A Season in Hell. Jack Higgins

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.