Midnight Plus One

There was a nasty squashybang and the fat man spun in the air and fell on his back, his gun waving feebly towards the wall. Harvey rolled near my feet. The third party started around them to get at me.

I finally got the Mauser untangled from my trousers and jammed my thumb hard on the single/automatic button; if ever I wanted to sound like a machine-gun, now seemed the time.

Harvey shouted: 'Don't shoot that thing! '

The third man saw the long magazine on the Mauser, and dropped any idea of drawing a gun. His hands went up before he'd got his feet to stop.

I swung the gun side to side. 'Venez chercher, mes amis.'

I felt tensed up and ready to pull the trigger.

Harvey rolled on to his feet. 'Jesus Christmas, the war's over. Take it easy, Cane.' He flicked his short gun left and right, and the two men backed quickly up to the wall again. The fat man in the gutter let out a sudden moan.

Harvey said: 'Go get the car.'

Rather reluctantly, I put the Mauser away under my raincoat, and walked back to the square.

Nobody seemed to be looking for the source of a gun going off. I hadn't made much noise; noise, after all, is only energy that's got wasted on the surrounding air, and the fat man's shoulder had got just about all the energy going from that shot. I didn't want to examine that shoulder.

I backed the Mercedes off a couple of yards, checked the tyres of the Citroën in case they'd tried two sorts of funny business, then drove it out to the corner.

Harvey walked slowly up the far side of the street, his right hand tucked under his mac. He slid in and I whipped around the corner.

'What'd you do with them?'

He said: 'Told them to pick him up and get him home. I was a damn fool.'

'What?'

'He was left-handed; I hadn't thought of that. I knew he was the boss, I knew they wouldn't start anything without him. But I thought I'd fixed him when I banged his right handinthe café. I should have thought of him being left-handed.'

I pulled round the next corner and slowed. 'Everybody makes mistakes.'

'Not in my business.'

I reached back to open the back-seat doors. Maganhard and the girl and my briefcase jumped in and, thank God, they didn't waste time doing it.

I pulled away and turned left into the Place des Halles, snaking between the last fruit and fish lorries.

Miss Jarman suddenly leant forward and said to Harvey: 'You smell of gunpowder.'

Harvey nodded. 'That's right. I had to shoot a guy. He didn't get killed.'

She said coldly: 'Bad luck.'

'It was intentional.'

I said: 'We wouldn't have got the same fun out of it, killing him without you watching.'

She said: 'Why didn't you just throw your joke book at him?'

Harvey chuckled. 'I don't think she appreciates us. But Jesus, you scared me.'

'Me?' I said.

'You. Waving that machine-gun around and shouting "Come and Get It!" I thought you were going to loose it off – and me in front of you.'

'Well. I told you I learnt this business in wartime.'

'That's a long time ago. Fashions have changed.' I started into a zigzag of back streets leading southeast to the main road running south out of town. 'Well,' I said. 'What did you think of the opposition?'

'They'll never make the First Team.'

I nodded. 'My own thoughts exactly. D'you know any of them?'

'No.'

Maganhard said: 'What did they plan to do?'

'I'd guess they were disobeying orders,' Harvey said rapidly. 'They'd probably been told to pick us up in Tours -and that wouldn't be difficult. We had to cross the river here and there's only two bridges. Then they were told to trail us out to somewhere quiet and jump us there. With that Mercedes, they could have hung on to us. But we stopped at the caféand they thought they'd got an easy chance. Crazy.'

I nodded; that sounded good sense. 'Was that why you didn't kill anybody?'

I felt his quick sideways look. 'Didn't seem necessary,' he said evenly. 'They were so slow, I had time.'

Miss Jarman leant forward and said incredulously: 'Did youwant somebody to get killed?'

'No: I can take it or leave it.' But that wasn't quite true. Iwas a little worried that nobody had ended up dead.

Being a good bodyguard-gunman isn't being particularly fast with a gun, or even particularly accurate. These are just refinements. The real talent is being ready, at any time and without asking questions, to kill. A gunman can still be as fast as a cat and accurate as Robin Hood – but if he's got to debate with his conscience whether he's ready to kill or not, then he's ready for unemployment pay. Or, quite likely, dead.

Or perhaps drinking too much.

I zipped across the Boulevard Béranger, still heading southeast. I shoved the clump of Michelin local maps across to him. 'Pick me a course heading southeast and keeping on only the D roads.'

Harvey said: 'You want to get off the main line between Brittany and Switzerland?'

'That's right. That's where the roadblocks'll be.'

He stared back at a map. 'You'll end up in the Auvergne.'

I nodded. 'That's the idea. I have friends there. Or I did, once.'

EIGHT

For a moment I thought they'd caught us right there, two kilometres out of town on the bridge across the Cher into St Avertin. They were rebuilding the bridge and it was a nasty mess of grey, girders, plank surfacing – and a cop staring watchfully at every car.

Then I realised he was just looking out for traffic tangles. I drove across quietly and carefully. A minute later we were heading due south on the D27, through a messy collection of vineyards and bright new suburban houses looking oddly naked as they waited for the neighbours to spring up around them.

We crossed one Route Nationale – no roadblocks or roaming Sûretécars – and after that we were clear. I pushed the Citroën along the narrow over-cambered road, reaching ninety kilometres on the good straight stretches.

On a job like this the Sûretédoesn't block every road everywhere. They pin up a map in headquarters and say: 'They startedthere atthat time, so they should be aroundhere bythis time.' And that's where they put the blocks and warn the cars. It's like ripples on a pond: a line of defence getting wider and drawing farther back as time goes on. So far, I thought I was probably outrunning the ripples; they might not even think I'd reached Tours yet. But I didn't dare take the risk. I had to hide in the side roads, and that meant the defence would overtake me. By tonight they'd have warned the Swiss frontier.

Which was fine, because tonight I wouldn't be within two hundred kilometres of Switzerland – and maybe tomorrow some of the ripples would have died down. Maybe.

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.'