Free The Watchers by Jon Steele Page A

and focused on the red-tile rooftops of the Palud quarter. Heatsmoke curled from chimneys. A little to the right, a lone trolley bus rolled over Rue du Grand Pont. Sparks flashed where the trolley’s arms touched the overhead power lines, the lights on the bus sputtered off and on. He panned left. The clock on the belfry of Saint-François was staring back at him through the lenses.
    ‘Aha! I knew it. Just like the bells in the Hôtel de Ville. Two minutes fast. You’d better not let Clémence find out. She’ll have you boiled in oil.’
    The clock looked close enough for him to reach out and give the big hand a tap and set it right. Then he remembered he was looking through binoculars. He turned the lenses backwards, looked again. Now the clock was so far away it looked as if it was sitting across the lake in France.
    He shuffled into the shadows of the southeast turret and leaned against a pillar. He looked through the binoculars again. Down on Pont Bessières, a man standing at the railings of the bridge, looking up at the cathedral.
    ‘Do you see, Marie? That man on Pont Bessières? He’s standing very still and he’s got his hands in the pockets of his coat. And it’s a coat with a belt and little straps on the shoulders like detectives wear in old movies Grandmaman liked to watch.’
    He lowered the binoculars and thought about it. He turned to the great bell hanging in the timbers.
    ‘You know, Marie, I think the man on the bridge must be a detectiveman, and I think he must be solving a mysterious mystery because that’s what detectivemen do, they solve mysterious mysteries. But I can’t think of any mysteries in Lausanne, can you?’
    A small breath of wind whisked by Marie-Madeleine to find him in the turret.
    ‘What do you mean, the cathedral is full of mysteries? When was the last time you saw a detectiveman movie, hmm? Why, there’s nothing in this pile of old stones but some teasing shadows who keep leaving doors open and all those dusty skeletons under the nave who like to rattle their bones at night and Otto the Brave Knight always falling over in his armour. Very common things for a cathedral, that’s what I think.’
    Rochat slowly raised the lenses, he scanned the rooftops of Lausanne and the trails of chimney smoke in the sleepy dark.
    ‘ Non , I’m very sure if there is a mystery in Lausanne, it must be somewhere out there. And with these very good binoculars for watching cows on hills I can see …’
    A bright light flashed in his eyes, and a woman in a white robe appeared as if floating. She settled before a mirror, let the robe fall from her shoulders. Rochat saw the skin of her naked back. Her hair was wet and she slowly combed it till it lay in long blond streaks.
    Harper stood a moment longer.
    He’d been walking the streets, checking every strip joint and after-hours club in Lausanne looking for Alexander Yuriev with nothing but a pocketful of receipts to show for it. Coming up Rue Caroline, and on the phone to the night clerk at the Hôtel Port Royal in Montreux for another round of ‘no, the man you want has not checked for messages, sir’, Harper heard the bells of Lausanne Cathedral ring for three o’clock.
    He remembered the night before, the light floating in the belfry just after the midnight bells. Curious if it’d be there again and wondering if he’d only been well pissed, he disconnected with the night clerk and headed up the road. By the time he rounded the corner and saw the cathedral atop the hill, all was dark. Then he thought he saw something shadowlike moving in the belfry. He walked slowly ahead, stopped and waited. Eyes focused on the high pillars and arches. He gave up and pulled out his smokes.
    ‘And the winner is – well pissed.’
    He lit up, aware of his surroundings. On a bridge stretching between Avenue Mon Repos and the old city. As if the earth had fallen out from under him and he was standing in midair. He stepped to the railings, looked down. A