A Season in Hell

‘Yes, well, we’ll forget about that and concentrate on this.’ Villiers opened the briefcase and produced a plastic packet, which he placed on the desk in front of the Brigadier. ‘Heroin, and the immediate opinion at the lab on briefest of examination is that it’s very good stuff indeed. This is the kind of article you could cut three times over and still sell on the street.’

‘All right, go on,’ Ferguson said, his face grave.

‘It was found inside Eric’s body when the medical examiner checked him. It also became plain to him that the boy had been dead for days and the subject of a postmortem. Apparently, he recognized the surgical technique used as French, so Kent Police tried the fingerprints on the Sûreté in Paris and came up with this.’

Villiers passed another report across and Ferguson studied it. Finally he sat back. ‘So what have we got here? The boy goes to Paris on a false passport. Drowns in the Seine under the influence of drugs. After the postmortem, his body is claimed using forged papers and flown to England.’

‘Packed with heroin,’ Villiers said.

‘Of which this is only a sample. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘It makes sense. The police have already established that the hearse was stolen. There’s no such funeral firm as Hartley Brothers. The whole thing was an elaborate front.’

‘Which went wrong. An accident of some sort.’

‘Exactly. They had to retrieve the stuff quickly and get the hell out of it fast.’

‘So fast that this packet was overlooked.’ Ferguson looked grim. ‘You do realize what you’re suggesting, don’t you? The possibility that the boy was deliberately killed in the first place so that his body could be used in this way.’

‘That’s right,’ Villiers agreed. ‘I’ve asked the lab for an estimate. They say, judging by the size of that packet, the body could have carried at least five million pounds’ worth at street value.’

Ferguson drummed his fingers on the table. ‘However, except for your own personal connection, I don’t really see how this concerns us.’

‘But it does, sir, very much so. I’ve got a copy here of the French coroner’s report.’ Villiers took it from the briefcase. ‘Notice the chemical analysis of the blood. Traces of heroin, cocaine, and also scopolamine and phenothiazine.’

Ferguson leaned back. ‘Science was never my strong point at school. Explain.’

‘It all started in Colombia last year. The depressive alkaloid scopolamine is produced from the fruit of shrubs in the Andes. It can be converted into an odourless serum, no colour, no smell, a few drops of which can reduce any individual to a state of total chemical hypnosis for at least three days. The condition is so absolute that the victims have no recall of what they’ve done. Men have killed, women been totally degraded, turned into sex slaves.’

‘And the phenothiazine?’

‘It neutralizes certain side-effects. Makes the victims more docile.’

Ferguson shook his head. ‘God help us if it ever takes root over here.’

‘But it has, sir,’ Villiers said urgently. ‘During the past twelve months in Ulster there have been four cases of members of the Provisional IRA executed by Protestant paramilitary forces where the postmortem has revealed the same thing. Scopolamine and phenothiazine.’

‘And you think there could be a link with this business?’

‘There could be other cases. We’ll have to run a computer check, but if there is a link and if it concerns the UVF or the Red Hand of Ulster or any other Protestant extremist group, then it is our business.’

Ferguson sat there frowning. Finally, he nodded. ‘Right, Tony, drop everything else or get someone in the department to handle it. I’ll leave you to sort this one out. Top priority. Keep me informed.’

It was a dismissal. He replaced his glasses and Villiers took the reports and the heroin and put them in his briefcase. ‘There is just one more thing, sir, on the personal side.’

Ferguson looked up in surprise. ‘Well?’

‘Eric had a stepmother, sir, Sarah Talbot. She’s an American.’

‘You know her?’

‘Oh, yes. She’s a very unusual woman. Eric adored her. His own mother died when he was born and Sarah meant a great deal to him, as he did to her.’

‘And now you’ve got to tell her about this tragic business. How will she take it?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Villiers shrugged. ‘She was a Cabot from Boston. Very Blue Book. Her father was a millionaire several times over. Steel, I think. She’d had no mother from an early age, so they were close. She was a typical spoiled rich bitch, as she once told me, who still managed an honour’s degree from Radcliffe.’

‘And then?’

‘She underwent a sea-change at twenty-one. Hated what was happening in Vietnam. Lost a boyfriend there. Two or three years later, she ran for Congress. Almost won, too. But the voters grew progressively disenchanted with her politics, she lost the election, gave up politics entirely, got her MBA from Harvard and joined a Wall Street firm of investment brokers.’

‘Helped by Big Daddy’s money?’

Villiers shook his head. ‘Started from scratch on her own and now has a considerable reputation. She met Edward on a visit to London, in the National Gallery one Sunday morning. She told me once that she forgave him for being a soldier because he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in a uniform and red beret.’

‘And there was the boy.’

‘As I said, it was love at first sight for both of them. I don’t mean this in the wrong way, sir.’ Villiers sounded awkward. ‘But I sometimes felt she loved Eric more than his father.’

‘Women go with the heart, Tony,’ Ferguson said gently. ‘Where is she at the moment?’

‘New York, sir.’

‘Then you’d better get it over with.’

‘Yes, I’m not looking forward to that.’

‘Of course, this Irish connection making it a security matter does mean you could legitimately make the whole affair the subject of a D-notice. That would keep it out of the newspapers, television and so on.’ Ferguson shrugged. ‘I mean, no need to make things any more unpleasant for the family than they already are.’

‘That’s good of you, sir.’ Villiers walked to the door, paused, then turned. ‘There is one more thing I should mention, sir.’

‘More, Tony?’ Ferguson said wearily. ‘All right, tell me the worst.’

‘Sarah, sir. She’s a very good friend of the President.’

‘Oh my God!’ Ferguson said. ‘That’s all we needed.’

Victoria Station was crowded with people, queues for some of the express trains. Albert wore a brown suede jacket and jeans as he pushed his way through the throng carrying the bulging holdall filled with heroin. Locker number forty-three was locked, of course. He took the key from his pocket and opened the locker. All very simple. He put the bag inside, locked the door and walked away.

He hesitated just by the main entrance, intrigued. He had to know, it was as simple as that, and none of Bird’s overprotective hysteria could put him off. He turned round and walked back, going into one of the cafés, ordering a coffee and finding a seat by the window from which he had a clear view of the lockers.

The café was already busy and two women came and sat at the table, crowding him in, and then the whole thing was over in an instant. He’d been looking for a man, of course, not the grey-haired, stout old woman in a man’s raincoat and beret, already at the locker, key in hand.

She got the bag out as Albert struggled to get past the women at his table, had disappeared into the crowd by the entrance to the underground before he could do anything. He stood outside the café, angry for a moment, then shrugged and walked away.

Smith, from his vantage point beside the newsagent’s where he had witnessed everything, shook his head and said softly, ‘Oh, dear, I’m really going to have to do something about you, aren’t I?’

Manhattan was, as Manhattan always is on a wet November evening, busy, the traffic quite impossible, the sidewalks crowded with people hurrying through the rain. Sarah Talbot eased down the window of the Cadillac and looked out with conscious pleasure.