But he had no need to worry. As he reached the darkened
Crown public house, he saw Jacey's battered Morris pull up. He sprinted across the road, opened the car door and slid in.
"Back to your place, Jacey."
"Wait a mo'," Jacey said. The street light lit up his aged, rat face. "W'ot's on the move?"
Fennel gripped Jacey's thin wrist.
"Back to your place!" he snarled.
Jacey caught a glimpse of the vicious twist of the mouth and the half mad expression of contained rage. He grunted, engaged gear and set the Morris in motion.
Ten minutes later, the two men were in a small, shabbily furnished room, lit by a dusty, shadeless lamp that hung precariously from the dirty ceiling.
Jacey put a bottle of Black & White on the table and two glasses. He poured two stiff drinks and cradled his glass in his dirty hands while he regarded Fennel uneasily.
Jacey was a bookie's clerk and did any odd job for the lesser tearaways to earn extra money. He knew Fennel to be a major tearaway. He had met him in Parkhurst jail when they were serving sentences: Fennel for robbery with violence: Jacey for trying to pass badly forged ten shilling notes. When they had been released, they had kept in touch and Jacey had been flattered to have a big man like Fennel interested in him. But now he was sorry he had had anything to do with Fennel. He had heard through the underworld grapevine that Fennel had talked and five of Moroni's men had walked into a police trap. He knew Moroni had put the death sign on Fennel, but he was too greedy to pass up the chance of earning twenty pounds.
Fennel took out Mimi's roll of ten pound notes. He pulled off two and tossed them on the table.
"Freeze on to those, Jacey," he said. "I'm staying here for a couple of days."
Jacey's ferret-like eyes widened. He didn't touch the money on the table.
"Can't "ave you "ere for two days, Lew. Ain't safe. They'll carve me if they find out you've been "ere."
"I can carve you too," Fennel said softly. "And I'm here."
Jacey scratched his unshaven chin. His eyes darted about the room while he considered the situation and the risks. Moroni was probably in bed, asleep, but Fennel was here. Fennel could be as dangerous as Moroni.
"Okay, then . . . two days . . . not an "our more," he said finally.
"In two days, I'll be out of the country," Fennel said. "I've got a job. Maybe, I won't be coming back." He finished his whisky and then walked into the inner room and over to the battered couch that served Jacey as a bed. He kicked off his shoes and lay down.
"You sleep on the floor, and turn that goddamn light off."
"Go a'ead," Jacey said bitterly. "Make yourself at "ome."
He reached up and turned off the light.
A week previously, Garry Edwards had seen in the Daily Telegraph the following advertisement:
Experienced helicopter pilot required for a three week unusual
assignment. Exceptionally high remuneration. Send career details and
photograph. Box S. 1012.
He had re-read the advertisement and had brooded over it. He liked the two words unusual and exceptional. He was looking for unusual work and badly needed exceptional money, so without telling Toni, he had written a letter to Box S.1012, setting out the details of his past career which was as full of lies as a colander is full of holes. He had enclosed a passport photograph and had mailed the letter.
A week had passed, and he now had given up all hope of any exceptional remuneration and any unusual job. On this cold, wet February morning, he sat in Toni's small, untidy sitting-room with a cup of Nescafe by his side while he searched the Situations Vacant columns in the Daily Telegraph.
Garry Edwards was a tall, powerfully-built man of twenty-nine years of age. He was handsome in a rugged way, with humorous brown eyes and dark-brown hair worn fashionably long to his collar. His mouth could laugh easily or tighten to a dangerous thinness. As he sat on Toni's broken down settee, dressed, in a white beach wrap, his long narrow feet bare, the wall clock showed the time was 08.45 hrs.
Having searched the Situations Vacant columns carefully, he dropped the newspaper to the floor in disgust. Well, he would have to do something pretty soon, he told himself. He had exactly one hundred and thirty pounds, five shillings and seven pence before he had to ask Toni to support him, and this, he told himself without much conviction, he would never do.
He had run into Toni White on the Calais—Dover channel boat. Happily, she had been in the bar when he had embarked with two tough-looking French detectives who remained with him until the vessel was about to sail. When they had gone, and after Garry had waved cheerfully to them as they stood on the rain-swept quay to see the vessel leave the harbour — a wave they had stonily ignored — he had gone down to the first class bar for his first drink in three years.
Toni had been sitting on a bar stool, her micro-mini skirt scarcely covering her crotch, sipping a Cinzano bitter on the rocks. He had ordered a double Vat 69 with a dash and then had saluted her. She seemed the kind of girl a man could salute if the man had a way with him, and Garry certainly had a way with him.
Toni was twenty-two years of age, blonde, elfin-like with big blue eyes with dark, heavy eyelashes a cow would envy. Also, she was very, very chic.
She regarded Garry thoughtfully and with penetration. She decided he was the most sexy-looking man she had ever seen, and she had a hot rush of blood through her body. She wanted to have him: to be laid by him as she had never been laid before in her short, sensual life.
She smiled.
Garry knew women. He knew all the signs, and realized that here was an invitation that needed little or no finesse.
He had in his wallet the sum of two hundred and ninety pounds: what remained of the sale of his aircraft before the French police had caught up with him. He was full of confidence and raring to go.
He finished his drink, then smiling, he said, "I would love to know you better. We have over an hour before we land. May I get a cabin?"
She liked his direct approach. She wanted him. His suggestion made everything simple. She laughed, then nodded.
It was easy to get a cabin, draw the curtains and lock themselves in. The steward had to rap a dozen times to remind them they had reached Dover and if they didn't make haste, they would miss the boat train.
While sitting by his side in an otherwise empty first classcompartment on their way to London, Toni had told him she was a successful model, had plenty of work, had a two room apartment in Chelsea and if he wanted a roof . . . "well, honey-love, why not move in?"
Garry had been planning on a cheap room in some modest hotel off the Cromwell Road until he could take stock and find himself lucrative employment. He didn't hesitate.
He had been living now with Toni for some three weeks, spending his remaining capital but not finding any lucrative employment. Now, with no prospects, he was getting slightly anxious. Toni, however, thought it all a huge joke.
"Why worry, you big gorgeous animal?" she had demanded the previous evening, jumping on to his lap and nibbling his ear. "I have all the money in the world! Let's make hectic love!"
Garry finished his half-cold coffee, grimaced and then went to the window to stare down at the slow-moving traffic and at the stream of men and women, sheltering under umbrellas, hurrying to work.
He heard a sound at the front door: letters being dropped into the box.
Toni received many letters each morning from gibbering young men who adored her, but Garry hoped there just might be a letter for him. He collected fifteen letters from the box, flicked through them quickly and found one for himself. The deckled edge, handmade paper of the envelope was impressive. He ripped it open and extracted a sheet of paper.
The Royal Towers Hotel
London. W. I.
Would Mr. Garry Edwards please call at the above address on
February 11th at 11.30 hrs. and ask for Mr. Armo Shalik. (Ref. Daily
Telegraph. Box. S.1012).
Well, yes, Garry thought, he would certainly call on Mr Armo Shalik. With a name like that and with such an address there had tobe a smell of money.
He took the letter into the small bedroom.
Toni was sleeping heavily. She lay on her stomach, her shortie nightdress nicked up, her long, lovely legs spread wide.
Garry sat on the edge of the bed and admired her. She really was delightfully beautiful. He lifted his hand and smacked her sharply on her bare rump. She squirmed, closed her legs, blinked and looked over her shoulder at him. He smacked her again and she hurriedly spun around and sat up.
"That's assault!" she declared. "Where are my pants?"
He found them for her at the end of the bed and offered them. She regarded him, smiling.
"Do I need them?"
"I shouldn't have thought so," Garry said with a grin. "I've had a letter. Could you turn your indecent mind to business for a moment?"
She looked questioningly at him.
"What's cooking?"
He told her about the advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, that he had answered it, and now he had a reply. He gave her the letter.
"The Royal Towers! The newest and the best! What a lovely name! Armo Shalik! I smell bags and bags of gold and diamonds." She tossed the letter into the air and threw her arms around Garry's neck.
Around 11.00 hours. Garry detached himself from Toni's clutch, took a shower and then dressed in a blue blazer and dark-blue Daks. He surveyed himself in the mirror.
"A little dark under the eyes," he said, straightening his tie. But that is to be expected. Still, I think I look healthy, handsome andhandmade . . . what do you think, you beautiful doll?
Completely naked, Toni was sitting in the armchair, sipping coffee. She regarded him affectionately.
"You look absolutely gorgeous."
Garry picked her out of the armchair and fondled her. Having kissed her, he dumped her back in the chair and left the apartment.
At exactly 11.30 hrs. he approached the hall porter of the Ro
yal
Towers Hotel and asked for Mr. Armo S
halik.
The hall porter surveyed him with that blank expression all hall porters wear when they neither approve nor disapprove. He called a number, spoke quietly, then replaced the receiver.
"Tenth floor, sir. Suite 27."
Garry was whisked up by the express lift to the tenth floor. He was conducted by the lift-man to the door of Suite 27. He was obviously too important and too fragile to knock on the door. The lift-man did this service, bowed and retired.
The smell of money, as far as Garry was concerned, was now over-powering.
He entered a small distinguished room where a girl sat behind a desk on which stood three telephones, an I.B.M. golf ball typewriter, an intercom and a tape-recorder.
The girl puzzled Garry because although she had a nice figure, was dressed in a stylish black frock, was beautifully groomed, her hair immaculate, she was nothing to him but a sexless photograph of a woman long since dead. Her blank face, her immaculately plucked eyebrows, her pale lipstick merely emphasized her lack of charm: a robot that made him feel slightly uncomfortable.
"Mr. Edwards?
Even her voice was metallic: a tape-recording badly reproduced.
"That's me," Garry said, and because he never liked to be
defeated by any woman, he gave her his charming smile.
It had no effect. The girl touched a button, paused, then said, "Mr. Edwards is here, sir."
A green light flashed up on the intercom. Obviously, Mr. Shalik didn't care to waste his breath. He preferred to press buttons than to talk.
The girl got up, walked gracefully to a far door, opened it and stood aside.
Impressed by all this, Garry again tried his smile which again bounced off her the way a golf ball bounces off a brick wall.
He moved past her into a large sunny room, luxuriously furnished with period pieces and impressive looking paintings that could have been by the great masters but probably weren't.
At a vast desk sat a small, fat man, smoking a cigar, his chubby hands resting on the desk blotter. Garry judged him to be around forty-six years of age. He was dark-complexioned with close cut black hair, beady black eyes and a mouth that he used for food but not for smiles. Garry decided he was either an Armenian or an Egyptian. He had the stillness and the probing stare of power. As Garry walked slowly to the desk, the beady black eyes examined him. They were X-ray eyes, and by the time Garry had reached the desk, he had an uncomfortable feeling this fat little man knew him rather better than he knew himself.
"Sit down, Mr. Edwards." The accent was a little thick. A chubby hand waved to a chair.
Garry sat down. He now regretted laying Toni an hour ago. He felt a little depleted and he had an idea that this fat little man wouldn't have much time for depleted applicants for the job he was offering. Garry sat upright and tried to look intelligent.
Shalik sucked in rich smelling smoke and allowed it to drift from his mouth like the smoke from a small, but active volcano. He picked up a sheet of paper which Garry recognized as his letter of application and he studied it for several moments, then he tore it upand dropped it into a hidden wastepaper basket.
"You are a helicopter pilot, Mr. Edwards?" he asked, resting his hands on the blotter and regarding the ash of his cigar with more interest than he regarded Garry.
"That's correct. I saw your ad and I thought . . ."
The chubby hand lifted, cutting Garry off.
"This nonsense you have written about yourself . . . at least, it proves you have imagination."
Garry stiffened.
"I don't get that. What do you mean?"
Shalik touched off his cigar ash into a gold bowl at his elbow.
"I found your lies amusing," he said. "I have had you investigated. You are Garry Edwards, aged twenty-nine, and you were born in Ohio, U.S.A. Your father ran a reasonably successful service station. When you were sufficiently educated, you worked with your father and you came to know about motor cars. You and your father didn't get along. Probably faults on both sides, but that is of no interest to me. You had the opportunity to learn to fly: you took it. You have talent with machines. You got a job as an air chauffeur to a Texas oilman who paid you well. You saved your money. The job didn't interest you. You met a wetback smuggler who persuaded you to smuggle Mexicans into the States. The pay was good, and when the operation was over, you decided to go into the smuggling business. You went to Tangiers, bought your own aircraft and flew consignments of various contrabands into France. You prospered as smugglers do for a time. However, you became greedy as smugglers do and you made a mistake. You were arrested. Your co-pilot managed to get your plane in the air while you were struggling with the police. He sold your plane and banked the money for you to have when you came out of the French prison after serving a three year sentence. You were deported from France and you are here." Shalik stubbed out his cigar and looked at Garry. "Would you say my information is correct?"