The Watchers (48 page)

‘They tune the cowbells in Switzerland?’

‘
Oui
, so it sounds nice when you walk through the country.’

‘Huh.’ Katherine looked at La Lombarde and La Voyageuse. ‘So they moved these bells from over there to here?’

‘But first, they had to move two bells from here to there.’

‘To Saint-François?’

‘I go visit them sometimes. They’re still very grumpy about the whole thing.’

‘You’re making this up.’

He stopped scrubbing, he looked at Katherine.

‘
La grande sonnerie
times is tomorrow at six o’clock. You can hear how nice the bells sing before you go home.’

Katherine settled against a wide timber and looked through the arches of the east balcony towards Pont Bessières.

‘Marc?’

‘
Oui?
’

‘Could you show me where I used to live?’

Rochat stopped scrubbing, peeked out from behind Nancy.

‘Now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘
D’accord
.’ He balanced the broom on a timber, slid down a cross-beam, jumped on to the wood platform and stood in front of Katherine.

‘Wait a sec, let me do something about these feathers in your hair.’

‘I was cleaning the bells.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ She reached up and picked them away one by one. She brushed the dust from his shoulders. ‘There, much better.’

‘
Merci
, I’ll be right back.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To get something to help you see things.’

He shuffled to the northeast turret and down the corkscrewed steps. Katherine waited, listening to the quiet and feeling the warm winter sun on her face. She walked along the platform to Mademoiselle Couvre-feu. She reached up and took the clapper in her hands, gently touching it against the darkened silver skirt of the thousand-year-old bell. The bell chimed softly.

‘Hello, you. It’s me, Katherine. Remember me?’

She listened to the sound as it floated through the belfry and faded away into the sky.

‘Hello.’

Katherine jumped and turned around, saw Rochat.

‘Jeez, Marc! Don’t do that!’

‘Don’t say hello?’

‘No, popping up like that. Where’d you go?’

Rochat held up the binoculars. ‘To get these.’

‘Ah ha, the famous binoculars for seeing things. Like girls through their bedroom windows.’

‘I wasn’t snooping.’

‘I know, Marc, it’s a joke.’

‘Oh. Do you want to see your house now?’ He turned and shuffled along the balcony. ‘Watch out for the ice on the steps and there’s still lots of snow on the roof.’

He climbed up the corkscrew steps of the northeast turret. She chased after him, imitating the way he skipped up the steps two at a time then jumping through the arch at the top of the steps and sinking to her knees in powdery white snow. The whole blue sky opened above her head, the whole world lay at her feet.

‘Oh, wow! This is like being on top of the world!’

She kicked through the snow and made her way along a balustrade of hollow crosses that ran between the four turrets of the tower, each turret peaked in wildly carved stone. A red-tiled hexagonal spire rose from the centre of the roof, twice higher than the turrets.

‘What’s this tower in the middle called?’

Rochat thought about it.

‘The top of the cathedral.’

‘I know that, but what’s it called?’

Rochat thought about it some more.

‘The top of the cathedral.’

Katherine laughed.

‘God, you’re so funny. Hey, there’s a little door down here, almost buried in the snow. What’s in here?’

‘Old roof tiles. But I like to imagine it’s a very good place for hiding things.’

‘Good to know, in case I ever need a new hiding place.’

The balustrade was almost as high as her shoulders. She jumped up, leaned over the edge. Her eyes following the lines and angles along the roof of the cathedral.

‘That’s the nave down there, where we went looking for lost angels, isn’t it?’

‘
Oui
.’

‘And what’s that tower over there, the pointy one at the far end of the cathedral?’

‘The lantern tower.’

‘That was above the altar, wasn’t it?’

Rochat looked at the pointy tower, then back to Katherine.

‘It still is.’

‘I know that, what I mean is … Wait a minute. Why do they call that one the lantern tower if the guy with the lantern lives over here, in the tower with the bells?’

Rochat looked down at the roof under his feet. Extending his arms this way and that way as if figuring the volume of a space. With arms fixed he faced the lantern tower and measured the squared space of the belfry against the conical shape of the lantern tower. He dropped his hands and looked at Katherine.

‘Because the bells won’t fit in the lantern tower.’

Katherine smiled.

‘You really are very funny, Marc.’

‘There was an accident when I was born.’

‘I don’t mean funny odd. I mean funny funny.’

‘
Merci
. Do you want to see where you used to live now?’

Katherine took a deep breath.

‘Yeah, let’s go for it.’

Rochat handed her the binoculars. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere, just turn around and look.’

Katherine took the binoculars. She put the lenses to her eyes and panned across the rooftops of Lausanne to the attractive building with the rounded façade at the corner of Rue Caroline. She focused on the rooftop flat with the green shutters and garden trees and the three men standing on her terrace looking back at her. She dropped to her knees.

‘Fuck!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘They saw me.’

‘Who?’

‘Those men on my terrace. Jesus, get down.’

Rochat ducked next to her, took the binoculars, looked through the stone pillars of the balustrade.

‘It’s not those men who hurt you.’

‘I know it’s not
those
men. The men out there are police. Holy fuck, they’re after me.’

Rochat lowered the binoculars. He saw Katherine cowering next to the northwest turret.

‘But policemen in Switzerland wear grey uniforms with grey hats and they carry black guns on their belts.’

‘Trust me, those guys are cops. Detectives, real ones.’

Rochat raised the binoculars to his eyes.

‘They’re looking somewhere else now.’

‘Where?’

‘To the lake.’

‘Lemme see.’

He gave her the binoculars and saw two big men in long black coats, with a third man in a brown wool overcoat. The big men writing in small notebooks as the third man talked. After a minute they re-entered the flat and closed the sliding glass doors.

‘Shit, this is all I need.’

Rochat crouched down next to her.

‘But they didn’t see you.’

‘They were looking right at me, Marc!’

‘No, it’s the binoculars. They play games on you and make you think people can see you because things look so close. Like the hands on the clock on Place de Saint-François.’

‘What?’

‘You can look at the clock through the binoculars and you can reach out and touch the hands and fix it because it’s always two minutes early.’

‘What’re you talking about, Marc? Because I’m talking about the police on the terrace of my flat, the ones who were looking at me!’

Rochat tried to think faster.

‘But they were far away. Look again without the binoculars. They don’t look like policemen, they look like ants.’

‘Ants?’

‘Tiny ones.’

She looked between the pillars of the balustrade, saw the windows of her flat and the indistinguishable shapes inside.

‘Yeah, maybe they didn’t see me, but they’re sure as hell looking for me.’

‘But they don’t know you’re here. And you don’t look like you any more, you look like
le guet
.’

She touched the brim of the black hat hiding her hair, hiding her face. She tugged at the black cloak and pulled it snug.

‘Yeah, that’s true.’

‘And soon you’ll be going home. Your friend the detectiveman is going to help. He said so.’

‘Yeah, that’s true too.’

She pulled off her hat. Her hair fell to her shoulders. She rested her head against the balustrade, took a deep breath and sighed. The timbers beneath the roof creaked and groaned and Marie-Madeleine rang for ten o’clock. Katherine combed her hair with her fingers, long strands of blond hair across her eyes till Marie’s voice faded away.

‘Marc, could you do me a favour?’

Harper dialled, the tramp picked up on the first ring.

‘So, English, I see death hasn’t found you yet.’

‘How did you know it was me?’

‘The holy miracle of caller ID.’

‘Caller ID, right.’

Harper heard the sound of Monsieur Gabriel firing up his opiates and sucking hard. His wheezing voice coming down the line as if from another planet.

‘The eternity of our beings is such a wonderful gift, is it not?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You sound weary, English.’

‘Weary? More like paralytic.’

‘
Y esta mañana, has visto la luz?
’

‘The light, this morning?’

‘On the ice cliffs above Évian. Beautiful, no?’

‘Depends on which side of the loony-bin gate you’re standing.’

‘Tell me, English.’

Harper laughed to himself.

‘I saw it more than once. Five or six times actually.’

He heard the tramp hit the pipe again.

‘I am familiar with the sensation.’

‘Glad to hear it, means we’re on the same side of the gate. How about this one then. You wake up in a London flat without a single memory of a life. You’re brought to Lausanne and set to wander through strip clubs, bridges, cafés and one falling-down cathedral looking for a dead man. And along the way there’s a bird in a strip club, or a bloke on a bridge, or a down-on-his-luck elf in Café Romand, or a nun in a gift shop. Not to mention a pack of Swiss cops who may not be cops but they’re up to their necks in corpses so what’s it matter. Because what does matter is the sensation I had coming to this morning and watching
la luz
splatter across those fucking big rocks again and again.’

‘And what was the sensation, English?’

‘That there’re a lot of people in Lausanne who know things I don’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as what I’m doing in this town and what happened to the rest of my life before I got here. I mean, there’s the rub, isn’t it? I’m dragged to Lausanne without a memory. No bloody idea why I’m here other than to watch people die until it’s my turn. And everywhere I go some local clown is pointing me to bloody Lausanne Cathedral. And when that doesn’t work I get pointed to the bloody Book of Enoch. And when that doesn’t work, I’m drugged and pushed to the edge of madness till I’m forced to come to you for the answers.’

‘Perhaps madness on this side of the loony-bin gate is no more than seeing things as they truly are.’

Harper lit up and drew on a fag.

‘Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t change the fact you’re the man with the answers, does it? Or am I wasting my bloody time? Because from what I hear these are the days of slaughter and destruction. And time is something you and the rest of Inspector Gobet’s gang are running out of.’

Harper listened to the sound of Gabriel’s ragged breathing.

‘It is time for us to meet again, English. Though I’m not sure you’re ready to know the truth.’

‘From what I can see, Monsieur Gabriel, truth is a moving target in this place … did you say
again
?’

‘I will wait where you saw me before, at the place of my midday meditations.’

‘Mate, I’ve never seen you. I don’t know you from Adam.’

‘You knew me long before the time of Adam. You have known me from the time of the unremembered beginning.’

‘The what?’

‘Noon, under the lantern tower of Lausanne Cathedral.’

Ripping back through time.

Watching himself search through the cathedral.

Coming up the ambulatory steps to the transept.

Sparkles of light on the flagstones, bright sun rushing through the coloured glass of the Cathedral Rose. Turning slowly to see a ragged form standing at the centre of the crossing square. His face aglow with colour, arms stretched to his sides, palms open to the light.

‘Bloody hell, you’re the tramp on the altar square.’

‘Let there be light, English.’

The line went dead.

thirty

‘How do I look?’

Rochat laid the scissors on the table.

‘You look like the picture of Joan of Arc I remember from my school book.’

‘What?’

‘You said you wanted me to cut your hair short and I remembered a picture of Joan of Arc from a school book because she had short hair.’

‘Oh shit. Where’s the mirror?’

Rochat took the hand mirror from the shelf and gave it to Katherine.

‘Hey, it’s really good. Where did you learn to cut hair?’

‘I drew the hair on your head with the scissors. It was easy.’

‘Easy? Trust me, women in LA would sell their firstborn for a haircut this good. You could be the next big thing in hair styling.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Don’t worry, it’s a good thing.’

‘It’s a good thing,
merci
.’

‘Now, do you have any money you could loan me?’

Rochat dug through the cabinet under the bed and found a tin box. He gave it to her.

‘Papa brought me this when I was little, it had chocolates inside but I ate them longtimes ago and keep money in it now.’

She stared at the picture on the lid: the Matterhorn reflected in an alpine lake.

‘Zermatt. I was supposed to be in Zermatt next week.’

She opened the lid, saw tightly fitted piles of Swiss banknotes in fifties and hundreds.

‘Yikes, how much is in here?’

‘I don’t know.’

Katherine counted the notes out on the table.

‘Jesus, there’re a hundred thousand francs here. What the heck do they pay you to wave your lantern?’

‘They don’t pay me anything.’

‘So what’s this?’

‘Monsieur Gübeli gives me some pocket money for allowances every month. I don’t spend much so I just keep it in the tin because he told me to keep it in a safe place.’