Midnight Plus One

The Citroen scurried along the wide rough road, empty and lonely between the rough dry-stone walls. The Mauser was back in my briefcase, and I'd changed my shoes for a pair of nasty grey moccasins that would be a lot more comfortable on a long drive than the normal hard-heeled jobs.

After a time, Maganhard said: 'I hope you will try to avoid trouble, rather than attempt to defeat it.'

'I'll try,' I said. 'But I don't have much choice of routes until we're out of Brittany – another two hundred kilometres. You were on time, so we may as well make use of that: just move as fast as we can. They may not be quite ready for us.'

I wasn't sure I believed that myself: somebody had been ready for the driver of the car more than two and a half hours before. But I still didn't have any choice.

We came down into Quimper. I changed down into second with more of a thump than I'd intended; it takes longer to learn to change down on a strange car than change up. Harvey lifted his elbow off the big arm-rest on the door and felt down by his ankle. We snaked quietly towards the Quai.

Apart from the line of parked cars, it was dead and empty under the rain: a blotchy, shiny tunnel of light from the street lamps half hidden in the trees on the riverside. The Citroën trembled gently across the cobbles.

Then Harvey said: 'You should have turned right there. You're on a one-way street the wrong-way.'

'I know. I hoped they wouldn't expect that.'

I snapped off the side lights to darken our number plate and pushed gently on the accelerator. We picked up speed. Then we were at the end of the Quai and swinging right across the river – again wrong way on a one-way bridge. Slight swing right, hard left, and we were legal again, accelerating past the station on the N165. I switched on the lights. The town began to dwindle around us.

'Did anybody see anybody?' I asked.

Nobody answered. Then Harvey said: 'I wouldn't jump anybody in the middle of town, anyhow. Too much publicity. They must be expecting us to shoot back by now: they know we found the guy who was delivering it.'

'They left us the car, too. So perhaps they just wanted us to get clear of this part of the world.'

We were out of the town by now, and I was up to ninety-five kilometres an hour. In top gear for the first time. Now, we were starting to run.

Maganhard asked suspiciously: 'Why would they do that?'

'Don't know. Maybe they thought one body was enough for one town. You must know more about these people than I do, Mr Maganhard.'

His voice went stiff. 'You believe I know such people?'

'It's you they're after, not us. We're here because you're here.'

'I am sorry: I do not know any hired gunmen socially. I lead a very narrow life.'

I glanced at Harvey and caught the quick twist of a smile in the backlash of light from the headlamps.

But perhaps there was still something Maganhard could tell me. 'So you think they'll be hired gunmen, do you?'

'I imagine that if, as you and Monsieur Merlin believe, somebody is trying to kill me, then that would be the easiest way.'

I shook my head. 'Not necessarily. Professional gunmen – real ones – are very rare birds. Most killings arepassionel or just mistakes; the average crook doesn't like risking a murder charge. You might be able to pick up a pathological case or some doped-up teenager who likes waving a gun around – but they aren't pros and they won't do a pro job. To find somebody you can depend on, you've got to know France pretty well.' -Monsieur Merlin found you,' he pointed out.

'Merlin knows France.' I thought about saying that even so, he'd ended up picking a driver who hadn't done much of-this sort of thing since the war, and a bodyguard who was at least on the edge of alcoholism. But there's no point in apologising until the customer starts complaining.

'But the people who'd be doing the hiring,' I persisted. 'Do they know France?'

There was a long pause. Then he said slowly: 'I am afraid I do not know whois doing the hiring.'

I reached down beside my seat and lowered the car's hydraulic springing a couple of notches now we were on a reasonably good road. I was holding one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour with the headlights on high beam and the road to ourselves.

The rain came down with the same weary relentlessness. The front and back seat heaters were both going, and with everybody starting off wet, the atmosphere inside had developed like a cosy Turkish bath. But we were moving.

Coming into QuimperléI nearly ended the journey right there, on a downhill left-hand curve that was fast but not as fast as it looked. The front wheels" had a brief moment of forgetfulness, then I lifted my foot, the wheels took more weight, and gripped again. When we were straight again, I glanced at Harvey. He was sitting comfortably, his hands still and relaxed in his lap, not looking at me. Getting on with his job – and leaving me to mine.

In Quimperléitself they were celebrating the start of the tourist season by tearing up the cobblestones into big ragged heaps, but once we were through, the road was open and empty again.

I got out my cigarettes and passed them to Harvey. Without saying anything he lit one, gave it back to me, then lit up one of his own Gitanes.

He smoked quietly for a while, then said: 'You know, if you don't want our number to show, I could go back and kick in the lamp.'

I thought about this. 'No, I don't think so. The gendarmes would be likely to chase us just to tell us the lamp was out. We want to look clean and law-abiding on the surface.'

He blew smoke into the stream of air from the dashboard fresh-air grille. 'Yeah, I noticed that on the one-way street back in Quimper.'

'That was what the generals call a "calculated risk".'

'I thought that was just when they won by accident. But if that's what you want, we should have used a panel truck – small van. Nobody'd suspect that.'

'They'd suspect the number plate. Any cop would get suspicious of a local delivery van wearing a Paris number out in Brittany or on the Swiss frontier.'

'Maybe. So we should have got a long-distance truck – acamion.'

'From where? And I'm nocamion driver.'

For a while he just smoked, using his left hand. He'd got it so that by now he looked naturally left-handed – unless you realised what he was keeping his right free for.

'Maybe,' he said, 'what I mean is I wish we'd had more time to plan this thing out.'

'If there'd been more time, we wouldn't be in it.'

'I guess so.' He looked across at the dashboard instruments. 'When d'you need to get gas?'

'Not yet.' The gauge was showing nearly full. 'I hope we won't need any until after it gets light – when there's more stuff on the road.'

'Sunrise at about five-thirty.'

I raised my eyebrows; I hadn't even bothered to check the sunrise time, although I should have done. I had to keep remembering that Harvey had been in this sort of game more often and more recently than I had. He had his own problem, of course, but when that wasn't showing he was a hard, cool, intelligent character.

I looked at him sideways. His face was calm and his hands were still when he wasn't lifting his cigarette. But his eyes were watching ahead, carefully vetting each wall, house, tree as they grew in the headlights and then ran away behind us, proven innocent.

The car seemed to dwindle around me, fitting more closely, feeling more a part of me. Back-seat passengers don't breathe down your neck in a big Citroën, and we hadn't heard a squeak from them in half an hour. They had faded, had become no more weight or individuality than a couple of vague memories. The car was just Harvey and me in a dim cockpit, flickering through the night with the precision of a high-powered bullet.

It was one of those times when you know exactly, canfeel exactly, what the car will do – and the road also. It felt familiar, although it wasn't. I understood the pattern of it: what it would do next, how tight its bends would be, how steep its slopes.

It happens. And when it happens, you're right and you're safe. But it doesn't last. And you're never more wrong, more dangerous, than when it's stopped lasting and you don't realise it.