A Season in Hell Read online

  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 neighborhood, old girl.”

  He spoke in English, the kind that had a public school edge to it, and there was a weary good humor 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.”

  He turned and walked off without another word, whistling tunelessly, and Agnés left too, pausing only at the first public telephone she came to, to call the police.

  “Emergency?” she demanded. “I was just walking past the slipway up from rue de la Croix when I saw what looked like a body in the water.”

  “Name, please,” the duty officer said, but she had already replaced the receiver and was hurrying away.

  The duty officer filled details of the incident on the right form and passed it to the dispatcher. “Better send a car.”

  “Do you think it might be a crank?”

  The other shook his head. “More likely some whore doing the night beat by the river who just doesn’t want to get involved.”

  The dispatcher nodded and passed the details on to a patrol car in the area. Not that it mattered, for at that very moment, the gendarme who had spoken to Eric Talbot earlier walked down the slipway for the purposes of nature and discovered the body for himself.

  Given the circumstances, the police investigation was understandably perfunctory. The gendarme who had found the body interviewed Marie at La Belle Aurore, but she had long since learned that in her line of business it paid to see and hear nothing. Yes, the young man had visited the café. He’d asked where he might get a room. He’d seemed ill and asked for a cognac.

  She’d given him a couple of addresses and he’d left. End of story.

  There was the usual postmortem the following morning, and three days later an inquest at which, in view of the medical evidence, the coroner reached the only possible verdict: death by drowning while under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

  The same afternoon the body of the boy known as Walker was delivered to the public mortuary in the rue St. Martin, a superior name for a very mean street, where appropriate documentation was to be prepared for the British Embassy—not that such documentation ever arrived, thanks to a cousin of Valentin, an old lady employed as a cleaner and washer of bodies, who intercepted the necessary package before it left the building.

  No possible query could be raised the following morning when Jago presented himself, in the guise of a cultural attaché from the British Embassy, with all the necessary documentation. The much respected firm of undertakers, Chabert & Sons, would take charge of the body, providing it with a suitable coffin. The grief-stricken family had arranged for it to be flown by a charter aircraft the following day from a small airfield called Vigny, a few miles out of Paris. From there the flight plan would take it to Woodchurch in Kent where the remains would be received by the funeral firm of Hartley Brothers. All was in order. The documents were countersigned, the regulation black hearse appeared to bear the body away.

  The premises of Chabert & Son were situated by the river and, by coincidence, not too far away from where Eric Talbot had met his death. The building dated from the turn of the century, a splendid mausoleum of a place with twenty chapels of rest where relatives could visit the loved one to mourn in some decent privacy before the burial.

  As with many such old-established firms in most European capitals, Chabert’s had a night attendant, a row of bells above his head. There was a bell for each chapel of rest, a cord placed between the corpse’s hands against the unlikely event of an unexpected resurrection.

  But at ten o’clock that evening the attendant was snoring loudly in a drunken stupor, thanks to the bottle of cognac thoughtfully left on his desk by some grieving relative. He was long gone when Valentin carefully unlocked the rear door with a duplicate key and entered, followed by Jago. They each carried a canvas holdall.

  They paused beside the glass-walled office. Jago nodded at the attendant. “He’s well away.”

  “Bloody old drunk,” Valentin said contemptuously. “One sniff of a barmaid’s apron is all he needs.”

  They proceeded along the corridor flanked by chapels of rest on either side. There was the smell of flowers everywhere, and Jago said in French, “Enough to put you off roses for the rest of your life.”

  He paused at the door of one chapel and glanced in. The coffin was raised on an incline, the lid half down, a young woman visible, the face touched with unnatural color by the embalmer.

  Jago lit a cigarette with one hand and paused. “Like a horror movie,” he said cheerfully. “Dracula or something like that. Any minute now, her eyes will open and she’ll reach for your throat.”

  “For God’s sake, shut up,” Valentin croaked. “You know I hate this part.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jago told him as they continued along the corridor. “I think you’ve done very well. What is this, the seventh?”

  “It doesn’t get any easier,” the Frenchman said.

  “Intimations of mortality, old stick.”

  Valentin frowned. “And what in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’d need an English public school education to understand.” Jago paused and glanced in the last chapel on the right. “This must be it.”

  The coffin was the only one closed. It was constructed of dark mahogany, the handles and studwork of gilded plastic in case cremation was favored. Normally, international regulations concerning the air freight of corpses required a sealed metallic interior, but this was habitually waived in the case of small aircraft flying at under ten thousand feet.

  “All right,” Jago said.

  Valentin unscrewed the lid and parted the linen shroud underneath to reveal the body of Eric Talbot. There were two enormous scars running from chest to the lower stomach, roughly stitched together, relics of the postmortem. Valentin had spent two years as a conscript in the French Army, had served as a medical orderly. He’d seen plenty of corpses in Chad when he was on attachment to the Foreign Legion, but this was something he could never get used to. Sometimes he cursed the day he’d met Jago, but then the money …

  He opened one of the holdalls, took out an instrument case, selected a scalpel and started to work on the stitches, pausing only to wipe sweat from his forehead.

  “Get on with it,” Jago told him impatiently. “We haven’t got all night.”

  The air was tainted now, the sickl
y-sweet smell of corrupt flesh, quite unmistakable. Valentin finally removed the last stitches, paused, then eased the body open. Normally, the internal organs were replaced after the postmortem, but in a case such as this, where the body faced a considerable delay before burial, they were usually destroyed. The chest cavity and abdomen were empty. Valentin paused, hands trembling.

  “A sentimentalist at heart. I always knew it.” Jago opened the other holdall and took out one plastic bag of heroin after another, passing them across. “Hurry it up. I’ve got a date.”

  Valentin inserted one bag into the chest cavity and reached for another. “Boy or girl?” he said viciously.

  “My goodness, I see I’m going to have to chastise you again, you French ape.” Jago smiled gently, but the look in his eyes was terrible to see.

  Valentin managed a weak laugh. “Only joking. Nothing intended.”

  “Of course. Now get the rest of it inside and sew him up again. I want to get out of here.”

  Jago lit another cigarette and went out, moving along the corridor to the chapel at the end. There were a few chairs, a sanctuary lamp casting a glow over the small altar and brass crucifix. All very simple, but then, he liked that. Always had done since he was a boy in the family pew in the village church, his father’s tenants sitting respectfully behind. There was a stained-glass window with the family coat of arms dating from the fourteenth century, with the family motto: I do my will. It summed up his own philosophy exactly, not that it had gotten him anywhere in particular. He tipped his chair back against the wall.

  “Where did it all go wrong, old son?” he asked himself softly.

  After all, he’d had every advantage. An ancient and honorable name, not the one he used now, of course, but then one had to preserve the decencies. Public school, Sandhurst, a fine regiment. Captain at twenty-four with a Military Cross for undercover work in Belfast, and then that unfortunate Sunday night in South Armagh and four very dead members of the IRA whom Jago hadn’t seen any point in taking in alive. Had taken every pleasure in finishing them off himself. But then that sniveling rat of a sergeant had turned him in, and the British Army, of course, did not operate a shoot-to-kill policy.

  It wasn’t so much that he’d minded being quietly cashiered, although it had nearly killed his father. It was the fact that the bastards had taken the Military Cross back. Still, old history now. Long gone.

  The Selous Scouts hadn’t been too particular in the closing year in Rhodesia before independence. Glad to get him, as were the South Africans for work with their commandos in Angola. Later, there was the war in Chad where he’d first met Valentin; he’d been lucky to get out of that one alive.

  And then Smith, the mysterious Mr. Smith, and three very lucrative years—and the most extraordinary thing was that they had never met, or at least not so far as Jago knew. He didn’t even know what had put Smith on to him in the first place. Not that it mattered. All that did matter was that there was almost a million pounds in his Geneva account. He wondered what his father would say to that, then got up and returned to the chapel of rest.

  Valentin had carefully restitched the body and was replacing the shroud. Jago said, “Five million pounds street value. He’s richer in death than he knows.”

  Valentin screwed down the lid again. “Six, maybe seven if it was diluted.”

  Jago smiled. “Now what kind of rat would pull a stroke like that? Come on, let’s get moving.”

  They went past the office where the attendant still slept, and stepped out into the alley. It was raining and Jago turned up his collar. “Okay, you and Agnés be at Vigny tomorrow, one o’clock sharp for the departure. When the plane lifts off, ring the usual number in Kent.”

  “Of course.” They had reached the end of the alley. Valentin said awkwardly, “We were wondering. That is, Agnés was wondering.”

  “Yes?” Jago said.

  “Things have been going well. We thought a little more money might be in order?”

  “We’ll see,” Jago said. “I’ll mention it to Smith. I’ll be in touch.”

  He walked away along the waterfront thinking about Valentin. A nasty bit of work. Rubbish, of course. No style. A true wharf rat, but a rat was still a rat and needed watching. He turned into the first all-night café he came to five minutes later and changed a hundred-franc note for coins at the bar, then went into a telephone booth in the corner where he dialed a London number.

  He spoke quietly into the tape recorder at the other end. “Mr. Smith. Jago here.” He twice repeated the number of the telephone he was using, replaced the receiver and lit a cigarette.

  They had always operated this way: Smith with his answerphone and presumably an automatic bleeper to alert him to messages so that he was always the one to phone you. Surprisingly simple and no way to trace him. Foolproof.

  The phone rang and Jago picked it up. “Jago.”

  “Smith here.” The voice, as usual, was muffled, disguised. “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Any problems?”

  “None. Everything as normal. The consignment leaves Vigny at one tomorrow.”

  “Good. Our friends will pick it up as normal. It should be making us money within a week.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Your account will be credited with the usual amount plus ten percent on the last day of the month.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “The laborer is worthy of his hire….”

  “And all that good old British nonsense.” Jago laughed.

  “Exactly. I’ll be in touch.”

  Jago replaced the receiver and returned to the bar, where he had a quick cognac. It was still raining when he went out into the street, but he didn’t mind that. It made him feel good, and he was whistling again as he walked away along the uneven pavement.

  But at Vigny the following afternoon the weather was not good—low cloud and rain and a ground mist that reduced visibility to four hundred yards. It was only a small airfield with a control tower and two hangars. Valentin and Agnés stayed in her Citroën on the edge of the runway and watched as the hearse arrived and the coffin was maneuvered inside the small Cessna plane. The hearse departed. The pilot disappeared inside the control tower.

  “It doesn’t look good,” Agnés said.

  “I know. We could be here all day,” Valentin told her. “I’ll see what’s happening.”

  He put a raincoat over his shoulders and strolled across to the main hangar where he found a lone mechanic in stained white overalls working on a Piper Comanche.

  “Cigarette?” Valentin offered him a Gauloise. “My English cousin is expecting the body of his son this afternoon. He asked me to check things out. I saw the hearse arrive. I mean, is the flight on or not?”

  “A temporary hitch,” the mechanic said. “No trouble taking off here, but it’s not so good at the other end. The captain tells me he’s expecting clearance around four o’clock.”

  “Thanks.” Valentin took a half bottle of whiskey from his pocket. “Help yourself. You don’t mind if I use your phone?”

  The mechanic drank from the bottle with enthusiasm. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t pay the bills; be my guest.”

  Valentin took out a slip of paper and dialed the number written on it. It was a Kent exchange which he knew was south of London, but other than that he knew nothing of the mysterious Hartley Brothers.

  The voice at the other end simply said, “Yes?”

  Valentin replied in his bad English, “Hartley Brothers? Vigny here.”

  The voice sharpened. “Any problem?”

  “Yes, the weather, but they expect to be away at four.”

  “Good. Call me again to confirm.”

  Valentin nodded to the mechanic. “Keep the Scotch. I’ll be back.”

  He returned to Agnés in the Citroën. “That’s it. All off until four. Let’s try that café down the road.”

  The man he had been speaking to replaced t
he telephone and clasped his hands together, leaning forward toward the weeping woman in front of him. He was sixty and slightly balding, wore gold pince-nez glasses, black tie and jacket, white shirt pristine, striped trousers immaculate. The gold-painted name-plate on his desk said Asa Bird.

  “Mrs. Davies. I can assure you that here at Deepdene, your husband will receive only the very best attention. His ashes may be strewn in our own garden of rest if you wish.”

  The room was half in shadow on that dull November afternoon, but the flowers massed in the corners, the oak paneling, were reassuring as was his soothing, slightly avuncular voice that had a touch of the parson about it.

  “That would be wonderful,” she said.

  He patted her hand. “Just a few formalities. Forms to fill in. Regulations, I’m afraid.”

  He pressed a bell on his desk, sat back, selected a handkerchief and proceeded to polish his glasses, standing up and peering out of the window into the immaculate garden that always filled him with conscious pleasure. Not bad for a boy born on the wrong side of the blanket in the worst slum in Liverpool that had fitted him for nothing but a life of petty crime. Eighteen offenses by the age of twenty-four. Everything from larceny to, although he preferred to forget about it now, male prostitution, which had led him to the chance of a lifetime, his relationship with the aging Henry Brown, an undertaker with his own long-established firm in Manchester.

  He’d taken young Asa in, not that that was his name then, and groomed him in every way. Asa had loved the death business at once, taken to it like a duck to water, soon becoming an expert on every aspect, including embalming. And then old Mr. Henry had died, leaving only Mrs. Brown, who had never had a son of her own and doted on Asa, making perhaps only one mistake. Told him that she had made him her sole heir, an error which had led to her untimely death from pneumonia, helped on her way by Asa’s unfortunately leaving the windows of her room wide open on a December night after first removing the bedclothes.

  Mrs. Brown’s thoughtful bequest had taken him to his own establishment, developed from an eighteenth-century country house. Deepdene Garden of Rest, with its own cremation facilities. You wouldn’t find better in California, and his association with the mysterious Mr. Smith hadn’t done him any harm.