The Watchers

by Jon Steele

  ‘Promise you’ll go away?’

  ‘Tomorrow night, same time, here?’

  ‘OK, goodbye.’

  Harper headed to the bar, picked up his drink and disappeared around the corner. Katherine dumped the maquette behind her chair, took a quick breath. Fuck, wouldn’t that have been fun. Oh, yes, Mr Fabulously Wealthy, this is some drunken slob acquaintance of mine. End of perfect evening.

  She glanced around the room. The guy with the hipcat whiskers still staring at her, smiling. She ignored him, lifted the glass, tasted the champagne. It was ambrosial; the bubbles tickled her tongue. She resettled in luxuriant mood. Music, candlelight, the beautiful faces of wealthy Lausannois. Everything, everyone, glowing in the fairy lights of the Christmas trees just beyond the windows. Lovely, the world so very lovely. She offered herself a silent toast: How sweet it is, baby.

  Then something even better walked in the room.

  Tall, elegant. Dressed in tailored black-on-black Armani. Pampered complexion, the most beautiful hair she’d ever seen on a man. Long, silver, pulled tight to the back of his head and held with a silver clasp. Gorgeous sculptured face, small dark glasses over his eyes. And wouldn’t that one be nice, she mumbled to herself.

  A tall androgynous-looking man, skinny as a string bean and wearing a black silk mandarin jacket, followed at the gorgeous one’s heels. The guy with the whiskers, the one who’d been staring at her, rose from his chair. Katherine did a double-take, he was three heads shorter than the others. She had another sip of champagne, thinking another night, another job, she’d take them all at once or one at a time. Giggling at the thought, wondering who’d be first. The short one, the tall one? Nah, have to be the gorgeous one in the middle. He was so alpha male Katherine could smell him from across the room. She watched them talk among themselves till the short one nodded towards her. Then the gorgeous one searching the crowded room from behind his dark glasses. His gaze stopping in her direction.

  Katherine smiled to herself. Girl, this is so your lucky day.

  And she watched him move through the room, almost floating. Her breath quickening as he stopped.

  ‘Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Taylor. I am Komarovsky.’

  She saw her reflection in his dark lenses, looking very pleased to make his acquaintance.

  ‘Enchantée, monsieur.’

  He took her offered hand and bowed slightly, almost touching his lips to her skin but holding back and releasing her.

  ‘I hope the champagne is to your taste. It is a particular favourite of mine.’

  The tall one lifted the bottle from the ice, Dom Pérignon, nineteen fifty-nine.

  ‘It’s delicious, monsieur. Like a taste of heaven.’

  ‘I am so pleased you appreciate it.’

  ‘I do, very much. In fact I was just thinking it must be a sin to enjoy something so nice alone.’

  ‘Then for the sake of your salvation, I must join you.’

  The tall one refilled her glass and poured for Komarovsky. Katherine gave the tall one a closer look. A dusting of foundation over chin stubble, just the right touch of mascara. One of the most beautiful one-or-the-others Katherine had ever seen. Komarovsky spoke a few words of Russian, the tall one made a graceful turn and left them alone.

  ‘And now, mademoiselle, where were we?’

  She raised her glass to her eyes.

  ‘I was welcoming you to Lausanne, monsieur.’

  ‘How delightful to be welcomed by such beauty. I have looked forward to this evening with great anticipation.’

  She watched herself in the dark glasses, looking so very beautiful tonight. Offering herself the toast, smiling, her face still flushed with colour.

  ‘Please, call me Katherine.’

  ‘I have no urge to hurry our intimacy. I am one who believes it is the sense of anticipation that brings the greatest pleasure.’

  ‘Pleasure is good. I like pleasure.’

  Katherine looked away to break the spell, she saw the short one on his cellphone, the tall one taking peanuts from a silver bowl, tossing them in the air and catching them in his mouth.

  ‘I get it now, your friend was watching me.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The one with the whiskers, over there with the tall one, he was watching me. He told you I was here, that’s how the champagne showed up.’

  ‘How clever of you to notice. They are my attendants. I fear you may find me old world in my habits.’

  Katherine smiled, never ceasing to be amazed by the habits of the über-rich, especially when it came to the habit of sex.

  ‘Not at all, monsieur, you wear it well.’

  ‘How kind of you to say. I have asked that supper be prepared for us in a private salon, where I trust we may come to know each other better.’

  ‘Whatever gives you pleasure, monsieur.’

  ‘The fulfilment of my own pleasure is not my wish, Mademoiselle Taylor.’

  Katherine leaned close to him, her head spinning. The champagne, the alpha male scent oozing from the guy’s skin, so good.

  ‘So what is your wish, Monsieur Komarovsky?’

  ‘To watch you drift in the deepest currents of your passion.’

  Katherine felt a rush of something nice. Jesus, she thought, Mr Wonderfully Rich was so on the right track she wanted to scream. She giggled instead.

  ‘You find me eccentric, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Mysterious would be more like it. Especially when you hide your eyes behind those dark glasses.’

  ‘All the better for you to see yourself.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I see the delight you take watching your reflection. You possess the rarest of gifts: to enter a trancelike state of bliss watching yourself surrender to pleasure.’

  Her head spinning, her body feeling like molten wax, waiting to be shaped into whatever the fuck he wanted.

  ‘Is that what you want, monsieur? You want to watch me take myself all the way to wonderland?’

  ‘I want, for one night, your reflection to be made flesh. To be worshipped and adored.’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ She raised the champagne to her lips. ‘Just one thing, monsieur. I’m going to need to see your eyes.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  The corners of her mouth curved into the slightest of smiles.

  ‘Because I want your eyes to be my looking glass to wonderland.’

  ‘I must warn you, people are often affected looking into my eyes. I have a lack of pigment in the irises.’

  ‘Me, too. A tiny squiggle, here.’

  ‘Yes. I admired it in your photographs, as I admire it now.’

  ‘Well, you’ve seen mine, Monsieur Komarovsky. Where I come from, it’s your turn to show me yours.’

  ‘This is your wish?’

  ‘Depends. How many does a girl get in one night?’

  He raised his hands, slowly removing the glasses. She took a sharp breath. Silver discs, the colour of his hair.

  ‘As many as you desire.’

  Counting his way up the steps of Escaliers du marché, Rochat saw black clouds racing through the sky. And at the old market place he felt a sharp chill in the wind. He hurried across Rue Viret and up the last of the wood steps. He jumped on to the esplanade to greet the cathedral.

  ‘Boo!’

  Silence.

  The façade looked pale in the floodlamps instead of its usual shining self. And the stone statues either side of the doors looked timid. Even Monsieur Moses seemed to cower amid the pillars.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? It’s only a silly storm. Be not afraid, Rochat is here.’

  The floodlamps flickered and the cathedral almost shrank in fright. Rochat shuffled across the esplanade. He saw the dragons and demons, gargoyles and man-beasts in the stone carvings of the great arch, all looking terrified and wanting to hide. He rapped Moses on his stone sandals.

  ‘What have you been telling everyone? Another plague of locusts on the way, rivers running r
ed with blood? You shouldn’t scare everyone with your stories. It’s not nice.’

  The wind swelled and the bare branches of the chestnut trees twisted wildly. The black clouds sank through the sky, scraping the high turrets of the belfry tower. Rochat looked at Moses, rapped his sandals again.

  ‘I’m sorry, monsieur, you’re right. This isn’t a December kind of storm. What? What do you mean, I should run away? I’m le guet de Lausanne, it’s my duty to protect the cathedral.’

  Rochat hurried to the embankment wall, looked out over Lausanne. All the trees twisting and bending in the wind, branches clawing at rooftops and windows. Shutters slamming and fallen leaves swirling in funnels through the narrow lanes of the old city. Then the clouds forming into a great tumbling mass, covering the Alps in a dark shroud and spreading over Lac Léman. The lake turning dark as ink as it began to churn and swell. White crests formed like sharp teeth, snapping at the low tumbling clouds. And all along the shore, orange warning lights flashed … one long, three short, one long, three short … Danger! Danger! Run away!

  Rochat hurried towards the cathedral.

  ‘Be not afraid, Rochat, be not afraid.’

  Thunder cracked and lightning sliced at the chestnut trees on the esplanade. The tallest of the trees snapped and crashed to the ground, skidded over the esplanade and charged towards Rochat. He jumped behind the corner of the tower, the tree just missing him and sliding on till it smashed and shattered against the fountain. Water from the fountain rose from the basin as if it was raining upside down into the black clouds now breaking into black shreds and flying madly in the winds, then swooping down across the façade of the cathedral. Rochat ran to the red door of the belfry tower, banged hard and shouted:

  ‘Otto, my Brave Knight, I know you’re sleeping by the altar, but wake up! I think bad shadows are here and they’re scaring the cathedral! En garde, mon ami! You protect the nave! I’m going to protect the bells!’

  He unlocked the tower door, raced up the tower to the south balcony. The lights of Lausanne, the lights of Évian, the villages along the lake, flickering on and off. And the winds now charging from every direction, howling like a pack of wild dogs, driving the mass of black clouds to the east, then chasing them to the west, faster and faster, till the tumbling mass formed a giant spiral above Lausanne. Rochat leaned over the railings and looked up into the boiling, bubbling eye of the storm, hovering directly above the lantern tower.

  ‘Stop it! You’re scaring the stones and the bells! They’re very old! It’s not nice! Stop it, I say!’

  Clattering on the cathedral roof.

  He hurried to the east balcony.

  Hailstones bouncing off the tiles, spilling from the gutters. Then a screaming gust of wind ripping open the clouds.

  ‘Leave us alone! Go away!’

  And a flood of hail bore down.

  The winds tore through the carpentry and slammed into Rochat. He stumbled and grabbed the balcony railings and held on. Pulling himself around the tower, jumping past pillars, grabbing the railings again. The wind lashing at his face, hailstones crunching under his boots. Then he heard terrible wailing sounds in the wind and the screech of metal against metal. He hid in the southeast turret, watched the building works surrounding the cathedral. Tarpaulins on the scaffolds flapping like untethered sails, high scaffolds rocking from side to side, metal planks dropping 60 metres to the ground and clanging on the cobblestones like frightened bells. Rochat jumped to the south balcony, barely able to see beyond it as the mass of swirling clouds closed in on the cathedral.

  ‘Stop it! You’re not supposed to be here! Go away I say!’

  As if to mock him, the winds ripped the scaffolds from the cathedral walls and they crashed to the ground in one monstrous scream of falling-down steel. The winds then charged through the turrets, finding Rochat and knocking him from his feet, sending him sliding over the icy balcony towards the tower steps. He grabbed at the railings, they slipped through his hands.

  ‘No! Help!’

  His crooked foot caught a stone pillar, stopping him from tumbling down the tower steps. He pulled himself to his knees, he heard the ancient timbers of the carpentry creak and groan and Marie-Madeleine cry out in the face of the storm.

  GONG … GONG … GONG …

  Rochat knew he should run to the loge, light the lantern and call before the ninth bell faded, but he couldn’t move. His hands squeezing the iron railings with all his strength, his whole body trembling to the sound of Marie-Madeleine’s voice.

  ‘Rochat, Marc Rochat! Evil has returned to Lausanne!’

  fifteen

  ‘Hello, Jay.’

  Harper looked up, saw a pair of kid gloves, dark brown this time.

  ‘Hello, Miss Clarke. What brings you to planet fucking perfect?’

  ‘I was on my way to the Château d’Ouchy with some mates when the storm hit. Like fire and brimstone out there.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘World’s coming to an end and that’s the best you can do?’

  Harper looked out of LP’s windows. The small forest of Christmas trees and twinkling lights lay in tatters, snow was beginning to fall.

  ‘I suppose it was rather exciting for the two minutes it lasted.’

  ‘Said the actress to the bishop.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s a joke, Jay. A Brit joke. You’re a Brit, you’re supposed to laugh at Brit jokes. So, do I continue to stand here like an idiot, or do you ask me to sit down?’

  He stood, offered a chair. She sat down, lit a smoke.

  ‘Anyway, my mates decided to run for cover in the Palace. We’re having dinner down in Le Jardin. I’d ask you along but you seem happy with your club sandwich.’

  ‘It’s the chips. Deadly in this place.’

  ‘You really need to get out more, Jay.’

  She took a drag from her smoke. A new addition attached to the butt end, a pearl-coloured cigarette holder.

  ‘Nice touch with the fag.’

  ‘Can’t soil the new gloves, Jay.’ She reached over, stole a chip. ‘Yeah, not bad for Swiss chips.’

  ‘Thought you didn’t want to soil the gloves.’

  ‘I always carry a spare. And thanks, by the way, I’d love a drink. Vodka tonic with a twist.’

  Harper signalled the polite bartender, vodka tonic with a twist, make it two.

  ‘So I had a visit from the Swiss police.’

  ‘So I hear. A cop in a cashmere coat told me you weren’t impressed with my detective work.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The cop in a cashmere coat.’

  ‘Sees all, knows all, talks shite.’

  ‘Oh, that one. Well, he wasn’t there, whoever he is. But I told the other lot you were cute.’

  ‘I’m sure that made an impression.’

  ‘One of them’s coming back tomorrow. Spending the afternoon looking through security tapes for your missing Russian pal. He’s a sergeant. He’s cute, too. Nice green eyes, like you.’

  A waitress delivered the drinks.

  ‘Cheers, Miss Clarke.’

  ‘The eyes, Jay. Look me in the eyes.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘To make a proper toast in Switzerland, you must look into each other’s eyes as you touch glasses. It’s one of the rules.’

  ‘Like no laundry on Sundays?’

  ‘Like you don’t want to look me in the eyes?’

  ‘Sure, they’re nice. They match your gloves.’

  ‘My knees are positively trembling, Jay.’

  ‘Where are your friends?’

  ‘In the restaurant. I said I’d follow on, maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Unless, maybe, you had a better idea.’ She watched him fumble with his watch, trying to read the time. ‘You’re a strange one, aren’t you, Jay?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I see you through the window and abandon my friends. And as fate would have it, I
’m wearing one of my better fuck-me dresses so maybe, just maybe, I’ll get lucky enough to not spend another Christmas Eve with Jimmy Stewart. And you haven’t batted an eye.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jimmy Stewart, actor in It’s a Wonderful Life. Weepy Yank holiday trash designed to keep lonely hearts from jumping off Pont Bessières.’

  ‘That’s a bridge in Lausanne.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s also a bridge in the film, in Bumfuck, USA. Jimmy’s about to take a flying leap on Christmas Eve when an angel shows up to save the day. I’ve seen it a hundred times, still cry like a baby every time.’

  ‘Hang on, what’s Pont Bessières got to do with Bumfuck, USA?’

  ‘Because every year at Christmas time, a few lonely Lausannois take a dive off Pont Bessières.’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘You think people diving off a bridge is a joke?’

  ‘No, I was there a few nights ago. Middle of the night, actually. This lad popped out from nowhere, asked me if I knew about the bridge, wanted to know if I needed comfort. I thought he was on the game.’

  ‘Maybe he was a ghost.’

  ‘A ghost?’ Harper laughed to himself. Headless virgins, skeletons … now ghosts. ‘This town’s bursting with comfort and joy, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, but it’s better than the rest of the world, or haven’t you noticed?’

  ‘Noticed what?’

  ‘The state of the world.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘When’s the last time you looked at a newspaper, Jay?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Then I’ll clue you in, it’s fuckingly depressing out there. That’s why I’m looking for a body to keep me warm on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘What about your cute Swiss cop?’

  ‘Oh, he’s cute enough. Strikes me as a bloke who’s married to his job, with no timeouts allowed for fun. But none of that matters. What matters is I’m sitting here like a sure bet on a million-to-one jackpot and you sit there eating chips, with ketchup on your chin.’ She picked up the napkin from the table, leaned over, dabbed away the splotch. ‘And it makes the second time you’ve turned me down. You’re giving me a complex.’

  ‘You don’t waste time, Miss Clarke.’