Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

A slight man in a grubby trench-coat and narrow-brimmed green trilby shoved through the main doors, started to hurry, then checked and turned quickly off to read a timetable poster. Damn!

I'd meant to tell Merlin to make sure he wasn't being followed – and also not to speak to any of us until I'd had a chance to make doubly sure. But I hadn't had time. Blast that girl and her telephoning!

Merlin and Maganhard were talking rapidly. I turned my back and sidled away towards the doors, keeping an eye on the trench-coat. He looked round and gave them a stare that was far too bright and beady for 6.45 am.

I had to do something. I had to get Maganhard away before the trench-coat realised who he was. Except that he'd probably guessed already. As I watched him, he suddenly hauled a folded newspaper out of his pocket, opened it, and riffled quickly through it as if he was searching for something.

I walked back past Merlin and Maganhard and the girl, still standing at the bottom of the ramp. A few yards inside it, I was out of sight of the trench-coat but not of them. I waved furiously.

The girl came up to me. 'Merlin was being followed,' I said quickly. 'Get Maganhard away, and up to the platform. And you still don't know me or Harvey. Right?'

She nodded. I turned and walked up the ramp. Harvey drifted out of the little crowd sipping coffee around the brightly lit buffet counter, and said: 'We're clean up here, too.'

I jerked my head at the ramp. 'Merlin's got here – and he was tailed. I've told them to break it up.'

Harvey said: 'Christ!' and started for the ramp. The bodyguard's place is beside the body. But I stopped him. 'If it's a cop it's too late, and if it isn't there still won't be any shooting down there. Just see if he's spotted Maganhard.' I hustled him back towards the buffet crowd. He gave me a stony look, then shrugged and let himself be hustled.

Maganhard and the girl came up the ramp, passed the buffet, and went to consult a timetable. The man in the trench-coat drifted up behind them, half checked when he saw they'd stopped.

I didn't need to point him out. He couldn't have been all that dim, so perhaps he was just unlucky in having to tail people who were moving briskly through a crowd that was walking like the awakened dead. But to anybody looking for him, his changes of pace were as obvious as a scream in the night.

Harvey said grimly: 'So he knows. We can't risk a train now.'

'We'vegot to take a train now. If he follows us on, at least he won't be doing any telephoning.'

'Something in that.' Maganhard and the girl turned and went up the steps to platform three. The trench-coat followed. Harvey moved casually into place a few yards behind.

I was about to go back down the ramp when Merlin came up it, a lot less bouncy now. He glanced at me, then left it to me to approach him. I did.

'Caneton – what is happening?' His fat face looked white and worried.

'You were tailed, damn it. Now he's after Maganhard.'

'Pas possible!'His face clenched in misery. 'I am a fool! I have forgotten too much. What can I do?' Then he decided. 'I come with you. I help get finished with him.'

He sounded as if he were ready to heave our new friend under a train. I said quickly: 'No-you-bloody-well-don't. I've got trouble enough. Is there anything useful you can tell me? D'you know anything about this man Calieron, the Belgian who's supposed to be after us?'

'I have tried. My friends in Bruxelles. But' – his shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug – 'but nobody knows him. I think it is not his real name. And for the bearer shares, he needs no name at all.'

I nodded gloomily. That's about what I expected. Well, he knows the business, all right.' A train rumbled in overhead. 'See you in Liechtenstein tonight. Don't get followed all the way there.'

As I ran for the steps, he was still waving his hands in remorse, misery, and despair. French lawyers are good at that.

It hadn't been our train. Up on platform three, there were twenty or so people standing around in silent clumps under the dim underwater light that seeped through the frosted glass roof. Harvey was near the steps, Maganhard and the girl twenty yards along, the man in the trench-coat studying his Journal de Genèvein between.

I asked: 'When's the train?'

'Should be in now.' He jerked his head at the trench-coat. 'Who d'y ou think he is?'

'I'd guess a cop. The other side can't have enough men to stake out every station and airport.'

'If he's a cop, where's his pal?'

He had a point. Policemen go in pairs when they can't go in packs. Even a tailing job really needs two or three people. But perhaps they'd been caught off balance by Merlin dashing out so early; they might have left just one man to watch the hotel at night.

I shrugged. The train, labelled for Lausanne and Bern, pulled in.

Maganhard and the girl climbed into one carriage; the man in the trench-coat got into the next back from them. Harvey and I walked up and got in behind him.

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.