Paris Love Match - By Nigel Blackwell Page 0,10
“I … I thought we weren’t going to use names, boss?”
There was a high-pitched groan. “Well, that may or may not be his name, because you don’t know. That could have been a ruse to make you believe it’s his name when it isn’t. Right.”
“Riiiiight,” said Sidney. “Look. I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about, and I’ve got a lot of things on my mind at the moment, so I’m going to have to go.” She lowered the phone from her ear. Piers grabbed it before she could close it.
“Who is this?”
There was a laugh at the other end. “Ah, it’s lover boy.”
“I’m not anyone’s lover boy, okay?”
“Ooohhh, touchy, touchy.” There was more sniggering.
“Look, if you’re trying to threaten us, the least you can do is explain what’s going on.”
The owner of the high-pitched voice cleared his throat. “Then listen up. If you don’t return what Auguste stole within 24 hours then Matchstick Morel will be paying you a visit. And you don’t want that do you?”
“Who’s Matchstick Morel? And we don’t know this Auguste guy, so how are we supposed to know what he might have taken from you?”
“Pierre Matchstick Morel is a man you don’t want to meet. And you know perfectly well what he took, so you better start looking. Speaking of looking, you better leave out the back, because some nosy old bat pointed you two out to those police guys who just raced past, and they’re on their way to the café now.”
Piers looked up. A knot of police officers was outside.
“Shit.” He grabbed Sidney’s wrist and dragged her down a corridor that led to the kitchen.
She fought back. “What are you doing?”
“Police. Outside.”
The waiter stood in front of them holding Sidney’s coffee. She downed it in one mouthful as they pushed past.
They raced for the rear door. Piers hit it first, shoving down the emergency handle and tumbling out into a narrow, trash-filled rear lane.
“This way,” said Sidney, racing to a featureless door on the opposite side of the road. She started hammering on the door. “Don’t just stand there—get knocking.”
Piers added his fists to the noise. “What are we doing?”
“This goes into a shopping area.”
“Shopping?”
“There’s a Métro station underneath.”
The door opened. Sidney leapt forward, embraced a security guard, and gave him an exaggerated kiss on the cheek. “Thank god. We went out there by mistake and didn’t know how to get back in. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
She let go of the guard. “Got to run. Train to catch.”
She bounded off. The guard turned his stare to Piers who shrugged and raced after her. To his relief, the guard closed and locked the door before there was any sign of the police following.
Sidney took a sharp left and bounded down a set of stairs, three at a time. Piers caught up with her at the bottom. “Where are we going?”
“One more floor to the platform.” She pointed at a line of machines. “Tickets, quick.”
Piers sneered. “Do you ever have any money?”
She stepped back. “You’re going to argue about money at a time like this?”
He held his hands up in mock surrender. “All right, all right.”
While he shoved euros into the ticket machine, she headed down the next set of steps, waving. He grabbed the tickets from the machine and ran after her. “Wait!”
Arms still waving, she turned right at the bottom of the stairs and disappeared from sight.
Piers leapt the last six steps in one go and crashed to the ground on a slick marble floor. A platform full of people turned to look at him. He rolled to his feet and held his hands up. “I’m okay, thanks. I’m okay.”
A presenter on an overhead TV babbled excitedly about a disturbance in Paris, but was drowned out by a train rolling into the station. He kept looking around. “Sidney, Sidney!”
The people on the platform backed away from him. Sidney appeared, grabbed his hand and dragged him, stumbling, into the train. He couldn’t take his eyes off the stares of the people on the platform. He knew he’d made a dramatic entrance onto the platform, but sometimes people were just weird. Sidney pushed him into a seat and wedged herself beside him.
He wiped his brow. “Nearly missed—” His gaze flicked from one person to the next. Half the subway car was staring at them. “Shit,” he mumbled.
She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and pressed her mouth to his ear. “Shut up. Act natural.”
“What’s going on?” he said