The Watchers (35 page)

Laws of physics somehow remembered: To stand, the force of gravity on body mass must be countered by an equal or greater force as applied by the legs, or you fall down. More laws of physics: Walking requires legs and feet to move in alternate but co-ordinated steps of equal pressure per square inch to maintain balance and resistance to force of gravity on same body mass, or you fall down.

He laid out the photos.

Yuriev’s feet were all over the place. His body mass leaning forward, way off balance. Shoulders pinched back, arms hooked to the sides.

Laws of physics said he should’ve fallen flat on his face.

Harper checked the photos of Yuriev at the slot machines. The poor sod’s eyes flipping from side to side. Harper found the overhead photos, compared them to the head-on shots, following Yuriev’s eyeline. The man wasn’t talking to the slots, more talking to people either side of him, but there was nobody there. Back to the last shots, Yuriev’s arms rising from his side, arced and twisted as if he’s being dragged from the place. Harper’s eyes searched the photo. Halogen lamps in the ceiling, hitting Yuriev’s back. There were shadows on the carpeted floor.

‘You must be bloody joking.’

By the time the tenth bell rumbled through the loge Katherine was letting go of the walls. The vibrations subsided and the door at the end of the room opened. A fat grey cat darted in followed by a crooked little guy in a long black overcoat. He was carrying a yellow plastic tub loaded with what looked like Chianti bottles. She pulled the duvet over her body.

‘Who are you?’

‘Marc Rochat.’

‘The guy with the lantern.’

‘
Oui
.’

‘And this place is the cathedral.’

‘In the belfry, on top of the cathedral.’

‘Yeah, OK.’ She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Is it morning?’

‘It’s ten o’clock. Didn’t you hear Marie?’

‘Who?’

‘Marie-Madeleine, she rings the hour.’

‘Oh yeah, her.’ Katherine leaned against the wall. Monsieur Booty hopped to the table and then on to the bed, he nestled in the duvet. ‘And this is your cat.’

‘My cat, Monsieur Booty.’

Rochat set the yellow tub on the table and stood by the door. Katherine stared at him, his round face framed by a mop of uncombed black hair.

‘You look different without your hat.’

‘I forgot to put it on when I went out.’

‘And there’s snow on your coat.’

‘I was shovelling snow from the tower roof, before I got water from the fountain.’

‘What?’

He pointed to the bottles in the yellow tub.

‘I got fresh water from the fountain.’

‘Those are Chianti jugs.’

‘I use them to get water from the fountain, so they’re for water now.’

‘Where’s the fountain?’

‘On the esplanade. Do you want to see?’

She watched him, standing still with a nervous look on his face.

‘How old are you?’

‘I have twenty-one years.’

‘You look younger.’

‘I have twenty-one years.’

‘My name’s Katherine.’

‘You told me your name was Katherine before you went to sleep.’

‘I did?’ The night flashed through her mind, she touched the bandage on her face. ‘What … what else did I say?’

‘You said, “Do you have a bell named Katherine?” and I said, “No.”’

‘Yeah, that’s right, and you told me your name was …’

‘Marc Rochat.’

‘Yeah. So, Marc, I don’t know how to say this but … I need to pee.’

Rochat thought about it. He reached behind a timber, found the plastic water bottle with the top cut off and held it out to her.

‘What’s that?’

‘The piss pot.’

‘You pee in an Evian bottle?’

‘I pee in an Evian bottle.’

‘What do you do with it when you’re finished?’

‘Empty it on the roof of the cathedral and rinse it out and put it back.’

‘Isn’t dumping pee on a church a sin or something?’

‘Monsieur Buhlmann said, “If these blasted pigeons are free to shit all over the cathedral roof, I don’t think the creator gives a hoot about a little piss from the likes of you or me.”’

‘Who’s Monsieur Buhlmann?’

‘He worked in the tower before me. He only works on Sundays now because he’s old.’

‘Well, I’m sure it works for you and Monsieur …’

‘Buhlmann.’

‘Buhlmann, yeah. But my plumbing’s different, you know?’

Rochat thought about it some more. He turned and put away the piss pot, he removed jugs from the yellow tub and held the tub out to her.

‘You mean you don’t have a toilet up here?’

‘Not in the tower. But there’s one under the unfinished tower for when I need to … other things.’

‘Can I go there?’

He took the skeleton keys from a hook on the wall.

‘I can take you. Do you want slippers? I have slippers under the bed.’

‘Yeah, that’d be great.’

Rochat shuffled to the bed, she jumped as he came closer. He stopped.

‘They’re under the bed, in the little closet.’

Katherine lifted her feet and slid to the corner of the bed. He opened the closet, found the leather slippers with thick cotton inside. He laid them on the bed and closed the closet door. He shuffled back to the door, watched her try them on.

‘Wow, fuzzy slippers, I love fuzzy slippers. You don’t have any extra clothes, do you?’

‘I have some trousers and some wool socks and some shirts and two jumpers. They’re under the bed, too, in my rucksack.’

‘Can I have a look?’

Six steps back across the loge, under the bed, up with the rucksack.

‘And there’s an extra toothbrush. You can wash it and use it, I have another one in the loge, it’s in a jar.’

Rochat shuffled back to the door and stood. Katherine looked at him, feeling suddenly shy.

‘Um, could you go outside for a minute, Marc? While I get dressed?’

‘I can go outside for a minute while you get dressed.’

He shuffled out of the loge, closed the door behind him.

He looked out over Lausanne and the lake, he felt warm sunlight cut through the cold air. He turned and saw Marie-Madeleine hanging in her timbered cage, detecting a severe scowl on her bronze face. The snowman near her, however, smiled with walnut teeth.

‘
Bonjour
, Madame Madeleine
et
Monsieur Neige. A good rest, I trust?’

Marie was silent. Rochat reached in the timbers and gave the great bell a rap with his knuckles. She grumbled.

‘What do you mean, what must I be thinking? You saw what happened last night, those men from the bad shadows hurt her. And Monsieur Rannou said an angel would come to the cathedral to hide and I have to protect her. It’s my duty, so there.’

The door of the loge opened, Katherine peeked out.

‘Who’s out there?’

‘Me.’

‘Who’re you talking to?’

Rochat pointed into the timbers.

‘Marie-Madeleine.’

Katherine looked around the stone pillars and into the criss-cross timbers and saw the massive bronze thing.

‘You’re talking to a bell?’

‘She’s not happy this morning.’

‘How can you tell?’

Rochat couldn’t decide if it’d be rude to tell the angel Marie didn’t like her hiding in the belfry, so he rocked on his heels and didn’t speak. Katherine looked around the stone pillar again.

‘And why is there a snowman in there with the bell?’

‘I made him in front of the loge first, but Monsieur Taroni said I had to get rid of him, but I didn’t want to chop him up, so I hid him next to Marie.’

‘Who’s Monsieur Taroni?’

‘The caretaker of the cathedral.’

‘So your snowman’s on the run too, huh?’

Rochat looked at Monsieur Neige, then Katherine.

‘He doesn’t have any legs.’

She stared at him, not knowing if he was joking or truly insane.

Soft bells rang up from Place de la Palud –
tink, tink
– Katherine’s eyes followed the sound. She saw the snow-covered roofs of the old city, curly streams of smoke from chimneys. She saw the long crescent of the lake, the French Alps rising above Évian and the Swiss Alps rising to the east, all the world rising into the clearest of blue skies.

‘Gosh, it’s like flying up here.’

‘It is?’

‘Yeah, it really is.’

‘I imagine I can fly when I come to the belfry at night.’

‘No wonder.’ Katherine looked over the railings and down to the esplanade, she saw people walking along the cobblestones, she jumped back. ‘There’re people down there.’

‘But people don’t look up when they walk under the tower, except when the snowman was standing here yesterday. Monsieur Buhlmann says the bell tower was once the tallest building in Europe and people always looked up then. But they stopped when it wasn’t any more.’

Rochat saw his jumper and trousers on her body, his slippers on her feet. The towel he gave her last night was over her shoulders. She held the toothbrush, toothpaste and Marseilles soap in one hand, her other hand held up the loose-fitted trousers.

‘My clothes look funny on you.’

‘They feel funny, but we’ll worry about that later. Can we go now? I really need to pee.’

‘We can go now.’

He shuffled along the balcony, pointing into the west timbers.

‘That’s Clémence, she’s always grumpy.’

Katherine looked in and saw another big bell with pigeon shit on it. Rochat hopped down the tower steps and spiralled out of sight. She felt a sudden rush of panic like the night before.

‘Hey, wait.’

He leaned back around the newel.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Just wait for me, please.’

He watched her come down the winding steps to meet him.

‘Are you afraid?’

‘I’m all right. Just don’t run away.’

‘
D’accord
.’

He led her two turns down the tower to the low wood door built into the curving stone wall. Rochat pulled his skeleton keys from his overcoat, gave them a shake and found the right one. He unlocked the door.

‘There’s a tunnel and you have to bend down and it’s dark.’

‘There’s not another way?’

‘We could go outside and around the façade, but I imagined you didn’t want to go outside so people wouldn’t see you.’

‘You imagined right.’

Rochat ducked into the tunnel. Katherine watched him scoot through the dark and come out in a place of dim blue light, then he disappeared. She felt alone amid an eerie silence. She looked up and down the winding stone steps, she felt the tower walls closing in.

‘Marc?’

… marc, marc, marc …

His head reappeared at the far end of the tunnel, upside down.

‘You can come now.’

‘Jesus, where did you go?’

… did you go, you go, you go …

‘I made sure no one was here, you can come.’

… you can come, can come, can come …

Katherine ducked in and hurried as fast as she could. Clearing the tunnel, she straightened up and found herself in a place of blue light radiating from a huge stained glass of Christ on the Cross.

‘Yikes, where are we?’

‘The tribune.’

‘What’s a tribune?’

‘It’s the old balcony at the back of the nave. The coming-in doors to the cathedral are under your feet. This is where the Pope and Emperor sat before the organ was here.’

‘You mean we’re inside the cathedral?’

Rochat pointed to the tall enclosures of polished oak.

‘The nave is the other side of those big boxes where the organ’s pipes live. The console lives between the pipes, it looks like a space ship. Do you want to see?’

‘I really want to pee.’

‘
D’accord
.’

He led her to the other side of the tribune and through a wood door, down some winding stone steps and along a narrow passageway to another wood door that creaked when Rochat opened it, then down a few more steps into a large dusty room of unused tools and uncut blocks of limestone. Wood slats high above, sunlight pouring through plastic tarps flapping in the breeze. He shuffled to a wood shack in the corner of the room, unlocked the door. Inside was an old toilet and an old sink, a foggy mirror hanging on a nail, a string to a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

‘I clean it every night, but there’s no hot water.’

‘I couldn’t care less just now. I’m going to have a bath in the sink.’

Rochat looked at the sink and then her, from his fuzzy slippers on her feet to the top of her blond hair.

‘You’re too big.’

‘I’ll think of something. Just don’t run off.’

‘I won’t run off.’ He reached in his coat, pulled out a fresh bandage with fresh strips of tape along the sides. ‘I made this before you woke up. I imagined you’d need it.’

‘Gosh, you’re a regular five-star concierge.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘I’ll explain later. Don’t disappear, please.’

‘I won’t disappear please.’

She dashed in, closed the door.

Rochat stood quietly.

He heard the toilet flush and water run in the sink and her voice say, ‘Wow, it’s so cold!’ She made splashing sounds for a long time and when she came out she was towel-drying her hair with one hand, still holding up the trousers with the other. A fresh bandage was attached to her right cheek and her face had an inquisitive look.

‘Which Pope?’

‘
Pardon?
’

‘Back there, in the tribune. Which Pope used to sit there?’

Rochat thought about it.

‘I don’t remember. He’s dead now.’

‘Huh.’ She looked up to the sunlight seeping through the wood slats and plastic tarp. ‘What happened to the roof?’

‘They’re fixing it. The covers blew off in the big storm. That’s where the unfinished tower is.’

‘Where?’

‘Up there.’

‘There’s nothing up there.’

‘That’s why it’s called the unfinished tower.’

‘What big storm?’

Rochat counted backwards.

‘Two nights ago, before it snowed. Don’t you remember?’

‘I was drugged out of my mind two nights ago.’ Katherine finished drying her hair and rolled the washing things in the towel. ‘You don’t have an extra belt, do you? I’m afraid your trousers are going to fall down around my ankles.’