Paris Love Match

Chapter 19





Piers’ feet ached. After running from the bank, they had settled into a steady walking pace and he’d lost track of how far they had traveled. “Sidney, we’ve got to stop and think.”

She came to a halt and Piers almost walked into her. “You think we’re far enough away?” she said.

“Much farther and we’ll have to swim the channel.”

“So, more coffee?”

“Christ, no. I’ve had enough caffeine to keep me awake for weeks.”

She held her hand out as if to sample the weather and looked up into darkening clouds. “Which we’re probably going to have to do.”

He furrowed his brow.

She rolled her eyes. “Stay awake. We’re not exactly going to check into a hotel tonight, are we?”

He clapped his hands on her shoulders. “That’s brilliant.”

She brushed him off. “If you’re trying to be funny, it’s not working.”

“No. A hotel. We don’t need to get a hotel. I’ve already got one.”

“You own a hotel?”

“No! I have a room booked in the company’s name, not mine. They always do that. Corporate policy.”

“Er.”

“It’ll be all right. We can hide out, think, and sleep.”

“Together?”

“Yes. I mean, no. No, no, I don’t want to sleep with you. I just meant—”

“You don’t like me?” She gave an angelic smile, angled her head, and blinked at him.

“No, I do like you.”

She fluttered her eyelashes. “But you don’t want to sleep with me?”

“Exactly. No, I mean, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“What? I’m not your sort?”

“No. I mean—”

“So, what is your sort? What sort do you like? Let me know and I’ll see what I can do to set you up with your sort.”

Piers fell silent. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and squeezed. “Why do you take everything so seriously?”

“Our lives are at stake, in case you’d forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten, but I have another idea.”

He cocked one eyebrow.

She winked, “Since you’re not keen on the idea of sleeping together.”

He shrugged. “Very funny. We need a plan. It’s not like we can stay awake at an all-night rave.”

“Oh.” She looked sheepish.

“You were thinking of going to a rave?”

“No! A club.” She dug two tickets from a pocket and handed them to Piers. “It’s just off the river. Bernard’s. I know the owner. They stay open all night.”

He turned the tickets over in his hands. “It’s hardly a place to sit and think.”

“I wasn’t going to sit and think. It’s Friday night.”

“It’s Friday night and we’ve got the mob and the police after us. Great time for a dance.”

“What do you do on a Friday night?”

“I, er, I meet up. You know. With friends.”

“Friends?”

“Yeah, I have friends.”

“Female friends?”

“I have male friends and female friends.”

“Right. Right. So you go clubbing?”

“Well . . . sometimes.”

“What do you do on the other times?”

He straightened his back. “You know. We meet up. Have a few drinks. Go out and have a laugh.”

“Tell me about the females you know.”

“Well, there’s lots. I mean … even my boss is a woman.”

“Your boss?” Sidney slid her arm off Piers. “What do you really do on a Friday night?”

Piers opened his mouth, but she placed a finger across his lips. “No. What do you really do?”

He sagged back down. “Sometimes I meet up with a couple of friends of mine. We go for a beer, or play Xbox.”

“Grand theft?”

“Huh?”

“You play Grand Theft Auto, don’t you?”

Piers looked down at his hands. “Okay. So I don’t have much of a life compared to you.”

“Nah, I played it once. Crashed a lot. You just need to get out a bit more. Meet some real people. Relax.”

“You mean go to this club?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I know people there.”

“But—”

She wrapped her arm around his and pulled them close. “They have good music. We could dance. Have fun. You and me.”

Piers’ skin prickled and he licked his lips. His heart banged in his chest and he forced himself to relax his hands. He stared, brow furrowed, not breathing, with his mouth half open.

“Come on.” She pulled playfully on his arm and winked. “Promise I won’t leave with anyone else.”

He pulled back. “Leave with anyone else? Dancing? People? Fun? Have you forgotten the fact we’re on France’s most wanted list?”

She hung on to his sleeve. “No! Besides, you don’t know that.”

“Know what?”

“That we’re on the most wanted list.”

“We’ve certainly made a good effort to get there.”

She let go of him, slumped onto a low wall and sighed. “So . . . What’s your plan?”

He took a deep breath. “I think the hotel is best. We need to look at the stuff you got from the bank.”

She surveyed the street and pulled out two envelopes. “Let’s just look at them here.”

Piers spun around, looking for Little and Large, or the police.

She pulled him down onto the wall. “Will you stop doing your best to look suspicious?”

He sighed.

She opened the first envelope and pulled out one sheet of heavy vellum. “His will,” she said despondently.

Piers looked it over. It only filled half a page. “He left everything to April.”

Sidney pulled a sheaf of papers from the second envelope. They were layered sheets of thin pink, yellow, and tan paper, glued along one edge. She sighed and handed it to Piers. “Sales receipt for a car.”

He looked down the sheet. “A Renault 5 LE, with optional side stripe and FM radio. Purchased in 1996.”

“Merde,” she said. “This doesn’t tell us anything.”

“It’s the car April mentioned. She called it the old car he worked on every weekend.”

“Sixteen years is pretty old for a car. Even older in Paris.”

Piers flipped through the pages. They were all carbon copies. He saw nothing suspicious, nothing that might be a coded message or a clue. “Bugger.”

“You British, you have such a way with words.”

“What do you expect? We don’t have a clue to anything.”

“You think I don’t know that? Have you forgotten I was the one who walked into the bank to get that crap? Or that I was the one running out when the police arrived?”

“I—”

“Forget it.” Sidney snatched the papers from Piers and they sat in an uncomfortable silence.

“Don’t you know anything else about Auguste?” she said.

“Like what?”

“Anything?”

“I don’t know him any more than you do.”

“Right.”

“I don’t. I never met the guy, and you know as much about him as me.”

“You were in his apartment.”

“So? I told you. It was tidy and practically empty.”

“And you knew which floor it was on.”

“Huh?”

“You knew which apartment was his. Among all the others you could have picked, you knew which one was his.”

“You think I knew him? I never met the guy before for Christ’s sake.”

There was a long silence.

“Besides, the door to his apartment had been kicked in. There was yellow police tape across the entrance. You couldn’t miss his apartment.”

She looked sideways at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh.”

The silence returned.

A Fiat 500 parked across the street from them and flashed its lights. Piers squinted to see inside. “Great. Little and Large have returned.”

Sidney looked down the street. “There’s a place down there we could eat, get out of their sights. Looks dingy enough. I doubt they’ll have a TV.”

They walked to the restaurant. She was right. The place looked as if it had been swept when the Second World War ended and never cleaned since. The chalkboard outside had an illegible scrawl where the meals should have been written. Sidney didn’t even stop to look; she walked straight in and sat down.

Piers gave up trying to interpret the chalkboard and joined her. “So, what do we do now?”

“Eat.”

“Very funny.”

She ordered an omelet and Piers a steak. Any meal might be his last, so he thought he might as well enjoy it. They sat in silence until the food arrived.

Piers took one look at his meal and knew it might actually be his last: it was almost entirely pink. “I can’t eat this.”

The waiter looked at him.

“English,” said Sidney.

The waiter grunted and scooped the plate away.

Piers threw up his hands. “Great, so now I don’t even get to eat?”

“Don’t be childish. He’s going to cook it some more.”

Sidney ate her food with a tiny fork. She was delicate, taking small portions and eating slowly. Even so, she was finished by the time the waiter returned with his steak.

The waiter dropped the plate on the table. “English,” he said and walked away without waiting for a reply.

Piers tapped the steak with his knife. It wasn’t just well-done; it was almost toasted. He cut off a chunk and chewed. To his surprise it tasted good, even though it gave his jaw a workout. He swallowed. “So, what do we know?”

Sidney stared at him. “Know?”

“About Auguste. About the painting. About what we’re going to do next.”

Sidney looked away. “You’re the one who thinks he knows everything.”

“When did I say that?”

“You told your mother, or have you forgotten already?”

He grunted.

Sidney stared at him. “Do you remember anything he said in the taxi?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly. There was a lot of shooting going on.”

“Come on, think. He must have said something.”

“He mentioned the company I work for.”

“Which is kind of suspicious.”

“Suspicious?”

“Yeah.” She leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “You sure you didn’t know him?”

He glowered back. “Positive.”

She stood up.

“I haven’t finished,” Piers said.

“I’m only going to the restroom.”

She picked up her phone and walked off down a long corridor. Piers watched her go. He didn’t have a clue how much the dress had cost, but the view from behind alone made it worth every penny. He pushed another chunk of steak in his mouth and looked around the café, only to realize he wasn’t the only person who noticed her leave her seat. The other male patrons brought their gazes back to their tables and made themselves busy as he stared at them. He cut off another chunk of steak and stabbed it with his fork. Who did they think they were?

He chewed his steak and wondered the same question about himself. Without the taxi, the shooting, and the mob, he wouldn’t have dared talk to her, and he doubted she would have given him the time of day. He swallowed, and shoved his gloom to the back of his mind. He had to concentrate on the problem.

And that was the problem. They had no clues. One minute they were arguing over a taxi, the next the mob was after them for a painting the dead guy stole. Piers chewed another piece of steak. Auguste didn’t have the painting in the taxi, so he must have hidden it somewhere. An obvious conclusion, but of no practical help.

Piers took a satisfying crunch of fries and almost forgave the waiter his attitude.

Sidney walked back, smiled, and dropped her phone onto the table. Piers watched her all the way.

She waved a hand in front of his face. “You don’t have to keep staring at my figure.”

“I’m not.”

“Gee, thanks. You’re just a bundle of compliments.”

“I’m thinking about Auguste.”

She hummed. “Is he your sort?”

“This is important. He jumped in our taxi at Notre Dame, right? But the other shooting happened at Gare de l’Est.”

She nodded slowly.

“So how did he get between the two?”

She shrugged. “Taxi? Métro? He was out of breath and sweating. Maybe he ran?”

“Yeah. Only he was an organization freak. His house looked like it was out of a museum, compared to yours.”

“Thanks.”

“Then he has his will made out and stored in a bank. He’s Mr. Prepared yet he ends up chased across Paris like a madman with a painting he planned to steal.”

“And your point is?”

“Planned to steal. He was a perfectionist. If he intended to steal the painting, he would have had it all planned out. He would have had an escape route, he wouldn’t be jumping into a taxi.”

“So? He messed up. It happens to the best of people, you know.”

Piers shook his head. “No. He planned to get to the Montparnasse railway station in time to meet his girlfriend. He’d never have done it on foot. He had a plan, I’m sure of it.”

“Look, you’re very irritating sometimes. What? Why? How does this help?”

Piers took a last bite of his steak and put down his knife and fork. “Things didn’t go to plan. That’s why he ended up running across Paris and jumping into a taxi. “

Sidney leaned forward. “So what? How does that help?”

“Get a map.”

She straightened herself up. “What?”

“Get a map, a street map.”

“What do you think I am? A walking map vendor strolling Paris on the off chance of making a sale to a demented Brit?”

“Fine.” He grabbed a free tourist map from a tired looking display and spread it on the table. “Auguste starts off here, at Gare de l’Est.” He drew his finger across the map, “and ends here, at Notre Dame.”

“About two miles.”

“Right. And somewhere along this route he dumped the painting.”

“You’re really narrowing it down.”

“Let’s just keep thinking.”

“But he could have gone in thousands of different ways. There’s so many streets.”

“Do you think he was a good runner?”

“That man? If he hadn’t been shot he probably would have had a heart attack.”

“So, he ended up on foot not far from Notre Dame.”

Sidney leaned forward. “And?”

“And he certainly didn’t plan to use a taxi or the Métro to escape.”

“Maybe.”

Piers leaned back. “If he was going to escape, he’d use a car. The—”

“Renault.”

“Exactly.” He smiled. “All we have to do is find his car, and we find the painting.”

“Damn. You really are pretty good at this thinking thing. Even if you are, you know, a bit annoying about it.”

“And once we have the painting, we’ll be free.”

He grinned, excused himself and headed for the restroom. As he left, he noticed she was typing on her phone, and the café’s males were paying her attention again. He had to fight back the urge to tell them to look somewhere else, but he was being stupid. There wasn’t any romance between them, they were just two people stuck in a bad situation. One of them just happened to be devastatingly beautiful.

When he returned to the table, she smiled. It was close to her full thousand-watt version, but he couldn’t help but think it was tinged with something else.

Auguste’s phone rang. Sidney looked at the display. “It’s them.”

She flipped her phone open and smiled. Not the thousand-watt version; something altogether different. Something filled with boundless confidence—a confidence that bubbled over into her voice. “Yep.”

Piers could hear the short guy’s high-pitched voice rasping out of the back of the phone. “If you’ve stopped for lunch, I take it you’ve found the stuff.”

“You’re a bundle of laughs,” said Sidney.

“More laughs than our boss will be, that’s for sure, missy. You need to get your act together. Spend less time eating and more time finding our stuff.”

“Stuff, stuff, stuff. It’s probably not your stuff anyway.”

“Who says?”

“Piers.”

Piers rolled his eyes.

“Ohhhhh. Lover boy.”

He leaned forward and spoke into the phone, “I’m not her lover boy.”

Sidney turned away from him. “You can say that again. He doesn’t even like my figure.” She winked at Piers.

Piers flushed hot and leaned back in his seat. “I didn’t say that.”

“He sounds like a very sensitive guy,” said the little man.

“Believe me, he is.”

“Don’t forget, you’ve only got 16 hours left.”

“Until what?”

“Until you run out of time.”

“I’ll be biting my nails then.”

“Ho-ho. Very clever. Think I’m simple, huh?”

Sidney hummed for a moment. “Tell your boss we don’t have the stuff and we can’t find it. Have a nice day.”

She clicked off the phone.

Piers shot forward. “Bloody hell!”

She looked indignant. “What?”

“Have you forgotten their threat? And that they’re a good deal bigger than either of us.”

“The little one isn’t.”

“It’s not the little one I’m worried about. Ring them back now. Tell them it was a joke.”

“No.”

“What? They’re outside. They’ll just wait for us to walk outside and beat the daylights out of us.”

“But we know where the painting is. We’ll be in control. They’ll have to do what we want, and we’ll be free. You said so.”

Piers groaned. “Maybe. When we have the painting. It may have escaped your attention, but we don’t actually have the painting yet.”

Sidney’s face fell. Her lips curled down and her eyes seemed to get smaller. “Then what do you want to do?”

“Call them back. Say you’re sorry.”

As she glowered at him, Auguste’s phone rang. She flipped it open without looking.

“What?”

“You need to take this seriously. Our boss isn’t a nice guy. Well, I didn’t mean that, he is a nice guy, but sometimes he’s not, comprende?”

“Comprende? My, you are well-educated.”

“Well, I am, as it happens. Very. Now, find our painting, and pronto.”

“Comprende and pronto, all in one phone call. How lucky can a girl get?”

“Find the bloody painting.”

The phone clicked off.

Piers shook his head. “They found us again. They might be idiots, but don’t antagonize them, because they might be idiots with guns and knives.”

“They don’t look like they could handle guns.”

“You’d be surprised. Especially if you push them over the edge.”

“I’d be only too happy to push them over the edge.”

He smiled. “I’d be only too happy to get rid of them as well, but for the time being we have to put up with them.”

“Maybe we should take the knives, for safety.”

Piers looked at his knife and laughed. “You’d be better off with the fork than this knife.”

She wiped her fork on her napkin and slipped it into her handbag.

He rolled his eyes. “Is there anything you haven’t tried to nick?”

She pulled a face at him.

He took a last mouthful of fries and pushed the plate away. The waiter arrived, scooped it away and dropped the check, all without speaking.

Piers glanced at the amount and dropped a couple of bills on the table.

“What now?” said Sidney.

He finished his coffee. “We start at Gare de l’Est and follow the route Auguste took. Which means we’ve got a long walk.”

She stood up and headed for the exit. “No, it doesn’t. Come on.”