Scorched Earth - Robert Muchamore Page 0,54
squirmed and giggled helplessly as Marc let go of her foot and started tickling her under the arms. Drool spilled out the corner of Jae’s mouth as Marc moved in for a kiss.
‘Aye-aye, what’s going on here then?’ PT said.
Marc sprang up as Jae dived under tangled bedclothes.
‘Haven’t you heard of knocking?’ Marc asked, half smiling, half angry.
‘Where’s the fun in that?’ PT replied, as he rattled a single-sheet newspaper. ‘I need a quick word.’
Marc tutted. ‘It better be important.’
The two lads ended up in the kitchen. The five-bedroom apartment was on the third floor and the living-room’s giant bay window gave a sweeping view downhill, across the Seine towards central Paris. On a good day you could see the Eiffel Tower, but right now the heat made it too hazy.
Jae was visiting from Beauvais, but Marc, Luc, Sam, PT, Edith and Henderson had been living here for eight weeks. They’d done a few little delivery jobs for Maxine’s Ghost Circuit, but they’d mostly been twiddling thumbs and slowly turning the apartment into a tip.
‘I know Henderson’s gone to Rouen,’ Marc said. ‘But where’s everyone else?’
‘Sam and Edith are out looking for food. I haven’t seen Luc this morning, but I expect he’s two floors down, with that married mother of two.’
Marc laughed. ‘Must be tough not having a girlfriend when even a scumbag like Luc is getting some action.’
‘I certainly need something to relieve the tedium,’ PT said, as he pulled a chunk of hard black bread from a loaf and tucked it in his cheek to soften. ‘Remember our old friend, Milice Commander Robert?’
‘He killed Rosie,’ Marc said. ‘I’m not likely to forget, am I?’
‘Read this,’ PT said, as he handed over the underground newspaper.
The two-day-old paper was tissue thin. Some sections were smudged where several people had already read it.
‘This is a communist paper,’ Marc sneered, then more angrily as he saw the depleted loaf on the kitchen dresser, ‘How much bread have you scoffed? That’s all we’ve got between seven and who knows when we’ll find more?’
‘Second article,’ PT said, as he struggled to chew. ‘The Nazis would still be winning the war if they built their bunkers out of this bread.’
Marc took the sheet. With paper and ink in short supply, the headlines in underground newspapers were only a few millimetres high. Stories stayed short and usually stirred propaganda into the news.
DON’T LET THE MILICE GET AWAY!
As the Allies advance towards an inevitable battle in Paris, France’s vilest traitors are abandoning their Milice uniforms and going into hiding.
These sub-humans use stolen identity papers and take new names so that they can avoid retribution by the communist brotherhood.
Comrades are urged to root out this cancer! Destroy the Milice! Act before they vanish!
THEY SHALL HAVE NO PART IN THE NEW COMMUNIST FRANCE.
‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t much like the idea of Rosie’s killer vanishing on us,’ PT said. ‘I found a map of Paris. The address Paul found for Robert’s café is only four stops from here on the Métro.’
‘And when did you last see the Métro open?’ Marc asked. ‘We haven’t had electricity at all for the last three days.’
‘An hour’s walk, then,’ PT said. ‘What else are we gonna do all day?’
‘Henderson ordered us to stay here,’ Marc said.
PT laughed. ‘Since when did his orders bother you?’
‘Look,’ Marc said, as he glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that his girlfriend was still out of earshot in the bedroom. ‘It’s not that I don’t care about Rosie, but Jae’s only here for one day. She’ll get in a right mood if I say I’m leaving.’
PT understood where Marc was coming from, but still felt a bit irritated. ‘All right then,’ he sighed. ‘You stay here working up a sweat with your little farm girl. I’ll track him down on my own.’
*
Paul shuffled back nervously when he heard boots clank on the wooden hatch in the ceiling.
‘Joel,’ he whispered, reaching across the tiny black space and tapping his fellow prisoner’s foot.
When the hatch opened a shaft of light made both lads shield their eyes. For the first three weeks they’d been hauled out of the basement every few days for a nurse’s visit. But that stopped once their cuts from the car accident healed. Now, their guard just threw down scraps of food and hauled up their slop bucket on a rope.
‘How’s the weather down there?’ the doughy guard asked, finding his own joke hilarious.
Paul and Joel couldn’t hold their eyes open