the Home Office will stop sending me to bother you.’