Out of the Darkness by Hinton Nigel

Author:Hinton, Nigel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Publishers
Published: 2012-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-five

Now that the police knew they were in Paris Liam wanted to leave at once but Leila said they had to stay for a few weeks longer. He knew it was dangerous but he'd vowed that he wouldn't argue with her so he didn't say anything.

Every day the big Mercedes arrived to take Leila to her meetings but Liam stayed indoors in case he was recognized. Finally, though, he became so bored that he put on some dark glasses and a baseball cap and went out on to the streets again. He felt nervous at first but no one paid any attention to him so he went back to exploring the city.

He had just begun to think that perhaps the whole thing had been forgotten by the press when two new photographs of them appeared on the front cover of a magazine. Leila was smiling her beautiful smile but his photo was horrible. It had been taken by the Social Services when he went to Beeches Hall and it made him look angry and slightly mad. The title above the photos was'Jeunes Assassins'.

The article was about violence among young people and it gave examples of terrible events from all over the world. The last couple of paragraphs were all about Dr Prior. They went into gruesome detail about the murder and strongly hinted that the police thought that Liam and Leila were the killers.

Liam stopped going out of the house again.

The hours passed slowly when Leila was out. He read the newspapers every day to try to improve his French and to check that there were no further articles about them. Then he often went downstairs to the printing shop. Ahmad was friendly but he was usually busy and the clatter of the old-fashioned printing presses made it difficult to chat very much.

Since early May, Paris had sweltered in a heatwave. When it got really hot in the afternoons Liam liked to go up to the flat roof of the building. Ahmad had made a small terrace up there with a couple of potted palm trees as rather pathetic reminders of his desert birthplace. The sun beat down fiercely but there was usually a cooling breeze and there were wonderful views over the shimmering city towards the white shape of the church of Sacré-Coeur far away to the north.

At the back of the building he could look down at the courtyard of Karim, the Algerian butcher. He couldn't actually see into the small shed where the animals were killed but he could see the sheep and goats as they were pulled inside. He could hear their panic-stricken squeals as they were hung upside down and their throats were cut. Blood often ran out through the door and Karim always emerged with his knives and arms splattered with it.

Liam knew that the way the animals were killed was part of a religious belief and it was probably less cruel than what happened in big abattoirs but it still made him shiver each time he saw it.

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