A Season in Hell. Jack Higgins

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.

       3

      Brigadier Charles Ferguson had commanded Group Four since its conception in 1972, a large untidy man in his early sixties with a deceptively benign face who affected crumpled suits, his only hint of anything in the slightest sense military his Guards’ tie. Ferguson preferred to work at home when possible, in the Georgian splendour of his Cavendish Square flat, which was where he was the following morning, sitting in comfort beside the Adam fireplace, drinking tea and working his way through a stack of papers, when his Gurkha manservant, Kim, appeared.

      ‘Colonel Villiers is here, sir. He says it’s urgent.’

      Ferguson nodded and a moment later Tony Villiers entered, wearing a black polo-neck sweater, Donegal tweed jacket and faded green cord slacks. His face was white, the eyes very dark, every evidence of real distress there. He was carrying a briefcase.

      ‘My dear Tony.’ Ferguson stood up. ‘What on earth is it?’

      ‘This report just came in, sir. Fed into the general computer, it arrived on my desk, following the usual cross-indexing procedure for service personnel.’ Ferguson adjusted the half-moon reading glasses he wore, walked to the window and studied the report Villiers had handed him.

      ‘Quite extraordinary.’ He turned. ‘But why you, Tony? I don’t understand.’

      ‘Eric Talbot was my cousin Edward’s boy. You remember him, sir? Half-Colonel in the Paras? Killed in the Falklands.’

      ‘Good God, yes. So you’re family?’

      ‘Exactly, sir.’

      ‘But if the boy was passing himself off as this George Walker, how did the Kent Police establish his real identity so quickly?’

      ‘The boy was only partially burned. They were able to take his fingerprints and they were on the national computer.’

      ‘Really?’ Ferguson frowned.

      ‘The boy was a student at Cambridge – Trinity College. Last year he got picked up in a police raid on the wrong sort of party.’

      ‘Drugs?’

      ‘That’s right. It was a user only charge, so he didn’t go to gaol. I’ve only just found this out from Central Records Office at the Yard.’

      Ferguson walked to his desk and sat down. ‘Talbot, yes, I remember Colonel Talbot’s death in the Falklands now. Tumbledown wasn’t it?’

      ‘Yes, he was liaising with the Welsh Guards.’

      ‘And the father. Baronet as I recall. Sir Geoffrey Talbot.’

      ‘He had a stroke some time ago when his wife died,’ Villiers told him. ‘He’s been in a nursing home ever since. Doesn’t even know what time of day it is.’ He paused. ‘Look, do you mind if I have a drink, sir?’

      ‘Of course not, Tony. Help yourself.’

      Villiers went to the sideboard and poured a brandy into a cut-glass tumbler. He walked to the window and stood there, peering out. ‘The thing is, he’s my uncle you see, sir. My mother’s brother, not that we were ever close.’

      ‘Tony, I really am sorry. A good thing the old boy’s not capable of taking this in. I mean, he lost one heir to the Falklands, another in this particularly distressing way.’ He tapped the report. ‘I wonder who inherits the title.’

      ‘Actually, I do, sir,’ Villiers said.

      Ferguson removed his glasses wearily. ‘In normal circumstances such a thing would be a cause for congratulation …’

      ‘Yes, well, we’ll forget about that and concentrate on this.’ Villiers opened the briefcase and produced a plastic packet, which he placed on the desk in front of the Brigadier. ‘Heroin, and the immediate opinion at the lab on briefest of examination is that it’s very good stuff indeed. This is the kind of article you could cut three times over and still sell on the street.’

      ‘All right, go on,’ Ferguson said, his face grave.

      ‘It was found inside Eric’s body when the medical examiner checked him. It also became plain to him that the boy had been dead for days and the subject of a postmortem. Apparently, he recognized the surgical technique used as French, so Kent Police tried the fingerprints on the Sûreté in Paris and came up with this.’

      Villiers passed another report across and Ferguson studied it. Finally he sat back. ‘So what have we got here? The boy goes to Paris on a false passport. Drowns in the Seine under the influence of drugs. After the postmortem, his body is claimed using forged papers and flown to England.’

      ‘Packed with heroin,’ Villiers said.

      ‘Of which this is only a sample. Is that what you’re saying?’

      ‘It makes sense. The police have already established that the hearse was stolen. There’s no such funeral firm as Hartley Brothers. The whole thing was an elaborate front.’

      ‘Which went wrong. An accident of some sort.’

      ‘Exactly. They had to retrieve the stuff quickly and get the hell out of it fast.’

      ‘So fast that this packet was overlooked.’ Ferguson looked grim. ‘You do realize what you’re suggesting, don’t you? The possibility that the boy was deliberately killed in the first place so that his body could be used in this way.’

      ‘That’s right,’ Villiers agreed. ‘I’ve asked the lab for an estimate. They say, judging by the size of that packet, the body could have carried at least five million pounds’ worth at street value.’

      Ferguson drummed his fingers on the table. ‘However, except for your own personal connection, I don’t really see how this concerns us.’

      ‘But it does, sir, very much so. I’ve got a copy here of the French coroner’s report.’ Villiers took it from the briefcase. ‘Notice the chemical analysis of the blood. Traces of heroin, cocaine, and also scopolamine and phenothiazine.’

      Ferguson leaned back. ‘Science was never my strong point at school. Explain.’

      ‘It all started in Colombia last year. The depressive alkaloid scopolamine is produced from the fruit of shrubs in the Andes. It can be converted into an odourless serum, no colour, no smell, a few drops of which can reduce any individual to a state of total chemical hypnosis for at least three days. The condition is so absolute that the victims have no recall of what they’ve done. Men have killed, women been totally degraded, turned into sex slaves.’

      ‘And the phenothiazine?’

      ‘It neutralizes certain side-effects. Makes the victims more docile.’

      Ferguson shook his head. ‘God help us if it ever takes root over here.’

      ‘But it has, sir,’ Villiers said urgently. ‘During the past twelve months in Ulster there have been four cases of members of the Provisional IRA executed by Protestant paramilitary forces where the postmortem has revealed the same thing. Scopolamine and phenothiazine.’

      ‘And you think there could be a link with this business?’

      ‘There could be other