A Season in Hell. Jack Higgins

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