A Season in Hell

‘And so she is, chéri.’

The young woman who leaned out of the booth at the far end of the room stood up and came towards him. She had dark hair held back under a scarlet beret, a heart-shaped face, the lips full and insolent. She wore a black plastic raincoat, a scarlet sweater to match the beret, a black mini-skirt and high-heeled ankle boots. She was very small, almost childlike, which increased the impression of a kind of overall corruption.

‘You don’t look too good, chéri. Come and sit down and tell me all about it.’ She nodded to the fat woman. ‘I’ll take care of it, Marie.’

She took his arm and led him towards the booth, past the man by the fire, who ignored them. ‘All right, let’s see your passport.’

Eric Talbot passed it across and she examined it quickly. ‘George Walker, Cambridge. Good – very good.’ She passed it back. ‘We’ll talk English if you like. I talk good English. You don’t look too well. What are you on, heroin?’ The boy nodded. ‘Well, I can’t help you there, not right now, but how about a little coke to keep you going? Just the thing to get you through a rainy night by the Seine.’

‘Oh, my God, that would be wonderful.’

She rummaged in her handbag, took out a small white package and a straw and pushed them across. In the mirror above the fire, the man in the blue trenchcoat was looking at her enquiringly. She nodded, he emptied his glass, got up and went out.

Talbot tore the packet open and inhaled the cocaine through the straw. His eyes closed and Agnès poured a little cognac in her glass from the bottle on the table. The boy leaned back, eyes still closed as she took a small phial from her handbag. She added a few drops of colourless liquid to the cognac and replaced the phial in her handbag. The boy opened his eyes and managed a smile.

‘Better?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded.

She pushed the glass across. ‘Drink that and let’s get down to business.’

He did as he was told, taking one tentative sip, then swallowing it all. He placed the glass on the table and she offered him a Gauloise. The smoke caught the back of his throat harshly and he coughed. ‘All right, what happens now?’

‘Back to my place. You catch the British Airways flight to London that leaves at noon. Carry the goods through in a body belt, only not dressed like that, chéri. Jeans and an anorak always get you stopped at customs.’

‘So what do I do?’ Eric Talbot had never felt so light-headed, so remote, and his voice seemed to come from somewhere outside himself.

‘Oh, I’ve got a nice blue suit for you, umbrella and briefcase. You’ll look quite the businessman.’

She took his arm and helped him up. As they reached Marie at the bar, the boy started to laugh. She glanced up. ‘You find me amusing, young man?’

‘Oh, no, madame, not you. It’s this place. La Belle Aurore. That’s the name of the café in Casablanca where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman have their last glass of champagne before the Nazis come.’

‘I’m sorry, monsieur, but I do not see films,’ she replied gravely.

‘Oh, come, madame, but everyone knows Casablanca.’ He lectured her with the careful, slow graveness of the drunk. ‘My mother died when I was born and when I was twelve I got a new one. My wonderful, wonderful stepmother, lovely Sarah. My father was away a lot in the army, but Sarah made up for everything and in the holidays, she let me sit up to watch the Midnight Movie on television whenever it was Casablanca.’ He leaned closer. ‘Sarah said Casablanca should be a compulsory part of everyone’s education because she didn’t think there was enough romance in the world.’

‘Now on that, I agree with her.’ She patted his face. ‘Go to bed.’

It was the last conscious thing Eric Talbot remembered, for by the time he reached the door he was in a state of total chemically induced hypnosis. He crossed the quay, moving with the certainty of a sleepwalker, Agnès’s hand on his arm. They turned onto a small wharf by some warehouses, a cobbled slipway running down into the river.

They paused and Agnès called softly, ‘Valentin?’

The man who stepped out of the shadows was hard and dangerous-looking. His shoulders enhanced a generally large physical frame, but there was already a touch of dissolution about him, a little too much flesh, and the long black hair and thick sideburns gave him a strangely old-fashioned appearance.

‘How many drops did you give him?’

‘Five.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe six or seven.’

‘Amazing stuff, scopolamine.’ Valentin said. ‘If we left him now, he’d wake up in three days without the ability to remember anything he’d done, even murder.’

‘But you won’t let him wake up in three days?’

‘Of course not. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

She shivered. ‘You frighten me, you truly do.’

‘Good,’ he said and took Talbot’s arm. ‘Now let’s get on with it.’

‘I can’t watch,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’

‘Suit yourself,’ he told her calmly.

She turned away and he took the boy by the arm and led him down the slipway. The boy followed without hesitation. When they reached the end, Valentin paused, then said, ‘All right, in you go.’

Talbot stepped off the edge and disappeared. He surfaced a moment later and gazed up at the Frenchman with unseeing eyes. Valentin went down on one knee at the edge of the slipway and leaned over, putting a hand on the boy’s head.

‘Goodbye, my friend.’

It was so shockingly easy. The boy went under as Valentin pushed, stayed under with no struggle at all, only air bubbles disturbing the surface until they, too, stopped. Valentin towed the lifeless body round the edged parapet and left it sprawled on the end of the slipway, almost entirely submerged.

He walked back to Agnès, drying his hands on a handkerchief. ‘You can make your phone call. I’ll see you at my place later.’

She waited until the sound of his footsteps had faded and then started to walk along the quay. There was a movement in the shadows of a doorway and she recoiled in panic. ‘Who’s there?’

As he lit a cigarette, the face of the man who’d been sitting in the café was illuminated. ‘No need to arouse the neighbourhood, old girl.’

He spoke in English, the kind that had a public school edge to it, and there was a weary good humour there, tinged with a kind of contempt.

‘Oh, it’s you, Jago,’ she replied in the same language. ‘God, how I hate you. You talk to me as if I was something from under a stone.’

‘My dear old thing,’ he drawled. ‘Haven’t I always behaved like a perfect gentleman?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You kill with a smile. Always very good-mannered. You remind me of the man who said to the French customs officer: no I’m not a foreigner, I’m English.’

‘To be perfectly accurate, Welsh, but you wouldn’t appreciate the difference. I presume Valentin has been as revoltingly efficient as usual?’

‘If you mean has he done your dirty work for you, yes.’

‘Not mine, Smith’s.’

‘The same difference. You kill for Smith when it suits you.’

‘Of course.’ There was a kind of bewildered amusement on his face. ‘But with style, my sweet. Valentin, on the other hand, would kill his grandmother if he thought he could get a good price for her body at the School of Anatomy. And while we’re at it, remind that pimp of yours that I expect him to keep in close touch, just in case the court processes the body sooner than usual.’

‘He’s not my pimp, he’s my boyfriend.’

‘A third-rate gangster, walking the streets with those friends of his, trying to imagine he’s Alain Delon in Borsalino. If it wasn’t for the girls he couldn’t even pay for his cigarettes.’