The officer didn’t move. “This building has been secured, monsieur.”
Piers look indignantly at the man. “Non, non. I live here.”
Sidney grabbed Piers hand. “Please. You can’t leave me. No one else uses leather like you.”
Piers shook himself free and re-addressed the officer. “Monsieur, really, I must go inside.”
The officer shook his head.
Sidney grabbed Piers by the shoulders and pulled him a step backward. Piers wrestled himself free, colliding with the officer and pushing past.
“Sir, I—” said the officer, but Sidney crashed into him, her arms flailing.
The officer fought her back.
Piers paced backward into the entranceway of the building. “I have to go. We need to make a clean break of it, for her sake.”
Sidney struggled with the officer. “No! Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.”
Piers stepped inside building and headed straight up the stairs. When he reached the first landing, he started checking the nameplates beside each apartment. On the fourth floor, he found he needn’t have bothered. A door hung off its hinges and yellow crime scene tape had been draped across the entranceway.
He listened for movement before stepping over the tape. He found a bedroom, bathroom, and a small kitchen/living room with threadbare rugs over wooden floors. The furniture looked old but well-cared-for. Pictures of April adorned the walls of the bedroom. In the entrance hall, a large color poster showed a panoramic view of a beach, busy with people. Piers guessed it to be in the south of France.
The living area had practically nothing in it. An old TV, a coffee table, and a paisley loveseat. Perhaps the police had already removed everything from the apartment?
From the window, he saw Sidney walking back to the corner where they had stood and hugged. No, he reminded himself with a deep sigh, where they had acted.
Only, he hadn’t acted.
The feel of her body against his had been a shock at first, and her breath on his neck had been intoxicating. He’d had to tell himself to keep his hands on her back and nowhere else, but then she had embraced him, and the whole world seemed to go quiet. The cars, the trains, the voices—it was as if Paris had come to stop, holding its breath to see what would happen.
Only, nothing happened. They’d been acting. It had been a wonderful moment. A moment when she had washed away all his doubts. A moment when she had calmed all his fears. A moment he wished had never ended. But it had, and now he felt guilty standing in the dry apartment while she stood in the rain. At last she flipped open the umbrella and he had to fight back the urge to run downstairs and hold it for her.
He dragged himself away from the window and into the kitchen. The drawers were full of pots and pans, all well-used. He rummaged through them and found nothing. An enormous collection of sharp knives lined the work surfaces and Piers felt a chill as April’s words trained killers pushed into his mind.
He used a spoon to stir the sugar, the coffee beans, and the flour, but there was nothing hidden in any of them. The breadbasket contained an old French loaf, which was hard enough to be classed as an offensive weapon. Outside the kitchen window was a rusty fire escape that looked like it hadn’t been used in years.
The bedroom was different from the other rooms. He felt uncomfortable as he looked at an array of candles and a line of furry animals. Auguste wouldn’t have had them without April. Piers bit his lip as he remembered her walking off into the crowds. He should have treated her better. He hadn’t appreciated Auguste and April’s relationship, he’d only thought of him as the man that nearly got them killed and her as a woman keeping secrets.
The scent from the candles was feminine and a blessed relief from the stink from his clothes. He gave a short laugh as he remembered Sidney’s apartment. She dressed well, but her home had been a mess—not dirty, just well-used. He ran his finger over the candles and wondered if there was a softer side of Sidney.
The closet was divided down the middle, April’s clothes on the right, Auguste’s on the left. Each of them had three pairs of shoes. He had a black umbrella in his corner; she had a red one in hers’. Piers looked back around the room. They had been very exact about everything. This man didn’t improvise.
Piers drummed his fingers on the closet door. Auguste didn’t just decide he was going to steal the painting on a whim. He’d planned it in advance—when he was going to steal it, how he was going to steal it, and how he was going to get away. It wasn’t a heat of the moment thing; he had train tickets and his girlfriend waiting at the station for him.
Piers moved to the bathroom and found it had April’s touches, too. A painting of a sunflower hung beside the door and a line of creams and fragrances stretched along one side of the sink. Auguste’s razors and shaving foam were in a cabinet above the toilet. The cabinet had a slope to it, and Piers had to catch a razor that fell out as he opened the door.
Under the sink there were the usual cleaning items and a metal bar with two points that Piers couldn’t envisage a use for.
He slumped onto the edge of the bath. He’d found nothing. The place was a model for clean and organized. Everything had its place and everything was in it. April must have had her own apartment, because her presence in this one was restricted to the bedroom and bathroom. But where she had a presence, everything had been shared, fifty-fifty, even steven, right down the middle. He looked up with a wry grin, everything except the cabinet above the toilet, and who’d want to put anything in there, if it was going to roll out into the toilet?
Piers stood up and looked at the cabinet. The rest of the house was well looked after, organized, cared for. It wouldn’t have taken much to adjust the cabinet so things didn’t roll out. He ran his fingers around the edge of the cabinet. It was solidly fixed to the wall. He opened it up and saw why. The rear of the cabinet was metal and two tamper-proof security bolts secured it, top and bottom. He ran his finger over them. They were rough with small holes in them.
He heard voices downstairs.
He wrestled with the cabinet, but it wasn’t going to move. Whoever put it on the wall, didn’t want it to come off.
The voices grew excited, something about a hoax caller, a misuse of police time, and tracing the call. The police were back.
He thumped the cabinet on the side. The razors and shaving foam fell out, clattering onto the floor and splashing in the toilet bowl. The security bolts were weird. They had a sloped surface with two small holes. French engineering, he thought, always got to be different. It’d need—
He dived for the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the metal bar. Its two points fit the bolt, and he rotated it as fast as he could. The remaining contents of the cabinet fell out, splashing toilet water down his jeans. He twisted on.
The voices were heading up the stairs. He heard calls for a fingerprinting kit and a photographer.
The first bolt fell out and he went for the second. The cabinet rocked on the wall and the bolt wobbled about. The lever slipped off, his hands slick with sweat. He reseated it and turned frantically. The cabinet sagged forward, obscuring his view of the bolt. He used his forearm to push the structure back onto the wall, but then he couldn’t move the bolt properly.
He heard footsteps climbing the old wooden stairs.
He flipped the lever over to his right hand so he could hold the cabinet with his left, but lost hold of the lever. It crashed into the toilet bowl and clattered into the water.
The footsteps stopped.
Shit! He grabbed the cabinet and wrestled it back and forth, levering it away from the half-removed bolt. The wood splintered and cracked. He twisted the cabinet to one side. There was a compartment behind the cabinet with a small black plastic bag in the rear corner
The footsteps resumed, faster this time and accompanied by shouting.
He grabbed the bag and ran for the kitchen fire escape. The latches were stiff and dug into his fingers as he pried them open. The window crea
ked as he slid it up. He threw himself through the opening, not caring about the state of the rusty metalwork, and pulled the window down.
The steps were narrow and doubled back on themselves with each floor. He bounded down, two at a time, bending his knees to mute the sound of his steps. Only when he reached the second floor did he realize the bottom two floors of the stairs were missing.
He looked down. It was a long drop. Didn’t the French have bloody fire regulations? He cursed whoever had taken the last steps and considered hanging by his arms to get low enough to jump without breaking anything. He looked again. It would still be ten feet to the sidewalk.
He was beside a window. Inside was another kitchen. He kicked hard and the glass disintegrated around his foot. He stamped on the bigger of the jagged pieces that were left in the frame before squeezing through the gap.
His shoes crunched on the broken glass. The apartment was identical to Auguste’s, only the owner wasn’t as fastidious about cleaning up. A dog stared at him from a basket in the corner. The room smelled worse than Piers. The dog wagged its tail and bounded over. Piers swept him up to keep his paws from the broken glass. The dog licked his face and Piers tried to wrestle him into a different position, one that kept his breath as far away as possible.
He ran for the door and tossed the animal onto the couch on the way. The dog bounded off the couch, and beat Piers to the front door, its lead in its mouth.
“No, stay here.”
The dog bounced up and down.
Piers pushed the dog away and listened at the door. It was quiet. He clicked the lock and opened it an inch. There was no sign of anyone on the landing. Restraining the dog with his foot he stepped out. Before he had closed the door, the dog bolted past him and down the stairs. Piers gave chase, using his hands on the bannisters to leap five or six steps at a time. He reached the hallway at the bottom and his shoes slapped onto the marble floor. Two police officers at the door turned. The dog barked and dived between them.
“Stop him!” Piers said, shoving through the police officers and running flat out after the dog.
The dog went away from where he’d told Sidney to wait, but he didn’t care. He ran after it, calling, “stop,” and praying that it didn’t.
After two blocks, the dog came to an abrupt halt by a gate into a park. He looked up at Piers, wagging his tail and shaking the leash in his teeth. Piers looked behind him and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the officer hadn’t followed.
He hooked the leash to the dog’s collar. The park wasn’t that big, but perhaps he could tie the dog to a tree. The dog wagged its tail, sweeping the ground in an arc behind him. Maybe his owners would pass this way as they returned home. Piers looked up and down the street, maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, he couldn’t walk the dog back to his home.
He toyed with the idea of Sidney handing the dog back over to the police outside Auguste’s apartment, but that was still too much of a risk. The dog ran around his feet, wrapping him in the leash. He let go and untied himself. The dog looked up, and made small jumps while his tongue flapped from the side of his mouth.
Piers took a deep breath. The dog had gotten him out of trouble; the least he could do now was look after him. They could walk around the block and get back to Sidney without passing the police in front of Auguste’s apartment building. Then he would find something better to do with him.
Piers bent down and looked at the tag on his collar. God, some people were inventive. He patted the dog’s head, and walked off to meet Sidney, Rover bouncing along beside him.
Chapter 14
Sidney walked back to the corner and out of sight of the police officer. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Bloody hell, this whole thing was ridiculous. God knows what damage she was doing to herself with all the crying, running around, and falling down trash chutes. Her eyes would be as puffy as could be, she ached all over, and the cold and the rain weren’t helping. Even the brandy hadn’t warmed her up.
She flipped open the umbrella. It had been a stupid trick to get by the officer, but it had worked. Hopefully now they would find out something about the painting, though she wasn’t quite sure what they would find. Would Auguste have hidden it in his apartment? And if he had, surely the police would have found it already? In fact, what was Piers looking for? She furrowed her brow.
He was a weird guy. Kind of likable, and kind of funny, but still kind of different. At least he wasn’t just full of lines and, she grinned, he could give as good as he got, like he wasn’t just out to impress her. But he had hung on to her longer than she’d expected when they hid from the police behind the umbrella, and she wasn’t quite sure how much of his embrace had been acting and how much might have been a little more. There again, she smiled, that wasn’t such a bad thing. It had been obvious in the shower that there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, and the firmness of his arms around her had been … she licked her lips . . . nice.
A black Mercedes appeared at the end of the street. Its windows were dark and she felt uncomfortable as it passed by. It didn’t look like a police car, but it might have been an unmarked one. The car turned right and raced away.
She looked up at the windows of the apartment block. Which one was Auguste’s? And how long was Piers going to be? She felt strangely naked without him. She shook herself. No. She didn’t need any man. Not again. She grinned. Or, at least not for a while.
She heard a voice behind her. “Excuse me?”
Sidney’s heart thumped so hard she could feel it in her throat. She whipped around, bringing the umbrella down as a shield. She gripped the shaft, ready to stab it forward into whoever had addressed her.
It took a moment for the face of the person who stood in front of her to register. He was tall, dark, and distinguished-looking, with square shoulders and a disarming smile of pearly white teeth. As she pointed the umbrella at him, he held his hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She swallowed. She didn’t know what to say to the dictator who, for the past five years, had ruled her homeland with an iron fist and a ruthless secret police force.
He lowered his hands. “Please, put the umbrella down.”
She lowered it a fraction. “What do you want?”
He smiled. “I know you have been in this country for a while, my dear, but surely you haven’t forgotten me already.”
“Per … President …”
He nodded and held out his hand. “Brunwald. Yes, my dear, and I must say I am very pleased to meet you.”
She lowered the umbrella and shook Brunwald’s hand. His grip was firm and confident. Hers was limp and cold as her muscles refused to cooperate.
“Don’t worry. I understand why you had to, shall we say emigrate, to France. I sympathize with what you’ve had to go through. Our country was sick, it still is, and we all must do what we can to achieve our dreams in life.”
He held his hands out, palms upward. “Your passion, it is fashion. Mine, contrary to the popular opinion in the press, is to restore our beautiful country to health, to resurrect our pride, to cherish and protect the values we have held dear for millennia.” He smiled.
Sidney forced her mouth closed and swallowed. “I, er, don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry, my dear, it is a lot to take in quickly. You see, I am here to personally retrieve various historical objects—those the criminal class have stolen from us. These people seek to undermine the progress we are making in Elbistonia.” He clenched his fingers and shook them. “They wish to steal the very things that make us Elbistonians.”
Sidney shook her head. “I, I, I’m not … haven’t stolen anything.”
Brunwald smiled and patted her arm. “Oh, I am not accusing you. No, no, no. I know what you are going through to retrieve our art.”
Sidney licked her lips. “Going through?”
“You do know the painting it is that you seek?”
She curled the ends of her lips downward.
“My friend?”
“The convenient Mr. Chapman.”
“Piers? Convenient?”
Brunwald nodded. “He has taken advantage of your kind and generous Elbistonian nature.”
“He has?”
Brunwald nodded sagely. “Indeed he has. Have you wondered why you two met?”
She shook her head.
“He was already in the taxi when you got in, correct?”
She nodded.
“Have you wondered why?”
“He was closer to the taxi than me.”
The sympathetic smiled returned to Brunwald’s face. “No, my dear. He was waiting for the other man. For Auguste. The man who stole the painting. They were in this affair together.”
Sidney’s cheeks fell. “He was?”
Brunwald nodded. “At the railway station? Don’t you find it was curious he was able to identify Auguste’s companion so quickly?”
“She had a phone.”
He gave a sympathetic smile. “Even so. A trained professional would struggle to find an unknown person so quickly. And the apartment over there. You brought him to this address, but did he ask for the apartment number?”
Her eyes narrowed their focus.
“You see, my dear, he has been using you. Playing you along.”
“But he—”
Brunwald leaned forward. “No, my dear. He is using you as cover and will dispense with you soon as he has what he wants. If you really don’t believe me, consider what happened in the taxi.”
She thought for a moment. “I got in. He was already there. He refused to get out—”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then Auguste got in. Then the shooting started and we drove away.”
“Did Auguste say anything?”
“No.”
Brunwald straightened up.
Sidney pinched her lip between her teeth. “Well … wait …”
Paris Love Match Page 9