Children of War by Martin Walker Page A

Sami had been kept as a slave.
    ‘This cous-cous is great, Dillah, and thank you for helping with Fabiola,’ Bruno said. ‘I was worried he might not want to be examined by a woman.’
    ‘So was I,’ she replied, smiling. ‘But when he came in with your dog, Balzac went straight to Fabiola and she picked him up like an old friend. Sami seemed to think that made her his friend, too. And I told him Fabiola was my doctor, and Momu’s, and that she had delivered Karim’s baby. Anyway, I asked her to take on Sami as a regular patient and Momu signed the form. We’re still his guardians.’
    ‘But he’s over eighteen,’ Bruno said. ‘Guardianship lapses once he becomes an adult.’
    ‘Yes, but when we were trying to get Sami into a special school he had to be declared incapable of running his own affairs. We had to go before the
Juge des Tutelles
, and Momu and I were appointed
tuteurs
,’ Dillah said. Bruno nodded; he knew that the court of guardianship usually appointed family members to manage the affairs of someone judged incapable. ‘That means the guardianship is extended until the medical diagnosis changes.’
    Momu cleared his throat, the sound of a man intent on changing the subject. ‘How long will we have to stay here, Bruno?’
    ‘I don’t know. As long as the situation lasts that puts you and Sami at risk.’
    ‘When can I go back to teaching?’
    ‘It’s the same answer, Momu. They know where you teach and where to find you. If you aren’t at the
collège
, that means less danger for the schoolchildren and your colleagues. This is not an address they know, and if they find you, you’re guarded. And that reminds me, I have to ask for your mobile phones. We don’t want them tracking you through them.’
    ‘Can Karim and his family come to visit us here?’
    ‘Yes, of course. I’ll go to see Karim and make the arrangements, pick them up myself and bring them here.’
    ‘Presumably they know who you are,’ said Dillah. ‘These men could be tracking you as easily as us.’
    ‘I have a special phone. It’s as secure as we can make them.’
    ‘I’m worried about Karim and the babies,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t they be here with us? There’s plenty of room.’
    ‘That’s up to you and Karim, if he feels he can afford to close the café and forgo the income,’ Bruno said. ‘I don’t think it’s wise for him to commute back and forth to work from here. We simply don’t know if these thugs are aware of Karim. His name wasn’t in their notebook we found. And if he disappears along with his family, they might alert somebody. We don’t know if they have any sympathizers around here …’ Bruno saw Momu’s face darken.
    ‘At the mosque, they know about Karim,’ Momu said. ‘When they agreed to take Sami into their special school, they wanted to know everything, names, relatives, how much I make, did I own my house, did I have a mortgage or a loan to buy my car? That was how they worked out how much we should pay.’
    Bruno had not been aware that Momu had been paying the mosque. ‘How much did you pay them?’
    ‘Rather more than I could afford,’ he said. ‘And they werefurious when I stopped paying when Sami disappeared. They said their religious court had ruled against me and I still owed money. I told them I’d see them only in a French court and they climbed down. I understand now why they were so nervous at the idea. It would have meant questions about where Sami had gone.’
    ‘I’d better take some food out to those two nice young men,’ said Dillah. ‘I can’t stand the idea of them living on frozen pizza, not here in the Périgord.’

9
    The next morning Bruno drove into St Cyprien to buy more clothes for Sami, dog biscuits and a pay-as-you-go phone. If he wasn’t allowed to use his own mobile, he still needed to communicate with people. And he wanted to continue his search for any trace of the Halévy children. He picked up some croissants and then drove back