Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

As we rounded the last curve into Lausanne, most of the people in the carriage stood up. Harvey said quietly: 'Are you going to try and lose him by running all over town?'

'No.'

He nodded. 'I'm not offering toshoot any cops, but-'

'My own thoughts exactly.'

He smiled. 'You or me?'

'Me. You block the light.'

The train stopped gently. People jostled their way off. I began to sweat. Maganhard could still wreck it by getting off too soon; I wished I'd remembered to tell him the train stopped for several minutes.

He got it right. The last people got off, a few more got on and sat down. Then the doorway was clear. Maganhard stood up and strode out, the girl a few paces behind him. Harvey took my briefcase and we started moving.

The trench-coat bounced suddenly out in front of us, snapped:'Je m'excuse'without looking at us, and hurried down the aisle. I took several quick steps and was right behind him when he went through the glass door into the little cramped space beside the lavatory and before the steps down. The girl was just ahead of him.

At the last moment his mind must have caught up with events: the fact that Maganhard had suddenly jumped off meant he knew he was being followed; and what were we doing getting off so late, as well? He slowed, stiffened, and his head started to turn.

I jabbed my fist, first knuckle extended, in under the brim of the Alpine trilby. He gave a little whistling sigh and folded up. I caught him and leaned us against the lavatory door. Latched.

Harvey's hand snaked under my elbow, and twisted the handle; the trench-coat and I fell inside with a rush. The door slapped shut behind us.

I hardly bothered to look at his face: it wouldn't tell me anything. I dumped him on the seat and ripped open his coat. He had a small Walther PPK in a shoulder-holster, a bunch of papers and passes in his inside and outside breast pockets, a wallet on his hip, a purse of coins, and some keys. It took me just over ten seconds to grab the lot, and I was sorry to have to leave the holster itself.

I wasn't being vindictive or money-hungry. It's just that a man without a franc on him takes more time getting his hard-luck story believed than one who can flash a roll of notes and start hiring help.

We stepped off the train not twenty seconds later than Maganhard.

I led the way down off the platform, along the passageway, and up to platform one and the station buffet. I'd still have liked to keep us in two separate parties for as long as we were travelling by train, but now it was more important to brief Maganhard and the girl again.

We sat down at a corner table, where he could keep his back to the world, and ordered coffee and rolls.

'Who was that man?' Maganhard wanted to know.

'I'm not sure, yet.' I was taking one piece of paper at a time out of my pockets, looking at it, and putting it away before I got out the next.

Miss Jarman asked: 'Did you kill this one?'

'No.'

Harvey chuckled. 'You hope. I didn't know you knew that Karate stuff – the knuckle punch.'

She said: 'What's Karate?'

'Ju-jitsu played dirty.'

Finally I found something: a French identity card. 'His name's Griflet, Robert Griflet. Policeman.'

Harvey frowned. 'French?'

'Sûreté. I thought it was something like that – him being alone, and so on. I think this explains it.' It was a letter of the to-whom-it-may-concern type, explaining that the bearer was an agent of the Sûretéand asking everybody, to give him all the help they could, if they would be so kind. It was tactfully phrased, but for me the gun under his arm had rather spoiled the effect in advance.

I passed the letter round. The rest of the papers were a French driving licence, an international one, and normal everyday junk. Nothing to show what job he was on.

The waiter brought our coffee. Maganhard read the letter, grunted, and passed it back. I put it back in my pocket and said: 'Well, I hope that ends the episode of Robert Griflet, policeman. With luck, he might not wake up before Bern. But I'm afraid it means we've got to change our line again. We daren't take a train on through Bern now.'

'I hope we will not take any more trains,' Maganhard said stiffly. They seem to get us into more trouble. We can hire a car here.'

I shook my head. 'I don't want to do anything in Lausanne. Remember, that bloke Griflet's going to wake up and start spreading the word sooner or later – and the last place he saw us was Lausanne. He'll try and pick up our trail here. No – I think we'll take a train round to Montreux and start from there.'

Nobody seemed to like the idea much. Maganhard said: 'I am not on a guided tour of Switzerland, Mr Cane. We have only come sixty kilometres from Geneva, and Montreux is a dead end. It is round the end of the lake. Even if we get a car there, we will have to double back to reach the main road.'

'True. So I hope they won't expect us to be fools enough to go there. And there's a man there I rather want to meet.'

'We are not here for your social life, either! '

'It's only thanks to my social life that we've got this far. We're going to Montreux.'

We didn't reach Montreux until after nine; the train service isn't good, and if you've ever been to Montreux in April, you know why. Nobody who spends the winter there ever uses the train; if the Rolls-Royce has developed the staggers, they hire a Mercedes and bleed with shame.

Montreux is one of those places where English money goes to die. It's for people who think Bermuda and Nassau are vulgar and American, and besides, the natives are getting uppitty. In Montreux the natives never get uppitty; from September to May the hotels serve nothing but roast beef and curry and take good care not to cook it too well. The dining-rooms are full of sweet little old ladies with cold eyes that can cost you down to your last half-dozen Shell Oil shares. Anybody wearing a beard or carrying a guitar is sentenced to be run over by massed wheelchairs at high noon.

All this was another good reason for us being there. Unless the airmail edition of The Times was running anything about us, nobody in Montreux was likely to have heard of us.

Since we were still in fairly public places, I'd bullied Harvey into going back to the two-by-two system, covering Maganhard and the girl from fifteen yards back. I thought we were fairly safe: the Swiss police hadn't been covering Geneva station, so it looked as if they hadn't been asked to pick Maganhard up yet. griflet would spoil all that when he woke up, but it would take time to get the word around.

Maganhard sat down in a caféa couple of hundred yards up from the station, as per my instructions. Harvey and I took a table near by, and I started sorting through some newspapers I'd bought at the station.

The Journal de Genèvegave it me: it must have been what Robert Griflet, policeman, had been looking up. They'd finally dug out the eight-year-old photograph of Maganhard. It was obviously a passport picture, but Maganhard looked very much like a passport picture, anyway. And he hadn't changed much in eight years: it was the same square face, angular glasses, thick, black swept-back hair. People with a ten-million holding in electronics and a yacht in the Atlantic don't age fast.

The- story alongside the picture reassured me a bit: it had been handed out by the French police on the Geneva frontier. They were blocking the border so that even a mouse couldn't cross. There was no reason why Geneva citizens should fear this rapist monster. He probably wouldn't get anywhere near the Swiss frontier, with the Sûreté Nationalehard after him.

On the question of who was with Maganhard, the cop had sounded honestly vague; all he knew was that they didn't scarehim. The story meandered off into the reporter's account of his tour of the frontier posts and the questions he'd got asked at each.