Blacklight Blue by Peter May Read Free Book Online Page A

your wallet.’
    ‘Why should I?’
    The first one spoke up again. ‘Just think what’s going to happen to your daughter after we take you down.’
    Enzo flinched. He reached beneath his coat and drew out his wallet, throwing it towards them so that it landed in the snow.
    ‘You, too.’ A flashlight swung into Kirsty’s face and she threw her bag at their feet.
    One of them stooped to open it up. He riffled quickly through the contents until he found her billfold with credit cards and notes. He removed the notes and stuffed them in his pocket and let the billfold drop back into the snow. He tossed her bag away and went through Enzo’s wallet, removing the notes but leaving the plastic. He stood up, and flashlights that had been trained on the ground at his feet swung up again into the faces of their victims.
    There was an odd hiatus, a momentary stand-off when it seemed that no one knew what would happen next. The one who had spoken first broke the silence.
    ‘You really got a blade?’
    Enzo stared boldly back at him. ‘You want to find out?’
    But the boy didn’t take long to think about it. He turned to the others. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
    Flashlights were extinguished, plunging them into sudden blindness, and the five hooded youths melted away into the falling snow.
    Enzo and Kirsty stood for nearly a full minute before Enzo stooped to recover his wallet and Kirsty’s billfold. She looked at him curiously as he went to retrieve her bag. ‘Do you?’ she said.
    ‘Do I what?’
    ‘Have a blade?’
    He almost laughed. ‘Of course not. But they didn’t know that.’ Then he shook his head and she saw the confusion in his eyes.
    ‘What?’
    He met her gaze. ‘This wasn’t just some chance mugging, Kirsty. They knew who we were.’
    She frowned. ‘How can you know that?’
    ‘How else would they know you were my daughter?’

Chapter Ten
    It took them forty minutes, once they left the park, to walk to the Place de Bordeaux. Every taxi was taken, and there were few other vehicles on the road. By the time they got to the shelter of the tram stop at Lycée Kléber they were both soaked through and frozen numb. At the north end of the square was the Holiday Inn, and beyond that the Palais des Congrès. Kirsty was unable to bring herself even to look in that direction.
    She was unable, either, to stop shivering, and Enzo stood holding her in the dark, miserable and bewildered and depressed. The digital display overhead told them that the next tram would in three minutes. With fingers that had lost all feeling, he fumbled to use a credit card to buy them a ticket from the machine. After the third rejection he tried another card. And still the machine wouldn’t accept it. Neither would it accept any of Kirsty’s cards. He cursed, and felt like kicking the damned thing. They had no cash, and so they would have to ride the tram without tickets. Maybe they’d be arrested and thrown in jail. At least it might be warm there.
    They waited alone, in silence, until the lights of the tram emerged from the darkness, its bell ringing as it rattled across the junction.
    There were only a handful of other passengers on it. They cast disinterested glances at the cold, unhappy couple who got on board at the Lycée Kléber and sat side by side without speaking. The tram creaked and strained and wound its way south along the Avenue de la Paix, around the Place de la République, and then east towards the Place de l’Homme-de-Fer—which translated, curiously, as Iron Man Square.
    There they reluctantly stepped back into the icy blast, sheltering beneath a strange, circular construction of steel and glass. Then out into the snow again, huddled together, crossing the bridge on the Rue de Sebastopol to the Place des Halles where the Hôtel Ibis rose high into a snow-smudged sky, above the incongruously British C&A department store.
    Enzo was already dreaming of a hot shower as they climbed the steps opposite the Lion