Read Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide for Free Online Page B

But she was glad to reach the Metro station.
    At Gare du Nord she had half an hour to wait before going through to the Eurostar departure area, so she stopped to buy a baguette sandwich and a bottle of water. The station was crowded and as she queued she smiled, chiding herself for letting the prison get under her skin. She’d never been quite so shaken by a visit before. Perhaps it was the contrast between the Santé’s ancient history and the very modern-day events that had brought Amir Khan there.
    But then, it wasn’t really modern at all – piracy was one of the oldest crimes in the book. Not that Khan seemed much of a pirate. But whatever he was, he’d given nothing away to help her unravel his story. Not until he’d made that one slip. But what did it mean? If he hadn’t received his orders in Pakistan, where had he got them from?
    Liz paid for her sandwich and looked round for a free table. As she sat down, a young man with a dark complexion got up and walked away. Somehow he looked familiar – was it the same one who had walked into the café when she and Cassale had been having coffee? Liz watched as he walked away down the platform and noticed a book sticking out of the pocket of his jeans. Her mind flicked back to the man in the Metro that morning, standing in front of her when she had sat down, with L’Étranger in his pocket.
    This man was too far away by now for her to see the title of the book. Could it be him again? If so, then that was too much of a coincidence. She got up and walked quickly down the platform, following the man who was now some distance ahead of her and moving fast. She managed to keep him in sight until he turned into an exit at the end of the platform. She broke into a run but when she got to the exit, she found there were three separate passages leading off in different directions and no sign of the man in any of them. She stood there panting, feeling stupid yet still uneasy, and then she slowly retraced her steps back to the café. When she got there, someone had taken her sandwich.

Chapter 7
    They had slaughtered the goat that afternoon. Taban had seen countless animals killed before, but he had been disgusted by the zeal with which these new men in the camp had despatched the little creature. One held the struggling animal while another slashed its neck with a knife. As blood gushed from the scrawny throat and the body twitched, cries of delight went up from the group.
    Now Taban was tending the big pot, using an enormous wooden spoon to stir the cut-up chunks of meat that were bubbling together with red beans and tamaandho . On a brazier next to the pot, flatbreads cooked over the driftwood fire.
    They were only seven miles from Mogadishu, but it could have been seven thousand. Their camp sat on a spit of sand behind a dune, overlooking the Indian Ocean. The nearest dwellings were half a mile away, the rundown shacks of an almost abandoned fishing village.
    He knew the village well; he had grown up there with his father and an elder brother. He couldn’t remember his mother – she had died of a wasting disease when he was just two – so he had never missed her, and his childhood had been happy. He had gone to school some of the time, but more often he’d helped his father fish; he knew the local waters inside out before he was ten. In the early morning they would cast off in their little boat, its bow stuffed with nets, and by midday, if they were lucky, they would chug back laden with anchovies, sardines and mackerel, sometimes a tuna, and very occasionally a shark. They would cart their catch to the broken-concrete highway, where the lorry bound for Mogadishu would stop and the driver get down to haggle with their father over the price of their haul.
    It had been a life of hard labour and long hours, but the coast was beautiful, the waters calm, and the fish plentiful. They did not want for anything that mattered.
    One day men had come, armed with automatic rifles. They