It was in her grandmother’s arms that Bee began to cry, but not for too long. ‘I need some air,’ she said.

Bish took her to a window, shoved it open, and instantly realised his mistake when he glimpsed the destroyed bus. He tried to guide her away but she stared at the scene outside, transfixed.

‘What about the chaperones, Bee?’ he asked, searching the hall. A couple of pinball machines and a pool table had been pushed up against one of the walls to make room for the kids, each of them with a bedroll provided by the campsite.

‘Mr McEwan? Is that his name?’

She didn’t respond, except with a pooling of tears in her dark eyes.

‘We’ll get you home,’ he said, gathering her to him. ‘We’ll find Mr McEwan and work out what’s going on. Do you know where he could be?’

Bee pointed a shaky hand outside, directed towards the tent closest to the smouldering front half of the bus. ‘Everyone’s saying it’s Mac, because no one’s seen him since . . . and one of the year eights said they saw brown Jesus sandals under the sheet.’ Bee swallowed hard. ‘It’s what he wore all the time.’

She indicated another tent, cordoned off at the steps of a bus around which a cluster of police stood. ‘That’s where the Spanish kids were boarding. There’s a body there as well.’

Bee looked confused, her face crumbling for the second cry, but she controlled it. ‘My bus was blown into two pieces and I got away without a scratch,’ she said, ‘and someone standing way over there dies just like that.’

Was it a nail bomb? Bish wondered.

‘They reckon if our bus had been full, there’d be a string of body bags. Thank God everyone used to fight over the back seats.’

‘How many sitting at the front, Honey Bee?’ Saffron asked.

‘I don’t know. Mr McEwan, plus about half a dozen. Fionn Sykes was there too. He usually sat at the back, but he was fixing up the luggage.’

She looked stricken for a moment. ‘There were two others – they were outside opening the gate. Violette and Eddie.’

Bee looked up at him and Bish saw regret and fear on her face.

‘I couldn’t see a thing,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do a thing. I just wanted to get out of there and then . . . then I thought I saw Stevie. And I just knew that if I got to him, I’d be safe . . . But it ended up being Eddie. Eddie Conlon. That’s who I saw outside the bus, except I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t know where she is. Violette.’

Bish pressed a kiss to her brow. ‘Bee, who’s in charge?’ he asked. ‘Who’s been taking care of you all since it happened?’

‘No one really. Gorman’s running around like a bloody idiot. Reckons he’s speaking to the embassy.’

‘And the other one?’ Bish asked, remembering a young woman he had met briefly at the port in Dover. ‘Lucy?’