Midnight Plus One

Now anything that dislodged Harvey's thumb would fire the gun: it was about as safe as a grenade with a half-second fuse. No sane man believes he can knock aside a gun in that condition; all he believes is that he can get himself shot accidentally by making too sudden a movement.

We seemed to have been there a long time; the waiter was going to pop up and ask what we wanted – and find out. I began to sweat. But the fat man was sweating a lot harder.

Then he frowned once, just for his own self-respect, and made a very small gesture to show he was ready to get up. Harvey stood back. The five of us marched out in a close line like five trucks on a freight train.

We went round the corner and past a bend that put the square out of sight from our side of the street. Harvey halted the procession and held out his left hand:'Les clefs de la Mercedes et la Renault.'

The fat man leant against the wall and started to explain that they weren't his cars and, anyway, what the Devil- Harvey just smiled. He had the sort of face for that sort of smile. It made me think of other walls, pitted with bullet marks, and blindfolds and firing squads. Then he pulled out his gun again, and this time you could hear the click.

He got the keys, and held them up over his shoulder to me.

I moved behind him to take them. 'I'll need about a minute to get the Mercedes clear.'

'Take all the time you want.'

I reached for the keys.

So far, all I knew of our new acquaintances was that they'd set up a situation with the parked cars which could easily have resulted in a gun-battle in the middle of Tours. Which made them fairly stupid, to my mind. But stupid or not, their teamwork was good.

I never saw any signal, but the first to move was the one at the end of the line. He jumped forward, then threw himself flat in the road. As Harvey swung to cover him, the fat man launched himself off the wall, his left hand groping under his coat.

I was behind Harvey, with him blocking my line of fire, and a good chance of getting knocked over by him if the fat man hit him. I left off trying to get the Mauser into action and took a leap backwards.

The fat man hit Harvey with his right shoulder just as he pulled an automatic with his left hand. They started to fall back towards me. Harvey planted his gun neatly on the man's left shoulder and loosed the hammer.

There was a nasty squashybang and the fat man spun in the air and fell on his back, his gun waving feebly towards the wall. Harvey rolled near my feet. The third party started around them to get at me.

I finally got the Mauser untangled from my trousers and jammed my thumb hard on the single/automatic button; if ever I wanted to sound like a machine-gun, now seemed the time.

Harvey shouted: 'Don't shoot that thing! '

The third man saw the long magazine on the Mauser, and dropped any idea of drawing a gun. His hands went up before he'd got his feet to stop.

I swung the gun side to side. 'Venez chercher, mes amis.'

I felt tensed up and ready to pull the trigger.

Harvey rolled on to his feet. 'Jesus Christmas, the war's over. Take it easy, Cane.' He flicked his short gun left and right, and the two men backed quickly up to the wall again. The fat man in the gutter let out a sudden moan.

Harvey said: 'Go get the car.'

Rather reluctantly, I put the Mauser away under my raincoat, and walked back to the square.

Nobody seemed to be looking for the source of a gun going off. I hadn't made much noise; noise, after all, is only energy that's got wasted on the surrounding air, and the fat man's shoulder had got just about all the energy going from that shot. I didn't want to examine that shoulder.

I backed the Mercedes off a couple of yards, checked the tyres of the Citroën in case they'd tried two sorts of funny business, then drove it out to the corner.

Harvey walked slowly up the far side of the street, his right hand tucked under his mac. He slid in and I whipped around the corner.

'What'd you do with them?'

He said: 'Told them to pick him up and get him home. I was a damn fool.'

'What?'

'He was left-handed; I hadn't thought of that. I knew he was the boss, I knew they wouldn't start anything without him. But I thought I'd fixed him when I banged his right handinthe café. I should have thought of him being left-handed.'

I pulled round the next corner and slowed. 'Everybody makes mistakes.'

'Not in my business.'

I reached back to open the back-seat doors. Maganhard and the girl and my briefcase jumped in and, thank God, they didn't waste time doing it.

I pulled away and turned left into the Place des Halles, snaking between the last fruit and fish lorries.

Miss Jarman suddenly leant forward and said to Harvey: 'You smell of gunpowder.'

Harvey nodded. 'That's right. I had to shoot a guy. He didn't get killed.'

She said coldly: 'Bad luck.'

'It was intentional.'

I said: 'We wouldn't have got the same fun out of it, killing him without you watching.'

She said: 'Why didn't you just throw your joke book at him?'

Harvey chuckled. 'I don't think she appreciates us. But Jesus, you scared me.'

'Me?' I said.

'You. Waving that machine-gun around and shouting "Come and Get It!" I thought you were going to loose it off – and me in front of you.'

'Well. I told you I learnt this business in wartime.'

'That's a long time ago. Fashions have changed.' I started into a zigzag of back streets leading southeast to the main road running south out of town. 'Well,' I said. 'What did you think of the opposition?'

'They'll never make the First Team.'

I nodded. 'My own thoughts exactly. D'you know any of them?'

'No.'

Maganhard said: 'What did they plan to do?'

'I'd guess they were disobeying orders,' Harvey said rapidly. 'They'd probably been told to pick us up in Tours -and that wouldn't be difficult. We had to cross the river here and there's only two bridges. Then they were told to trail us out to somewhere quiet and jump us there. With that Mercedes, they could have hung on to us. But we stopped at the caféand they thought they'd got an easy chance. Crazy.'

I nodded; that sounded good sense. 'Was that why you didn't kill anybody?'

I felt his quick sideways look. 'Didn't seem necessary,' he said evenly. 'They were so slow, I had time.'

Miss Jarman leant forward and said incredulously: 'Did youwant somebody to get killed?'

'No: I can take it or leave it.' But that wasn't quite true. Iwas a little worried that nobody had ended up dead.

Being a good bodyguard-gunman isn't being particularly fast with a gun, or even particularly accurate. These are just refinements. The real talent is being ready, at any time and without asking questions, to kill. A gunman can still be as fast as a cat and accurate as Robin Hood – but if he's got to debate with his conscience whether he's ready to kill or not, then he's ready for unemployment pay. Or, quite likely, dead.

Or perhaps drinking too much.

I zipped across the Boulevard Béranger, still heading southeast. I shoved the clump of Michelin local maps across to him. 'Pick me a course heading southeast and keeping on only the D roads.'

Harvey said: 'You want to get off the main line between Brittany and Switzerland?'

'That's right. That's where the roadblocks'll be.'

He stared back at a map. 'You'll end up in the Auvergne.'

I nodded. 'That's the idea. I have friends there. Or I did, once.'

EIGHT