The Escape - Robert Muchamore Page 0,37

of market stalls. ‘There’s no trolley here.’

‘Excuse me,’ Rosie said, as she approached an exhausted-looking fireman who stood in front of a red and white barrier, puffing on a cigarette. ‘Do you know the town well?’

‘Lived here all my life,’ he said, nodding.

‘We need a trolley or a pram,’ Rosie explained. ‘Any idea where we might get hold of one?’

The fireman looked unsure, but after a few seconds he made a gesture with his hand. ‘Two streets over that way there’s a road with a couple of second-hand shops. But right now there are certain things that can’t be had for any amount of money and I suspect wheeled carts are one of them.’

Paul looked dejected as they turned away.

‘There is one thing,’ the fireman called after them, brightening up as he pointed in the opposite direction. ‘You could try St Peter’s church. The priest has been helping out refugees all week. It’s a two-minute walk and if there’s anyone who can help you, he’s your man.’

‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, smiling. ‘We’ll give it a go.’

They dragged the cases for another hundred metres until they found a side street with a gothic church behind tall iron gates. It was approaching the middle of the day and with the sun high, the church’s well-tended garden and neat surrounding lawns made an extraordinary oasis amidst the chaos of the bombed town. But as the siblings passed through the gates, they were shocked by a line of bodies. They had all been covered with sheets or clothing, but in many cases blood had soaked through and flies swarmed to the smell.

‘It’s you!’ Hugo said excitedly, as he ran out of the church doorway, pointing at the largest of the bodies. ‘There’s your daddy. I told them about you, but I don’t know your names.’

Paul was stunned by the reappearance of his dad, but the real horror was the two bodies of young children laid out alongside. None of the deaths was just, but the death of kids too small to even know what war was seemed like the worst thing of all.

‘Did you find your mummy?’ Rosie asked.

Hugo nodded, before pointing into the distance. ‘They took her away. These are ones nobody knows.’

‘Hello,’ a priest said brightly, as he stepped into the sun from the church’s main archway. He was tall, thin and had a huge growth on one side of his nose. ‘I’m Father Leroy. Do you two need any assistance?’

‘The boy and girl from the dead man!’ Hugo explained excitedly, which was enough to stop the priest in his tracks.

‘My children,’ he said softly. ‘Bless you. Come inside and we can talk.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As Marc stood under the porch waiting for the storm to pass, he recalled Director Tomas’ many lectures on the places where hooligans like him could end up if they continued to misbehave. France had a brutal penal system that ran from rat-infested dungeons with twenty men crammed into each cell, to labour camps and penal colonies where twelve-hour shifts and starvation rations were the norm.

Marc had already stolen from the director and run away, but those crimes were within the bounds of the orphanage. Tomas would have been within his rights to call in the police, but he’d never do so because beating the daylights out of his charges gave him such pleasure.

But however horrible the orphanage could be, the director was a devil Marc knew. If he was caught breaking into a house in Paris, he’d face punishment by police and the courts. He neither knew nor understood these forces, but the prospect of a Paris jail cell chilled his heart.

Against this, Marc weighed the extraordinary filth he’d seen inside Dormitory Raquel and the fact that sooner or later the director’s savings would run out and he’d have no option but to break the law to survive. Everything in life costs and he was too young for an honest job.

If he didn’t break into the house now it was only delaying the inevitable and the obvious absence of the owner, combined with the overgrown hedges shielding the view from the street, made this a great opportunity. The only thing was, Marc didn’t have a clue how to break into a house.

When the sun finally broke between two banks of cloud, Marc stepped off the porch and began a circuit of the building. His white shirt was now grey from the falling ash and his eyes still stung, but the rain had scrubbed the air and Marc felt as