The Watchers by Jon Steele

miserable beast. And stop scratching the floors.’
    He opened the door locks and jumped in his flat. There was a big sign on the back of the door: ‘LOCK UP!’ But sometimes he forgot and sometimes he found strangers from the hotel who had got lost and walked straight into his flat. Sometimes they were standing at the big windows of the sitting room admiring the view of the dungeon tower of Château d’Ouchy from one window or the corniche and Lac Léman all the way to the Alps above Montreux from another. Sometimes he even found strangers unpacking their bags or looking in his icebox machine. Rochat was always polite, telling the strangers he was very sorry, but this wasn’t their room, it was his house. He thought it important to be polite. The funny building with the hotel and flats was his, given to him by his grandmother and father before they died.
    ‘Monsieur Booty! Where are you, miserable beast?’
    And each month on number fifteen day, Monsieur Gübeli, the man with the bald head and glasses on his nose who’d brought him to Switzerland, came to the flat and sat at the kitchen table for a cup of tea. He’d open his briefcase and there’d be lots of papers to sign. The papers were confusing but Rochat’s father told him to always trust Monsieur Gübeli, so he did. On the day he learned he owned the building atop the funicular station, Rochat asked Monsieur Gübeli if signing so many papers all the time meant he was rich.
    ‘You know the château in Vufflens, Marc. The family fortune is substantial, indeed, but you are not part of that fortune. However, your grandmother put aside this property with all its revenues for you and you alone. If there is anything you want, anything you need, you only have to tell me, or my assistant Madame Borel. Do you understand?’
    ‘ Oui, monsieur .’
    ‘Is there anything you need, Marc, anything you want?’
    Rochat thought about it. He had a big sitting room, two bedrooms, two large bathtubs with catlike feet. He had a dining room overlooking the lake with lots of light and a big round table he used for drawing things he saw from the windows. He had two fireplaces and the plaster walls were covered with his drawings and the handmade marionettes his father brought from Venice. Harlequin, Pinocchio, Baron Münchausen in the drawing-pictures room. A Venetian Plague Doctor, Peter Pan and Napoleon in the sitting room. Next to his bed he had the photograph of his mother and father standing on the Plains of Abraham. And Teresa came three times a week to scrub the floors and clean the flat. Teresa was from Portugal and did the ironing and cooked lunches and stored them in the icebox. Rochat did his own laundry because he liked to watch the clothes go around in the washer machine. He had a TV that had sixty-seven channels but was always tuned to Cartoon Network so he could watch Tom and Jerry because they were funny. If he wasn’t drawing or watching cartoons, or his clothes in the washing machine, he’d take Napoleon from his hook on the wall and chase Monsieur Booty around the flat shouting, ‘Charge!’ Other than that he spent most of his time at the cathedral.
    ‘ Non , I can’t think of anything.’
    But just now, standing in the foyer of his flat, Rochat had another thought. If there was nothing he wanted or needed, why did his flat, full of things, feel so empty? A fat grey cat curled around Rochat’s boots.
    ‘And how are you this afternoon, Monsieur Booty?’
    Mew .
    ‘Yes, yes, I am very late and you’re hungry. And I had a very busy night. I forgot to get some bread on the way home. Can I have some of your cat food?’
    Monsieur Booty dug his claws into Rochat’s overcoat and began to climb.
    Mew.
    ‘Never mind, I’ll see what Teresa left me in the icebox machine. Alors , I’ll feed you, clean my coat and hat and the rest of me. Then I’ll go for fresh bread for my lunch.’
    He was soaking his head when he remembered there would be no fresh bread