The Good Thief's Guide to Paris Read Online Free PDF Page B

enough confidence men in my time to know just how crudely he was trying to flatter me but that didn’t make the effect any less potent. It wasn’t everyday I was offered the chance to demonstrate my skills. Usually, I was more than a little concerned to ensure I had no observers whatsoever when I was picking a lock. But Bruno was giving me the chance to showboat and offering me cash to boot. By my calculations, the money would easily cover the food and wine I’d paid for, and I guessed I could always treat the episode as a harmless bit of fun.
    Fun was something Paige seemed to be experiencing. She was giggling again, looking up at the Italian with an unmistakable spark in her eyes. I finished my wine.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Bruno. “I’ve had enough for one night.”
    Together, we left the bar and crossed Place Saint-Michel and then Bruno led me along the Quai running beside the inky River Seine, in the direction of the Ile Saint-Louis. Notre Dame Cathedral loomed alongside us, the arachnid limbs towards the Cathedral’s rear bathed by the spotlights of a passing Bateau Mouche. Cars and mopeds streamed by, a clamour of diesel engines above the city’s background hum. I took a few deep breaths to clear my mind, as if a lungful of traffic fumes could counteract the wine I’d ingested.
    The stretch of wall we were walking beside had a series of green wooden boxes fixed to it. During the daytime, the boxes folded open to form street stalls selling artistic prints, second-hand books, snowglobes, fridge magnets and other bric-à-brac. The closed stalls were protected by the cheapest of padlocks. I could have picked them open in my sleep. With one arm tied behind my back. And a whole squadron of gendarmes marching by. And . . . oh, you get the idea.
    “She is pretty, yes?” Bruno said, from nowhere.
    “Excuse me?”
    “The American girl.”
    I glanced sideways at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Bruno studied me for a moment, then did his Parisian shrug again. “I live not far away. Across the river.”
    “So focus,” I told him. “You need to concentrate if we’re going to do this right.”

FIVE
    There are times I wish I’d listened to my own advice. There are times too when I wish I’d listened to my conscience. Days when I regret not listening to either are usually the worst.
    The morning after I’d broken into Bruno’s apartment, I woke with a hangover and a head full of regrets. I also cursed the time on my alarm clock because I’d forgotten to set the alarm before falling asleep and I’d have to hurry if I was going to make my meeting with Pierre, my fence. Stumbling towards the handful of cramped units that formed the excuse for a kitchen in my apartment, I dropped two soluble tablets into a glass of tap water and necked the fizzing sludge. The bubbles seemed to percolate in my brain, as if trying to jump-start my grey cells. I wished they’d hurry up and do something about the dull, mushy ache around my forehead and the queasy, hollow sensation in my stomach. Sure, I know I hadn’t drunk that much wine but the truth is I’d been drinking on an empty stomach, a stomach that had stayed that way before I fell asleep and, hell, sometimes there’s no logic to hangovers anyway.
    I groaned and circled my fingers at my temple, then looked at the stale baguette on my kitchen counter and pushed any thoughts of eating it to one side. I moved into the bathroom, twisted the hot tap on the shower and stepped beneath the steamy jet. No matter how hard I scrubbed, though, or how much menthol shampoo I applied to my scalp, I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that I was thinking and moving at something like half my normal speed. And I couldn’t shed the concerns that were niggling away at me about Bruno, either.
    In the light of day, it seemed like a really dumb thing to have got involved in. And no matter what I’d said to Bruno, I hadn’t agreed to do it because of