‘Chief Inspector Ortley.’

Russell Gorman, the teacher from Strood, was coming towards him. There was a fevered look in his eyes.

‘The locals think they’ve got total control.’

‘Well, Calais and Boulogne do belong to them,’ Bish reminded him. ‘Who have you been dealing with here?’

‘A local. Capitaine Attal. I’ve been letting him think he’s in charge until someone arrived,’ Gorman said.

Bish was about to correct him. He wasn’t here to investigate. The London Met didn’t send their officers to France to investigate a bombing. But a cry at the entrance made him turn, and he saw a couple embracing a pair of identical twins who looked about Bee’s age.

‘I know who did it,’ Gorman said. ‘Bad blood,’ he added.

‘What are you saying?’ Bish asked.

‘We’ll talk in a moment,’ the chaperone whispered, before hurrying to introduce himself to the newly arrived parents.

Bish went back to the handwritten sheet. He didn’t want to look further down the page. Didn’t want to see a phone number pencilled beside an unaccountable because then he’d feel obliged to ring a parent. But he did look, committing the names to memory. And there on the list he saw one he couldn’t easily forget. It seemed unfathomable. It stunned him, but he dared not let himself think it was anything more than sheer coincidence.

Violette LeBrac Zidane.

The moment Bish stepped outside, it was easy to see who was in charge. Capitaine Olivier Attal. The French police captain looked like a prizefighter. Ugly as one. A nose broken too many times to count, from the looks of things. A bear of a man in both shape and facial hair. Attal had insisted that all the anglais stay until he’d interviewed everyone who’d been on board the bus, even if it took all night.

More parents had arrived from across the Channel, at first hysterical, then relieved, and then guilty at their relief. The rumour was that Julius McEwan was dead. He was a history teacher at a school in Dover, and the chaperone the kids most relied on. They seemed indifferent to their youngest shap, Lucy Gilies, a twenty-something reading history at Cambridge. Bee claimed Lucy was prone to hysterics and had to be sedated after the bomb went off, which made Bish question whether she’d written the list of names after all. That had left the kids at the mercy of their least favourite, Gorman, who’d earned the nickname Vermin. Since the blast, he’d spent most of his time on the phone with the embassy, and this was known because all he seemed to say was, ‘I’m on the phone with the embassy.’

Bish watched Attal exchange a word with one of his officers, who was labelling items around the bombsite. Suddenly the two were staring in Bish’s direction.

Even across this distance he knew he was under scrutiny, so he faced the inevitable and made his way towards them.