Читать книгу A Season in Hell - Jack Higgins, Justin Richards - Страница 8

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.’

‘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.’

He turned and walked off without another word, whistling tunelessly, and Agnès 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 and 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 and Sons 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 plated 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 colour 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 in dark mahogany, the handles and studwork of gilded plastic in case cremation was favoured. 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 the 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 sickly 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. ‘Come on, hurry 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 got 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 honourable 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 off himself. But then that snivelling 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, although 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 as far as Jago knew. He didn’t even know what had put Smith onto him in the first place. Not that it mattered. All that did matter was that now there was almost a million pounds in his Geneva account. He wondered what his father would say to that. He 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 Agnès be at Vigny tomorrow, one o’clock sharp, for the departure. When the plane takes 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, Agnès 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. You’ll hear from me.’

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, changing a hundred-franc note at the bar, going into a telephone booth in the corner where he dialled a London number.

He spoke quietly into the tape recorder at the other end. ‘Mr Smith. Jago here.’ He repeated the number of the telephone he was using twice, 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.’

‘Excellent. Our friends will pick it up as usual. It should be making us money within a week.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Your account will be credited with the usual amount plus ten per cent on the last day of the month.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘The labourer 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 Agnès stayed in her Citroën on the edge of the runway and watched as the hearse arrived and the coffin was manoeuvred inside the small Cessna plane. The hearse departed. The pilot disappeared inside the control tower.

‘It doesn’t look good,’ Agnès 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 told him. ‘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 whisky 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 dialled the number 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 Agnès 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 the telephone and clasped his hands together, leaning forward towards the weeping woman in front of him. He was sixty and slightly balding, wore gold pince-nez glasses, black jacket and tie, 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 shadows on that dull November afternoon but the flowers massed in the corners, the oak panelling, were reassuring, as was his soothing, slightly avuncular voice that had a touch of the parson about it.

‘That would be wonderful.’

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. It 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 offences 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 ageing 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 at 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 Deepdene and his own establishment, developed from an eighteenth-century country house. A 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.

The door opened and a handsome young black man entered. He was tall and muscular and the well-cut chauffeur’s uniform showed him to advantage. ‘You rang, Mr Bird?’

‘Yes, Albert. The package from France. It will be later than we thought.’

‘That’s a shame, Mr Bird.’

‘Oh, I expect we’ll manage. Is the transport ready?’

‘In the rear garage, sir.’

‘Good. I’ll just have a look.’ Bird turned to Mrs Davies. ‘I’ll leave you for a few minutes to complete those forms and then I’ll help you choose a suitable coffin.’

She nodded gratefully. He patted her shoulder and went out. Albert opened a large umbrella and held it over his head as they crossed the cobbled yard.

‘Bloody weather,’ Bird said. ‘Always seems to be pissing down these days.’

‘Dreadful, Mr Bird,’ Albert agreed and got the garage door open. When he pulled a dustsheet away a gleaming black hearse stood revealed. ‘There you are.’

Beautifully painted on the side in gold was the legend: Hartley Brothers, Funeral Directors.

‘Excellent,’ Bird said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘Knocked it off myself in North London, Thursday. The log book and tax disc are from a write-off I found in a scrapyard in Brixton.’

‘You’re certain you won’t be remembered?’

Albert laughed. ‘In Brixton? You, they’d remember, but me? In Brixton, just another brother, just another black face. Do we go the usual way?’

‘Yes, you take the hearse. I’ll follow in the Jaguar.’

Which Albert knew meant just in case anything went wrong, which really meant that he would be left carrying the can while the old bastard did a runner. Not that it mattered. His day would come, Albert was certain.

‘That’s fine, Mr Bird.’

Bird patted his face. ‘You’re a good boy, Albert, a lovely boy. I must think of some way to reward you.’

‘Not necessary, Mr Bird.’ Albert smiled as he opened the umbrella. ‘Serving you is reward enough,’ he said and they started back across the yard.

Agnès and Valentin arrived back at Vigny at four to discover that the plane had already departed. She watched Valentin hurry across to the hangar and speak to the mechanic again. She lit a cigarette and waited. Valentin returned in a little while.

‘Left fifteen minutes ago.’

‘Did you phone?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said as he switched on the engine. ‘And a funny thing happened. You know how sometimes an answering tape stays on even though someone has picked up the receiver?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, as my usual man answered, I heard a tape playing.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It said: This is Deepdene Garden of Rest. We regret there is no one here at the moment, but leave your number and we’ll get back to you.’

‘Now that is interesting, chéri.’ Agnès smiled, managing to look quite vicious. ‘A chink in Monsieur Jago’s armour that could be worth a great deal.’

Woodchurch Airfield was not much bigger than Vigny. An aero club really, used occasionally for charter or freight flights. Situated in the depths of the Kent countryside, it had no customs facilities which meant that the customs officer who received the Cessna with Eric Talbot’s coffin had to drive all the way from Canterbury. He was not pleased by the delay, wanted only to be on his way. Formalities were of the briefest. The necessary papers were signed and he and the pilot helped Albert load the coffin into the hearse.

As Albert drove through the gate and turned into the country road the Cessna roared down the runway and lifted into the sky. Behind him, Bird, who had stayed discreetly out of the way, took up station in the black Jaguar. Albert reached for the half-pint of vodka in the glove compartment, then shook a couple of his special pills from a bottle, driving one-handed. He washed them down with the vodka and within a few minutes was on a marvellous high.

He checked out the Jaguar in his rear-view mirror. It was already dusk and Bird had turned on his lights. Always a cautious one, Albert thought. Never took a chance if someone else could take it for him and, usually, that someone else was Albert.

‘Albert this, Albert that,’ the chauffeur said softly, glancing into the mirror again. ‘I sometimes wonder what the silly old bugger thinks I am.’

He took another swig from the bottle, then realized, too late, that he was running into a bend. He dropped the bottle and swung the wheel. His offside front wheel mounted the grass bank, collided with a block of granite which had fallen from a low wall. The hearse careered across the road, went straight through a wire fence and ploughed down a slope, uprooting young fir trees on its way, sliding to a halt in a gully below, half on its side.

Only the seat belt had saved him from going through the windscreen. He got the driver’s door open and pulled himself out. He stood there, slightly dazed, aware of the Jaguar pausing on the road above. Bird appeared at the top of the short slope.

‘Albert?’ There was genuine fear in his voice.

‘I’m all right,’ Albert called.

At the same moment he saw that the coffin had smashed through the glass side of the hearse, the lid bursting open so that the corpse hung out, still swathed in the shroud. He dropped to his knees and peered under the vehicle and saw that the bottom end of the coffin was caught underneath.

Bird scrambled down the slope to join him. ‘Just get him out. We’ll put him in the boot of the Jaguar, but for God’s sake hurry. Someone might come.’

Albert reached under the hearse. There was a slight, uneasy creaking and it swayed slightly. He jumped back. ‘This damn thing could topple over at any moment and he’s pinned by the feet.’

Bird stooped and when he straightened he was holding the vodka bottle. ‘Drinking again,’ he said furiously. ‘What have I told you?’ He slapped Albert across the face and threw the bottle into the trees.

Albert cowered away, a hand raised, a child again. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bird. It was an accident.’

Bird took a penknife from his waistcoat pocket and opened it. ‘Cut his stitches. Open him up. We’ve got to get that heroin.’

‘I couldn’t do that, Mr Bird,’ Albert said.

‘Do it!’ Bird cried and hit him in the face again. ‘I’ll get a bag from the car.’

He thrust the penknife into the chauffeur’s hand, turned and scrambled up the slope. Albert, terrified, dropped to his knees and pulled the shroud away. The boy’s eyes were open, staring at him. He averted his own eyes as best he could and started to hack at the stitches.

On the road above, Bird got the boot of the Jaguar open and found a canvas bag he used for shopping. He went back to the top of the slope and peered down into the gathering darkness. ‘Have you got it?’

‘Yes, Mr Bird.’ Albert’s voice was strained and muffled.

‘Put it in this.’

Bird tossed the canvas bag down and looked anxiously along the road. Thank God it had happened on a side road and the flat farmland beyond the bend meant that he could see some considerable distance. His heart was pounding and there was sweat on his face. What would Smith say? The prospect was too awful to think about.

He slid down the slope. ‘Are you ready, for God’s sake? Have you got it all?’

‘I think so, Mr Bird.’

‘Right, let’s get out of here.’

‘But they’ll still find the body, Mr Bird. Certain to.’

‘Even if they do, they can’t trace any of us. Not in France, not here, and there is such a thing as destroying the evidence. Go on! Get up there and get the car started!’

Albert scrambled away and Bird unscrewed the cap on the fuel tank. Petrol spilled out onto the ground. He took out his handkerchief and soaked it, then went halfway up the bank. He found his lighter, touched it to the handkerchief and tossed it down onto the hearse. For a moment, he thought it was going to go out and then a yellow tongue of flame flickered into life. By the time he reached the top of the slope, the hearse was beginning to burn. He had a glimpse of the corpse’s eyes staring at him accusingly, then turned and got into the Jaguar and Albert drove away.

Later, at his desk at Deepdene, waiting for Smith to return his call, he sipped brandy and tried to pull himself together. It was going to be all right. It had to be. Smith would understand. The telephone rang as Albert entered the room with the tea things on a silver tray. Bird held up a hand, motioning him to silence, and picked up the phone.

‘Smith here.’

‘It’s Bird, sir.’ Bird’s hands were shaking. ‘Actually we’ve had a bit of a problem.’

Smith’s voice didn’t change in the slightest. ‘Tell me about it.’

Which Bird did, omitting any reference to Albert and his drinking, blaming the entire incident on a steering defect.

When he was finished, Smith said, ‘Most unfortunate.’

‘I know, but accidents will happen, sir.’

‘I can’t comment on that, I’ve never had the experience,’ Smith said.

‘So what do we do, sir? Will Mr Jago be picking up the stuff as usual?’

‘Not necessary this time. I’ll take delivery of the goods tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock precisely. You will leave it in luggage locker forty-three at Victoria Station in London.’

‘But the key, sir?’

‘Will be in an envelope in your morning mail. I’ll have a duplicate,’ Smith said.

‘Right, sir.’

‘There had better not be any more accidents, Mr Bird, or Jago will be round to have words, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

‘No need for that, sir,’ Bird gabbled.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Bird. The young man was a nobody. They’ve all been carefully selected nobodies. No way of tracing him to any of us. With any luck, this should prove to be a temporary inconvenience. Goodnight.’

Bird replaced the phone and Albert said, ‘What did he say?’

The older man told him. He was brighter now, relieved and reassured at the way Smith had taken things. ‘He’s right. The kid was a nobody. The hearse was stolen. All the paperwork phoney. The scuffers won’t stand a chance on this one.’

‘Scuffers, Mr Bird?’

‘Sorry, Albert, betraying my youth there. That’s what we called coppers in Liverpool when I was a lad.’

Albert nodded. ‘I was thinking, Mr Bird. A locker at Victoria Station. I mean, if I hung around, maybe I could catch a glimpse of him. I did it before, remember, when that Frasconi geezer turned up.’

Bird shook his head pityingly. ‘Albert, I don’t know how you’ve survived this long. Do you really think someone as big as Smith would be that stupid? If you even tried it that bastard Jago would be on you like a vulture. Miracle you got away with it before. They’d find you floating down the Thames with your dick in your hand, and that would be such a waste. Now what have we here?’

‘Tea, Mr Bird.’ Albert poured some from Albert’s favourite silver pot into a delicate porcelain cup. ‘Ceylon, just the way you like it!’

‘Lovely.’ Bird took a sip, then gulped it down gratefully. ‘Nothing like a nice cup of tea, as my old mother used to say.’ He glanced up at Albert, reached up and patted his cheek. ‘You’re a good boy, Albert, but a little foolish sometimes.’

‘A good thing I’ve got you to look after me, Mr Bird,’ Albert said and poured him another cup of tea.

In Paris, at that precise moment, Jago was listening to Smith’s version of events. ‘A balls-up is putting it mildly,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Nothing for the moment,’ Smith told him. ‘With luck, we might get away with it. Let’s wait and see, but if things go sour, I’ll need you over here to handle the disposal work. You’d better come over to London in the morning. The usual service flat in Hyde Park. I’ll be in touch.’

‘My pleasure, sir.’

Jago replaced the telephone. He stood staring down at it, then started to laugh. It really was too funny for words. He was still laughing when he went into his bedroom to get dressed.