Vulture is a Patient Bird

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.