Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

'A friend. ' Her chin was up and she had the girls' boarding-school expression on her face. She wasn't telling who put frogs in the Latin mistress's bed.

'All right,' I said again. 'But if you're selling us out, remember the methods they've used so far: you stand as good a chance of stopping a bullet as anybody. Maybe better, If they don't get me with the first shot.'

Harvey had straightened up off the wall. 'And kind of what the hell are you talking about?'

I swung round. I'd had just about enough of him and his thirst and his tendency to pull his gun on the wrong people. Maybe he wouldn't get his gun up level before I'd broken his wrist for him…

Ginette said: 'Give Louis the gun or I will kill you.'

We both looked. She was standing in the shadows at the back of the hall, leaning stiffly against the wall, with the Mauser held in both hands out in front of her.

'It is on automatic, Mr Lovell,' she added.

'You wouldn't fire that thing in here,' he said slowly. He studied her carefully: the way she was holding it meant she knew what she was holding – and he could see that.

She said contemptuously: 'Bet your life on it, then.'

He took a long breath. A gunman believes he can never be beaten – but he knows damn well when he has been. She had the Mauser aimed low, to allow for the kick. Whatever he did now, he'd get filleted like a fish if she pulled that trigger.

He tossed me his gun.

Ginette said: 'Thank you. Please remember I have the exclusive shooting rights in my own house. Where did that bullet go, Maurice?'

He indicated a hole in the wall near the telephone.

Ginette came up to us and offered me the Mauser. I shook my head. 'It's over now. I'll get him to bed.' I stuck his gun in my pocket.

Harvey was watching me with a faraway look and a twist of cynical amusement at the edge of his mouth. 'I could take you even without a gun,' he offered.

I shrugged. 'Maybe. We've both been through unarmed-combat school. It wouldn't prove anything.'

He nodded and started towards the stairs. I said to Miss Jarman: 'Get whatever bottle he was using.'

'Don't you think he's had enough?' She was still back in the fifth-form dormitory.

I shook my head wearily. 'It doesn't matter what you or I think. Just get the bottle.'

I followed Harvey upstairs. At the top we met Maganhard; Harvey pushed straight past without seeming to notice him. Maganhard gave him a steely look that turned immediately into a suspicious glare. He turned to me and seemed about to say something – but I pushed past as well.

In his bedroom, Harvey yanked the silk cover straight off the bed and dropped face down on to it, all in one movement. After a moment or two he rolled on his back. It took an effort.

'Maybe I'm tired.' He sounded faintly surprised.

Behind me, Miss Jarman came in with a bottle of Queen Anne whisky and a glass. I took the bottle; from the weight, he'd been working on it hard.

She asked: 'What are you going to do? '

'Get him ready for tomorrow.' I poured a small dose into a glass.

'With that?'

'It's what he usually gets ready for tomorrow on.' I gave him the glass. She stared at him, then me. 'You don't really care, do you?'

'Who were you ringing?'

She glared. 'Perhaps one day you'll know.' She slammed the door as she went out.

Harvey raised his glass to me, and sipped. 'You honestly think she's selling us out?'

'Somebody is.'

'I kind of hope not,' he said thoughtfully. 'She's a nice kid.'

'It's mutual. She wants to cure you.'

'I noticed.' He sipped again. 'And you don't care?' He watched me with his little cynical smile.

'Not my business. After tomorrow, you and I daren't meet. You know that.'

'I know.' He emptied the glass.

I stretched out my hand for it. 'More?'

He shrugged his shoulders on the pillow. 'I guess so.'

I walked back to the bottle on the dressing-table. He said: 'If I'm a good boy, do I get my gun back?'

'Sorry; I'd forgotten.' I'd been hoping he'd remind me. I took out the little revolver, swung the cylinder, and poked out the empty cartridge. 'Got any more rounds?'

'Coat pocket.'

His jacket was hung on a chair. I got my back to him and groped in both side pockets. I got a fresh cartridge with one hand, and a bottle I hoped was his sleeping pills with the other. I slid the round into the gun, closed it up, and tossed it on to the foot of the bed.

By the time he'd reached for it, checked it over just as I knew he would, as any gunman would after somebody else had handled his gun, there were three tablets at the bottom of his glass. I didn't know just what they were, or what dose they should have been; Idid know that mixing two depressants like alcohol and barbiturates isn't a good idea. But it was less risk than he'd meet tomorrow if he finished off that bottle tonight.

I poured whisky on top and gave it a moment to dissolve them by going to find a glass of my own over by the washbasin. A bit of cloudiness wouldn't show through the cut glass tumbler, and by now his sense of taste would be shot.

I poured my own drink and gave him his.

'You're an understanding sort of bastard,' he said slowly. 'Or maybe you're just a bastard. Understanding somebody is a pretty lousy thing to do to him.' He turned his head wearily and looked up at me. 'Well, you're the Professor, and here I am on the couch. D'you want me to tell you my dreams?'

I sat down on the chair with his jacket slung over the back. 'Could I stand them?'

'Maybe. They ain't fun, but you get used to them.'

'D'you get used to how you feel in the mornings?'

'No. But you can't remember how bad it was, ever. Still, if you thought tomorrow was as important as today, you wouldn't be a – a drinker, would you?'

'You're over-simplifying,' I said. 'You want to think you're basically different in outlook from everybody else. You aren't. You just drink more, that's all.'

By now the pill bottle was back in his jacket pocket.

He smiled. 'That's good head-shrinking, Professor. But you want to know the worst thing? You don't taste it any more. That's all. You just don't taste it.' He sipped and held the glass up to the light and stared through it. 'You just remember going into some place in Paris where they know how to mix a real martini. Get in there around noon, before the rush starts, so they'll have time to do it right. They like that: they like a guy who really cares about a good drink – so for him, they get it right. Mix it careful and slow, and then you drink it the same way. They like that, too. They don't have to think you're going to buy another one. Just once in a time they like to meet a guy who'll make them do some real work and appreciate it when they've done it. Pretty sad people, barmen.'

He took a gulp at his drink and went back to watching the ceiling. His voice was slow and quiet and he wasn't talking to me and perhaps not even to himself. Just to a door that had closed on him a long time ago.

'Just cold enough to make the glass misty,' he said softly. 'Not freezing; you can make anything taste as if it might be good by making it freezing. That's the secret of how to run America, if you want to know it, Cane. And no damn olives or onions in it, either. Just a kind of smell like summer.' He moved his head on the pillow. 'I haven't had a martini in an elephant's age. You don't taste it. Now – now all you think of is the next one. Christ, but I'm tired.'

He stretched an arm to put the tumbler on the bedside table, missed, and it thumped on the carpet, spilling a few drops.

I stood up. His eyes were closed. I put down my own glass and moved softly towards the door. I had my hand on the knob when he said: 'I'm sorry, Cane. Thought I could last it out.'

'You lasted. It was the job that stretched.'