Midnight Plus One

I kicked the door shut and leant on it. The man in the raincoat took a couple more steps backwards and put up a hand to straighten his tie. I waved the gun towards the second man, in a chair beside the fire.

He said calmly: 'All right, Sergeant, don't do anything hasty.' He looked at me. 'And who are you, sir?'

I said: 'Somebody who scares easily,' and then gave him a second look.

He was old – so old that you didn't even think of an age when you looked at him. His face was long and withered to a dry mask ending in a ruin of sagging flesh under his chin. He had a big nose with a big white moustache under it, stiff with the brittle stiffness of a dead plant clinging to the cracks in a crumbling wall. His ears were decayed white leaves and his scalp a few forgotten strands of white hair. The whole face looked as if it had been six months in a dry tomb – except for his eyes. They were damp blobs so pale that they looked almost blind, and it must have cost half his energy to keep the hoods of his eyelids from flopping closed.

I had the creepy feeling that if I breathed on that face it would fall to dust, leaving the white skull underneath.

He was wrapped in a gold-and-black dressing-gown, with an invalid table shunted in over his knees, carrying a coffee pot, a cup, and a bunch of papers.

He opened his mouth slowly, and his voice came out as a dry death-rattle, but it still had a crispness that expected a fast answer. 'If you've come to kill me, you won't get away with it – will he, Sergeant?'

The man in the raincoat said: 'No, sir, he won't get away with it.' There was a rhythm, rather than an accent, to his voice that I couldn't identify because it seemed so much out of place. Then I had it: Welsh.

'You see?' the old man said. 'You won't get away with it.'

I got the point: I wouldn't get away with it. I leered at him. 'Maybe I didn't come to kill you.'

'You've got a pistol,' the old boy pointed out. 'Even if it's only a Walther PPK – a pop-gun. Still, it's the man behind the gun that counts – isn't it, Sergeant?'

The Sergeant said smartly: 'Yessir. That is what counts.'

'You see?' the man by the fire said. 'It's the man that counts.'

I was getting that floating feeling that comes with an influenza fever or trying to understand tax laws. I groped around for a chair. 'All right,' I said, 'let's just take it that I can count.'

The old boy let out a rasping gurgle that could have been a chuckle. 'You know, Sergeant – I don't think he knows who I am.'

I sat down. 'I just guessed. You're General Fay.' The man I'd come to Montreux to see.

In my line of business, the General had been a legend for a long time, but I hadn't realised just how long. He was some relic of the First World War who'd somehow got himself running a business intelligence network. If you wanted to know whether a company was going bust, was ripe for takeover, or was about to raise new share capital, the General would find out for you – at a price. His prices were something of a legend, too; that was why I'd never had any dealings with him before. But if you were in his price bracket -and a lot of people in Montreux were – the legend said he gave good value.

He gave another rasping chuckle. 'Right. And this is Sergeant Morgan, me driver.' Once you got used to the sheer age in his voice, you could spot the out-of-date British upper-class accent that uses 'me' for 'my' and says 'orf for 'off'. 'And who are you?'

Sergeant Morgan said: T think he followed me from the caféwhere I saw Mr Maganhard, sir.' He was standing in a stiff at-ease position, hands behind his back, and lowering at me. It was going to take him a lot of work to learn to love me, and so far he wasn't even trying.

'Ah.' The General's half-hooded eyes fixed on me again. 'So you're something to do with that damn fool Maganhard, are you? Who are you, boy?'

'Call me Caneton.'

'Ah – then I've heard of you. Special Operations Executive, eh? Good, tough, tricky bunch. Thought you couldn't have been real army – wouldn't have had the gumption to point a gun at an old man like me. Lot of old women in the last war – weren't they, Sergeant?'

Morgan said smartly: 'Yes, sir, they were that.'

'Lot of old women. You know they pulled a regiment out of the line when it had less than twenty per cent casualties? In our day, it had to be eighty per cent.'

I nodded vaguely. The cross-talk act was getting me dizzy again, and the jungle temperature of the room wasn't helping. I could have done without my raincoat, jacket, and shirt, and still been sweating. But I'd already pointed a gun at him, then sat down before being asked. Even Special Ops manners don't allow yanking off all your clothes, unless there are ladies present.

I shook my head and tried to get back to within shouting distance of reality. But the General did it for me. 'All right. So you saw the Sergeant see Maganhard, and followed him. Not difficult. Morgan's a damn fool at this slippery-secret stuff. Very good. What's your offer?'

'For what?'

'For not telling the police, you damn fool.'

I must have been wearing my dazed look. We were back to reality with a thump. Now I had a nice little case of blackmail on my plate. I was beginning to see how the General managed to maintain a permanent suite of rooms with his own furniture in the Victoria – and why his first thought had been that I'd come up to kill him.

I stalled: 'Have the police been asked to pick up Maganhard?'

The half-hooded eyes watched me steadily. Then he husked: 'Good question. No fool, this man. Police can't arrest and extradite without an official request from somebody abroad. Can't act just on a story in the Journal de Genèvealone. Unless' – and the hoods lowered just a fraction – 'unless he crossed the frontier illegally. That would mean he'd committed an offence in Switzerland, wouldn't it?'

'If they could prove it.'

'You're more of a fool than I thought, boy. Maganhard must have crossed illegally: he was seen in France only yesterday.'

'You mean by somebody who's still alive?'

He just looked at me – 'stared' is too strong a word for what those wet, pale eyes could do, but it was a steady, straight look. Then he grunted. 'Ah. Wondered if that shooting up in the Auvergne yesterday was something to do with you. So I was right first time. You're a killer but not a fool. Sergeant! knock "illegal entry" off the bill. We'll let you have that free. Back where we started: have the Swiss police had an official request? Sergeant!'

Morgan took a couple of heavy steps towards the white telephone on the far side of the fire. I said: 'Hold it.'

He stopped. Both of them looked at me.

I said: 'Let's get my position clear. I'd like that information, and I'm ready to pay for it. But let's forget any idea of you selling out Maganhard to the cops if I don't play your game.'

There was a silence. Then the General said calmly: 'And why shouldn't I? I sell information for a living. I'm just giving you a chance to bid against the police, as it were. I'm a businessman.'

'So am I. And I agreed to get Maganhard to Liechtenstein, for a fee. I'm going to do that.'

'It won't be your money, lad. Maganhard will pay. Just tell him there's a special toll for coming through Montreux.'

I took a deep breath and said: 'General, you don't get the point. I'm running this trip, not Maganhard. I won't even ask him to make a decision on this: making decisions is my job. I've decided that if your sergeant picks up that phone and says anything dangerous to the police, I'll kill both of you.'

There was another silence. Then the General said: 'Waste of time threatening an old man like me. Only one flicker of the candle left in me, anyway. Could be snuffed out by natural causes tomorrow, so I haven't got much to lose.'

I nodded gently. 'Only as much as anybody else: the rest of your life. I don't mind how short it is.'