Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

That reminded me: 'We must ring Merlin.'

Harvey asked: 'What for?'

'Just keep him in touch – and see if he's heard anything. And I'd like him to send a telegram in your name, Mr Maganhard, if you don't mind.'

Maganhard asked: 'Why? Who to?'

To the captain of your yacht, or the crew or something. Just saying you're sorry and hope they'll be released soon – something like that. The cops'll see it and maybe they'll be convinced you're in Paris. It might help.'

He chuckled his metallic chuckle. 'A good idea.'

The road got rougher and more winding as we climbed out of the lush farmland of the Loire valley. The verges straggled on to the roads, the trees and hedges looked in need of a haircut. And the road signs were the old Dunlop Touring Club de France' jobs, battered and rusty from generations of small boys throwing stones.

It had been raining inland and the streams were fat and fast, pocked with small whirlpools and sometimes breaking their banks to leave a row of poplars ankle deep in water like Guardsmen waiting for somebody to order them in out of the rain.

Harvey picked up the maps again and said: 'You want to go south of Clermont Ferrand, into the real Auvergne?'

'That's right.'

'We won't be moving fast in that country.'

'If we get lost, we can always ask a policeman.' He just looked at me.

Maganhard woke up suddenly and said: 'Now we know the policeare looking for us, what will happen if they stop us?'

I shrugged. 'Unless it's some character on a bike that we can run away from – we stay stopped.'

The girl said coldly: 'What happened to the brave gunmen? Are police too much for you?'

'In a way, yes. We agreed before we started that we weren't shooting at police.'

'You agreed?' Maganhard asked. 'Who authorised you to agree?'

'I thought you didn't likeany shooting, Mr Maganhard.'

His voice had the precise, toneless click of a teletype machine punching out the words. 'Through Monsieur Merlin, I am paying your wages. Any agreement should have been reached with him or with me.'

Harvey and I glanced at each other. He sighed and said: 'You've hurt his feelings, now. Stop at the next crossroads and we'll probably get a bus to Châteauroux and a train back to Paris.'

I said: 'Let's put it another way, Mr Maganhard: do youwant us to shoot at policemen?'

There was a pause, then: 'I want to know why you agreed not to. That is all.'

'If you don't see the difference between some character who's been hired to kill you and a gendarme who's been told to arrest you – well, we can skip the moral question. But have you thought what it would do to your chances in the long run?'

'I do not understand.'

I took a deep breath. 'I imagine this journey's only half the battle for you. When it's over, you don't want to be any worse off than you are now. Right now the cops are looking for you – on a rape charge. They'll look pretty hard, because you're a big man and there's always somebody to scream Influence when a big one gets away. But it's still only a rape charge; we're still sharing their time with a couple of bank robberies, a murder, a prison escape, stolen cars – whatever else has happened today.

'But once we kill a cop, they'll forget everything else. It'll only be us they want. And even if we got away with it, they'd chase us to the hot end of Hell and then get us extradited. There isn't a country in the world would stand up to protect a cop-killer; they've got their own police to worry about. Have I made my point?'

'If what you say is true. It seems most peculiar that the police should react in that way.'

Harvey lit a Gitane and said thoughtfully: 'It's the way cops think. They don't really mind somebody breaking the law – not personally. They get to expect it. Sure, they work at their jobs, but they go home for dinner at six. They don't think the world's going to end just because some guy gives his wife a face-lift with a meat axe. Not even if he gets away with it.'

He blew smoke at the windscreen. 'Cops don't mind people running away like we're doing. They expect that, too – they rather like it. It shows respect. But the guy who kills a cop? He didn't run. He didn't show any respect. That way, he's not just breaking the law, he's trying to destroy it. He's knocking at everything the cops think they stand for: law, order, civilization – and he's knocking at every cop. That makes it personal. And he's the man they've got to catch.'

Maganhard said quietly: 'That is very peculiar.'

The car ran on. Now we were on open downland country: fields of green wheat with big three-sided stone farms enclosing yards that opened direct on to the road and spilled hens, geese, and ducks all over it. The geese and ducks just looked affronted and ruffled, like duchesses caught shoplifting; the hens decided the far side of the road looked safer.

That apart, it was a lonely road. People turned to look at you, expecting a neighbour.

Miss Jarman said: 'How do you know these things? Are you – I mean, just whatare you both?'

Harvey said: 'I'm a bodyguard, Miss Jarman.'

'But – how do you get to be one?'

'Sounds like what guys are supposed to ask prostitutes,' he said dryly.

I said: 'Just lucky, I guess.'

Harvey grinned and said rapidly: 'I was in the United States Secret Service, bodyguard detail. They sent me to Paris for when presidents came over to visit. I liked it. I quit. I stayed on, went into private practice.'

I caught his eye and his face was quite expressionless. I asked: 'When was this?'

'Several years back.' So perhaps he hadn't collected his problem before he'd left. Perhaps it was the strain of 'private practice'.

The girl said: 'What about you, Mr Cane?'

'I'm a business agent, sort of. Mostly for British firms exporting to the Continent.'

Maganhard said sharply: 'I thought you had been in the French Resistance.'

'No, Mr Maganhard. Contrary to certain legends in certain places, the French Resistance was French, not British or American. I was in the Special Operations Executive; I was dropped in to help organise supplies for the Resistance – that's all. The French did the fighting; I just loaded guns for them."

Harvey asked: 'Where were you?'

'Paris and the Auvergne. But I got around quite a bit, delivering stuff and organising the supply lines.'

Maganhard said: 'Ahh,' as if he'd seen just why Merlin had chosen me. Which was more than I'd seen for myself, yet.

Harvey asked casually: 'Get picked up at all?'

'Once.'

'How're the legs?'

'I'm walking.'

The girl asked: 'What are you talking about?'

The Gestapo,' Harvey explained. 'Sometimes – I heard – when they'd questioned a guy and weren't sure about him one way or another, they'd kind of tap on his legs with chains before they let him go. So when he got picked up again, maybe a year later with different papers, different name, all the new lot had to do was to look at his legs. They'd know he'd been questioned before. And in their tiny minds, I guess two suspicions made one proof.'

After a moment the girl said: 'Did they do this to you?'

I said: 'Yes.'

'I'm sorry.'

After another moment I said: 'It was all a long time ago.'

Harvey said softly: 'But not very far away.'

As we got south, the clouds broke up and there were bursts of sunlight, throwing vivid green patches on the hills. The roads got curlier and narrower and our average speed was cut right down. Suddenly we were on just a cart-track of sand and stones wiggling through a pine forest.

I jerked down into second gear and snapped: 'God, you've got us lost. Give me that map.'

Harvey shook his head. 'Just a bit ofvoie ordinaire. It gets better later.'

'It had better.' Then I shook my head. 'Sorry.'.