Читать книгу A Season in Hell - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 10

She could have waited for Concorde, the fastest passenger flight in the world. It would have had her in London in three hours, fifteen minutes, but that would have meant waiting until the following morning. By chance, Pan Am had a delayed flight leaving for London just after midnight, a Boeing 747, so she took that.

The truth was she needed time to think. She’d left a still protesting Dan Morgan behind at Kennedy. He’d wanted to come with her, but she wouldn’t have that. There were things he could do, of course. Alert their London associates. A car, a driver, the house in Lord North Street they all used when visiting London. A good address, Edward had once told her. Very convenient for Parliament and Number Ten Downing Street.

Edward, she thought. First Edward in that stupid little war. Such a waste of a fine man. Now this. She stared down through the window at the lights of New York below as the plane turned out to sea, and the pain was unbearable. She closed her eyes and felt a hand on her shoulder.

The blonde stewardess who had greeted her on boarding smiled down. ‘May I get you a drink now, Mrs Talbot?’

Sarah stared blankly up at her, unable to speak for a moment, and her own intelligence told her that this was shock and that she had to fight it or go under. She forced a smile. ‘Brandy and soda please.’ Strange, but for the first time since boarding, probably because of the subdued lighting, she noticed that all the seats around her were empty. In fact, she seemed to be the only person in the whole of the first-class cabin.

‘Am I it for tonight?’ she asked as the stewardess brought her brandy.

‘Almost,’ the girl said cheerfully. ‘Just one more on the other side.’

Sarah glanced across and saw at first only the back of another stewardess in the far aisle and then she moved to the galley and Sarah saw the other passenger. It was Rafael Barbera. She felt bewildered, shocked. For a moment, she closed her eyes and was in the back of the car again reading Charles’s newspaper and looking at Barbera’s photo. She’d been so happy, everything going so well, and now this terrible nightmare. She sipped some of the brandy and took a deep breath. It was just like that dreadful cable from the Ministry of Defence in London telling her of Edward’s death. You fought or you went under.

The stewardess appeared again. ‘Would you like the menu now, Mrs Talbot?’

At first, Sarah was going to say no, but then remembered that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast and that wouldn’t do at all. There’d been no time for lunch with the big deal breaking so she had a little smoked salmon, a salad, some cold lobster, eating with no kind of conscious pleasure, but because strength was important now. She was aware of Barbera also eating on the other side of the cabin, saw him speak to his stewardess who turned and came across. She leaned over Sarah.

‘We have a movie for you as usual, Mrs Talbot, but as there are only two of you tonight, we won’t show it unless you want us to. Mr Barbera over there isn’t bothered one way or the other.’

‘Neither am I,’ Sarah told her. ‘So let’s skip it.’

The stewardess returned and spoke to Barbera who nodded and raised his champagne glass in salute and smiled. He spoke to the stewardess again and she returned. ‘Mr Barbera was wondering if you might join him in a glass of champagne.’

‘Oh, I don’t really think so,’ began Sarah, already too late, for he was on his feet, moving with surprising speed for a man of his size.

He leaned on the cane and looked down at her. ‘Mrs Talbot, you don’t know me, but you come highly recommended. I believe you are an associate of Dan Morgan? He handles the occasional business matter for me from time to time.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

He reached for her hand, kissed it gracefully and there was a slight quirk of amusement at the corner of his mouth. ‘You wouldn’t. It’s a special account.’ He eased into the chair beside her. ‘Now then, champagne. You need it. I’ve been watching you. At the very least it’s been a bad day.’

‘Oh, no,’ she protested. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Nonsense.’ He took the two glasses from the stewardess and passed them to her. ‘A strange thing for a Sicilian to say, but when you are tired of champagne you are tired of life.’ He raised his glass. ‘As my Jewish friends would say, lechayim.’

‘Lechayim?’ she said.

‘To life, Mrs Talbot!’

‘I’ll drink to that, Mr Barbera.’ She emptied the glass in one long swallow. ‘It’s really very appropriate. I’m drinking to life and my son’s dead. Isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard of?’

And then she dropped her glass and turned into the window and cried as she had not cried since she was a little girl and he stroked her hair gently, motioning the worried stewardess away. Finally, she was still, but she stayed curled up staring into the shadows, letting him soothe her, a child again with Daddy when it had been good. When it had worked. Finally, she pushed herself away, got up without a word and went to the toilet. She washed her face with cold water and combed her hair. When she came out, the stewardess was there.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Talbot?’

‘It’s quite simple. I just got news of my son’s death. That’s why I’m on my way to London. But I’ll be fine. I won’t break down on you, I promise.’

The young woman instinctively flung her arms around her. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Sarah kissed her on the cheek. ‘That’s very kind. I see Mr Barbera’s ordered coffee, but actually I’m a tea person.’

‘I’ll see to it.’

She took her seat again beside Barbera. ‘All right now?’ he asked.

‘I will be.’

‘When we’ve talked,’ he said calmly and raised a hand as if to forestall protest. ‘This is necessary, believe me.’

‘All right.’ She opened her bag, took the battered old silver cigarette case they’d found on Edward’s body at Mount Tumbledown and extracted a cigarette. She lit it, blew smoke up at the ceiling in a strangely defiant gesture. ‘You don’t mind?’

He smiled. ‘At my age, Mrs Talbot, you can’t afford to mind anything.’

‘How much do you know about me, Mr Barbera?’

‘They tell me you’re one of the best brains in Wall Street. And when you were very, very young, you were almost a Congresswoman.’

‘I was a rich little spoiled bitch. My father seemed to have all the money in the world. Because I didn’t have a mother he indulged me. Oh, I went to Radcliffe, graduated magna cum laude. No trouble. I was very bright, you see. I didn’t need to work. I smoked marijuana like everyone else did in the sixties and I screwed around like everyone else did.’ She turned sideways to look at him. ‘Does that shock you?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘I had a boyfriend who dropped out of college and was drafted to Vietnam. They gave him a gun and sent him off to play. He only lasted three months. Pure mindless destruction.’ She shook her head. ‘I was very smart. I didn’t join the protest movement until after I got my party’s nomination to Congress.’

‘And your father didn’t like that.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘Didn’t speak to me for three years. Considered me some sort of traitor. The voters didn’t think much of me either. I finally pulled out and decided to get my MBA and then go to work.’ She laughed. ‘Wall Street beckoned.’

‘Where you could show your father what you were made of?’

‘In spades. And I did too.’ There was the defiance there again. ‘Mind you, I did please him in one way. In my husband.’

‘I didn’t realize until tonight that you’d been married.’

‘Oh, yes, if briefly. To an English army colonel. It didn’t last long. He was killed in the Falklands, but he did leave me my stepson.’

‘I see.’

‘I wonder if you do? Eric’s mother died when he was born. I understood that because I’d gone through the same pain. I understood him and he understood me.’

‘And now he’s gone. What happened?’

She sat there thinking about it for a moment, then got her briefcase from under the seat, opened it and took out the buff envelope containing the material Villiers had sent over from London. ‘Read that.’

She lit another cigarette and lay back in her seat while Barbera worked through the various papers. He didn’t say a word until he was finished. He carefully replaced the papers in the envelope and turned to her, his face like a stone.

‘Drugs,’ she said. ‘How could he? Heroin – cocaine.’

‘You told me earlier how you smoked pot back in the sixties. It’s an even worse problem for kids these days because it’s all so available.’

‘You would know, wouldn’t you?’ The words were out before she could take them back.

He showed no anger. ‘Mrs Talbot, I’m an old-fashioned man. Sure, I was what you would term a gangster, but those I harmed tended to be my own kind. To me, other people were civilians. My family had business with the unions, gambling, prostitution, even booze during Prohibition, and these are human failings which everyone understands. But I tell you this. The Barbera family never took a penny on the drugs market. My grandson, Vito, in London, for example. We got three casinos there. Restaurants, betting shops.’ He shrugged. ‘How much does a man need?’

‘But Eric,’ she said. ‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s a popular misconception that people on hard drugs are hooked by some pusher. The first fix is almost always offered by a friend. Probably he was at some student party the first time it happened. Had a few drinks …’

‘But afterwards,’ she said. ‘Afterwards came the pushers, the suppliers, all happy to keep the pot boiling. To destroy young people on the threshold of life, and for what? For money.’

‘To some people money is serious business, Mrs Talbot. But let’s leave that on one side. What do you intend to do about this? What do you want?’

‘Justice, I suppose.’

He laughed harshly. ‘A rare commodity in this wicked world. Look, the law is a joke. You go to court, it goes on and on. The rich and powerful can buy anything they require because most men are corruptible.’

‘Then what would you do?’

‘It’s difficult for me. Spilled blood cries out for vengeance, that is the Sicilian way. My son dies, he must be avenged. It isn’t a question of choice. I have no choice. I can do no other.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re from a different world. Violence has never had any place in your life, I suspect.’

‘That’s true. I once saw a fist fight as we were driving through the Bronx, from my privileged position in the rear seat of a Cadillac.’

He smiled bleakly. ‘That’s good, you can mock yourself. But now, there is something you must promise me you will do and it is essential.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You must insist on seeing your son’s body.’ He raised a hand to stop her saying anything. ‘No matter how terrible an ordeal. Believe me, I know a great deal about death and of this I am certain. You must see for yourself, you must mourn, or you will be haunted for the rest of your life.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘And there is one more thing you must face up to. Something quite terrible.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘The French coroner’s verdict was clear. Accidental death by drowning under the influence of drugs and alcohol.’

‘That’s right.’

‘His body, Mrs Talbot, was a considerable convenience to those who used it. It occurs to me that it might have been more than a convenience that it was available at all.’

She said flatly, ‘You’re actually suggesting that there was no accident to any of this?’ It was difficult for her to get the word out, but she forced herself. ‘That he was murdered.’

‘Please. It’s all been very convenient, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t wish to make things worse for you than they already are. I’ve lived in a harsh world for too many years. I tend to suspect the worst.’

‘I didn’t think it could be worse,’ she told him, her voice shaking with anger and the last vestiges of denial.

‘I may be wrong and, in any case, I’m sure the authorities would consider the possibility fully.’ He took out his wallet and extracted a card. ‘This is my grandson, Vito’s, address in London. I’ll speak of you to him. He’ll do anything he can. I myself don’t even leave the airport. I fly straight on to Palermo. I know it is unlikely, but if you are ever in Sicily, you will find me at my villa outside the village of Bellona in the Cammarate.’

He took her hand and kissed it gently. ‘And now, my child, you need sleep.’

She reached and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled, stood up and went back to his own seat. She switched off the light and lay there in the darkness thinking about what he had said. The suggestion that Eric’s death had not been accidental filled her with horror. She refused to accept it, pushed the thought away and after a while she did sleep, head pillowed on her arm as the plane droned on through the night.

A journalist in Kent, alerted by a sympathetic friend in the local police force, sent a brief report of the affair to the Daily Mail in London. It recounted only what he knew. That a hearse had crashed on a Kent country road and had caught fire. There was also the mention that a body was involved. Details being understandably sketchy at that stage, it merited no more than a paragraph at the bottom of page three because of the macabre implication. In any event, the issue of the D-notice Ferguson had authorized meant that the story was deleted in later editions, but not before Eric Talbot’s identity had been revealed to the world.

Jago had flown over on the breakfast plane from Paris and was at the service flat in Connaught Street close to Hyde Park by eleven o’clock. As he was unpacking, the phone rang.

Smith said, ‘There’s a small item in the Daily Mail this morning. It seems the boy wasn’t what he seemed. His real name was Eric Talbot and he was a student at Cambridge.’

‘So he used an alias,’ Jago said. ‘That’s perfectly understandable. Why should it be a problem?’

‘Because he wasn’t a nobody after all,’ Smith told him. ‘I’ve made discreet enquiries with the porter at his college. Pretended to be a journalist. His grandfather’s a baronet, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Oh, dear me,’ Jago said, resisting the impulse to laugh out loud. ‘And who got us into this mess?’

‘A bitch in Cambridge called Greta Markovsky. She was a student too. A pusher. I’ve used her for a year now. I thought she was reliable.’

It was the first hint of weakness Jago had ever noted in Smith. ‘But my experience of this wicked old world is that no one ever is. Where is Miss Markovsky to be found?’

‘It seems she overdosed badly on heroin two nights ago. She’s in some rehabilitation place outside Cambridge called Grantley Hall. A closed unit.’

‘Do you want me to do something about her?’

‘I don’t think it’s necessary, certainly not at this stage, and in any case, she’s never met me.’

‘Who has?’ Jago said.

‘Exactly.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘There’s a coroner’s inquest at Canterbury at two o’clock this afternoon. Be there.’

‘All right. And Bird and his boyfriend?’

‘That can wait. I’ll speak to you later.’

‘Yes, I’d better get moving.’

Jago put down the phone and finished unpacking quickly. He decided against changing. There wasn’t really time, not if he was to be certain of making the inquest by two.

Five minutes later he emerged from the lift into the basement garage. The car he habitually used in London, a silver Alfa-Romeo Spyder, was in its usual place. When he got behind the wheel, he paused only to reach under the dashboard for a hidden catch. A flap dropped down to reveal a Walther PPK, a Browning and a Carswell silencer, all neatly clipped into place. He checked both weapons quickly, just to make sure. Life, as he had found, could be hideously full of surprises. Two minutes later and he was part of the traffic in Park Lane.

Ferguson looked up from his desk as Tony Villiers entered the room. ‘How is she?’

‘I met her at Heathrow. Went to Lord North Street with her. Her company has a house there.’

‘Have you gone into things in any detail with her?’

‘Not really. There wasn’t the need. I sent all the relevant material over to her in New York before she left. French coroner’s report and all the medical stuff. She’s here now. She wants to attend the coroner’s inquest in Canterbury at two o’clock. I said I’d go with her. I’ve warned her that if she puts in an appearance, then as next-of-kin she could be called.’

‘Did you now?’ Ferguson frowned slightly. ‘Is she going to be difficult?’

Villiers managed to restrain his anger. ‘It would be perfectly understandable in the circumstances.’

‘For God’s sake, Tony, you know what I mean. This could be a tricky one for all of us. Anyway, show her in and I’ll see for myself.’

He moved to the window, thinking about how he should handle this distraught woman, and turned as she came into the room with Villiers, to get the surprise of his life. She wore a brown suede jacket belted at the waist and matching slacks. The hair hung to her shoulders, a dark curtain on each side of her face which was calm and determined.

‘Mrs Talbot.’ He came round the desk, at his most charming, and took her hand. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Please sit down.’

She produced Edward’s silver case from her handbag, her one sign of nervousness, and he gave her a light. She said ‘Why am I here, Brigadier?’

He moved round the desk to his chair. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I think you do. When Tony said he was bringing me here, I asked him why. He said you were his boss. That you would tell me.’

‘I see.’

‘Brigadier, my husband was a colonel in the British Army and I was a service wife for long enough to learn a few things.’

‘Such as?’

She turned and put a hand on Villiers’s arm. ‘Well, I’m aware that my darling cousin by marriage here is not only Grenadier Guards, but SAS. I was always given the impression that his main line of business was military intelligence of some sort.’

Villiers said wryly to Ferguson, ‘I told you. The smartest brain on Wall Street.’

‘Exactly, Brigadier,’ she said. ‘So if you’re Tony’s boss, what does that make you, and what’s more to the point, why are you involved in what I would have assumed was a matter for the police?’

‘Tony was right, Mrs Talbot. You’re an exceptional woman.’ He glanced at his watch and stood up. ‘We’d better get going.’

‘Where to?’ she said.

‘My dear Mrs Talbot, you wanted to go to the inquest. Then by all means we’ll go, and in my car. We can talk on the way.’

She and Ferguson sat together on the rear seat of the Daimler limousine, Villiers opposite on the jump seat, the glass partition raised between them and the driver.

Ferguson said, ‘There are aspects of this case, one in particular, which do make this, at least in theory, a matter of national security rather than a more conventional crime that would be handled by the police.’

‘That’s hardly the kind of statement to instil confidence,’ she said. ‘It takes me right back to Vietnam and my protest days. I mean, I’ve experienced the best the CIA have to offer at first hand, Brigadier.’

‘You’d better do the explaining, Tony.’

‘International terrorism needs money to keep going,’ Villiers said. ‘A great deal of money, not only for arms, which are expensive, but to fund operations. Drugs are a ready source of that kind of money and we’ve known for some time that in Ulster both the IRA and various Protestant paramilitary organizations have been raising money by becoming involved in the trade.’

‘But how does this affect Eric?’

Villiers took an envelope from his pocket and passed it to her. ‘There’s a more detailed postmortem report from France. They discovered not only heroin and cocaine, but a mixture of scopolamine and phenothiazine in his blood. In Colombia, where it originated, it’s known as burundanga.’

‘It induces a kind of chemical hypnosis, Mrs Talbot,’ Ferguson put in. ‘Reduces the subject to being a zombie for a while.’

‘And that happened to Eric?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, and during the past year, four members of the IRA executed by Protestant factions in Ulster have had traces of the same drug revealed at their postmortems.’

‘And that’s what makes it a security matter, Mrs Talbot. It’s a very rare occurrence,’ Ferguson said. ‘Four members of the IRA in Ulster and now your stepson.’

‘And you think there could be a connection?’ she said.

‘Perhaps the same people were involved,’ the Brigadier told her. ‘That’s what we’re getting at. We’ve got a computer hunt on now covering all Western European countries.’

‘And what have you found?’

‘Several cases in France over the past three years, all rather similar to your stepson’s actually. Death by drowning under the influence of drugs.’

Barbera’s suggestion could no longer be avoided.

‘Which would seem to suggest to me,’ she said evenly, ‘that a number of people have been murdered while in this state of chemical hypnosis you mention.’

‘So it would appear,’ he said.

‘Murdered for one reason only. So that their bodies could be used like some damned suitcase.’ She hammered a clenched fist on her knee. ‘They did that to Eric. Why?’

‘Five million pounds a time, Mrs Talbot, that’s our conservative estimate of each consignment of heroin at street prices.’

She took out the silver case. Villiers gave her a light. The smoking helped to steady her trembling. And it was anger she felt now. No, more than that – rage. They were entering the outskirts of Canterbury, threading their way through the ancient streets. She gazed up at the towering spires of the great cathedral.

‘It’s very beautiful.’

‘The birthplace of English Christianity,’ Ferguson told her. ‘Founded by St Augustine in Saxon times.’

‘And bombed by the Nazis in 1942.’ Villiers shrugged. ‘Not exactly a military target, but we bombed some of their cathedral towns, so they bombed some of ours.’

The Daimler turned into a quiet square. She said, ‘So the computer hasn’t thrown up any more cases then?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ the Brigadier said.

‘That’s not quite true,’ Villiers put in. ‘A case came up this morning. I didn’t have a chance to tell you. Eighteen-year-old girl found in the Thames at Wapping a few months ago.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ Villiers paused. ‘Actually, she was Egan’s foster sister, sir.’

Ferguson was astonished. ‘You mean Sean Egan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good God.’

Sarah interrupted. ‘And who would this Sean Egan be?’

‘A young sergeant who served with me in the SAS. Badly wounded in the Falklands. He’s just left the Service.’

‘Tell me about him,’ she demanded, but at that moment they pulled in at the kerb at the bottom of a row of steps leading up to an imposing Georgian building.