A Season in Hell

‘Out of the frying pan into the fire? I don’t think so.’

‘What will you do, go back to your uncle?’

Egan laughed harshly. ‘God save us, I’d rather work for the Devil himself.’

‘Cambridge then? Not too late.’

‘I don’t really see myself fitting into that kind of cloistered calm. I’d feel uncomfortable and those poor old dons certainly would.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Villiers said. ‘I used to know an Oxford professor who was an SOE agent during the Second World War. Still …’

‘Something will turn up, sir.’

‘I expect so.’ Villiers looked at his watch. ‘The helicopter is leaving for regimental headquarters at Hereford in ten minutes. Grab your kit and be on it. I’ll arrange for your discharge to be expedited.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Egan moved to the door and Villiers said, ‘By the way, I was just remembering your foster sister, Sally. How is she?’

Egan turned, a hand on the door knob. ‘Sally died, Colonel, about four months ago.’

Villiers was genuinely horrified. ‘My God, how? She couldn’t have been more than eighteen.’

‘She was drowned. They found her in the Thames near Wapping. I was in the middle of major surgery at the time so there was nothing I could do. My uncle took care of the funeral for me. She’s in Highgate Cemetery, quite close to Karl Marx. She liked it up there.’ His face was blank, his voice calm. ‘Can I go now, sir?’

‘Of course.’

The door closed. Villiers lit another cigarette, shocked and disturbed. The door opened again and Captain Warden came in. ‘He told me you wanted him on the helicopter, back to regiment.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He’s taking his discharge?’ Warden frowned. ‘But there’s no need for that, sir. He can’t continue to serve in SAS, no, but there are plenty of units who’d give their eye teeth to get their hands on him.’

‘No way. He’s quite adamant about that. He’s changed. Maybe the Falklands did it and all those months in hospital. He’s going and that’s it.’

‘A hell of a pity, sir.’

‘Yes, well, there may be ways and means of handling him yet. I offered him a job with Group Four. He turned it down flat.’

‘Do you think he might change his mind?’

‘We’ll have to see what a few months on the outside does to him. I can’t see him sitting in the corner of an insurance office, not that he would need to. That pub of his father’s – he owns it. He also happens to be Jack Shelley’s sole heir. But never mind that now. He just gave me a shock. Told me that foster sister of his was drowned in the Thames a few months ago.’ He nodded to the computer in the corner. ‘We can pull in stuff from Central Records Office at Scotland Yard with that thing, can’t we?’

‘No problem, sir. Matter of seconds.’

‘See what they’ve got on a Sally Baines Egan. No, make that Sarah.’

Warden sat down at the computer. Villiers stood at the window looking out at the rain. Beyond the trees he heard the roaring of the helicopter engine starting up.

‘Here we are, sir. Sarah Baines Egan, aged eighteen. Next of kin, Ida Shelley, Jordan Lane, Wapping. It’s a pub called The Bargee.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Found on a mudbank. Been dead around four days. Drug addict. Four convictions for prostitution.’

‘What in the hell are you talking about?’ Villiers turned to the computer. ‘You must have the wrong girl.’

‘I don’t think so, sir.’

Villiers stared at the screen intently, then straightened. The helicopter passed overhead and he glanced up. ‘My God!’ he whispered, ‘I wonder if he knows?’

2 (#ulink_6c40b380-27fd-504f-9040-f95ed2574799)

Paris on the right occasion can seem the most desirable city on earth, but not at one o’clock on a November morning by the Seine with rain drifting across the river in a solid curtain.

Eric Talbot turned the corner from Rue de la Croix and found himself on a small quay. He wore jeans and an anorak, the hood pulled up over his head, and a rucksack hanging from his left shoulder. A typical student, or so he appeared, and yet there was something else. An impression of frailness, unusual in a boy of nineteen, eyes sunken into dark holes, the skin stretched too tightly over the cheekbones.

He paused under a streetlamp and looked across at the café which was his destination. La Belle Aurore. He managed a smile in spite of the fact that his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. La Belle Aurore. That had been the name of the café in the Paris sequence in Casablanca, not that there seemed anything romantic in the establishment across the quay.

He started forward and suddenly became aware of the glow of a cigarette in the darkness of a doorway to his right. The man who stepped out was a gendarme, a heavy, old-fashioned cape protecting his shoulders against the rain.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’

The boy answered him in reasonable French, nodding across the quay. ‘The café, monsieur.’

‘Ah, English.’ The gendarme snapped his fingers. ‘Papers.’

The boy unzipped his anorak, took out his wallet and produced a British passport. The gendarme examined it. ‘Walker – George Walker. Student.’ He handed the passport back and the boy’s hand trembled violently. ‘Are you ill?’

The boy managed a smile. ‘Just a touch of flu.’

The gendarme shrugged. ‘Well, you won’t find a cure for it over there. Take my advice and find yourself a bed for the night.’

He flicked what was left of his cigarette into the water, turned and walked away, his heavy boots ringing on the cobbles. The boy waited until he had rounded the corner, then crossed the quay quickly, opened the door of La Belle Aurore and went inside.

It was a poor sort of place, of a type common in that part of the waterfront, frequented by sailors and stevedores during the day and prostitutes by night. There was the usual zinc-topped counter, rows of bottles on the shelves behind, a cracked mirror advertising Gitanes.

The woman who sat behind the bar reading an ancient copy of Paris Match wore a black bombazine dress and was incredibly fat with stringy peroxided hair. She glanced up and looked at him.

‘Monsieur?’

There was a row of booths down one side of the café, a small fire opposite. The room was empty apart from one man seated beside the fire at a marble-topped table. He was of medium height with a pale, rather aristocratic face and wore a dark blue Burberry trenchcoat. The thin white line of a scar bisected his left cheek, running from the eye to the corner of the mouth.

Eric Talbot’s head ached painfully, mainly at the sides behind the ears, and his nose wouldn’t stop running. He wiped it quickly with the back of his hand and managed a painful smile. ‘Agnès, madame. I’m looking for Agnès.’

‘No Agnès here, young man.’ She frowned. ‘You don’t look so good.’ She reached for a bottle of cognac and poured a little into a glass. ‘Drink that like a good boy then you’d better be on your way.’

His hand trembled as he raised the glass, a dazed look on his face. ‘But Mr Smith sent me. I was told she’d be expecting me.’