Paris Love Match

Chapter 11





Piers heard Sidney calling for April to stop. He watched the pair come to a halt a short distance from the steps. For a moment, he was relieved that April appeared to be heading back, but it was only a moment, because a line of French police officers, gendarmes, appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Find a bloody door!” Sidney shouted as she sprinted toward him, April just a pace behind.

He forced himself up and worked from door to door until he found an open one that led to a staircase.

“Go!” yelled Sidney as she arrived at the door.

He didn’t need further prompting. He headed up the bare concrete stairs, three at a time.

On each floor, he slammed into the exit doors, but they were locked, designed only to be opened from the other side. Sweating, he reached the top of the stairs. He hammered on the last door while crushing his face against a small wire-reinforced porthole and peering left and right. Beyond the door, he saw a plush corridor with an old painting of the station and its famous train wreck dangling from the second floor. Sidney joined in hammering on the door.

“They’re on the steps,” April said.

Piers started kicking the door to make more noise. A waiter’s face appeared at the window. Sidney pressed her face up to the porthole, screamed help, and implored him with her eyes. The door lock clicked in an instant.

Piers shoulder-barged the door. It flew open, smacking the waiter in the face and sending Piers stumbling into the far wall. Sidney and April were right behind. Sidney slammed the door. They were in a corridor with imposing entrances at either end.

The waiter rubbed his face. “Madame et monsieur, the entrance is at the next stairway.” As he pointed to a grand door at the end of the corridor it swung open, and two police officers rushed through.

“We’ve got to go,” Piers said.

The officers shouted for them to stop. Piers grabbed Sidney’s hand and ran in the opposite direction down the corridor. He heard April’s shoes thumping behind him. He ran through an archway, and they stamped into an ocean of tranquility. A thick carpet padded gently underfoot. The walls were decorated with a dark, velvet wallpaper and gold-framed paintings. Spotlights picked out intimate tables. In uncanny unison, the diners at those tables turned to look at them.

“Excuse us,” Sidney said, as she dodged her way through the well-dressed patrons toward a pair of swing doors on the right side of the room. April followed and Piers brought up the rear. A rotund maître d’ barreled in their direction. As they passed through the swing doors, Piers grabbed a mop and wedged it into the door handles. The maître d’ bounced off the doors, then returned with a booming voice, demanding to be let in.

Steam rose from pots and pans all around a tiny kitchen. There was no other exit. Three cooks were packed into one corner, apparently tasting something. After a moment’s surprise, they armed themselves with pots and pans.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” Piers said, holding up his hands.

“Get out,” said the head chef.

“There’s a man after us.”

The chef advanced on them. “Then call the police. Get out.”

Sidney opened a small hatch in the far wall. “Over here.”

April and Piers danced around the cooks to join her.

The head chef folded his arms and smiled. “Go ahead. It’s only five floors straight down into the trash.”

Sidney grabbed a tablecloth from a pile on a cart. She held it out to April. “Wrap it around your feet and back. Press on either side of the chute to slow you down.”

Her eyes widened. “Me?”

There was a hammering on the door. Piers saw a flash of police uniform through the small window. “Yes, you. Unless you want to deal with them.”

April wriggled into the opening and wrapped the sheet round her legs. “This is stupid.”

“Go!” said Sidney, wrapping another tablecloth around herself.

One of the cooks started for the door.

“Wait,” said the head chef. “This I have to see.”

April dropped into the chute, screaming.

The chef nodded. “I’m impressed. Now open the door.”

Piers grabbed Sidney and stepped into the hatch. He forced his feet against one side of the chute and his back against the other. His shoes skidded and juddered on the smooth metal. Sidney rolled into a ball in his arms and they rocketed downward. His back grew hot and he couldn’t see below, but above them he could hear shouting. The outline of someone appeared at the hatch, but in a moment they were gone.

“Hope they don’t have a bloody gu—”

Piers’ feet flipped off the end of the metal, and his back fell away under Sidney’s weight. He redoubled his grip on her and curled his head forward, cringing.

The ground wasn’t what he had expected. They hit it with a percussive whump. It was soft, trash bags filled with god knows what. The plastic bags were almost frictionless, and he slid sideways. The impact on his back felt more like a mistimed jump into a swimming pool than a concrete floor. The smell wasn’t what he had expected either. A savory, sickly sweet putridness. He almost gagged.

Sidney struggled to get free. He relaxed his grip and she levered herself off him by wedging her elbow in his stomach. He struggled to get up on the squirming bags.

The room would have been pitch dark but for the glow from April’s mobile phone. She was searching the walls. “This was a stupid idea.”

Piers snorted. “Did you want to see if we could talk our way out of things with the police?”

“You didn’t even look for another way out!”

“There wasn’t another way out. Didn’t you notice the guys with the pots and pans and the police at the door?”

“Don’t be stup—”

“Stop it,” shouted Sidney. “Both of you. We need to get out of here.”

Piers clenched his teeth, and took out his phone for illumination.

“There’s a crack down the corner of this wall,” Sidney said.

Piers scrabbled over the stinking bags and saw the line of light in the corner. There was a gap. He ran his phone upward. The gap went right to the top of the room then along the ceiling. “The whole wall’s a door. We need a lever or something.”

“Here,” April said from the other side of the room.

“Pull it,” Piers and Sidney said in unison.

April put her weight onto the lever. There was a metallic crunching sound, a rumbling, and light burst in through the top of the wall. It shook and rattled like an ancient drawbridge.

The wall opened onto a parking area for a trash truck. Piers expected to see a line of police officers, but there were none in sight. Beyond the parking spot, pedestrians and Paris traffic bustled. Piers stepped forward as the door headed for the horizontal. They were still high above the ground; the trash was obviously poured straight into the rear of a parked truck.

The floor began to tilt. “Shit!”

Sidney grabbed his arm. “What’s happening?”

“Jump!”

He leapt down to the ground. His feet stung from the impact but he turned just in time to adsorb the weight of Sidney landing in his arms. He rolled her to one side and shuffled right to catch April. But April didn’t jump. The bags started rolling and sliding from the filthy floor. Piers leapt back, and April was deposited gracefully down on a mound of garbage. Piers pulled her off.

Sidney was already looking up and down the road. She jumped out into the traffic, zigzagged to the middle lane, and stepped in front of a taxi. Piers dragged April through the traffic as he listened to screeching tires and prayed Sidney wasn’t hit. When he reached the taxi, she was already in the passenger seat. Piers followed April into the back. The taxi driver screwed up his nose and rolled down the electric windows.

“Charles de Gaulle. Move it, we’re late,” Sidney said. The taxi eased off and joined a line of traffic.

Piers leaned forward. “Fifty euros if you get us there on time.”

The taxi driver grunted and swung the car, tires squealing, out into the oncoming lanes, and accelerated away.

Piers looked at April. She had her hands on her lap and her head down. She was biting her lip. He patted her shoulder. “We’ll be all right.”

She took deep breaths. “But he won’t, will he? It’s not like you can do anything for him, can you? You’re just going to walk away and live your lives.”

Piers sighed. “I know we can’t help him. But now we’re in danger because of him.”

She scoffed.

“The people who were chasing Auguste think we have something he took.”

She gave a derisive snort and raised her eyes to him. “And what am I supposed to do? Maybe you work for them. Maybe you killed him?”

“We didn’t kill him.”

“So you had someone do your dirty work.”

“No, we were just bystanders to whatever happened and now we’re being threatened with our lives.”

She snorted. “That was the police back there. Why didn’t you tell them?”

Piers sighed. It was a good question.

She gestured behind them with her hands. “Really. Go and tell them.”

He took a deep breath. “We can’t. We think they shot at us as well.”

“The police?” asked the driver, looking at them through the rearview mirror.

Sidney slapped the driver on the shoulder. “Watch the road.”

April had her head down and looked at Piers from the top of her eyes. “You can’t trust them? The police?”

“Maybe, maybe not. It was hard to tell. There was a lot of gunfire.”

The driver’s face appeared in the rearview mirror. “The shooting on the radio. You were there?”

“Do you mind?” Piers said, “Just drive.”

“But they’ve been talking about it on the radio. Bunch of people been shot at Gare de l’Est, and Notre Dame. Criminals, they said. They said some survived.”

April’s head shot up. “Who?”

“Who what?”

“Survived, for god’s sake.”

The driver shrugged. “I don’t know. Some of them. That’s all they said.”

April grabbed the driver’s shoulder. “We need to go there. Now.”

Piers eased April back into her seat. “We saw him. We were in the same taxi.”

“I don’t care. Some of them survived. He said so. He said it’s been on the radio.”

Piers shook his head.

She stared at him, long and hard. “You’re sure.”

He nodded.

“Are we still going to the airport?” the driver said.

Sidney slapped him, harder this time. “Just shut up and drive.”

April sank into the corner of the rear seat and began sobbing. Sidney tapped Piers on the shoulder and mouthed, “I should have sat in the back.” Piers couldn’t help but agree. The last thing he wanted was to deal with another crying woman. They emerged from the confines of Paris’ buildings and crossed the Seine. “Where are we?”

Sidney glanced along the river. “Austerlitz.”

“Which is?”

“A bridge.”

“Where?”

Sidney pointed. “Notre Dame’s over there.”

“Okay. We’ll get out here.”

“Here?” said the driver.

Piers glowered. “What is this, twenty questions? Yes. Here. Stop here.”

“Okay. Only you said the airport.”

“Well, we’ve changed our minds.”

“You said I’d get a tip.”

“Whatever.”

The taxi drew to a halt beside a line of cafés. Sidney eased April out of the taxi while Piers handed over the fare and promised tip.

Sidney wrapped her arm around April. “We should go somewhere quiet.”

Piers looked at the pair. “Let’s sit down for a minute, have a drink.”

“We stink,” said Sidney. “Big time.”

“We’ll sit outside. No one will notice.”

Piers found a free table in a quiet corner. They seated the silent April and angled themselves to have a view of the street. April kept her head down.

A waiter arrived, his nose screwed up to hold his breath. Sidney ordered three large brandies.

Piers ducked his head down to get into April’s line of sight. “We need to know what Auguste was involved in.”

She shook her head. “He was a good man.”

“I’m sure he was, but we need to know. Our lives are in danger.”

She sat silent, and the waiter returned with the drinks. Piers could smell the brandy over their own stench. He handed over a twenty. “Keep the change.” It seemed only fair given their condition.

Sidney persuaded April to take a drink. She took a couple of sips then downed the glass in one.

Piers gave the alcohol a moment. “April, we really need to know about Auguste.”

She gave the barest of nods. “He liked to joke about things. That’s how we met, how we got to know each other. You know, Auguste and April, we’ve heard all the jokes.”

Sidney placed her hand on April’s shoulder, and April placed her hand on top. “I knew what he did from the moment we started going out. I knew it was dangerous. And … and not always right. But he wasn’t bad. Not really. He didn’t use guns.” She drew herself up. “I don’t know about the shooting. He wouldn’t,” she shook her head, “he didn’t. No. Not Auguste.”

Sidney squeezed her hand. “But what was he doing?”

April put her hands together in her lap. She gave Sidney a sideways look, then looked down at her hands. “You have to understand. Auguste worked for the same man for ten years. We struggled to pay the rent some months. It wasn’t easy. His mother, my father, they were old; they needed looking after. And his boss was so rich. Money for anything. And always Auguste helped, never complained. When Auguste’s mother passed away, we talked about doing something different, but how could we? We didn’t have the money. Then when my father passed away … then we knew we had to do it. To do something. A new life. A fresh start.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “This was going to be it.”

“So you were running away?” Piers said.

April rolled her eyes. “We knew we couldn’t stay in Paris. We’d lived our whole lives here, and all we owned was an old car that he worked on every weekend just to keep going.”

She looked up at Piers and he nodded sagely, hoping she would get to the point soon. “And?”

“And we had to do something. He wanted to do something. He was good at things. Good at listening, good at figuring things out.”

“What did he figure out?”

She bit her lip. “There was a painting. Valuable. He figured out about the painting.”

“What painting?”

She rubbed her hands together. “I don’t know. He planned things round his place, never at mine. He said the less I knew the better. But it … it was hot, and worth lots. Plenty for us to start a new life with.”

“That was his plan. To steal the painting?”

She looked at Piers like he was an idiot, which be began to feel he was.

“Who was he stealing the painting from? Pierre Morel?”

She looked down and rubbed her hands together. “No. Morel was his boss. These were bad people. He said it would be best if I didn’t know them.”

“We need to know.”

She shook her head then looked up at him. “I don’t know.”

“This isn’t a game April. Who was he stealing it from?”

“I don’t know! I told you, I don’t know.”

Sidney glowered at Piers. “She said she doesn’t know.”

“But if we’re going to find this thing—”

“She’s had a shock.”

“I understand that, but we don’t have long before those goons come after us again.”

Sidney wrapped her arm around April’s shoulder and stared hard at Piers. “You can still give her time.”

Piers made a show of closing his mouth.

After a long silence, April stood up. “I have to go.”

Piers looked up at her. “Where to?”

“I can’t tell you.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry about Auguste. I really am. And about … just then.”

Sidney stood and hugged the woman. “We’re sorry. Really.”

“You have somewhere to go?” Piers said.

She nodded. “Away from Paris. I have friends.” She looked hard at each of them. “If you have any sense, you’ll get out of Paris, too. These people are ruthless. Auguste said so. Trained killers. Some sort of army, special forces, people.”

Piers nodded grimly.

Sidney rummaged in her pockets and handed a bundle of bills to April. “Auguste’s.”

She pushed them into her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe her nose. She didn’t look at either of them. “They’re bad people. Auguste wasn’t a bad person. Not really. But they are. He said so. If you’re innocent, go to the police. Quickly.”

Without making eye contact, she pushed her way through the tables and chairs to the street, and disappeared in the crowds.