The Watchers

by Jon Steele

  ‘You really got yourself screwed nine ways to Sunday this time, girl.’

  She looked at the wreck of a telephone on the wall. Damn, if only there was someone to call. She went through her contacts. Forget it. Daily gossip sessions meant Simone had the names of all her clients, Stephan at LP’s and Lili at her sculpture studio, her family in the States, her favourite restaurants and haunts. Need an escape plan. Go to the Swiss cops or the US Embassy in Geneva? Oh yeah, there’s an idea. Hi, my name’s Katherine, but you can call me Kat, and I’m a dope-smoking hooker from California with hobbies in international money laundering, insider trading and eight years’ worth of tax fraud under my belt, and I was wondering if you could help me, please? Couldn’t stay in a belfry for ever. Think what it’d be like asking her roomie to pick up a box of tampons with lunch. She stroked Monsieur Booty’s fluffy coat.

  ‘This is what you call being up the creek without a paddle, fuzzface.’

  The beast looked up to her.

  Mew.

  ‘I get it. Your boss talks to bells, you talk to people.’

  Mew.

  She stood with Monsieur Booty in her arms and looked through the small square window above the table. Yup, big bell still hanging in the criss-crossed timbers, narrow stone balcony, pillars and arches opening to the sky. She could just see bits of way-down-there Lausanne and the snowy hills forming the border with France.

  She turned to the small window facing east. She saw the long retiled roof of the cathedral with a conical tower at the far end, then the snow-covered vineyards beyond Lausanne and the lake bending to Montreux and down to Italy where the ice-bound Alps rose to the blue sky. Hell of a view, she thought, like sitting on the edge of a cloud.

  She opened the window, pigeons fled from the timbers in a blur.

  The cat’s ears twitched.

  Merroow.

  ‘Hey, you heard the boss. Lay off the birds.’

  Merrrroooow.

  She dropped the cat from her arms.

  It scratched at the wood floor.

  Merrrroooow.

  ‘Scat!’

  Monsieur Booty hopped up to a stool, jumped on the bed.

  Katherine rose on her tiptoes, stretched her neck through the small window to see Marie-Madeleine. The bell was as tall as the loge ceiling and twice as wide.

  ‘No wonder it’s so damn loud.’

  She closed the window, looked about the room.

  There was a shelf along the wall, with a photograph of a young man and a beautiful young woman on a cliff. She saw his face in the both of them, had to be Mommy and Daddy. A stack of tall, thin books behind the photo. She pulled one down, saw the words loge de guet written in childlike scribble on the cover. She sat at the table and opened the book. Inside were pictures of the very room she was in, drawn as detailed studies. The burning lantern on the table with a floppy hat, water jugs and candles, the empty bed. There was a name at the bottom of each page, written in the same childlike scribble: ‘rochat’.

  ‘Hey, not bad.’

  She took down another book, les eveques du morts, and opened it. She thumbed through a series of marble tombs. Clerics from the Middle Ages in stoneful repose, their marble faces worn away to almost nothing but looking as if they just might sit up and talk.

  ‘Not bad at all.’

  She took down another book, piratz. It was a story, like a comic book, with a wizard in a pointed hat, resembling the conical tower outside her window – even had the weathercock on top. And the wizard was flying through the night, lighting the sky with the huge diamond hanging around his neck. And he lived in a castle of ice, on an island in the middle of a boiling sea. Then there was a gang of goofy-looking pirates with wood swords and paper hats, riding on the back of a giant caterpillar, flying over the boiling sea and circling the castle. The wizard and the pirates shouting at each other: ‘Pooh on you, you big mean wizard!’ ‘No, you take it back, you dumb pirates!’ ‘Oh, yeah?’ ‘Yeah and double yeah!’

  ‘Jesus, he’s really good.’

  She reached for the last book, l’ange de lausanne. She heard footsteps on the balcony and quickly replaced the books on the shelf. She sat still on the bed and listened. There was nothing but the sound of pigeons scurrying outside the loge. Monsieur Booty took the opportunity to crawl over and curl up in her lap. She scratched the beast behind his ears.

  ‘False alarm, Monsieur Booty. Just the pigeons.’

  Merroow.

  ‘No, you still can’t eat them.’

  Merrrooow.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Life’s a bitch.’

  Katherine sat quietly, looked around the loge again. The odd angles of the walls and ceiling like lines of perspective squeezing down to the door the other end of the loge. Weird, she thought, the wood door was only six or seven steps from where she sat with a cat in her lap. But with the lines of perspective and the way it was set between two heavy timbers, with a huge cross-beam above, the door looked like the gateway to a rabbit hole leading to a dark and scary place. Come to think of it that’s just what was the other side of the fucking door. Better off above the world in the middle of the sky with a crooked, brain-damaged guy who thought it was his duty to protect you. Damn good thing there’s still someone left you can squeeze a favour from, she thought. Her mind came to a screeching halt. Jesus, maybe he wasn’t the only one. She lifted Monsieur Booty’s face to hers.

  ‘Hey, fuzzface, where’s your boss hide the phone book?’

  Monsieur Dufaux was snapping his dish towel on tabletops and pounding breadcrumbs to the floor when Rochat came into the café.

  ‘Marc Rochat! Where have you been?’

  ‘Salut, monsieur, ça va?’

  Monsieur Dufaux tucked the dish towel in his apron strings and shook Rochat’s hand.

  ‘I’m fine, Marc. But everyone’s been talking in the café. Madame Budry says you must have found a girl to cook for you in the tower. You know, you are looking a little pink in the cheeks.’

  Rochat watched the cigarette bounce on Monsieur Dufaux’s lip as he talked.

  ‘Well, come on, Marc. Who is she?’

  Rochat didn’t know what to say.

  Monsieur Dufaux smiled.

  ‘I’m teasing, Marc. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’d like two plats du jour to take to the tower, and a block of fondue cheese for later. I’ll return the dishes tomorrow.’

  ‘Deux magrets de canard avec frites et salade verte, c’est bon? Wait, did you say two plates?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘So maybe you do have a girl up there, eh?’

  Rochat spoke very slowly to make sure he didn’t make mistakes.

  ‘I’m staying in the tower, because there’s been lots of ice and snow. And Monsieur Booty, my cat, is visiting. So I need two plats du jour.’

  ‘Well, for you and your cat, I’ll get the fattest ducks in the canton. Sit and have a Rivella.’

  ‘I’m in a hurry, monsieur.’

  ‘Marc, you have to give my cook time to go to the farm, find just the right ducks and bring them to Lausanne. Then we need to wring their necks, pluck their feathers and roast them in the oven.’

  Rochat wasn’t sure if it was a joke. He laughed nervously, rocked back and forth on his boot heels. Monsieur Dufaux put his hand on Rochat’s shoulder.

  ‘You have time for a Rivella, Marc.’

  ‘I have time for a Rivella.’

  Rochat sat at the table by the window. He pulled back the lace curtain and looked up the cobblestones of Escaliers du marché. He could see the belfry through the bare plane trees, and the streaks of thin white clouds sneaking in from the southwest. Monsieur Dufaux came to the table with the drinks and sat.

  ‘So what’s the weather report for tonight, Marc? More snow coming our way?’

  Rochat remembered what the sky looked like from the tower.

  ‘It’s too warm for more snow today but stingy kind of clouds are coming from the southwest. That means more rain by tomorrow ni
ght, then winds will come down from the north and it will turn very cold and icy.’

  ‘Really?’

  Monsieur Dufaux reached for the newspaper and turned to the weather report.

  ‘Bless me, you’re right. Come to think of it, last week you sat right here and said old man winter was trying to sneak into Lausanne. Next thing, we were buried in snow. Why don’t you pick the lottery numbers for me, Marc? Seventy-six million francs in the pot. I’ll buy the ticket, you pick the numbers, we’ll split the money.’

  ‘I’m not very good with numbers, monsieur.’

  ‘Too bad.’ Monsieur Dufaux drank his coffee in one quick gulp. ‘Bon, I’ll see about your food.’

  He rose from his chair and went to the kitchen. Just now, the café was full of shopkeepers and bankers and people Rochat didn’t know but recognized from the street. Like the two ladies sitting across the café, smoking and talking over coffee. There were big shopping bags at their feet, stuffed with things wrapped in Christmas paper.

  ‘Goodness, Rochat, you’ve been so busy you forgot it’s nearly Christmas.’

  He sipped his drink, thinking what if she was still here for Christmas? What would she want for Christmas?

  ‘A way home is what she wants, Rochat, a way home.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The angel.’

  ‘What angel?’

  ‘The angel who’s lost and hiding in the cathedral because … because …’

  Rochat stopped talking and looked up. Monsieur Dufaux was at the table with a picnic basket covered with a red chequered cloth in his hands. He smiled at Rochat.

  ‘Tell you what, Marc. You go right ahead and find that angel a way home. Too many illegal foreigners in Switzerland as it is.’

  The phone rang again. Harper ignored it. His desk was now covered with scraps of paper. Each scrap filled with his own scribbled notes. The phone stopped ringing, Harper turned back to the computer screen.

  Chapter seven, verse one.

  It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that Daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. And when the Angels(3), the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves from the progeny of men, and let us beget children.

  Harper scrolled down to the references, number 3: ‘Aramaic text reads Watchers here’. He scrolled down a few more lines.

  And the women conceiving brought forth giants, Whose stature was each three hundred cubits. These devoured all which the labour of men produced; until it became impossible to feed them.

  ‘So what the hell is a bloody cubit?’

  He kept reading.

  The Angels taught man how to make weapons, armour, jewellery and other things that which were not known before. Moreover Azazel taught men to make swords, knives, shields, breastplates, the fabrication of mirrors, and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments, the use of paint, the beautifying of the eyebrows, the use of stones of every valuable and select kind, and all sorts of dyes, so that the world became altered … thus has the whole world been filled with blood and inequity.

  The screen blipped, a message flashed on the screen.

  Mr Harper, Inspector Gobet asks as you are too busy to answer the telephone, could you then be good enough to open the door. Thank you.

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  Knockknockknock.

  A not-so-gentle rapping at the chamber door that could only be from the knuckles of an iron fist. Harper turned in his chair, stared at the door.

  ‘Just a second.’

  He tossed off the robe, threw on his clothes, opened the door. The cop in the cashmere coat was standing in the hall, the waitress with the gun behind him. Her gun drawn, her finger inside the trigger guard, the barrel pointed at Harper’s head. Harper was careful not to move, remembering from somewhere there’s no dodging a bullet at point-blank range.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Harper.’

  Harper looked at his watch: two forty.

  ‘I miss check-out time?’

  ‘Considerably. But as you are not checking out as yet, let’s not worry about it. May I come in?’

  ‘Room’s a mess, I’m afraid. Seems I’m the maid and I’m rather bad at it.’

  Inspector Gobet turned to the waitress with the gun.

  ‘Thank you, Officer Jannsen. He appears to be in one piece. Please resume your post, advise the rest of the team of the situation.’

  ‘Sir.’

  The Inspector stepped into the room.

  ‘I hope you’re comfortable. I’m afraid the Lausanne Palace is one star above our expense guidelines.’

  ‘Thought it might be because this place is a Swiss copper’s safe house.’

  ‘That too. Though the management doesn’t advertise it in the brochure.’

  ‘May not be the Palace, but there’s a free minibar and a nice view of those big rocks across the lake. What else does a man need in a prison?’

  The Inspector looked about the room. Harper saw the Inspector’s nose turn up at the general lack of neatness.

  ‘Any news, Inspector?’

  ‘One or two things. Firstly, I took lunch with the Doctor. I told him you were involved in a bit of research for me. He was kind enough to pass on a telephone message from the IOC switchboard.’

  ‘A message?’

  ‘Received at twelve thirty-five today. A woman called for you regarding a lost cigarette case, asking if you might return it. There was no name or return number. I assume you know her.’

  Harper could sense the Inspector’s sees-all, knows-all eyes.

  ‘Someone I met in a bar, but she’s got the wrong man.’

  ‘The wrong man?’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘Her cigarette case.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But thanks for being concerned about my social life. Or were you just profiling the manner of my thinking again?’

  ‘Bit of both, in truth.’ The Inspector turned, regarded the view from the windows. ‘Yes, an excellent view of Le Massif.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Le Massif des Mémises, Mr Harper, those big rocks across the lake.’

  The Inspector took the chair at the desk, his eyes scanning the almost finished sandwich plate with the LP’s logo, the empty bottles of beer and the ashtray overflowing with butts. All set amid scattered notes and Yuriev’s casino photos.

  ‘You’ve been busy, I see.’

  ‘A little.’ Harper nodded towards the computer. ‘By the way, nice trick with the laptop, Inspector.’

  ‘I hope it wasn’t too much of an intrusion.’

  ‘I take it your lads in the kitchen have been monitoring what I’m doing?’

  ‘Of course. But as I’m here, why don’t you tell me what it is you have been up to with our computer. Save me reading the report on your excellent detective work.’

  ‘Ever heard of the Book of Enoch, Inspector?’

  ‘Should I have heard about it?’

  Harper walked to the desk and picked up his smokes and lit one up.

  ‘It was a book that ended up getting chucked from the Bible, part of what’s called the Apocrypha. I downloaded it from the net, read through it twice. Load of mystical gibberish about angels and men. Seems, in the beginning, angels were called Watchers. Sent here by God to protect the creation, guide mankind. First wave of Watchers went stir crazy and fell for the women of Earth in a big way. They took the form of men and set out to create their own race of half-breeds to rule the Earth.’

  ‘Half-breeds, you say?’

  ‘Not me, Enoch.’

  The Inspector didn’t appreciate the jibe. Harper dug through the scraps of paper on the desk.

  ‘Bottom line, all evil in the world comes from a pack of bad guy angels and their half-breeds.’

  ‘And what, may I ask, does any of this have to do with the lat
e Alexander Yuriev, or the hapless Albanian night clerk for that matter?’

  Harper looked the Inspector in the eyes, feeling they had a way of beating lesser beings into their place.

  ‘The note Yuriev left in the cathedral, the line about evil spirits walking the earth, it’s from the Book of Enoch. A local biblical scholar confirmed it. Bit of a loon who talks in morphine riddles, but he did get me thinking.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Evil spirits.’ Harper picked up the last shots of Yuriev leaving the casino. ‘You told me to keep these pictures, look at them again.’

  ‘Standard procedure in police work, Mr Harper. New eyes see new things.’

  ‘Or things that aren’t there, maybe.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Look at the carpet in front of Yuriev. There’s more than one shadow on the carpet, I count three. The man isn’t stumbling, he’s being dragged.’

  The Inspector didn’t bother to look.

  ‘Are you suggesting Yuriev was forcibly removed from Le Casino Barrière by two “bad-guy angels” from the Book of Enoch, as it were?’

  ‘I’m suggesting someone did a lousy job of doctoring these photos. The rest was – what’d you call it on the drive from Montreux?’

  ‘Whimsy, shooting the breeze.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  Harper dropped the photos in the Inspector’s lap. The Inspector tapped the photos into even corners, laid them atop Harper’s notes.

  ‘For the moment, Mr Harper, let’s put aside pictures of things that aren’t there and consider all the things that are.’

  Harper walked back to the bed, sat down.

  ‘Somehow, I knew this wasn’t a social call.’

  ‘Indeed not.’

  The Inspector slid his hand into his cashmere coat, pulled out a DVD case and removed a disc from it. He tossed the empty case across the room. It landed perfectly in Harper’s lap. Black scribble on the cover, ‘Confidentiel pour Inspecteur Gobet’. Harper picked it up.

  ‘I’ll bite, what is it?’

  The Inspector looked at the sandwich plate on the desk. He took the last of the chips, popped it in his mouth.