Midnight Plus One

by Gavin Lyall

  Merlin coughed and said: ‘Caneton – I am sorry, but-‘ He turned to Maganhard and said in a legal voice: ‘Monsieur, as your lawyer, it is my duty to advise you against risks. To go to the house would be a risk. Done – I must advise you not to go.’

  Maganhard frowned.

  I said: ‘As your illegal adviser, I’d say it would be nice tomeet Galleron after all this.’

  Maganhard looked at me sharply. ‘I do not want any more shooting! ‘

  I shrugged one shoulder. ‘Whatever you say. You’re the boss.’ He looked suspicious. I went on: ‘But there’s no need to rush a decision. Let’s just get the issue quite clear.’

  He shook his head impatiently, throwing off the clutching snowflakes. ‘It is cold out here.’

  ‘Be a lot colder without your share of Caspar,’ I said soothingly. ‘Let’s see now: Caspar’s got a share capital of forty thousand Swiss francs, right? I suppose it’s in ten-or hundred-franc shares?’

  Ten.’

  ‘Making four thousand shares in all. How many d’you own?’

  ‘You know already. Thirty-three per cent.’

  ‘Not the question I asked. Howmany?’

  It was very quiet in the slow, swirling snow. Harvey and the girl passed as dark ghosts beyond the lights, draining Merlin’s car into the empty brandy flask, then pouring it into the Rolls.

  Maganhard hunched his shoulders against the snow and said: ‘I would have to work that out. But the percentage is the important factor.’

  ‘Sure – but share certificates only show howmany shares. Now, you two have met Fiez; I haven’t. Tell me if I’m reading him right. Galleron walks in a week ago, slaps down his share certificate, says: Tve got Heiliger’s shares -let’s have a meeting and sell out the whole company,’ and Fiez remembers the trouble you’ll have getting there – and goes into a galloping panic. Am I right?’

  Maganhard and Merlin looked at each other. Merlin spread his hands and murmured:‘C’est possible.’

  Maganhard said slowly: ‘He would probably do that. But-”

  ‘Maybe he panicked a bit too quickly. Still, he knew the certificate couldonly be Heiliger’s, couldonly be worth thirty-four per cent – and so it outvoted him. But a bearer certificate doesn’t show either of those things: no name, no percentages. Only the number of shares held. And Fiez would be used to thinking in percentages, too. So maybe he didn’t stop to work it out. Have you worked out your holding yet?’

  Maganhard said stiffly: ‘If you please…’

  I found I was waving the Mauser at him for emphasis. It was still empty, but I’d shoved home the bolt, so nobody would know by looking at it. ‘Sorry.’

  He said: ‘I own 1320 shares.’

  ‘Correct. Thirty-three per cent. And thirty-four per cent is 1360 shares. Pretty easy numbers to confuse, aren’t they? – when you’re used to thinking in percentages. I wonder if Fiez didn’t do just that – and Galleron’s certificate showed just 1320 shares, same as yours, same as Flez’s.’

  He stared at me. ‘You mean – it is a fake?’

  ‘Why would you fake one with thewrong number of shares on it? No, it’s genuine – but it isn’t Heiliger’s. That burned up when he crashed. No, it’s yours. Right now, you don’t own a centime of Caspar. How does it feel being poor?’

  There was a long hush.

  I said quietly: ‘I suppose when you got hit with that rape charge you couldn’t get around so easily, so you increased Merlin’s power of attorney. I’d guess you even lodged a lot of important papers with him, or maybe gave him power to get them out of a safe deposit for you. I’d even guess one of them was the Caspar certificate.’

  I grinned at Merlin. He went on watching the Mauser which was watching his stomach. ‘Any Frenchman could do that heavy Belgian accent, Henri – hell, I could do it myself. Well enough to fool a Liechtensteiner like Fiez, anyway. Now give kind Mr Maganhard back his ten million quid – Galleron.’

  He looked up slowly, and after a tune he smiled a little sadly. ‘Legally, of course, a bearer certificate belongs to whoever bears it. But possibly we are not being strictly legal.’ He sighed and reached inside his coat. A gun blasted three times beside my elbow. Merlin’s face was lit by the flashes, his expression frozen in the moment of changing. Then he was pitched away into the swirling snow.

  I whipped round and clouted the big Webley out of Maganhard’s hand.

  Harvey came cat-footed out of the curtain of snow, gun in hand. ‘What in hell happened?’

  ‘We met Monsieur Galleron.’ I nodded at Merlin. ‘Meet Monsieur Galleron.’

  Harvey looked at me, then walked across and peered carefully down at him and shook his head.

  Maganhard was standing with his eyes clenched shut, melted snow streaming down his face and glasses and glinting in the backlash of light from the headlamps.

  I said: ‘Welcome to the Murderers’ Club.’

  He opened his eyes slowly. ‘Is he dead?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s not so difficult really, is it? ‘ But I wished I had remembered he still had that damn revolver.

  Harvey came back. ‘Was he really Galleron?’

  ‘Yes. D’you want to stand around talking about it in a snowstorm, or can it wait?’

  ‘Can wait. But what about him?’

  ‘Strip his pockets and stick him in the Rolls. We’re going to have to dump that car before morning, so he may as well go with it ‘

  Merlin’s car had a Liechtenstein registration, so it must have been hired. So perhaps he’d hired it in the name of Galleron. But it didn’t much matter. Harvey said doubtfully: ‘He’ll get found.’

  ‘Christ, we’ve left dead men spread from here to the Atlantic,’ I snarled. ‘One more’ll just screw things up so the cops never work it all out.’

  And that was just about true. Beyond a certain point, a crime can get so complicated that the cops know no jury or judge will ever understand it – even if they do themselves. On top of everything else, finding a Paris lawyer who’d been posing as a Belgian businessman dead in Liechtenstein in the car of the distinguished British resident of Switzerland would just be a ten-aspirin headache.

  Harvey grinned sourly and bent over Merlin and came up with a handful of papers and a small automatic. I took the biggest of the papers: a stiff, folded document that opened out into a spread of fancy lettering and a big seal like a ‘wanted’ notice for Robin Hood. The Caspar certificate. For a few seconds I was a very rich man. The snow went on falling on me.

  I gave it to Maganhard. ‘Yours, I think. Let’s get up the hill for that meeting.’

  ‘But Herr Fiez is dead,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Don’t be silly. Saying that was just Merlin’s last chance to stop you coming; he could have killed you off later, before you caught on. But using your certificate, he always needed you dead and Fiez alive. It makes sense now.’

  Harvey dragged Merlin’s body into the back of the Rolls. Maganhard kept his eyes front and walked carefully in after it. I picked up the Webley, rubbed it clear of fingerprints, and threw it into a field.

  And now perhaps we could go up and have a quiet company meeting.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ‘So you were all really working for the same person,’ Miss. Jarman said. ‘Harvey and you, and those – Bernard and Alain and the others. All working for Henri Merlin.’ I nodded. ‘Just like the Christians and the lions down in the arena. All really working for old Emperor Nero.’

  ‘I don’t imagine,’ she said sharply, ‘that the Christians thought of it that way.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the lions did, either.’

  We were sitting drinking whisky around a big log fire in Flez’s living-room. It was a long, wide wood-panelled place that would have looked expensive if it hadn’t looked like a Swiss souvenir shop. Every time Fiez had made another million, he’d celebrated by buying another dozen cuckoo clocks and carved brackets full of china and painted-wood figures.

  Fiez himself was a fussy little
man who’d nearly gone catatonic when we’d marched in bristling with pistols and started bleeding on his rugs. Miss Jarman had done the real work of fetching hot water and antiseptic and starting temporary repairs on me, while Maganhard had taken Fiez into a corner to explain the True Life Story. But I don’t think it had registered, even in Schwytzer-Deutsch. Fiez just couldn’t believe there was that much wickedness. in this big, beautiful, coloured postcard of a world.

  Maganhard came out of his corner and planted himself in front of the fire. ‘Do you say, Mr Cane, that Monsieur Merlin planned this whole thing from the beginning?’

  ‘No, he can’t have done. He must have set up the phoney rape charge in the hope that you’d give him more power of attorney. After all, he’d know how you’d react: that you’d prefer to stay away than fight the charge. Then all he had to do was wait for a chance to turn his power into cash. When Heiliger flew into a mountain and you were stuck out in the Atlantic, that was his chance. The rest of it all came from that.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ I added, ‘is why you lodged a bearer certificate worth ten million quid with him.’

  His voice got a touch of the old stiffness. ‘Since I was liable to arrest it would have been foolish to carry a document like that on me. And of course I made arrangements that if anybody appeared at a Caspar meeting with my certificate, certain precautions had to be taken to ensure that he truly owned it.’

  I nodded. ‘But as he was pretending it was Heiliger’s certificate, none of the precautions applied. I get it.’

  Miss Jarman asked: ‘But if Merlin was going to kill us, anyway, why did he send you and Harvey? Or why didn’t he send those two – Bernard and Alain – and let them pretend to guard us, then kill us?’

  ‘The risk – to his Merlin personality. Remember, everybody knew Merlin was Maganhard’s lawyer and that he’d be arranging this trip. So when you ended up dead, Merlin would get some blame anyway. If it then came out that he hadn’t arranged an escort, or had sent one that somehow stayed alive while you got killed, it would have looked suspicious. Since he was guilty, he couldn’t riskany suspicion.

  ‘That’s why he rammed Harvey down your throat: made you take him along even when Maganhard didn’t think there’d be any shooting. That way, when it was all over, it’d look as if Merlin had done his best – and all the blame was on Calieron. He didn’t mind that: Galleron hadn’t got a traceable past and was going to vanish, anyway, once Caspar was cashed in. Probably he hired Alain and Bernard in the name of Galleron, so they never knew who they were working for and couldn’t give him away.’ I looked up at the girl. ‘I told you the lions might not know they were working for Nero, either.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘And that makes us the Christians, does it? I hadn’t known Christians ate lions.’

  I gave her an insincere smile and said quickly: ‘So all in all, Merlin could go back to being Merlin with just an extra ten million in an anonymous account in Switzerland. No need to run off and be Joe Smith in Brazil.’ Then I thought of something and turned to Maganhard. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be having a company meeting, after all this?’

  ‘Yes. But Herr Fiez has been good enough to remind me that we do not have proof that Max’s certificate was destroyed. It is still possible that his heir may appear with it before midnight. Therefore we must wait until then.’ He gave Fiez a heavy sideways look that showed what he thought of the possibility.

  Then he remembered: ‘Herr Fiez could have identified Monsieur Merlin as this Galleron.’

  ‘He could, but it wasn’t so much of a risk. By Caspar’s rules, I believe Fiez can’t get away from Liechtenstein much, so he wouldn’t be likely to meet Merlin again. And when the deal was complete, in a month or two, I imagine Fiez would have got quietly pushed off a mountain.’

  Fiez went as white as new snow and dropped his glass. Maganhard smiled a stiff satisfied smile.

  Miss Jarman said: ‘Who killed that man in the Citroen at Quimper, then?’

  I shrugged my good shoulder. ‘Merlin, I’d say. Harvey’s got Henri’s gun, but it looked the right calibre.’

  Harvey seemed surprised for a moment, then dipped into his pocket and brought out the little automatic and peered down the muzzle. ‘Six-point-three-five,’ he said. That’s right.’

  ‘But Merlin wasn’t at Quimper that night,’ the girl objected. ‘You rang him up in Paris at four o’clock or something.’

  ‘Heshouldn’t have been there,’ I said. ‘Probably the driver spotted him and that’s what got him killed. And I didn’t get through to him in Paris. I rang there, and he had to ring back a few minutes later. There was time to ring from Paris to Quimper to tell him to get on to me. After that, we didn’t talk to him until past noon. He could have got back to Paris by then.’

  She nodded thoughtfully, then said: ‘So the telephoning that was getting us into trouble-‘

  ‘Yes. I was doing it all myself.’

  She just looked at me.

  Harvey got up and helped himself to another whisky without being asked. The girl watched him, expressionless.

  Maganhard said: ‘And what will happen now?’

  I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. ‘The French police’!! be jumping; the Swiss police’ll be jumping. And you’ll have the Liechtenstein cops up here first thing tomorrow. But as long as you swear you were here since before they closed the frontier… they won’t convict a live millionaire on the evidence of a few dead gunmen. They won’t even try.’

  The girl said softly: ‘Poor old lions.’

  Maganhard said: ‘But what about the… the charge against me in France?’

  ‘It’ll fall down. The woman in the case is going to get a letter from Merlin, back-dated a few months, saying he’d arranged for it to be sent if he died. And it’ll tell her to drop the case.’

  He frowned. ‘Do you believe he has arranged such a letter?’

  ‘Of course not. But I’ll get Ginette to write it – I told you she was a good forger, remember? Just send me the woman’s name and one of Henri’s signatures.’

  He stared at me while he chewed this over. Then his face moved slowly, piece by piece, into his version of a smile. ‘Considering everything, Mr Cane, you appear to have done an efficient job.’ The voice got official. ‘I would consider having you work for me on a permanent basis. I might pay-‘

  ‘No.’

  The smile vanished. ‘I have not said what I might pay! ‘

  I shook my head wearily. ‘That’s nothing to do with it, Mr Maganhard. Don’t you see what Merlin proved? I’d been going around playing Caneton: the big professional, the man who couldn’t step aside when a job like this came up. Now – now we know Merlin picked both sides: Harvey and me against Alain and Bernard and the others. So he choseus as the two most likely to fail.”

  There was a silence. Then Harvey said mildly: ‘Wrong, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Only just, chum, only just. And at least he tried: he picked an Englishman who made a reputation back in the war – and an alcoholic gunman. To guard a man worth ten million quid. And we weren’t even bright enough to see that.’

  Maganhard put on a stiff frown. He hated the idea that anybody working for him might have been second-rate; he could swallow Merlin – first-class and merely crooked – a lot easier.

  He said: ‘I think you are being rather fanciful, Mr Cane. As Mr Lo veil says, Monsieur Merlin was wrong. We were right, and we were successful.’

  I nodded. ‘Oh yes, we won the war. Andyou were right… I thought for a time that made me right, too. But it doesn’t. I should never have taken this job. The way I do things – the way Caneton does them – too many people get killed. I don’t know what else I could have done… but maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe somebody else could have thought of something. You find him. Hire him.’

  The girl was looking at me curiously. ‘I thought you didn’t care about what happened to those men down there.’

  ‘I don’t, not much. Maybe I’m wrong
, but I don’t think it matters who kills hired killers, or when, or even how. I was thinking of Harvey.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw his head jerk round. I kept looking at Miss Jarman – hard. ‘Harvey’s no killer; don’t ever think you have to cure him of that. The real killers are the ones who can do it without taking a drink. After or before.’

  ‘I hate to spoil a good speech,’ Harvey said slowly, ‘but nobody seems to have noticed I ain’t dead yet.’

  I gave him a quick look, then stood up, finished my drink, and said to nobody in particular: ‘I’m going to run the Rolls down the hill and dump it, then catch a train from Vaduz. They won’t be checking on who’s goingout yet.’ I looked at the girl. ‘Get him away from here before the cops come.’

  Harvey asked me: ‘Paris?’

  ‘France, anyway. I’ve got to find a doctor who won’t talk.’

  He finished his whisky with a gulp. ‘Guess I’ll come, too. The work’ll be piling up.’

  Miss Jarman turned slowly to face him, her face stiff and unbelieving.‘What work?’

  He seemed surprised. ‘My work.’

  Inside, I felt as cold and empty as a forgotten church. I said dully: That was what I meant.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  After a moment! said: ‘He’s the top gunman in Europe, now Bernard and Alain are dead. Even if it never gets out that he killed them, he’s the number one man. The best jobs, the top rates.’

  The girl didn’t seem to have heard me. She said to Harvey: ‘But… but Merlin chose you because of your -your drinking problem. Heexpected you to get killed! ‘

  He shrugged. ‘So like I say – he was wrong.’

  I said: ‘He doesn’t have a drink problem. Not now.’

  She whipped round at me.

  I said: ‘His problem was he didn’t think he could mix guns and booze. That’s why he went dry at the beginning of this job. It’s why he tried to keep us out of it tonight – he knew he’d drunk too much. He’d faced up to it, then: he was honest enough to say he’d screwed up his job by his drinking.’