“I love sorbets. Queen Victoria used to stuff sorbets down the throats of all her over-stuffed guests half-way through the menu. The sorbets allowed them to go on stuffing.”
“I didn’t know you were so well educated, darling. I asked what is biting you.”
The lemon sorbets arrived. Garry, in a fit of frustrated rage, crushed his cigarette in the ice.
“Is that how you feel, Mr. Oxfam?” Toni asked, spooning ice into her pretty mouth.
“Look, Toni, I don’t know what’s come over you, but this has turned into a drag.”
“Has it?” She put down her spoon. “Garry, dear, I am always asking myself how it is I land up with a lover who lies to me. It is beginning to bore me.”
They stared at each other.
“Women who are able to spot my lies bore me too,” Garry said quietly.
“There it is.” Toni lifted her hands helplessly. “Damn you, I love you. Let’s get out of here and go home and have sex.”
He paid the bill without shuddering with one of the $50 Travellers’ Cheques Shalik had given him.
In the taxi, Toni sat away from him, putting her feet up on the tip-up seat.
“This photographer… she’s marvellous, isn’t she?” she asked. “Darling Garry, don’t lie to me… tell me.”
He watched the street lights and the rain beating on the pavement, and he sighed. “Okay… yes… she’s marvellous.”
Toni’s small, pretty face tightened with misery.
“Will you be coming back, Garry?”
“Now look, Toni…”
“I’m asking you… will you be coming back to me?”
He hesitated, thinking of the tawny-haired woman who now filled his mind.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, thanks for being truthful.” She moved closer to him and slid into his arms.
Fennel told the taxi driver to take him to the end of Hornsey Road where Jacey had his shabby flat. As the taxi passed Jacey’s building, Fennel peered through the rain splashed window, looking for trouble, but saw nothing to alarm him. At the end of the long road, he paid off the taxi and walked back, keeping in the shadows, his eyes alert for trouble.
He reached the entrance of the block, stepped inside and looked at the steep stairs leading to the upper floor of the building, lit by a yellow light bulb.
Instinct warned him he could be walking into danger. He hesitated, then moving silently into the smelly lobby, he stepped into the telephone booth behind the stairs. He dialled Jacey’s number. He listened to the steady ringing for some minutes, then he hung up. It was unlikely Jacey would be out in this cold rain at this hour… it was after 22.00 hrs. Jacey got up early and went to bed early. Fennel hesitated. His equipment which he had to have for the Natal trip was up there. He had to get it. It was securely hidden in the rafters of Jacey’s attic. It would want some finding if they search for it. He hadn’t told Jacey where he had hidden it so they would have no success if they had put pressure on Jacey.
He grinned suddenly as an idea came into his mind. He lifted the receiver and dialled 999. To the answering police voice, he said, “There’s bad trouble at 332 Homsey Road… top flat… could be murder,” and he hung up.
He then moved cautiously out of the booth, listened, then walked into the darkness and the rain. Keeping in the shadows, he crossed the road and stood in the entrance of a dark alley to wait.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Two police cars came swiftly out of the night, pulled up outside the building and four policemen ran up the steps.
Fennel looked up at Jacey’s darkened windows. After a few moments a light flashed up. He waited, leaning against the damp wall of the alley, shivering slightly in the bleak cold. After some twenty minutes, three of the policemen came out, shoving two powerfully built men into the police cars. The two men were handcuffed. They drove away. That left one policeman up there.
What had happened to Jacey? Fennel wondered. Well, he couldn’t wait. He had to get his equipment. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and tied it across his face, making a mask, then he crossed the street and entered the building and ran silently up the stairs. When he reached Jacey’s floor, he paused to listen. Jacey’s front door stood open. He could hear the policeman moving around in the room.
Fennel crept like a ghost to the door and glanced in. The far wall was splashed with blood. His back turned to him, the policeman was kneeling by Jacey’s body.
Fennel grimaced. So Jacey, the poor stupid sod, had been carved. He didn’t hesitate. Moving swiftly, he was on the policeman before the man realized he was being attacked. With laced fingers, Fennel smashed his hands down on the man’s bent neck with one shattering, terrible blow. The policeman spread out over Jacey’s blood-stained body.
Fennel darted into the tiny, evil smelling bedroom and up the ladder that led to the attic. In seconds, he had got the bag containing his equipment, then slid down the ladder, out on to the landing. He paused to listen, then went down the stairs to the ground floor, three at the time. Panting, he reached the front door where he paused again, hearing the distant sound of a police siren. He slid out into the rain, ran across the road and backed against the wall of the alley as an ambulance and two police cars came roaring to a standstill.
Fennel grunted… well timed, he thought, then set off by the back alleys until he reached a main road. He saw a cruising taxi and waved. The taxi pulled up and he told the driver to take him to the Royal Towers Hotel.
He arrived outside Shalik’s suite and rapped on the door. There was a delay, then the door opened. George Sherborn, a pertly, elderly man who acted as Shalik’s confidential secretary and valet regarded Fennel with startled disapproval. He knew all about Fennel and after hesitating, stood aside and let him in.
“Mr. Shalik is away for the weekend,” he said. “What is it?”
“I’ve got to get the hell out of the country fast,” Fennel said wiping his sweating face with the back of his hand. “I’m in dead trouble. The creeps after me found my pal and carved him. The cops are there now. It won’t take them long to find my fingerprints all over the goddamn place, and when they do, I’m blown.”
Sherborn was never flustered. He could rise to any emergency with the calmness of a bishop presiding over a tea party. He knew without Fennel the Borgia ring operation couldn’t succeed. He told Fennel to wait and went into the inner room, shutting the door. Half an hour later, he returned.
“A car is waiting for you downstairs to take you to Lydd,” he said. “You fly by air taxi to Le Touquet. There will be another car at Le Touquet to take you to the Normandy hotel, Paris where you will stay until the Johannesburg plane leaves. Your ticket will be at Orly, waiting for you.” Sherborn’s round gooseberry eyes regarded Fennel impersonally. “You understand the cost of all this will be deducted from your fee?”
“Who says so, fatty?” Fennel snarled.
Sherborn looked at him with contempt.
“Don’t be impertinent. Mr. Shalik will be most displeased by what has happened. Now get off.” He handed Fennel a sheet of paper. “All the necessary details are here for you. You have your passport?”
“Oh, get stuffed!” Fennel snapped and snatching the paper, hurried to the lift.
Five minutes later, seated in a hired Jaguar, he was being whisked down to Lydd.
Chapter Three
Ten minutes after the meeting between Gaye, Garry, Jones and Fennel had broken up, Shalik had come into Natalie’s office, an overcoat over his arm and a weekend case in his hand. She paused in her work and looked up.
To Shalik, Natalie Norman was part of his background: useful, exceedingly efficient: a dedicated, colourless woman who had been with him for three years. He had chosen her to be his personal assistant from a short list of highly qualified women an agency had submitted to him.