Midnight Plus One

by Gavin Lyall

  I pulled away and kept going west.

  He peeled off a thin plastic mac and threw it on to the back seat. ‘All go okay?’

  ‘Not quite. We’ve a problem.’

  ‘No gas or something?’

  ‘Petrol’s all right. Just look on the floor at the back.’

  He turned and leaned over. After a few moments he slid back into place. Then he stared at me. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘He does look like a problem. Who is – was he?’

  I turned right, away from the river, on the N785 signposted for Pont l’Abbé. ‘I assume he’s the man who was sent here to deliver the car.’

  ‘You fade him?’

  ‘Not me. I just found him as he was. Whoever it was had just left him there, with the keys in the dashboard.’

  He thought about it. This, I don’t like. They just left the car and keys and all, hey? Maybe they wanted to see who picked it up.’

  ‘I’d thought of that. But if anybody follows us, we’ll know.’

  ‘D’you know how he got it?’

  ‘Shot. Don’t know what by. I was hoping you’d give an expert opinion when we’re clear of town.’

  He didn’t say anything. I glanced sideways at him; he was peering ahead with the instrument lighting showing a faint frown on his face.

  Then he said: ‘It isn’t the end of the business I’m good at, but I’ll try. Then what?’

  ‘We off-load him down at the beach or somewhere.’

  ‘And just keep on as we planned?’

  ‘It’s what we’re being paid for.’

  After a while he said softly: ‘Looks like maybe we’re going to earn our money.’

  Once we were clear of the town, I started trying the car out: shoving on the accelerator, throwing it into bends, stamping on the brakes. I hadn’t driven a Citroën DS for a couple of years, and while it’s a damn good car it’s also a damn peculiar one. It has a manual gear-change but without a clutch; a front-wheel drive – and everything works by hydraulics. Springing, power steering, braking, and gear-change – all hydraulic. The thing has more veins in it than the human body – and when they start to bleed, you’re dying.

  Also, in the last two years, they’d hotted the engine up a bit. It had always had a top speed good enough for most French roads; now it had some real push in the acceleration as well.

  We slipped into the typical fast scurrying motion, a series of small shocks mostly damped out, curling round the bends without a hint of a roll. On high beam, the big yellow headlights lit the road like carnival night.

  Harvey said: ‘Is there a heater in this thing?’

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Let’s find it.’

  It didn’t feel that cold to me. The rain was the slow, steadydrizzle ofawarm front, so the temperature was probably rising. On top of that, the thought of our friend on the floor at the back was keeping me fairly warm. But maybe riding with a corpse takes people’s temperature different ways.

  I fiddled around and switched on the heater and demister. There weren’t any big villages or resorts on the big beach for which we were heading, but the local road stayed good and wide, if over-cambered. We wound between dry-stone walls, with occasional disused windmills showing in the headlights.

  We passed through Plonéour-Lanvern and headed for Tréguennec, one of a stack of old Cornish-Celtic names in this part of the world. We hadn’t seen a person nor a car since leaving Quimper, and if anybody was following us he was doing it by radar and not headlights.

  Harvey didn’t say anything; just stared ahead through the drizzle being wiped off the windscreen.

  As we reached the sign for Tréguennec I slowed down and dipped the lights, then went on to the parking lights. It held us right down in speed, but now we were only a mile or so from the sea, and the road didn’t go anywhere else. I didn’t want anybody wondering why a Citroen with a Paris number was driving down to the sea on a night like this.

  Finally, the road petered out into a wide sprawl of sand and gravel. I stopped, and switched everything off. When I opened the door we could hear the casual crunch of the sea over a slight rise ahead.

  ‘End of the line,’ I said.

  Harvey reached back and got his mac. ‘What do we do with our new old friend? Plant him somewhere?’

  ‘Something like that. You take a look at him while I explore.’ I opened the briefcase down by my leg and decanted a bundle of local 200,000-scale Michelin road maps on the front seat. Under them was a big wooden holster. I opened the top, took out the Mauser, fumbled around for the magazine, and rammed it in. Then I reversed the wooden holster and clipped it on the back of the Mauser butt to form a shoulder piece. Then I got hold of the bolt, and cocked it. Then I was ready.

  Harvey said: ‘I should have timed you on that. I don’t think you’d have beaten Billy the Kid on a fast draw.’

  ‘I haven’t been practising. I might get it down to five minutes yet.’

  ‘I heard Billy was faster than that even.’

  ‘On a night like this we wouldn’t either of us hit anything. It’s only the sound that matters. I’ll sound like a machine-gun.’

  He nodded. ‘You got a point there. All right, you pick a grave plot.’

  I stepped out and slammed the door. It takes a long time for your eyes to adjust to real darkness. I blundered forward, working on what I felt under my feet. After a dozen steps, it turned into heavy shingle, and then took a slope upwards.

  A few yards got me to the top of the shingle bank, and even in that light I could see the sea about thirty yards down on the other side, the waves coming in with a muscular thump after their long trip from the Bahamas. As an open beach facing into the prevailing wind, it didn’t look like a good small-boat landing to me, but maybe Maganhard didn’t have much choice. At least its unsuitability meant it was lonely.

  I stepped back from the crest of the bank, turned my back on the rain, and squinted off to either side inland. On my right, south, there was a huddle of what looked like huts a few yards off the end of the road. Nothing to the other side except a vague shape maybe two hundred yards away. I tramped down to the huts – one of which was an old bus without wheels and the windows boarded up. No sign of life. I turned and walked back along the inland side of the bank to the north.

  The first thing was a faded notice painted with a big skull and the word minen! That made it an old German fortification. I stood around for a while trying to convince myself that any mines would have rusted away by now, then realised that they either would or wouldn’t, no matter what I thought. I turned away, down towards the sea.

  The water was just below the last of the shingle, showing a patch of sand, and the last of the stones were still wet. It looked as if the tide was on its way out. I walked back to the car.

  My eyes were getting adjusted to the dark; I could see the interior light of the Citroen glaring like a beacon the moment I topped the shingle bank. It went off as Harvey heard me coming andclosed the door. ‘Find a place for him?’ he asked. ‘You find what he died of?’

  ‘More or less. He stopped three of them, and I’d guess from pretty close. Maybe through the window of the car. They’re all three still in him, so I’d guess a small calibre gun: something like a 6.35 millimetre. But I ain’t no surgeon.”

  ‘You can’t tell from the size of the wounds?’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t tell a thing. If it goes in straight, the hole shuts up again. I can tell you he didn’t bleed much, so he died fast – if that’s any help.’

  ‘Only to him.’ I flashed the torch on him. I hadn’t had time for any stocktaking back in the Cathedralplace. He was a short, wide man with smooth dark hair, a sad moustache, and the pale, disinterested expression of being dead. He had on a coarse tweed jacket, and Harvey had opened his shirt to show three neat punctures across his chest.

  Without much wanting to, but wanting to make sure, I felt round his back: no exit wounds. Then I started groping in his pocket.

  Harvey said: ‘No sc
ore. No identity card, no driver’s licence. Either he didn’t bring them, or somebody lifted them.’

  They hadn’t cleaned him out, though: he still had some coins in his pocket, a few bills and receipts, a maker’s label on the jacket. The police wouldn’t have any trouble identifying him. It would just take them a little time; maybe that was all the killer wanted.

  I took out his key-ring: a few door and luggage keys, and also, hung by a smaller ring through a drilled hole, an empty brass cartridge case.

  I turned it up to the torchlight. The percussion cap in the base showed it had been fired, and by something with a big, rectangular firing pin. The lettering round it had been worn faint by years in a pocket, but I could still read WRA – 9 mm. I passed the key-ring to Harvey.

  He held it under the torchlight. ‘Winchester Repeating Arms,’ he interpreted. ‘Guess they sent them over in the war. What the hell has a firing-pin like that?’

  ‘Sten gun.’

  ‘So he was in the Resistance, hey?’

  I nodded. That wasn’t a surprise: anybody who did this sort of work for Henri Merlin would likely have been in the Resistance with him. But it wasn’t so likely he’d have had a Sten. In the movies, everybody in the Maquis has Stens; in the war, they were handed out to people who’d proved they knew they were going to hit something. For anybody else, a Sten is just the fastest way of wasting ammunition.

  So he’d met somebody else who was good at getting up close and shooting only when he knew he would hit. I shrugged: the Resistance was a long time ago and we’d all of us forgotten a lot. But it didn’t sound as if the Other Side, whoever they were, had forgotten quite so much.

  I stuck the key-ring back in his pocket and stood up into the rain.

  Harvey asked: ‘Where do we take him?’

  ‘We’ll throw him in the sea. The tide’s on its way out, and we can’t dig in shingle or wet sand, anyway.’

  ‘He’ll probably get picked up.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe not. Or maybe a long way from here. And after a few days in the sea they won’t be able to time his death properly.’

  He looked at me.

  I said: ‘I’m not trying to do the poor bastard out of a decent burial – it’s just that he’s a damn nuisance. If anything happens and they back-track us to this beach, I don’t want them to findhim here.’

  He nodded and we picked him up and started over the shingle bank. He was a hefty weight, making us slow and clumsy, but we finally made it down to the edge of the sea. We got our feet wet up to the knees and threw him a yard farther. He floated, of course, and for a moment it looked as if he didn’t want to leave us. Then every receding wave dragged him a bit farther out than it pushed him in.

  I led the way back up to the top of the bank, and looked back. There was no horizon: sea and sky just became a thick blackness at some range you couldn’t even guess at -four hundred yards or four miles. On an off-chance, I pulled out my torch and flashed a Morse code OK seawards. Nothing flashed back. wasn’t going to start worrying until he was at least an hour late. I only hoped he’d got enough sense to keep his yacht outside the three-mile limit, and use only a small boat in French waters.

  I hadn’t expected anything yet; with the rain, and the general confusion of setting up the whole deal, I It was going to be a long, wet wait. But no need for both of us. I said: ‘You go back to the car. Come out and take over in a quarter of an hour.’

  He didn’t say anything, nor move. I flashed the torch on his face. He jerked his head away. ‘Turn it off, damn it!’

  I turned it off. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t ever bund me like that. I need tosee.’ His voice had a raw, jittery edge on it.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said again. ‘You want to go and keep dry?’

  ‘Okay.’ He didn’t move. Then he asked: ‘You got a drink around?’

  Thought you weren’t drinking tonight?’

  ‘I didn’t think I was carrying stiffs around, either.’

  Silly of me. I should have remembered that professional gunmen don’t like being reminded of the end product of their work. I’d even made him do a post-mortem.

  I said: ‘Sorry,’ for the third time. ‘There’s some Scotch in my case. Hold on here and I’ll get it.’

  I walked back and got it from the car. It was just a half-bottle of a brand I didn’t much like but all I’d been able to get on the flight from London. I’d opened it on the train as being cheaper than railway prices, but it was still three-quarters full.

  I came back up the bank, flashed at the sea, and then handed the bottle to Harvey.

  He said: ‘No thanks. Changed my mind.’

  I glared at him through the darkness and rain. I was cold and wet and I hadn’t exactly enjoyed finding and then dumping that body myself – andnow I was stuck with a gunman who couldn’t even make up his bloody mind about something as simple as whether he wanted a drink or not.

  Well, by now I certainly wanted one myself. I took a swig and then held the bottle out again. ‘Have a sip. It’s going to be a long ride.’

  He took it. Then his arm whipped over and the bottle exploded on the shingle by his feet.‘Idon’t want a drink!’

  The gulp of whisky was lead on my stomach and the taste sour in my mouth. I asked quietly: ‘How long have you been off the stuff, Harvey?’

  He just sighed, a long resigned sound.

  I said: ‘How long?’

  ‘I’ll be all right. Don’t you worry.’

  No. No worries at all. Except for a bodyguard who was a practising alcoholic. But no more than that.

  At least I knew now why he hadn’t stayed to draw a pension from the American Secret Service.

  ‘Howlong?’ I asked grimly.

  ‘Forty-eight hours. About. I’ve done it before. I can do it’

  That’s the funny thing: theycan do it. For forty-eight hours, or a week or weeks.

  ‘You going to get the shakes on me?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I’ve had them. They won’t happen again until I’m back on it.’

  The calm assumption that he’d be going back on it shook me. I opened my mouth to say several severe but well-meant things, then shut it again before too much rain got in. All I wanted was for him to stay sober for twenty hours more. After that, he wasn’t my problem.

  And in a way, it was cheering that he didn’t plan to stay dry for ever. When they suddenly remember how long for ever is, they’re back inside the bottle with a rush. But just another day is an easy target. No need for him to crack before then.

  I flashed the torch at the sea.

  For a few minutes nobody said anything. The waves crashed on the beach below, their echo dulled by the steady rain. Then I asked: ‘Had your first amnesia yet?’

  He made a sound that might have been a chuckle. ‘The first memory blackout, you mean? Now, how would a man rememberthat?’

  I just nodded. I hadn’t really expected an answer, but it had been worth asking. The first amnesia, the first time you can’t remember what the hell happened the night before, that’s the big step. After that, you’re over the hill. Nowhere to go but down. Or so the doctors say.

  Getting an answer would have helped me guess how committed he was, how likely to crack.

  I said: ‘Just interested.’

  ‘If you’re that interested, you know a man hates talking about it.’

  So he’d taken the trouble to check up on the stages and symptoms. They sometimes do. It’s a way of standing back, watching themselves go down the slope. Less effort than trying to hold themselves back.

  ‘So you know something about it?’ he asked.

  ‘Something. A bit of drinking wasn’t exactly uncommon in the war – particularly in our sort of business. I read it all up once. Had to know how much security risk those people’d be.’

  ‘And how much were they?’

  I shrugged, but he probably couldn’t see. ‘Some were, some weren’t. We won the war anyhow.’

  ‘So I heard.’ Then
: ‘You got a light.’

  ‘What?’

  He waved at the sea. ‘Out there. You got a light’

  I flashed the torch again. A faint light winked back. I looked at my watch: just after two o’clock.

  ‘Can’t be him,’ I said. ‘He’s hardly late yet.’

  ‘You ever think a real big businessman might be efficient? And he might hire efficient people to get him around?’

  We looked at each other through the rain and darkness. ‘No,’ I said, ‘looking at you and me, I wouldn’t say that thought had occurred to me. But now we’re hired, maybe we’d better try.’

  FIVE

  The boat hit on the beach with a long, grinding crunch. Several people bounced out and grabbed hold to steady it. The next wave swamped them to their waists.

  That was what they’d been hired for, and I’d got quite wet enough for one night already; we stood back on the shingle. It was a motorised whaleboat with a good width, which it must have needed coming through that surf, and a clear twenty-five feet long, which told you something about the size of yacht that carried it.

  One of the men stumped up to me and said in guttural English: ‘The fish are biting.’

  I tried hard to think of the proper password. Passwords are fine in the right place, which means a seemingly casual remark in a crowded street which won’t betray anything if the wrong person hears it. Here, they were nonsense. But Merlin had insisted.

  Then I remembered. ‘And the birds are singing.’

  He grunted and walked back. I glanced at Harvey; he was slipping something back under his mac.

  Somebody was stepping off the whaleboat and getting a lot of help from the crew. He walked slowly up to us, and announced: ‘I am Maganhard.’

  ‘Cane.’

  Harvey said: ‘Lovell.’

  Maganhard said: ‘There are twenty kilos of luggage and two of us. I believe you have the Citroën.’

  He didn’t ask ‘Is that all right?’ or anything. Just telling us. If there was anything we didn’t expect, it was up to us to say so. Efficiency – as Harvey had guessed.

  And there was something I hadn’t expected. ‘Two of you?’