[Fen Churche 02] - Night Train to Paris Fliss Chester (essential reading .TXT) 📖

for political prisoners and citizens of Allied countries caught in the crossfire of the occupation. Fen shivered a little as the bus dropped them close by to where thousands of innocent people had been sorted and labelled and sent on to perhaps even less desirable places.

The address of the warehouse was just around the corner and a few minutes later they stood in front of what looked like a large farm building, similar to the cinder-block winery they had both worked in in Burgundy last month. The blocks made up the first ten foot or so of external wall, and then corrugated metal took over. There were no windows, but there was a large grey door, which James pushed open.

Fen had expected to see a bustling workplace full of crates and stock, and she was more than a little surprised to find the cavernous space almost empty, save for a few packing cases stacked up in one corner and barrels of varying sizes along one wall. Electric lights hung from swooping wires, suspended from the cross-beams, and much like a simpler version of the Gare de Lyon, daylight came from vast skylights, each mottled with dirt. Clunking great chains on pulleys hung down from the highest girders and as Fen looked up at them, she could see dust motes hang in the air, gently floating in the stillness of the empty space.

Then, from nowhere, a crack of a pistol sent Fen to her knees.

Suddenly James had thrown his own body over hers, shielding her, turning the air blue with his language.

Crack!

Again, a report from a gun, echoing around the empty warehouse.

‘Get down, Fen, stay down!’ James all but pushed her to the dirty floor as he risked looking up. The sound of another shot ricocheting around the building had James swiftly ducking back down. This time it was followed by a metallic ping and the sound of breaking glass.

Fen raised her head. ‘James,’ she hissed. ‘James!’

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

‘I don’t think they’re shooting at us,’ she whispered and he nodded, helping her up from the floor.

She was just about standing when a fourth shot echoed around them and James risked shouting out a warning to the shooter.

‘They’re a lousy shot if they are. Still… hallo there!’ he shouted again and his voice was met with a shuffling and the sound of a bullet chamber being emptied.

‘Who’s there?’ The man’s voice echoed from the darkness at the back of the warehouse.

‘Captain Lancaster—’

‘And Fenella Churche!’

Their introductions were met with a belly laugh and gradually out from the murkiness of the far corner of the all-but-deserted warehouse a man’s figure appeared.

‘Thought I was taking potshots at you, eh?’ Antoine Arnault laughed again, twirling the pistol around his forefinger as he walked.

‘What were you doing?’ Fen had just about brushed herself down and didn’t feel the need for any more pleasantries. She did feel the need, however, to know why Antoine was walking towards them with a gun.

‘Target practice,’ he simply replied. When he was just a few feet away from them, he brandished the gun one last time and then tucked it into the back pocket of his overalls. He stuck out his hand for James to shake.

‘In the dark?’ James asked, taking the words out of Fen’s mouth. He looked disturbed at Antoine’s behaviour.

‘Best place to practise.’ Antoine smirked and eyed Fen up and down. ‘Sorry if I shocked you. You’ve probably never heard a gun before, eh?’

Fen tried to disguise the shake in her hands by making a show of nonchalantly patting down her hair and adjusting her coat. And she’d heard guns before all right, just not like this.

‘Unless it’s pointed at a pheasant, no,’ she replied quite tersely, as she crossed her arms, still trying to hide her shaking hands. She didn’t like his overt style of machismo and was annoyed at herself for being a bit shaken up.

Luckily, Antoine laughed and ushered Fen and James towards an internal door that had a sign saying ‘OFFICES’ over it.

Fen had to remind herself that, as far as they knew, Antoine was still just the fun, if slightly buffoonish, man she’d met the other night, and, target practice with an old service revolver besides, it was only Henri that suspected him, or at least his brother, of being part of some sort of gang. Still, asking the right sort of questions to work out if he was or not wasn’t going to be easy, especially with her heart beating like she’d just finished the Tour de France…

Antoine sat himself down behind an old wooden partner’s desk and it reminded Fen of Henri Renaud’s at the Louvre, just much, much smaller and far less imposingly ornate. ‘Sit down, friends. Can I get you a drink? A coffee? Perhaps a little cognac?’

Fen could see James’s eyebrow raising in interest, but quickly declined it herself – her hands had finally stopped shaking and she wasn’t in the mood for early-morning drinking. Luckily, it seemed James wasn’t either and he shook his head, too.

‘How can I help you both?’ Antoine asked, and James turned to face Fen. They had agreed, while on the bus on the way over, that Fen would do most of the talking and James’s role would be to wrestle the conversation back to the jovial if Antoine started to get a bit tetchy. So Fen jumped in and started the ball rolling.

‘Antoine, we’re here with terribly bad news, I’m afraid…’ Fen told him about Rose, and as she spoke she noted the colour drain from Antoine’s face. He fidgeted as she went on and when she got to the part about finding Rose with the paintbrush piercing her neck, he jerked up from his chair, leaving it spinning on its central column and skidding across the floor on its castors.

‘He couldn’t have, he couldn’t have…’ he whispered to himself.

‘Who couldn’t have, Antoine? Do you know who might have done this to Madame Coillard?’

Antoine shot a glare at Fen,