It was now a week since the bombing, and the mainstream press had exhausted their stories about the five dead and three badly injured and were after tales of heroism and resilience. Bee had already expressed regret that she’d got out of the bus as fast as she could, and Bish didn’t want her actions judged by others. It would break her.

He was checking his Facebook page to see if Layla Bayat had accepted his friend request within the past five minutes when Elliot rang.

‘Grazier’s fuming because Ian Parker won’t let us talk to his daughter.’

Bish didn’t question why he needed to know how Grazier felt. ‘You work for the government, Elliot. Just go down there and demand to speak to him.’ He was concentrating on finding any new friends Bee had accepted overnight. Was Zulu Dawn a pseudonym for Violette, despite there being no obvious connection between their names?

‘Making demands is tricky,’ Elliot was saying now. ‘The French already did that. Apparently their investigators were insinuating that Lola Barrett-Parker was the target of the attack.’

Elliot suddenly had his attention. The daughter of an MP who persisted in expressing his views about migrants could easily have been a target. Lola had been sitting in the front row of the bus that day.

‘Grazier wants you to speak to Parker face to face,’ Elliot said.

‘I already did that. Wasn’t pleasant. And I thought my job was bringing Violette and Eddie out of the cold?’

‘Yes, by getting the parents to find out what they can from their kids. Ian Parker is a parent. Both your children were on that bus. Common ground.’

Common ground? It’s what Bish had with Noor LeBrac. With Ian Parker. With the Kennington bigots. He didn’t want that sort of common ground.

‘Lola, Manoshi and Fionn haven’t been interviewed by our Intelligence. Better that you chat with the kids than those goons do. Total ignorami when it comes to dealing with kids.’

‘Ignoramuses,’ Bish corrected.

‘You’ll make the Home Secretary very happy if we don’t have to force an interview on Parker and the other parents of the injured.’

‘And yet making the Home Secretary happy is not my number-one priority this morning.’

‘Try,’ Elliot said, hanging up.

So Bish spent the next two hours talking to parents, trying to find a way to Ian Parker. There was no number for him on the Calais list and no one seemed to have a connection with him. No one seemed to want it. When Bish rang Greta Jager’s father, he knew he had to question what Grazier’s journalist contact had overheard. They spoke about the injured kids for a while until Bish found his segue.

‘Paul, is there a chance Greta might have seen something that could help the investigation? On the night before the blast?’

There was silence on the other end.

‘The kids are my priority, Paul. You know that.’

‘That I do,’ Paul said. ‘But just say it’s not connected. What she saw, I mean.’