‘Saffron’s not such a bad name,’ he said.

‘It’s damn ridiculous,’ she said with a laugh. ‘So twee. It sounds worse as I get older. Thank God Bee and Stevie had the sense to call me Sofi.’

Saffron reintroduced him to Katherine Barrett-Parker outside her daughter’s room, before going to see the registrar, who was an old friend. Lola’s mother was slightly warmer than she had been the first time, mostly because Saffron was a good press agent.

‘She’s recovering quicker than we thought she would,’ Katherine said, a little defensively. ‘This business about my husband insisting she be transferred to England has got out of hand. We’re not racists, and we’re not ignorant. Boulogne was merely impractical. We did it as much for the other two kids as for Lola.’

‘Is your husband around?’ Bish asked.

‘He was here this morning, but had work to attend to.’

‘Would you let Ian know that if he’d like to talk, one father to another, I’d welcome it?’ Bish held out his card, hoping he wasn’t laying it on too thick.

‘Your mother told me about your loss,’ Katherine said. ‘Well, she was speaking of her own loss, I suppose . . .’

Bish didn’t want to use Stevie’s death as a means to get Ian Parker talking. He looked away and was about to pocket his card, but Katherine took it.

‘Can I speak with Lola, Katherine?’ he asked.

‘Ian won’t —’

‘She may be able to shed light on where the two missing kids are,’ he said. ‘It’d be heartbreaking if we lost them too.’

He could see she was torn.

‘Please don’t tell her about the deaths,’ she said, relenting. ‘It’s been tricky, but the language barrier in France made it easier to keep the truth from her.’

‘You’re going to have to tell her sooner rather than later,’ he said. ‘With the funerals approaching, she’s bound to overhear someone speaking about them.’

He was grateful when she turned to open the door of her daughter’s room and led him in. Lola was all big ears and patches of hair on a half-shaved head. Her face was still bruised, although Bish could imagine what she was like before the bombing. Her one eye was bright, alert and inquisitive, and she actually looked better than he expected.

‘Darling,’ Katherine said, propping Lola up in the bed, ‘this is Chief Inspector Ortley. He’s the father of one of the girls on the tour.’

‘Sabina Ballyntine-Ortley’s dad,’ Lola confirmed to herself with a nod. ‘Did she get hurt too?’

He shook his head.

‘Manoshi Bagchi did,’ Lola informed him, as if he didn’t know. ‘She can’t hear on her left side and she lost her hand, and Fionn Sykes’s leg was blown off.’

All this had just become news to Lola and she seemed at once horrified and fascinated by the carnage. And then she was sobbing. Bish concentrated on the motley bunch of flowers in the glass by her bedside.

‘Manoshi and Fionn will be fine, I told you that,’ Katherine said, fussing. ‘And once the police in France find the other two, we’ll be able to get to the bottom of all this.’