Midnight Plus One - Lyall Gavin - Страница 36

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We didn't reach Montreux until after nine; the train service isn't good, and if you've ever been to Montreux in April, you know why. Nobody who spends the winter there ever uses the train; if the Rolls-Royce has developed the staggers, they hire a Mercedes and bleed with shame.

Montreux is one of those places where English money goes to die. It's for people who think Bermuda and Nassau are vulgar and American, and besides, the natives are getting uppitty. In Montreux the natives never get uppitty; from September to May the hotels serve nothing but roast beef and curry and take good care not to cook it too well. The dining-rooms are full of sweet little old ladies with cold eyes that can cost you down to your last half-dozen Shell Oil shares. Anybody wearing a beard or carrying a guitar is sentenced to be run over by massed wheelchairs at high noon.

All this was another good reason for us being there. Unless the airmail edition of The Times was running anything about us, nobody in Montreux was likely to have heard of us.

Since we were still in fairly public places, I'd bullied Harvey into going back to the two-by-two system, covering Maganhard and the girl from fifteen yards back. I thought we were fairly safe: the Swiss police hadn't been covering Geneva station, so it looked as if they hadn't been asked to pick Maganhard up yet. griflet would spoil all that when he woke up, but it would take time to get the word around.

Maganhard sat down in a cafea couple of hundred yards up from the station, as per my instructions. Harvey and I took a table near by, and I started sorting through some newspapers I'd bought at the station.

The Journal de Genevegave it me: it must have been what Robert Griflet, policeman, had been looking up. They'd finally dug out the eight-year-old photograph of Maganhard. It was obviously a passport picture, but Maganhard looked very much like a passport picture, anyway. And he hadn't changed much in eight years: it was the same square face, angular glasses, thick, black swept-back hair. People with a ten-million holding in electronics and a yacht in the Atlantic don't age fast.

The- story alongside the picture reassured me a bit: it had been handed out by the French police on the Geneva frontier. They were blocking the border so that even a mouse couldn't cross. There was no reason why Geneva citizens should fear this rapist monster. He probably wouldn't get anywhere near the Swiss frontier, with the Surete Nationalehard after him.

On the question of who was with Maganhard, the cop had sounded honestly vague; all he knew was that they didn't scarehim. The story meandered off into the reporter's account of his tour of the frontier posts and the questions he'd got asked at each.

Harvey said: 'And I don't likethat guy, either.'

I looked up quickly. An elderly party was just getting up from a table against the wall on the far side, carrying a newspaper with him. At the door he stopped to fiddle with his newspaper and, reckoning that made him invisible, threw a stare like a searchlight back at Maganhard.

He was a squat, solid man of at least sixty, and starting to develop a stoop. He had dark eyes and a long gingery moustache that was beginning to turn white. But his clothing was the thing that rocked me; up to his eyebrows he was the perfect chauffeur: shiny black leather leggings, black raincoat, black tie with a stiff collar. But on top of it was a vast hairy, orange tweed cap.

Probably, in his mind, that put him out of uniform and helped his invisibility. He was as invisible as an airport beacon.

He suddenly switched off the stare, fiddled with his newspaper again, and then went out with a determined military strut that, with him, had aged to the plodding of a dinosaur.

Harvey and I stared at each other. 'Well,' I said, 'he's no professional.'

Harvey said: 'If he knows Maganhard, he's trouble whatever he is.'

I nodded. 'Get them out of here. Get up to the next cafeon the same side, so I'll know where to find you.' I stood up and tossed him a ten-franc note. 'And get Maganhard to get his glasses off and comb his hair differently.' I passed him the Journalopen at the photograph, and slid out of the cafe.

Anywhere but in Montreux the streets would have been full of Swiss dashing resolutely about making watches or money. Not here. Here was just about finishing its second cup of China tea and wondering whether to have one or two boiled eggs this morning. The streets were almost empty, and my man was easily in sight, fifty yards up on my left, heading deeper into town.

I crossed the road. There wasn't enough traffic to make it a problem crossing back if he dived up a side road, and he didn't look the type to think you could ever be trailed from the opposite side of the street. Twice he stopped, swung round, and gave the sergeant-major's stare at somebody behind him. It made him as conspicuous as an alligator in a bath, but it seemed to reassure him that the Black Hand Gang wasn't on his tail.

I slowed up to keep behind him, and we pressed on.

Montreux is a series of terraces around the end of the lake, with the main road and the railway criss-crossing at the middle level. We went through the shopping area and out of the centre towards the last row of big hotels on the lake front. It was staying a cold, grey morning and too early even for the old girls well wrapped up in rugs and Rolls Royces. I dropped farther back as the town began to thin out.

He gave one last sweep of the evil eye behind him, crossed to my side, and ducked into the side road above the Quai des Fleurs. We passed the Excelsior and then he turned into the Victoria.

I reached the door in several quick strides, a uniformed flunkey swung it for me before he noticed I was under seventy, and I nodded and headed across the lobby towards the lifts.

The whole place was furnished with a rich gloom that would have made an undertaker's parlour seem like a milk bar: heavy square columns covered in dark wood, brown-and-cream carpets, big rubber plants, and dark olive drapes trying to creep across the windows to keep out the light. I speeded up: in a hotel like that, the lifts work efficiently. They have to. Nobody is young enough to use the stairs.

I slid into the dark-panelled lift just behind the man I was following. The lift-boy flicked the doors shut, and asked me what floor. I bowed to the black raincoat, as a gesture of politeness to age, and he said: 'Sank.' I'd just got that figured out as the English for Cinque in time to say:'Quatre.'

In his suspicious mood, the old boy tried to catch my eye, but I wasn't having any. You never look the man you're trailing straight in the eye.

I bailed out at the fourth floor and took a few resolute steps to convince the lift-boy that I knew what I was doing, then doubled back as soon as the doors closed. I had half an eyeball poked around the next corner of the stairs by the time the lift stopped again. The black raincoat stomped past the top, and I tiptoed on up.

The corridor was long, tall, and plastered with shiny cream paint that had darkened to a smoky orange. He went about twenty yards down and stopped at a door on the left. I ducked back a step down the stairs: I'd seen him in action enough by now to know that he was going to swing round and stare down the corridor before he opened the door.

I waited twenty seconds, then walked after him. The room was number 510, and there was nobody else in the corridor. I rapped on the door.

After a pause a voice quavered: 'Who's that?'

I hooted:'Service, monsieur,' in cheerful, confident tones.

There was another pause. Then the door opened six inches and the gingery moustache peered out suspiciously.

I rammed griflet's little Walther PPK against the black tie at his neck and marched in behind it.

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