Midnight Plus One

I shook my head wearily. 'Maybe, Ginette. But not this time. And next time is next time.'

'There is going to be a next time?' She was watching me with her steady sad eyes, with the glint of lamplight on her chestnut hair, like the sheen of old, polished wood.

'Ginette – it's fifteen years. You aren't in love with me.'

'I do not know,' she said simply. 'All I can do is remember, and wait – and perhaps make sure you do not get killed.'

'I'm not going to get-' I knew it was the wrong thing as soon as I'd said it.

But she said: 'No – tell me it won't happen. That it can't, not to you, not to Caneton.' And her fight was over. If I was going on, then she wanted to believe it could never happen to me; that if there had to be dragons, there would never be a last one. She wanted to think like a gunman -again. And forget that she had believed it before – and been wrong.

I winced. I should never have come back. Fifteen years I'd stayed away from this quiet house where she had tried, so hard, to find an end to war. And when I'd come back, it had only been because I was still at war.

'You can't be sure,' I said slowly. 'In the end, it depends on me.'

'I know.' She nodded and smiled gently. 'I remember.'

There were footsteps on the stairs. Maurice was walking carefully up, carrying a loaded tray, including a bottle in a wicker cradle.

I said: 'Harvey won't want anything. He's probably asleep already.'

She straightened up from the bannisters, moving with the lazy grace of a cat. 'I told Maurice you and I would have dinner in my room.'

I stared at her, then opened my mouth. She shook her head. The argument is over, Louis. You are going on; I understand. That is all.'

There were a thousand reasons why not – but suddenly I couldn't remember any of them. Only that I'd been away so long.

'I'll come back,' I said thickly.

She smiled her half-sad smile. 'Don't promise anything, Louis. I am not asking for promises.'

She walked down the corridor after Maurice. After a moment I followed.

NINETEEN

We headed north on the N92. We were in the same Citroen delivery van, with Ginette and I sharing the driving. And a stack of crated bottles across the back of the van to block anybody's view of the other three passengers if the rear doors were opened.

We'd practically had to pour Harvey aboard. He'd been in a deep, drugged sleep, and by now was probably in it again; we'd dumped a couple of old mattresses and a few blankets in there. But I'd guessed Maganhard wasn't asleep even before he stuck his little iron voice out of the window behind my neck.

'How are we entering Switzerland, Mr Cane?'

'We are going up to near a place called Gex, just a few miles northwest of Geneva. We'll drop off there and just walk across near the airport.'

He tasted this and – as I'd expected – didn't much like it. 'I understand we must arrive in a big town where we can hire a car, but why not go to Evian and cross the lake by boat to Lausanne?'

'Because that's exactly the sort of tricky thing they'd expect us to do. The Geneva frontier's what we want: it's almost impossible to guard. There's about twenty different roads going across, and most of the frontier's farmland. We'll just walk through.'

'It must have been guarded in the war,' he objected.

'Sure, but even then you'd be surprised at the number who got across. The Swiss kept a big internment camp up there, all ready for them.'

'Mr Cane,' he said coldly, 'if we arrive in a Swiss jail, it will not be any better than being in a French jail.'

'Probably a lot cleaner. But I'm hoping the Swiss police won't be looking for us: they can't do anything until the French ask for it – and the French may not want to admit they might have missed us. Not just yet.'

I had a private hope that we might break the Une of evidence here – out-run the ripples again. If we could cross the border unseen and leave the Gendarmerie believing we were still in France, we'd have done it. A lot depended on whether or not they'd identified the wrecked Citroën DS as Maganhard's. I was pretty sure they must have found it by now: the extra shooting and the wrecked Renault would have started them combing the area more thoroughly than I'd first expected.

In one way, I hoped theyhad identified it. It would switch suspicion away from the northern route from Paris, but it might also convince them that we were stuck somewhere, hiding out, without transport. I wasn't worried about them thinking of the old Rat-line or Clos Pineclass="underline" they wouldn't think of them unless they knew I was involved -and I still believed they didn't know about me.

Unless Harvey had loused up cleaning the car and they'd got a set of my fingerprints. But they wouldn't know theywere mine – I'd never been arrested in France. Or had the Deuxième Bureautaken the trouble of getting my prints when I was 'attached to the Embassy' in Paris? They'd known about me, of course. And if they knew about me now, they might think of the old Resistance routes across the Geneva frontier…

I shook my head. You can get too clever with any police force, as well as too stupid. You've got it all worked out that they must have heard of X so they'll have stopped watching Y. And you roll up at Y, straight into their loving arms – all because the report about X has been sitting on the Superintendent's desk for three hours and nobody's remembered to tell him about it.

It's the same as systems at roulette: the wheel ain't heard of them. I'd decided to cross at Geneva. That was still the number to put my money on.

The night droned past us. Beside me, Ginette swung the big flat wheel like aroutier, her face now and then lit by the reflection of the headlights. I lit a cigarette and watchedher, serene and controlled, as the van buzzed up the steepening road into the Savoie.

'If you get stopped,' I asked, 'what's your story?'

'I shall deliver some wine in Geneva, anyway: two restaurants there take Pinel. And there is a good one in Gex. I will try to sell some there first, after I have had breakfast.'

'Why did you have to arrive there so early?'

'Because, Monsieur le Gendarme, I have an appointment at Pinel soon after lunch.'

'And have you?'

'I told Maurice to fix one – a safe one.'

'And you still think you need a manager?'

She smiled faintly. 'I need somebody to look after the wine while I look after the old Resistance friends who come through.'

'Touché.'

Soon after that, I fell asleep. I woke up as we came into thezone francheand started skirting round, with the frontier a kilometre or two on our right, to approach Geneva from the north-west.

She should have woken me: I'd missed my turn at the wheel. But it would have been hypocritical to complain. Liechtenstein was still nearly four hundred kilometres away; it could be a long day yet.

Ginette said: 'I think we are close, Louis.'

She'd turned right a few kilometres before Gex and was heading down towards Ferney-Voltaire, just about on the frontier.

'Don't get too near,' I said. The cops were likely to be prowling well inside the frontier, not just on it. And I didn't want them to wonder about a van that they heard come close, stop, and go back.

She said: 'Here, then,' and drew up. She kept the engine running. I swung down, ran round and opened the doors at the back. Somebody started pulling the crates of wine aside. Maganhard stepped down, then the girl. Then Harvey.

He was like somebody who'd been dragged out of the rubble of a bombed building. Weaving and staggering and shaking his head and then obviously wishing he hadn't. As a gunman, he looked just about fit enough to tackle a rather tired kitten.

I shut the doors quietly and went back to the cab. 'Thanks, Ginette. On your way.'

She reached across to my window. 'Look after yourself, Louis – please.'

'I'll let you know. Probably tonight.'

'Please.'

We touched hands, and then the van was growling off into the night. I waved a hand at the roadside. 'Over there, into the field. Quick.'