Paris Love Match - By Nigel Blackwell Page 0,64

he was using when he was telling her it would be all right? Saying whatever he thought she wanted to hear? She knew he wouldn’t have talked to her without being caught in that taxi. He could barely talk to his mum.

She bit her cheek. His mum. He’d talked to her outside the library and in the boutique. He’d said things to appease her, things to deflect arguments, but really, he’d being lying.

And if he could lie to his mum …

Chapter 28

Piers left Bernard’s at three-thirty in the morning. The place was jumping. During the course of his hours at the bar, he’d been propositioned by both sexes and in three different languages. As the night had worn on he started to take it as a sport.

Terry’s All Time was to the west, but he knew Brunwald would track his phone, so he headed east before calling the dictator. The phone was answered on the first ring. Kuznik’s voice rasped slowly from the speaker. “What?”

“I want to talk to Brunwald.”

“Whatever you’ve got to say to him, you can say to me.”

“I’m not going to talk to the monkey when I want to talk to the organ grinder.”

“Don’t piss with me. My knife is one door away from your bitch.”

Piers swallowed. “Put him on, or I hang up.”

“You better have good news or I’m going to open that door and mix things up with your bitch.”

“Put him on.”

There was a silence long enough to make Piers check his phone to see the call was still connected. Finally Brunwald spoke. He was as smooth and polished as ever. “I hear you have something for me.”

“As long as you have something for me.”

“I’m a man of my word.”

“I want to talk to her.”

Brunwald hummed. “After you tell me what you’ve found.”

“Diamonds.”

“Excellent. And where did you found the diamonds.”

“Abandoned at a building site.”

Brunwald hummed. “My men must be loosing their touch. How much do these diamonds weigh?”

Piers sweated. He wasn’t good at guessing weight. “Ten pounds, or thereabouts. They’re sealed in a thick plastic pouch.”

“And where are you now?”

“Put Sidney on.”

Brunwald sighed. There was a long silence finally broken by Sidney’s voice. “Piers?”

“You okay?”

There was a long pause. “Kind of.”

“You’re going to be all right.”

“I’m really sorry, I really am. Don’t do anything stupid. Go to—”

The phone was wrenched away from her, but Piers heard the word “police” before Brunwald came back on.

“Very sweet, but we need to get down to business. Where are you?”

“You know Petit Quai?”

“No.”

“Then get a map and meet me there at 9am.”

“No. We meet now.”

“I need to sleep. Be there at nine. Bring Sidney and have your phone with you.”

“One hint of a problem—”

“Just be there.” Piers hung up. He was sure they had been tracking his calls, and hoped they had got a good fix on his direction. He turned around and sprinted for Terry’s All Time.

Twenty minutes later, sweaty and panting, he arrived at the sad sight of Terry’s twenty-four hour restaurant. The windows were thick with grime and the door had come from a different building and been fitted badly. There was no sign of a blue Citroën parked on the street. Perhaps they had gotten something different. He felt a pang of guilt at the thought of someone being deprived of the car, but it was a necessary evil. Perhaps he could make it up to the owners afterward.

Inside, the café was as dark as its windows. At the rear of the room, swing doors led into a kitchen where he could see steam rising from pots on a cooker.

To Piers’ surprise, the café was full. Men talked in muted voices in groups huddled around small tables. Some were dressed in dirty jeans, some were dressed in suits, but none of them looked like hygiene was a top priority in their daily routine. The voices stopped when the badly-fitted door slammed behind him. He gave an uncertain smile to the faces that turned to look over the stranger in their midst, and headed for the counter at the rear of the room. The men drifted back to their conversations, their voices lower and heads closer.

“Over here,” called Large.

Piers turned to see the pair seated behind a pillar, invisible from the door.

He sat down. “Do you have the stuff?”

Little screwed up his face and hissed Piers quiet. “What you trying to do? Make us look like criminals?”

Large nodded. “Need to order first.”

The swing doors crashed and an obese man in a not-recently-washed T-shirt walked out. He