Free The Watchers by Jon Steele Page B

200-metre drop to narrow lamp-lit streets, where unseen winds gathered dead leaves and carried them away in darting spirals. Shadows chasing leaves, leaves chasing shadows. The winds curled up the bridge supports, cut through the railings … He snapped back from the edge, rubbed the back of his neck.
    ‘Bloody hell.’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    Harper turned to the voice, saw a young man standing on the pavement the other side of the bridge.
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘Are you all right? I noticed you leaning over the railings.’
    Harper stepped to the edge of the pavement. Two of them at the middle of the bridge, talking across the roadbed like villagers chatting across a brook.
    ‘Fine. Touch of vertigo looking over the edge, I guess.’
    ‘Lausanne takes some getting used to. I came from Poland, everything’s so flat there. All these hills and bridges in Lausanne, always looking down, it’s a little like flying.’
    ‘Or standing in midair maybe.’
    ‘Yes, that too. You’re a newcomer, aren’t you?’
    Harper took a long pull of smoke.
    ‘What did you call me?’
    ‘A newcomer. Those are the names we use in Lausanne. “Locals” for the people who live here, and “newcomers” for ones like …’
    ‘Like me.’
    ‘Yes, like you.’
    Harper took another pull of smoke, stared at him. Leather jacket, blue jeans, trainers on his feet. Nineteen, twenty maybe.
    ‘I walk this bridge at night. Sometimes I see newcomers wandering near the cathedral, not quite sure where they are. They always come this way.’
    ‘That’s what you do, keep a sharp eye out for newcomers on the bridge?’
    ‘You don’t know about this place, do you?’
    Harper looked both ways, not a soul in sight.
    ‘What’s to know, other than I’m standing on a bridge in the middle of the night?’
    ‘Some of the locals come here and … I thought you might be a local, someone in need of comfort. That’s what I do.’
    Swell, Harper thought, spend the night looking for a drunken Russian and end up in Lausanne’s all-night cruising shop.
    ‘That’s terribly kind of you, mate, but maybe you could just tell me the way to Chemin de Préville.’
    The young man pointed towards the old city.
    ‘That way.’
    ‘Up the hill, past the cathedral?’
    ‘There’s a view of Lausanne from the esplanade. You’ll see where you need to go next.’
    Harper checked his watch: three thirty in the morning. He pointed to the opposite direction.
    ‘Actually, I think I saw a taxi stand back down—’
    ‘There’s not a lot of time, monsieur.’
    Harper dropped his smoke on the pavement, shoved his hands in the pockets of his mackintosh.
    ‘Not a lot of time, right. I’ll get a move on then.’
    Harper headed off the bridge.
    Corner of Rue Caroline he looked back.
    One midnight cruiser crossing the roadbed, carefully removing a handkerchief from his leather jacket and collecting the crushed remnants of Harper’s cigarette and tossing it in a bin. Then stepping back to the pavement marking the centre of the bridge, waiting for someone else to come along.
    ‘And good luck.’

five
     
    The mobile rang and vibrated at the same time.
    Harper pulled his eyes from the telly, watched the thing rumble into a half-empty bottle of vodka. The bottle went clink . He grabbed the phone before it did any more damage.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Mr Harper, Nathalie Barraud calling. The Doctor is on his way from Geneva Airport and wishes to see you in Vidy Park.’
    Harper kick-started his brain. The Doctor. Doctor Johann Schwarzenberg, President of the International Olympic Committee. Liked to be called le docteur rather than le président . Nathalie Barraud, nice-looking bird who ran the Doctor’s office. Wore horn-rimmed glasses and tight skirts, spoke nine languages, never smiled. Coming from the airport? Right, overnight from Jo’burg, the African regional games.
    ‘What day is this?
    ‘Sunday and the Doctor does apologize for the inconvenience. But he’ll be receiving the