Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil Read Free

half-destroyed bus, and another about a hundred metres away at the steps of a second bus. Three deaths. Bish counted seven other coaches in the car park and recognised a few foreign numberplates at a glance. Polish. Italian. Bee’s bus had seemingly been blown up as it approached the exit gate.
    A woman in plain-clothes approached, questioning them in French.
    ‘ Nous sommes anglais ,’ his mother said, and Bish saw a flash of pity on the woman’s face.
    ‘ La salle des jeux, ’ she said, pointing to the closest building.
    Inside the recreation room, paramedics and camp staff were tending to the kids. No one seemed badly injured here, and Bish figured those seriously hurt had already been taken to the closest hospital. Although he hadn’t received an official call about his daughter’s bus being involved, he knew that most of the kids on the tour were from Kent and Sussex, close enough for a worried parent to contemplate crossing the Channel just to be sure. He knew, too, from dropping off Bee at the port in Dover, that out of forty-six places, the tour organisers had managed to fill only twenty-three. He did a quick count, wanting to see twenty-three kids and their chaperones. But then he saw Bee and it was all that mattered.
    She was sitting on a bedroll against a wall. The moment she saw him she forgot herself and scrambled to her feet, running to Bish and his mother, her arms trembling in their grip. He held back the choke of emotion, not wanting to let go, because Bee always let go too soon these days. Once upon a time, Bish and Rachel called her their little orangutan because of her clinginess, but three years ago his daughter had stopped believing that her parents could save her from anything.
    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