Midnight Plus One

Merlin waggled his backside to get more comfortable on the stiff little chair, and said: 'I ring you at your hotel, later. Now – we become the enemies. Voici.'

He had spotted number 37.

To me, number 37 -Printemps de la Vie – was just a bolt of bottle-green silk wrapped around the girl to give a lot of horizontal creases up top and vertical creases below, and dragging a short train behind. But I got Henri's point about the age of the women who'd wear it: under those thick creases you could be any shape at all. The only idea the dress put across was that you were rich enough to afford a lot of bottle-green silk.

I leaned over to Merlin and whispered: 'Far better than anythingle Maîtrecould have done.'

'La mode n'existe qu'à Paris,'he said firmly. 'If it is good – it is stolen.' He had a photograph in his hand and was glancing from it to the model and back again.

She knew what he was doing; she slowed up as she went past us, groping around her waist for a pocket or belt to hook her hands into. I don't know why models do that; if a girl hooked her hands into her belt in real life you'd think she was a tart.

Merlin exploded. 'It is the dress ofle Maître! It is -c'est un vol! Votre Hopkins, il est un larron, un espion…'

Istopped listening. I knew where we were, now.

When he'd finished, I said mildly: 'I agree there are similarities. But there are differences, too-' If that was true, I couldn't spot them. But Merlin had.

'They are very small. It is the dress ofle Maître. Many years your Hopkins has done this. Now Henri Merlin has caught him.'

I said thoughtfully: 'I doubt Hopkins will give in without a fight.'

'Then we will fight.' He stood up and shoved back along the front row. The model had turned and was floating along the catwalk, keeping level with us. I winked up at her and she winked down at me. She'd given up trying to find a belt or pockets and just had one hand on her hip. It didn't make her look less like a tart. Only like a cheaper one.

At the door, Hopkins and Merlin were standing pretending not to look at each other.

I smiled at both and said to Merlin: 'Excuse me – I have some advice to give to my client.'

'Advise him to be rich tomorrow or cut his throat tonight.' He gave me a fat grin. 'I ring you.' And he marched out.

Hopkins said: 'Well, boy – does he think he's got a case?'

'No. He started getting angry in French. If he'd had a case, he'd have explained it to me in English. But I acted worried enough so that he'll push it a bit.' I looked at my watch. 'He'll probably leak the story to the Press tonight. He's got time.'

'Marvellous.' He thumped my shoulder, grinning hard.

'You'll go too far one of these days, Ron. They'll nick you.'

'I'll ruddy wellhave to go too far. I can't pull this stunt much longer: they'll get fed up and stop making a fuss. And then what'll happen?'

'Nobody in Paris'll buy your clothes.'

'Dead right, boy. Unless they think I'm pinching the big Paris ideas, I'm finished.'

'La mode n'existe qu'àParis'

'Ay?'

'Something Merlin said. Roughly translated, there's no fashion but Paris fashion.'

'Right again, boy.' Then he turned mournful. 'Put Paris on the label and you could sell 'em a sack that still smelled of manure. Don't get me wrong – I'm not knocking Paris. It's a bleeding miracle how good most of their stuff is. But it don't need to be. Most of the old cows haven't got no more taste than a sixpenny hamburger. That's why just being good ain't enough.' He waved a hand at the models titupping past us.

I shrugged. 'Why not change your name – call yourself Ron Paris? Then you could put Mode de Paris on the label.'

He stared at me. Then he thumped my shoulder again.

'You're a marvel, boy. Knew I was on to a good thing when I got you instead of one of them lawyers. Too much bloody law with them.'

I smiled weakly at him. 'I'll ring you in a few days, Ron.'

He shook my hand, a cool firm grip that had nothing to do with his fancy dinner jacket. 'What you doing now, boy?'

'Spending a few days over here. Might be doing a little shooting.'

'Shooting – in April? You can't shoot anything now.'

I shrugged again. 'I've been told you can find something.'

THREE

I got off the train at Quimper at half past ten the next night. By then I was wearing a lightweight grey-blue raincoat over a new brown sports-coat with brass buttons, a blue shirt of that Swiss cotton that looks like silk, buttoned up to the neck without a tie, dark-grey trousers, and a short haircut.

I wasn't playing at being a fashion model. I just wanted to look French enough so that if the gendarmes got the word to look out for a tall, thin, forty-year-old Englishman, they might pass over me – but not so French that if theydid stop me, they'd get suspicious at a Frenchman carrying a British passport; there hadn't been time to geta false identity card.

It was a fairly subtle line I was trying to draw, and I could be wrong several ways. But I thought the brass buttons might just do it. They were the size and thickness of dog-biscuits and stamped with a heraldic crest that could only have belonged to a dog. I was very proud of them.

They were just the sort of thing the French wear because they think it's an English fashion.

The night had a heavy ceiling of cloud, low enough to reflect the lights of the town, and the Place de la Gare was still wet from the last rain. Facing the station there were a row of restaurants. I picked the one I wanted and went in.

Only five of the tables still had anybody at them, and all at the coffee and cognac stage. A waiter gave me a sour look and came forward to explain that they were closing.

I picked a character sitting alone and asked him:'

'Je m'excuse^ mais n avez-vous pas vu une jeune fille avec-'

He said: 'Pass, friend, all's well. Harvey Lovell.'

'Lewis Cane.' I sat down. The waiter hovered off my starboard bow.

'Like a drink?' Lovell asked.

'Marc, if they've got one.'

He snapped his fingers.'Un marc.'

'Aren't you?' I asked.

He shook his head quickly. 'Not tonight.' We waited and looked each other over.

He was solidly built, a few years younger and maybe a couple of inches shorter than me. He had wiry fair hair, cut rather short, and was wearing a grey sports-coat with a faint red check, dark trousers, a knitted black tie. None of this told you anything about him once you'd met his face.

It might have been a haunted face, but if so, it was used to its ghosts by now. He had a wide mouth, held set, and light-blue eyes that moved quickly or stayed very still. The rest was lines: two sharp trenches carved from his nose down past his mouth, deep creases beside his eyes, permanent lines along his forehead. But they didn't express anything; they were just there. Not tired or hungry or haggard. Not a face that had seen hell – but perhaps one that expected to.

I grabbed for a cigarette. Maybe I was imagining things. I hoped so: I wanted a sensitive gunman as much as I wanted one with two tin hands.

He shook his head at my cigarettes and lifted one out of a packet of Gitanes on the table, using his left hand.

'So what's the plan?' he asked.

'I'm collecting the car at midnight. Two o'clock we're down at the Baie d'Audierne flashing a torch at the sea. They row Maganhard ashore – and we get rolling.'

'What route are we going?'

'We've pretty well got to go through Tours, anyway; after that, I'd pick the southern route: Bourges, Bourg, Geneva. I reckon we should be in Geneva by the middle of the afternoon. Then it's only about six hours to Liechtenstein.'

He nodded thoughtfully. 'You know anything about the characters who are supposed to be trying to stop us?'

'Merlin couldn't say much. They're something to do with Maganhard's Liechtenstein business – it sounds as if they're trying to take it over. He's something to do with Caspar AG.'

'AG?'

'Aktiengesellschaft -means "corporation", roughly. Caspar's a big holding and marketing company: controls a lot of electronics firms in this end of Europe, France, Germany, Italy, so on. The firms make the stuff, then sell it at cost to Caspar. They don't make any profit, so they don't pay any tax. Caspar markets the stuff, takes all the profit -but there's no real profits tax in Liechtenstein. So they don't pay tax anywhere. It's not a new idea.'