When Bish hung up, his phone rang immediately. Twice. Elliot. Rachel. He ignored them both.

‘Can you please switch that off?’ Crombie said. ‘It’s annoying me.’

‘Chief Inspector Ortley, is it true you were involved in what happened at Marianne Attal’s school?’ Manoshi asked.

Bish turned around to face the rest of the kids. Perhaps it was time to own his hero role.

‘Someone tweeted that you broke a man’s arm and ran over a statue of a saint,’ Lola said.

Or perhaps not.

‘Chief Inspector Ortley, is it true you thought there was a point-one percent chance that Bee was pregnant?’ Lola asked.

‘Why only point one?’ Violette said. ‘Being a lesbian doesn’t mean someone’s knicked off with her uterus, Chief Inspector.’

‘I might want kids one day,’ Bee said. ‘Sperm’s all I need.’

‘You can have mine if it’s okay with my missus,’ Charlie said.

‘Eyes on the road,’ Bish ordered. He looked at Violette. ‘Is that what you aspire to? Being Charlie’s missus?’

‘Yes.’ Violette seemed proud to own the title. ‘He’s going to be my first ex-husband.’

‘Cheeky bitch.’ Charlie was grinning.

When they passed through Cambridge, Bish was ordered to swap seats with Bee and found himself next to Violette.

‘I need to say something to you, Chief Inspector, that you won’t like hearing,’ she said, not wasting any time.

There were screeches of laughter from behind them. He turned to see Eddie Conlon imitating someone, doing pelvic thrusts in his seat, entertaining the girls.

‘If this is about your mother —’

She held up a hand to warn him against further mention of her mother.

‘It’s about Bee. She thinks she wasn’t enough to keep you all together . . . and that her brother would have been. She thinks she wasn’t worth it.’

He winced, glancing at Violette. She nodded in confirmation. When he couldn’t think of anything to say, she sighed.

‘Sorry.’ He heard the regret in her voice. ‘I’ll swap with Eddie. He’s really good at lifting moods.’

‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Tell me one of your stories.’

A hint of a smile crept across her face.

‘How about the one where my parents fell in love in Cambridge?’

When they reached Sheffield, Bish suggested they stop for sandwiches.

‘Sandwiches?’ Charlie said. ‘That’s what they serve these three every day in hospital. Have a bit of imagination.’

Imagination was McDonald’s. It didn’t have a drive-through, so Bee and Charlie went to get the food, because, according to Eddie, ‘They aren’t ex-suspected terrorists or missing any body parts, so they won’t stand out in a crowd.’

Bee and Charlie came back soon enough with bags of food and serious expressions.

‘We’re all over the news,’ Charlie said.

Lola and Manoshi were caught between the drama of being all over the news and the excitement of eating chicken nuggets and French fries. Bish fiddled with the radio scan and found a news station.

‘Chief Inspector Bish Ortley is a person of interest in the disappearance of three young patients who were injured in the August Boulogne bombing.’