by Gavin Lyall
We all ended up in the same second-class non-smoker. I should have warned Maganhard to take a smoker. It was an open carriage with double facing seats on either side of the aisle, the top of the seat backs high enough so that you couldn’t see over them without half standing up.
Maganhard and the girl sat down facing each other. Once they’d made that choice, I knew exactly where the trench-coat would sit – and he did: the next seat back on the same side, so that he was hidden from them, but would see them over the seat back when they stood up.
Harvey and I sat a couple of rows back, on the opposite side. When we were moving, Harvey asked: ‘Well – what do we do about it?’
I wasn’t very sure. As I’d said, as long as the man was on the train then he wasn’t ringing up and spreading the word -so perhaps the longer we stayed on, the better. But if he was really a cop, then he might start passing messages to the ticket collector or chucking notes out at stations. So perhaps the sooner we ditched him, the better.
‘I’d like to get off at Lausanne,’ I said slowly. ‘If we can pass it on to Maganhard.’
He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You haven’t got a plan,’ he said. ‘You’re just counter-punching. That’s all.’
‘There are worse plans. At least it’s flexible.’
He gave me another look, then relaxed slowly. The smell of trouble had done a lot to wake him up. He might have been feeling like hell’s ashes – and probably was – but he’d been a gunman a lot longer than he’d been an alcoholic.
But it wouldn’t last. As his hangover wore off, his thirst would begin to wear on. If hangovers lasted as long as thirsts, there wouldn’t be any alcoholics.
The train had the early-morning feeling, too. It crawled out along the lakeside, stopping whenever it got the chance. We’d started with about half a dozen other people in our carriage; most of them had gone by the time we got to Nyon.
The ticket collector, wearing a cash satchel slung down around his knees, came round and said’Bern, ah?’ to Maganhard’s tickets, good and loud. That suited me fine, since I’d changed my mind.
The trench-coat had to buy a ticket. I bent my ears hard in that direction in case he was passing messages as well as money, but was certain he hadn’t.
Soon after Nyon, Maganhard came back down the aisle, towards the lavatory. While he was gone I scribbled a note: The man just behind you is following you. Don’t talk out loud. Get off at Lausanne. Wait until everybody else is off.
When he came back I just held it out to him and he took it without stopping to argue, and without stopping to read it before he got back to his seat, either. Now all we had to do was wait to see if he’d obey it.
At the next few stations, people started to get in again. I hoped there wouldn’t be too many; I wasn’t looking for an audience.
As we rounded the last curve into Lausanne, most of the people in the carriage stood up. Harvey said quietly: ‘Are you going to try and lose him by running all over town?’
‘No.’
He nodded. ‘I’m not offering toshoot any cops, but-‘
‘My own thoughts exactly.’
He smiled. ‘You or me?’
‘Me. You block the light.’
The train stopped gently. People jostled their way off. I began to sweat. Maganhard could still wreck it by getting off too soon; I wished I’d remembered to tell him the train stopped for several minutes.
He got it right. The last people got off, a few more got on and sat down. Then the doorway was clear. Maganhard stood up and strode out, the girl a few paces behind him. Harvey took my briefcase and we started moving.
The trench-coat bounced suddenly out in front of us, snapped:‘Je m’excuse’without looking at us, and hurried down the aisle. I took several quick steps and was right behind him when he went through the glass door into the little cramped space beside the lavatory and before the steps down. The girl was just ahead of him.
At the last moment his mind must have caught up with events: the fact that Maganhard had suddenly jumped off meant he knew he was being followed; and what were we doing getting off so late, as well? He slowed, stiffened, and his head started to turn.
I jabbed my fist, first knuckle extended, in under the brim of the Alpine trilby. He gave a little whistling sigh and folded up. I caught him and leaned us against the lavatory door. Latched.
Harvey’s hand snaked under my elbow, and twisted the handle; the trench-coat and I fell inside with a rush. The door slapped shut behind us.
I hardly bothered to look at his face: it wouldn’t tell me anything. I dumped him on the seat and ripped open his coat. He had a small Walther PPK in a shoulder-holster, a bunch of papers and passes in his inside and outside breast pockets, a wallet on his hip, a purse of coins, and some keys. It took me just over ten seconds to grab the lot, and I was sorry to have to leave the holster itself.
I wasn’t being vindictive or money-hungry. It’s just that a man without a franc on him takes more time getting his hard-luck story believed than one who can flash a roll of notes and start hiring help.
We stepped off the train not twenty seconds later than Maganhard.
I led the way down off the platform, along the passageway, and up to platform one and the station buffet. I’d still have liked to keep us in two separate parties for as long as we were travelling by train, but now it was more important to brief Maganhard and the girl again.
We sat down at a corner table, where he could keep his back to the world, and ordered coffee and rolls.
‘Who was that man?’ Maganhard wanted to know.
‘I’m not sure, yet.’ I was taking one piece of paper at a time out of my pockets, looking at it, and putting it away before I got out the next.
Miss Jarman asked: ‘Did you kill this one?’
‘No.’
Harvey chuckled. ‘You hope. I didn’t know you knew that Karate stuff – the knuckle punch.’
She said: ‘What’s Karate?’
‘Ju-jitsu played dirty.’
Finally I found something: a French identity card. ‘His name’s Griflet, Robert Griflet. Policeman.’
Harvey frowned. ‘French?’
‘Sûreté. I thought it was something like that – him being alone, and so on. I think this explains it.’ It was a letter of the to-whom-it-may-concern type, explaining that the bearer was an agent of the Sûretéand asking everybody, to give him all the help they could, if they would be so kind. It was tactfully phrased, but for me the gun under his arm had rather spoiled the effect in advance.
I passed the letter round. The rest of the papers were a French driving licence, an international one, and normal everyday junk. Nothing to show what job he was on.
The waiter brought our coffee. Maganhard read the letter, grunted, and passed it back. I put it back in my pocket and said: ‘Well, I hope that ends the episode of Robert Griflet, policeman. With luck, he might not wake up before Bern. But I’m afraid it means we’ve got to change our line again. We daren’t take a train on through Bern now.’
‘I hope we will not take any more trains,’ Maganhard said stiffly. They seem to get us into more trouble. We can hire a car here.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t want to do anything in Lausanne. Remember, that bloke Griflet’s going to wake up and start spreading the word sooner or later – and the last place he saw us was Lausanne. He’ll try and pick up our trail here. No – I think we’ll take a train round to Montreux and start from there.’
Nobody seemed to like the idea much. Maganhard said: ‘I am not on a guided tour of Switzerland, Mr Cane. We have only come sixty kilometres from Geneva, and Montreux is a dead end. It is round the end of the lake. Even if we get a car there, we will have to double back to reach the main road.’
‘True. So I hope they won’t expect us to be fools enough to go there. And there’s a man there I rather want to meet.’
‘We are not here for your social life, either! ‘
‘It’s only thanks to
my social life that we’ve got this far. We’re going to Montreux.’
TWENTY-TWO
We didn’t reach Montreux until after nine; the train service isn’t good, and if you’ve ever been to Montreux in April, you know why. Nobody who spends the winter there ever uses the train; if the Rolls-Royce has developed the staggers, they hire a Mercedes and bleed with shame.
Montreux is one of those places where English money goes to die. It’s for people who think Bermuda and Nassau are vulgar and American, and besides, the natives are getting uppitty. In Montreux the natives never get uppitty; from September to May the hotels serve nothing but roast beef and curry and take good care not to cook it too well. The dining-rooms are full of sweet little old ladies with cold eyes that can cost you down to your last half-dozen Shell Oil shares. Anybody wearing a beard or carrying a guitar is sentenced to be run over by massed wheelchairs at high noon.
All this was another good reason for us being there. Unless the airmail edition of The Times was running anything about us, nobody in Montreux was likely to have heard of us.
Since we were still in fairly public places, I’d bullied Harvey into going back to the two-by-two system, covering Maganhard and the girl from fifteen yards back. I thought we were fairly safe: the Swiss police hadn’t been covering Geneva station, so it looked as if they hadn’t been asked to pick Maganhard up yet. griflet would spoil all that when he woke up, but it would take time to get the word around.
Maganhard sat down in a caféa couple of hundred yards up from the station, as per my instructions. Harvey and I took a table near by, and I started sorting through some newspapers I’d bought at the station.
The Journal de Genèvegave it me: it must have been what Robert Griflet, policeman, had been looking up. They’d finally dug out the eight-year-old photograph of Maganhard. It was obviously a passport picture, but Maganhard looked very much like a passport picture, anyway. And he hadn’t changed much in eight years: it was the same square face, angular glasses, thick, black swept-back hair. People with a ten-million holding in electronics and a yacht in the Atlantic don’t age fast.
The-story alongside the picture reassured me a bit: it had been handed out by the French police on the Geneva frontier. They were blocking the border so that even a mouse couldn’t cross. There was no reason why Geneva citizens should fear this rapist monster. He probably wouldn’t get anywhere near the Swiss frontier, with the Sûreté Nationalehard after him.
On the question of who was with Maganhard, the cop had sounded honestly vague; all he knew was that they didn’t scarehim. The story meandered off into the reporter’s account of his tour of the frontier posts and the questions he’d got asked at each.
Harvey said: ‘And I don’t likethat guy, either.’
I looked up quickly. An elderly party was just getting up from a table against the wall on the far side, carrying a newspaper with him. At the door he stopped to fiddle with his newspaper and, reckoning that made him invisible, threw a stare like a searchlight back at Maganhard.
He was a squat, solid man of at least sixty, and starting to develop a stoop. He had dark eyes and a long gingery moustache that was beginning to turn white. But his clothing was the thing that rocked me; up to his eyebrows he was the perfect chauffeur: shiny black leather leggings, black raincoat, black tie with a stiff collar. But on top of it was a vast hairy, orange tweed cap.
Probably, in his mind, that put him out of uniform and helped his invisibility. He was as invisible as an airport beacon.
He suddenly switched off the stare, fiddled with his newspaper again, and then went out with a determined military strut that, with him, had aged to the plodding of a dinosaur.
Harvey and I stared at each other. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s no professional.’
Harvey said: ‘If he knows Maganhard, he’s trouble whatever he is.’
I nodded. ‘Get them out of here. Get up to the next caféon the same side, so I’ll know where to find you.’ I stood up and tossed him a ten-franc note. ‘And get Maganhard to get his glasses off and comb his hair differently.’ I passed him the Journalopen at the photograph, and slid out of the café.
Anywhere but in Montreux the streets would have been full of Swiss dashing resolutely about making watches or money. Not here. Here was just about finishing its second cup of China tea and wondering whether to have one or two boiled eggs this morning. The streets were almost empty, and my man was easily in sight, fifty yards up on my left, heading deeper into town.
I crossed the road. There wasn’t enough traffic to make it a problem crossing back if he dived up a side road, and he didn’t look the type to think you could ever be trailed from the opposite side of the street. Twice he stopped, swung round, and gave the sergeant-major’s stare at somebody behind him. It made him as conspicuous as an alligator in a bath, but it seemed to reassure him that the Black Hand Gang wasn’t on his tail.
I slowed up to keep behind him, and we pressed on.
Montreux is a series of terraces around the end of the lake, with the main road and the railway criss-crossing at the middle level. We went through the shopping area and out of the centre towards the last row of big hotels on the lake front. It was staying a cold, grey morning and too early even for the old girls well wrapped up in rugs and Rolls Royces. I dropped farther back as the town began to thin out.
He gave one last sweep of the evil eye behind him, crossed to my side, and ducked into the side road above the Quai des Fleurs. We passed the Excelsior and then he turned into the Victoria.
I reached the door in several quick strides, a uniformed flunkey swung it for me before he noticed I was under seventy, and I nodded and headed across the lobby towards the lifts.
The whole place was furnished with a rich gloom that would have made an undertaker’s parlour seem like a milk bar: heavy square columns covered in dark wood, brown-and-cream carpets, big rubber plants, and dark olive drapes trying to creep across the windows to keep out the light. I speeded up: in a hotel like that, the lifts work efficiently. They have to. Nobody is young enough to use the stairs.
I slid into the dark-panelled lift just behind the man I was following. The lift-boy flicked the doors shut, and asked me what floor. I bowed to the black raincoat, as a gesture of politeness to age, and he said: ‘Sank.’ I’d just got that figured out as the English for Cinque in time to say:‘Quatre.’
In his suspicious mood, the old boy tried to catch my eye, but I wasn’t having any. You never look the man you’re trailing straight in the eye.
I bailed out at the fourth floor and took a few resolute steps to convince the lift-boy that I knew what I was doing, then doubled back as soon as the doors closed. I had half an eyeball poked around the next corner of the stairs by the time the lift stopped again. The black raincoat stomped past the top, and I tiptoed on up.
The corridor was long, tall, and plastered with shiny cream paint that had darkened to a smoky orange. He went about twenty yards down and stopped at a door on the left. I ducked back a step down the stairs: I’d seen him in action enough by now to know that he was going to swing round and stare down the corridor before he opened the door.
I waited twenty seconds, then walked after him. The room was number 510, and there was nobody else in the corridor. I rapped on the door.
After a pause a voice quavered: ‘Who’s that?’
I hooted:‘Service, monsieur,’ in cheerful, confident tones.
There was another pause. Then the door opened six inches and the gingery moustache peered out suspiciously.
I rammed griflet’s little Walther PPK against the black tie at his neck and marched in behind it.
TWENTY-THREE
It was a long room, with big windows on to a balcony over the lake. If the windows had been opened in the last six months, it hadn’t caught on: the temperature was at steam-bath level. That apart, it had a dark-red carpet, a load of furniture that looked too valuable to belong to the hotel -and another man.
I k
icked the door shut and leant on it. The man in the raincoat took a couple more steps backwards and put up a hand to straighten his tie. I waved the gun towards the second man, in a chair beside the fire.
He said calmly: ‘All right, Sergeant, don’t do anything hasty.’ He looked at me. ‘And who are you, sir?’
I said: ‘Somebody who scares easily,’ and then gave him a second look.
He was old – so old that you didn’t even think of an age when you looked at him. His face was long and withered to a dry mask ending in a ruin of sagging flesh under his chin. He had a big nose with a big white moustache under it, stiff with the brittle stiffness of a dead plant clinging to the cracks in a crumbling wall. His ears were decayed white leaves and his scalp a few forgotten strands of white hair. The whole face looked as if it had been six months in a dry tomb – except for his eyes. They were damp blobs so pale that they looked almost blind, and it must have cost half his energy to keep the hoods of his eyelids from flopping closed.
I had the creepy feeling that if I breathed on that face it would fall to dust, leaving the white skull underneath.
He was wrapped in a gold-and-black dressing-gown, with an invalid table shunted in over his knees, carrying a coffee pot, a cup, and a bunch of papers.
He opened his mouth slowly, and his voice came out as a dry death-rattle, but it still had a crispness that expected a fast answer. ‘If you’ve come to kill me, you won’t get away with it – will he, Sergeant?’
The man in the raincoat said: ‘No, sir, he won’t get away with it.’ There was a rhythm, rather than an accent, to his voice that I couldn’t identify because it seemed so much out of place. Then I had it: Welsh.
‘You see?’ the old man said. ‘You won’t get away with it.’
I got the point: I wouldn’t get away with it. I leered at him. ‘Maybe I didn’t come to kill you.’
‘You’ve got a pistol,’ the old boy pointed out. ‘Even if it’s only a Walther PPK – a pop-gun. Still, it’s the man behind the gun that counts – isn’t it, Sergeant?’
