Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

Harvey said in a dull voice: 'Well, nobody'll think of looking for international finance here.'

I turned left at the big fortress of a church, into a side street hardly wider than the Citroen itself. After fifty yards I stopped beside a narrow three-storey house with a first-floor balcony and cracked stone steps leading down from it. Under the steps, there were two lean grey cats feeding off the same saucer as a bunch of chickens. The chickens ignored me; the cats stared as if I'd come to steal their supper.

I stood outside the car for a minute, just lighting a cigarette and giving anyone inside the house a chance to look me over. Then the door at the top of the stairs banged open and a fat bundle of aprons waddled down.

'C'est Caneton,'she squawked back over her shoulder,'c'est Monsieur Caneton.'Then she stopped dead at the bottom of the steps and the smile fell straight off her face. 'Iln'y pas déjàune autre guerre?'

'Non, non, non.'I waved my hands and dragged a reassuring smile on to my face.

Behind me, Miss Jarman asked:'What did she say?'

'She asked if my being here meant another war starting. I suppose I've never been good news to these people.'

Madame Meliot waddled forward and hugged me. She was a fat old biddy, but not soft; she nearly bust my ribs. Her brown face was full of lines like a road map, her tough grey hair pulled back into something that might have been a bun. She stood back and smiled and looked me over carefully with pale-grey eyes.

I grinned weakly at her and started explaining: I wasn't Canetonany longer, I wasn't withle Baker Street, orl'Intelligence, I was just me: Lewis Cane. On the other hand, I did happen to be being chased by the police, and we needed a place to spend the night.

She absorbed it all perfectly calmly.

Over my shoulder, Maganhard said quietly: 'You can tell her that I'll pay.'

'Don't be stupid,' I snapped. 'She'll do it for me or not at all. If we try and make it a business deal, she'll charge us Ritz prices and then sell us out to the cops in the morning.'

Meliot himself came out to the top of the steps: tall, thin, bent, with a long bald head, a big straggling moustache and two days of beard. His collarless shirt and baggy trousers would have cost about five francs, but he could probably have reached into a pocket and pulled out enough cash to buy the Citroen there and then.

She didn't consult him; she never had even when we were using the place as a 'safe house' on the Rat-line. The house was her business; the acres of grazing and woodland over the hill were his.

Then she said:'Pour Caneton, c'est normal,'and led the way. I winced and followed. For me, perhaps being on the run from troublewas a habit.

We sat straight down at the table. The room wasn't big, but it was warm and bright; the furniture wasn't up to the standard of the Good Taste magazines, but it was comfortable and where they'd wanted to spend money, it had got spent. Alongside a tinted photograph of Giles, in a frame so ornate and dull that it must have been solid silver, there was a radio set that looked like the dashboard of a space ship. That made me wince again; I'd been thinking of Dinadan as isolated from newspapers, which it probably still was. But I'd also thought of- it in its wartime state, with hardly any radios. On that thing, she could have overheard us on the beach at Quimper.

She confirmed it by nodding her head at Maganhard and saying to me:'C'est Maganhard, n'est ce pas?'

I nodded. I didn't feel guilty about not telling her before; it wouldn't have been natural for us to discuss just what I was up to, anyway.

She looked him over critically, then said: 'Iln'est pas un violeur – pas le type.'

I agreed that he wasn't the raping type, and added that the whole thing was a phoney charge brought by business rivals. She nodded; she knew about phoney charges brought by business rivals. Then she said that Maganhard didn't look capable of rape, or, indeed, much else in that line.

Maganhard went as rigid as a post; he'd been following even her accent pretty well.

She chuckled and started out. I yelled after her that if she wasn't careful I'd send him along after midnight and she could find out for herself. She nearly blew the house down laughing.

Maganhard said stiffly: 'I cannot stand that sort of conversation, Mr Cane.'

'Tough luck, chum, but it comes with the house. You can always sleep out under the trees.' I was too tired to want to get complicated. Miss Jarman was wearing a blank, ununder-standing expression that the English girls' schools are so good at teaching.

Harvey was sitting slumped, staring at the tablecloth. We could have been talking economics in Chinese for all he cared.

There obviously wasn't much conversation to be got there. I followed Madame Meliot, found that the local garagehad passed from father to son, and went down to see him.

He remembered me, all right, and I just about remembered him: he'd been a bit young for the war, and unhappy that he was missing it. Now, he was delighted to get started at last.

I asked if he could do me a couple of new number plates, belonging to this part of France, but not to do them too professionally for fear, if we got caught, that they were traced back to him. He had a better idea: why didn't I simply take the plates off his own Citroen ID? They should fit.

I pointed out that if we got pinched, those certainlywould be traced back to him. He grinned; cops didn't bother him, and, anyway, if he left the car parked out that night, why shouldn't I simply have stolen them? Behind it all was obviously the thought that the great Caneton would never get caught, anyway.

It was a nice compliment, but it was based on a view of me he'd formed when he was twelve and it showed he didn't know much about the Sûreté Nationale, either. But in the end, on the promise that hewould leave the car out all night, I took the plates.

He was bubbling with curiosity, but he was also keen to show me he knew the old Resistance rule of never asking unnecessary questions. I didn't tell him anything; just winked secretly and went my way.

I drove Maganhard's Citroën round the corner of the house out of sight of the main road, changed the plates with a screwdriver, and went back upstairs.

They were halfway through some sort of birdpaté, a long block of the stuff cut in the middle so as to preserve the tasteful decoration of a dead bird's head sticking out one end, and its tail feathers the other. It looked something like a thrush, which suited me fine: I prefer eating them to being woken by them.

I helped myself to a reasonable slice and told Harvey: 'I've changed plates on the car.'

He turned slowly to look at me. 'You won't get it across the frontier with the old papers.'

I nodded with my mouth full. 'We weren't going to get it across anyway. The customs'll have the number by now.'

Maganhard stared at me: 'What will you do, then?'

'You should have thought of that when you brought your damn boat inside the three-mile limit. Well – if nobody knows we're in Geneva, we may be able to hire a car there. Or, of course, there's always the Swiss railways.'

Harvey said thickly: T prefer a car.'

I looked at him and nodded. For his side of the business, trains provided too many witnesses.

Madame Meliot waddled in and scooped up a bottle of red wine from the table and poured me a dose. Maganhard and the girl had glasses of it already; Harvey was on water.

She nodded at him and shrugged.

'Américain,'I explained, if she'd take that for an explanation.

She did, then turned the label to show me.'Pinel, ha?' And she grinned knowingly, and waddled out with thepate.

Miss Jarman asked: 'Does Pinel have some special significance?'

I nodded. 'In a way. The family that makes it: their château used to be a "safe house" on the same Rat-line. Across the Rhône from here.'