The Creep (2 page)

Detective Superintendent Howard Mainwarring wiped the sweat from his brow with a not-so-clean linen handkerchief. He was beginning to get frustrated, the traffic was slow, the heat unbearable, he almost slipped into a trance. What stopped him
was
the sounds of bugles, drums, trumpets and cymbals.

The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace was in full swing as his black cab swung somewhat erratically into The Mall and headed down towards Whitehall.

Mainwarring was relishing the pomp and pageantry, and was wondering how the guards put up with the heat under their busbies.

He was also congratulating himself that he had persuaded Sta
n Barron, the supersleuth and
forensic psychol
ogist, not to join the FBI's B
ehavioral Science Unit in the States, but to stay in England with him, and help solve the serial killings that had taken place over the last five years.

Furthermore
, he was looking forward to briefing
Detective
Sergeants Martinson a
nd Fl
a
ck
man at New Scotland Yard, two key players, in his seventy-strong team.

When you see car chase
s like Steve McQueen's in
Bullit
t
and the one with Gene Hackman in
The French Connection
it's thrilling, but there are people who drive like that in Britain, on a regular basis, without even realizing what they're doing, without even being filmed. Make McQueen and Hackman look
like a coupl
a kids on the dodgems at the county fair.

Multi-millionaire Bill Harvey, world renowned hypnotherapist, was peering out of his immaculate white Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am, embellished with a blue Firebird decal on the hood, and blue racing stripe.
An American muscle car in London and i
t was parked on Westminster Bridge, overlooking the River Thames and the Victoria Embankment. Big Ben stood glistening in the early morning sun, monumental and majestic. This was to be the Trans-Am's last airing before he left for the States.

Harvey tried to get a cartridge into the tape deck, but something had jammed.

There was a mobile vendor selling burgers and coffee on the bridge, and every now
and then cars would pul
l in. Harvey looked at his attrac
tive passenger and said
,
"It's a shame they don't sell pretzels or bagels like they do in the States. You can't beat
it you know, bagels with cream
cheese and lox." Harvey finally got the tape
deck to
work.

"You can't wait to get back out there, can you? I bet you've got a woman lined up
already." G
inny whined in a pleasant, teasing sort
of w
ay.

"I haven't, and I've t
old you: I'll be busy." Harvey
switched on the ignition and turned up the tape deck volume-loud. The song was
Be-Bop-a-Lula
, the singer was Gene Vincent.

A car pul
led out from behind the Trans-A
m and cut in close. It was a red XJS V12 Jaguar.

The
guy looked at Harvey and scowled. He gassed it hard and turned left at
the lights, past the Houses of
Parliament and wen
t hurtling down Millbank. Har
vey was immediately in hot pursuit - 90 mph and still accelerating.

The guy in the XJS knew what he was doing. This was a fast car and one very quick and skilful driver. The race was on and they very quickly followed the contour of the river.

He braked hard, and threw the Jaguar
r
ound the particularly tight left hand corner and over Chelsea Bridge at 100 mph, asking for t
rou
ble. Bill Harvey was with him all the way.

Harvey drifted the American muscle car
r
ound the roundabout at 75 mph plus, rear end chopping and hopping and trying to get away from him. He straightened out and could feel his pulse
begin to race. Within seconds he was up again to
s
omething over 90 mph.

Suddenly, to Harvey's horror, less than
one
hundred yards in front of him was an idiot
p
ulling out of a side turning. The car just kept
c
oming out into the middle of the road with another
c
ar right behind it, on a tow rope - a steel rope
...
f
uck!

Harvey had
a slow-motion vision of hitting
the tow-wire and pulling one of the cars into
the
right-hand side an
d the other car into his left, m
aking a steel sandwich, his beloved Trans-Am
b
eing the filling. Harvey felt his heart in his
m
outh.

He hit the brakes,
hard
, and screeched to
a
halt. Tires smoking, he actually stopped on the steel tow rope
...
they were intact, but the XJS was getting away again.

The road was completely blocked, two
c
ars across the road with a tow rope stretched
t
ightly between them.

Harvey sat. Ginny gawked, her mouth wedged open. Eight doors opened from the two
c
ars and four Road Rats got out of each car. Road
R
ats are the Hell's A
ngels' opposition, except they d
rive around in cars
– well, wrecks actually. They w
ear colors and carry around live rats, stuffed in
t
heir pockets and in their hair.

Each of the eight now converging on
H
arvey and Ginny carried a baseball bat, with nails
d
riven through the business end.
A formidable weapon.
Disaster for tires, no good at all for
b
odywork, and they'd do your head in pretty bad,
too
. Indeed Mungo, their leader, had just finished
his penance to society in Wormwood sc
rubs for
throwing a nun
, who
he had just raped, off t
he
t
op of the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith. Harvey slammed the Firebird into
reverse
f
or twenty yards, braked, cogged into low and hit the gas. The Road Rats thought he was coming straight for them, the more quick-witted of them diving over the trunk of their
car for cover, b
ut at the last moment Harvey shot up onto the sidewalk, just missing a lamp-post and a road sign, before swerving back onto the road and hitting the gas.

H
arvey built up speed fast: seventy, eighty,
s
hit! Cyclist
!
Down to 50 mph, up to 90 mph again.
Queenstown Road has lots of tight bends in it. Ooops! He was all over the show,
sliding
, skidding, wheels spinning, tires smoking, jabbing at the steering wheel,
Be-Bop-a-Lula
still going flat
chat
. But the big Jaguar had disappeared.
Shit
!

Acting on some kind of hunch, Harvey swung down a side-road that opened out into a huge commercial vehicle park. Being Saturday it was completely empty, all except for one bright and shiny red XJS, parked right in the middle.

For twenty seconds Harvey paused on the perimeter of the vehicle pa
rk, pointing directly at the XJ
S. He cogged into low and left it there, held his left
foot on the brake and revved the big seven and a half
liter
V8 flat chat with his right until it reached six thousand revs, then released his
f
oot from the brake and all hell broke loose. The t
ir
es spun like
Catherine
wheels, propelling Harvey
directly towards the stationary XJS like an Exocet missile.

Harvey kept his foot to the floor, never faltering, not even for a fraction of a second. A twitch of the steering wheel at the very last moment and he shot past the XJS, missing it by a millimeter and then started making dozens of tiny jabs at the power steering, coaxing the big car into a deliberately provoked slide.

The Firebird began to drift around, Harvey's foot still flat on the floor, tires belching out smoke. The G-forces exerted were enough to slow the car down to the correct speed, so Harvey didn't have to lift his foot from the gas pedal when making the slide. He executed a perfect circle with a huge radius, completely under control and headed back towards the Jaguar. This time he passed it on the other side, again missing it by a millimeter.

Wheels still spinning, tires still belching smoke with bits of rubber flying in all directions, Harvey jabbed continuously at the power steering again, gently coaxing the big car into another complete drift, using only the G-forces to slow the vehicle down. Second circle complete, he was now back on the rubber tracks he'd made at the start.

He pulled up right next to the XJS, in a perfectly controlled skid. He had laid a perfect figure-of-eight in molten rubber. It looked good, too: perfect proportions. The smell of burnt rubber pervaded the atmosphere, tire smoke hung in the still, crisp morning air.

Harvey switched off the endless loop tape of Gene Vincent, got out and walked over to
the Jaguar where the driver was just getting out. Jimmy Holmes was an old friend of Harvey's. He was going to be responsible for looking after Harvey's car collection while he was in the
States setting up new franchisee
s.

They had an almighty chuckle about Harvey's antics, tied up a few loose ends, and went to get breakfast. They settled on the Hotel Russell. Harvey and Jimmy Holmes ate heartily. Ginny just nibbled.

Max Hatfield, Harvey's business manager, greeted him at Los Angeles International Airport on his first day back in the States. Within the next two weeks Harvey well and truly settled into Pinewood, the magnificent fifteen-bedroom, two-pool, ex-Charlie Chaplin mansion in Beverly Hills. Harvey knew the Los Angeles area pretty good. He'd never actually lived in Beverly Hills before, but he had lived in Santa Monica on and off and he sure knew a lot of people.

America was a tremendous challenge. Harvey was happy to be the figurehead of the International Organization of Hypnotherapy, although he didn't want anything to do with the actual day-to-day running of the business or the one-on-one hypnotherapy. He saw himself in the same role as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.
Merely a figurehead.
Hey, why not?