Midnight Plus One

by Gavin Lyall

  He was a smallish man with long dark hair, wearing a shabby grey double-breasted suit. Hus gun was a US Army Colt.45 automatic. I put it in a pocket, picked him up, and staggered through the wood towards the fields.

  Near the last of the trees I put him carefully down again, got out his gun, broke out the magazine, and counted the rounds. There were too many for what I planned; I left him just three. Then I sneaked forward to the edge of the field.

  One of the cops was standing in plain view about a hundred yards away, up to the middle of his thighs in long grass, and staring hard at the trees. I couldn’t see the other. I pulled back and went on hands and knees to the road I needed to account for the four earlier shots – and a dead man. I tucked the Mauser into my shoulder and fired two careful shots at the nearest house in the village, a quarter of a mile off. I saw a cloud of dust fall off the wall. Now the cops down there knew they’d been fired at; maybe they’d believe some of the earlier shots had been aimed at them, too.

  I crept back to the dead man. The cop was still in the middle of the field, staying out of what he thought was accurate pistol range. With the Mauser and its shoulder-piece, I could have plucked his eyebrows at that range. Well, that was about what I wanted to do. But I would have preferred to know where his partner was.

  I propped myself carefully behind a tree, and shouted at him. I told him to come on if he felt brave enough. Gendarmes had killed my father and brother. Now let him try and kill me. I was going to take one with me when I went.

  I tried to make it sound crazy; an impression of craziness might help fog up some awkward details. He had half ducked when I started shouting, but stayed in view. I put a shot close enough to his head for him to know I meant him. He threw himself flat.

  His partner knelt up suddenly from the grass near him and loosed off his submachine-gun in my direction. Sprigs of fir and cones spattered down on my head. That was good enough for me. I let out a long dying scream, ending in a nasty little choked gurgle.

  Then I threw the empty Mauser cartridge case into the field, patted the dead man on the shoulder, said: ‘That’ll teach you to shoot at cops,’ grabbed my briefcase, and ran.

  I caught up with them just where they were about to re-cross the stream and get to the road. By there, my run had turned into a gentle trot.

  Harvey gave me a bleak little smile and said: ‘I like the idea, but d’you think it’ll fool them for long?’ He must have heard all my little performance.

  ‘Long enough, maybe.’

  ‘Sooner or later they’ll find the guy got hit by a thirty-eight, not one of their machine-guns.’

  ‘They won’t rush a post-mortem on him if they think they already know what happened.’

  We splashed across the stream and up into the cover of the wall leading to the road. I looked at my watch and made it just over half an hour since I’d left Miss Jarman. My feet were beginning to remind me that I’d got them wet four times since then. We stumbled on.

  Parked in the gateway at the top of the field was a grey Citroen van with corrugated sides and clos pinel painted across its rear doors. Miss Jarman and somebody else were kneeling by the front wheels, pretending to be interested in the tyres.

  As we staggered up, blowing like a herd of tired horses, the other person stood up and came quickly to the back of the van. It was Ginette, in a neat grey skirt and a smudged old suède jacket.

  And older than when I’d last seen her, twelve years ago -but not twelve years older. Perhaps a gentle weariness in her dark eyes, a slowness and steadiness in her expression. But the same dark-chestnut hair, the soft pale skin that never seemed to be touched by the sun, the same sad amused smile I’d remembered far too well.

  She touched my arm. ‘Hello, Louis. You haven’t changed a bit.’

  My legs were soaked to the knees, my jacket and shirt were covered in mould and pine-needles, half my hair was dangling in my face, and half the forest was in my hair. And I had the big Mauser in my hand.

  I nodded. ‘Maybe I should have.’ We started climbing into the back of the van.

  FOURTEEN

  When the doors opened again, we were on the gravel driveway just in front of the Château.

  It was the sort of château that looks like one – to an Englishman. Probably that was why one of the earlier Comtes had built it that way: he wanted something that would make a good picture on his wine labels.

  It didn’t belong to this part of the country; he’d pinched the idea from up on the Loire. It was a solid piece of fake Gothic, with tall windows and a round tower at each side, with peaked witch’s-hat roofs of blue slate that jarred with the warm pink southern stone of the house itself. But that wouldn’t show on the neat engraving on the labels, of course.

  By now the others had climbed out. I turned to Ginette. ‘I don’t know if you want any introductions…’

  She was looking curiously at Maganhard. ‘I think I’d better know,’ she said.

  I said: ‘Mr Maganhard – Ginette, Comtesse de Maris.’ Her eyebrows lifted just a fraction at his name. He took her hand, came to attention, and bowed slightly.

  I introduced Miss Jarman and Harvey. He wasn’t looking his best: the lines on his face weren’t any deeper, but the whole face had frozen.

  Ginette said: ‘I believe you are wounded. If you will go inside, Maurice will bandage you.’ I saw the grey-haired, white-jacketed character hovering in the background, up on the terrace in front of the windows. I went up and shook his hand, and the old brown crab-apple face crinkled into a vast grin. We asked each other how things marched, and said they marched as well as one could hope. Then he said it was quite like old times, grinned again, and led Harvey off inside. The others came up on to the terrace. Maganhard said: ‘How long are we staying here, Mr Cane? I believe we have gone less than one hundred kilometres today.’

  Ginette said: ‘We needn’t discuss that just now. Giles, will you give Mr Maganhard a drink?’ She swung round on the girl. ‘My dear, let me show you your room.’ She collected Miss Jarman, who was looking a bit pale, and led the way.

  Nothing inside the Château seemed to have changed much – but no reason why it should when you’ve got a big house filled with furniture that’s taken a century to collect. The front room on the right as you went in was still a sort of office/drawing-room, and the booze was still tucked away in a solid dark Louis Treize cupboard facing the window.

  I peered in at the bottles. ‘What’ll you have?’

  Maganhard said: ‘Sherry, if you please.’

  ‘Sorry, the French don’t drink the stuff.’

  ‘A weak whisky and soda, then.’

  I hauled out a bottle of Scotch and mixed him one. I poured myself three fingers of it, neat.

  Maganhard sipped. ‘What do you plan now, Mr Cane?’

  ‘I want to cross into Geneva early tomorrow morning -just before dawn.’

  ‘Dawn? Why not before?’

  I found a slightly crumpled packet of Gitanes and lit one. ‘We’ve got to cross illegally – we daren’t show our passports now. So we’ve got to wait until night. If we get there just after dark, we’ll be stuck in Geneva overnight; it’ll be too late to hire a car and I don’t like overnight trains. The Swiss don’t use them much – we’d be too conspicuous.

  ‘But if we cross just before dawn, we won’t have to hang around looking obvious. The streets’ll start filling up, we can get moving quickly.’

  He frowned into his glass. ‘I believe Monsieur Merlin said he would be in Geneva. If we rang him there now, he could have a car waiting for us. So we could cross immediately after dark.’

  I shook my head wearily; he wasn’t going to like what 1 was going to say. Hell, he probably wasn’t going to understand it. ‘Things have changed since I spoke to Merlin yesterday. Somebody’s been tracing us; they could have done it by tapping Merlin’s phone. If so, why shouldn’t they be doing the same thing in Geneva?’

  ‘You said the police would not dare do that to an impo
rtant lawyer.’

  ‘That doesn’t apply to the Other Side – and it’s them been doing the tracing.’

  He frowned. ‘Is it so easy to intercept a telephone?’

  ‘No – in a city it’s damn difficult; that’s why I wasn’t worried about it yesterday. But after this morning, we know a bit more about these people: if they know enough to hire a man like Bernard, then they could know anything.’

  ‘Mr Lovell thought it was the people in Dinadan who had betrayed us.’

  ‘Yes, but he hadn’t thought that through. The Meliots wouldn’t have known who to betray us to, except the police. Nobody could have got at them in advance because nobody knew we were going there.’

  He took a sip of whisky to help him swallow this. Then he said: ‘I must have Monsieur Merlin with me in Liechtenstein.’

  ‘All right – but we won’t ring him until we’re across the frontier. From here, nobody rings anybody. I’m putting a complete ban on that phone.’ I finished my Scotch with a gulp-Then I said carefully: ‘Of course, there was another phone call made last night.’

  I felt him staring at me. ‘My secretary rang my associate in Liechtenstein,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘She says.’

  After a moment he said: ‘You mean that she may have rung somebody else? That is impossible.’

  ‘I didn’t listen, so I wouldn’t know. But if I wanted to get at you, the one person I’d like on my side is your privatesecretary.’ And this time I met his stare.

  The door opened and Maurice, with his Louis Treizeexpression firmly in place, announced:‘Messieurs sontservi.’

  There were only three of us: Ginette, Maganhard, and. myself. Harvey didn’t apparently feel like food, and Miss Jarman had gone straight off to sleep.

  Ginette gave me a slight frown and asked: ‘What have you been doing to that child, Louis?’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe killing people near her.’

  ‘This morning?’

  I nodded. ‘We got jumped, up near Dinadan.’ I took a deep breath. ‘One of them was Bernard.’ She’d known him, in the war.

  But she just went on stirring hersoupe au pistou.‘I had heard he and Alain had gone to – to that sort of work. After that, I suppose it does not matter who kills them.’

  I started to say that it had been Harvey, not me, then decided she must have guessed. She’d thought a lot of me at one time – but never that I could beat Bernard.

  But it hadn’t been quite the gay chatter you can switch round to the spring fashions, the latest Mexican divorces, and who-elected-A/m-anyway? We finished the soup and started anomelette aux fines herbesin the general atmosphere of a funeral feast at a Home for Incurables.

  By the time Maurice brought in grilled trout I either had to say something cheerful or ask for half an hour alone with the gas oven.

  I said: ‘Thank God for fish. Now I won’t have to drink your Pinel.’

  Ginette leant back and looked at me reproachfully. ‘You used to say that trout were the only fish that weren’t an excuse for a rich sauce. That was why I ordered them.’

  ‘Oh, I still say it. Anybody who cooks trout in a fancy way is a grave robber, a violater of children, and cheats at cards, too. But here, they’re doubly welcome. They mean I don’t have to drink your dreadful wine.’

  She made a graceful gesture of despair and looked at Maganhard. He was carefully staying out of the conversation, doing a surgical job on his trout – and probably remembering he’d called Pinel an ‘overrated wine’ last night.

  She said: ‘Isn’t it fascinating to hear the English giving opinions on things they know nothing about? Theysound so convincing.’

  Maganhard quickly shoved a piece of trout into his mouth.

  I said: The British are essentially a humble people. They long ago realised it would be a terrible pride to try andbe right. So they concentrated onsounding right. And there you have the basis of the English upper classes, the public schools, the late Empire.’

  Maurice leant over my shoulder and poured me a new glass of white wine, smiling gravely to himself. He knew a lot more English than he tried to speak.

  ‘And what do the English think of the French reputation for logic and diplomacy?’ Ginette asked.

  I waved a fork. ‘An insufferable pride. Anyway, the British have never believed it.’

  She sighed. ‘I know. They still think we are a wild, emotional people who crash cars and stamp on grapes. But, mon Louis,’ – she pointed her knife at me in a most un-Comtesse-like way – ‘but now you have competition from the Americans. They also can sound very right.’

  ‘Quite true.’ I tasted the new wine: a cold, sharp white Burgundy. ‘But they do it by setting up million-dollar research programmes. It’s easy to sound right when you do that: our way’s far cheaper. Still, we’ve had to give up sounding right about nuclear physics, I believe – but we’ve doubled our opinions on wine. Millions of dollars will never prove us wrong there. You should go to London, Ginette: you’ve no idea how right we can sound about wine these days.’

  I glanced at Maganhard. He was smiling a bleak smile into his trout.

  Ginette banged her knife down. ‘Ah – we knew it: an English plot. When things are going badly, you pick onla France. It is an old story to us. So now the English will tell us how to grow wine: that is very interesting. Go on, Louis – tell me.’

  ‘My dear Ginette – if I were honest, I would tell you to stop making wine at all and grow cabbages on that hill-‘ I nodded at the back of the house and the vineyards beyond it. ‘However, a hundred years ago the de Marises realised they could never improve Pinel and concentrated instead on making it famous. So now you, sell the most expensive cabbage soup on the market. Which means you can afford far better wines for your guests.’

  She smiled quietly at me and tinkled a bell by her plate. Maurice appeared, whipped away our plates, and put a cheese-board on the table – with a bottle of Pinel. I made a face.

  She twisted it to show me the label. ‘What do you think of our new design, Giles?’

  The picture of the Château was gone. Instead, it was a simple affair of copperplate script on a white label that was shallower but longer than usual. The paper had a thick but almost transparent look, like a good watermark paper.

  She said blandly: ‘You don’t recognise it?’

  I shook my head doubtfully. It looked familiar, somehow…

  She grinned. ‘The old English five-pound note. The exact size and amount of lettering. I never understood why you stopped making that beautiful money.’

  I said grimly: ‘They said it was too easy to forge. Now, I see why.’ I turned to Maganhard. ‘Ginette’s work in the Resistance was forging: she used to make passes and ration cards for us. Nice to see somebody’s wartime training being useful in peace, isn’t it?’

  He twitched a small smile at me. ‘I believe that is the principle on which you are working for me, Mr Cane.’ He half stood up. ‘If you will excuse me, Comtesse, I would like to go and rest. I have things to think about.’

  Ginette nodded gracefully. ‘Maurice will take you-‘

  I said: ‘Hold on.’

  Maganhard stayed where he was, bent awkwardly, half out of his chair.

  I said: ‘I think the time’s come for me to know a bit more about just why you’re going to Liechtenstein.’

  ‘I do not see that that is necessary.’ But he sat down again.

  ‘Let me get one thing clear, then; after this morning’s affair, we all ought to be dead. Bernard was rated a better gunman than Harvey Lovell – and I expect the ones with him were rated far better than me. Luckily things didn’t go by the form book – but it means whoever-it-is has got very damn serious about trying to kill you. That’s one point.

  ‘The other is thatthey know what you’re trying to do -but I don’t. And both together gives them just too much of a margin. We’ve already been outguessed twice. The next time…’ I shrugged.

  He just went on giving me his steel-statu
e look. Then he asked: ‘What do you wish to know?”

  ‘The whole damn story.’

  FIFTEEN

  He frowned and glanced at Ginette. I said: ‘I’ll go bail for her; we’re both security-minded.’

  He frowned again, then probably remembered that if shewasn’t security-minded, he was sunk, anyway.

  Ginette smiled distantly and pushed the cheese-board towards him. He shook his head briefly, then turned to me. ‘What do you know about Caspar Aktiengesellschaft, Mr Cane?’

  ‘Just that it’s a holding and marketing company, registered in Liechtenstein, that owns majorities in a lot of electronics firms in this end of Europe. And that you’re something to do with it.’

  ‘Quite right – as far as it goes. I own thirty-three per cent of the corporation.’

  ‘One-third.’

  ‘No, Mr Cane.’ He allowed himself a two per cent smile – practically laughing out loud, for him. ‘Do you know the other advantage of Liechtenstein registration – apart from the tax advantages?’

  I shrugged. ‘Secrecy of ownership, I suppose.’

  He nodded decorously. ‘Quite right. Nobody need know who owns a company. Let me explain: I own thirty-three per cent. The shares are divided thirty-three, thirty-three -and thirty-four.’

  By now he was beginning to enjoy showing how ignorant I was.

  I said: ‘So the thirty-four can outvote you, or the third man, but not both. So who are they?”

  ‘The other thirty-three per cent is held by a Liechtenstein resident, Herr Fiez. He handles the day-to-day affairs of the company and conforms to the recent law that a Liechtenstein resident must be on the board of such companies.’ From the tone of his voice, I got the idea that Flez’s worth was mainly that he conformed with the law.

  When he stopped there, I said: ‘So – who owns the thirty-four per cent?’

  ‘The problem, Mr Cane,’ he said, ‘is that we are not sure.’

  I took a sip of the Pinel which I found had been poured for me. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t much else.