The Creep (35 page)

"Well, I reckon we're onto a winner. We've done our research pretty damn good and everything points to him being here every Wednesday morning.
Killed a lot of people, by the looks of things.
We've put together twelve cases that tie into his modus operandi and movements, and about another thirty possibles." Martinson stubbed out his cigarette and carried on.

"You've got your share of these guys over here, apparently - we've been reading up on them."

"You'd better believe it - some right crazies and weirdos," said Hernandez as he braked hard to avoid a dog.

"I think the heat does the dogs in too. That one didn't know whether he was coming or going, I bet he doesn't last the day if he carries on like that." Hernandez built up speed and fiddled with the air conditioning lever again.

"This guy we're after has been going for years and not left too many clues. The only way we tracked him down is because this
eighteen
-year old girl recently came out of a coma after
two
years and gave us some clues.

"One of our chaps put two and two together, and dozens of unsolved murders have all started to fall into place. Came together like a cosmic
jigsaw puzzle." Martinson brought both of his hands together and meshed the fingers like two cogs, as if to demonstrate the process. "Because of some of the nasty stuff this guy's been up to, the press has been calling him 'The Creep.'
Been giving us a bad time for not bringing him in.
Up until now we didn't have too much to go on.

"This
lovely
little girl had his
fat
cock stuffed down her throat and it suffocated her. She passed out and he left her for dead. She went into a coma, which probably saved her life." Martinson sighed.

"Jeeeeez!
The Creep.
Sounds like a fucking weirdo." Hernandez took in a deep breath.

"Yeah the guy's been hard to track down because he's kept on the move all the time. He operated on a figure-of-eight circuit all over England," said Martinson wiping the sweat from his brow.

Hernandez swung into San Miguel Avenue and started to look out for numbers. "What number did you say? Oh here it is
,
I can see it on the left." He parked the Pontiac Bonneville.

There was a knock on the door of Harvey's office. He was meditating in a sort of funny way - he was glancing through
Tycoon
magazine, looking at some very seductive and voluptuous females in a
number of extremely erotic poses. He quickly put the magazine under his desk.

"Yes, come in Jai."

"Bill, there are three gentlemen here to see
you,
they say they're from the police. They look rather official. Shall I show them in?" The three officers waited in the mock-Chippendale waiting room.

"Yes sure, take the rest of the day off and put the answering machine on - and lock the front door when you leave. I'm winding up here myself soon. Have a good one." No sooner had he finished speaking than Jai was showing in three suited gentlemen. They looked more like businessmen than police officers. One of them spoke:

"I'm Officer Hernandez from LAPD. These gentlemen are from England, I'll let them introduce themselves." The officer nodded to his two associates, who were holding out their identification.

"I'm Detective Sergeant Martinson; you are Bill Harvey also known as Dr. Bill, is that correct?" He offered Harvey his hand. Harvey shook it.

"Yes, I am," said Harvey.

"I'm Detective Sergeant
Flack
man, and we have to ask you some questions pertaining to your activities in the United Kingdom. Can we sit down? This will take quite bit of time."

"Yes, sure, why don't you draw up those three chairs from over there?" Harvey pointed to the chairs and the officers pulled them up in front of Harvey's husky walnut desk. They
didn't notice the soft background music, it wasn't distracting at all. Baroque music, sixty beats a minute.

"Before we start, gentlemen, do I detect a Sunderland accent in you two gentlemen?" Harvey looked at the
two Englishmen in a friendly, '
nice to hear another Brit' sort of way.

"Yes sir, you do, how did you pick that up? Most people get it muddled up with Newcastle or Liverpool."

"I've travelled all over England and America and studied phonetics." He nodded to the American cop, "I bet you're not from around here originally; I'd say that was a Boston accent." The cop nodded in agreement.

"There used to be a little pub we'd go to in Sunderland, the Jolly Wagoners. I bet it's still there. And when I used to live in Boston I used to go to Red Sox and Bruins games all the time." Harvey chose his words carefully. He paused briefly, to allow them to assimilate what they had just heard. He mentally whisked them from where they were to where he wanted them to be, then continued:

"Now look, before we start I'd like to make a statement." They hadn't noticed that Harvey had dropped his tonality and was speaking softly and quietly and deliberately, as he continued:

"You see, when I first came out to the States from England I had everything going very comfortably. Things were easy. I was extremely
relaxed
. The more relaxed I became the easier it was for me to be more comfortable and the more comfortable I became the more
relaxed
I became.
In actual fact I became so
relaxed
I felt sleepy most of the time, sometimes even drowsy."

He kept his tempo down, decidedly monotone, boring, almost hypnotic you might say; he never stopped the boring monologue but just kept going, very gently:

"Then I made myself comfortable by breathing
deeper
, and the
deeper
I breathed the more relaxed I became." The three guys just sat and gazed and listened and Harvey increased his breathing slowly but surely until he was breathing fairly heavily. His right hand wavered in front of him as though he had a slight tremor and the three cops were transfixed on this as they listened to his voice. Harvey turned up the music just slightly. He never stopped his boring monologue or his hand shaking, not for a single moment.

"Sometimes I even notice my eyes closing and I just let them. My eyes become heavy and I let my breathing get
deeper
and
deeper
and then my arms become
heavier
and
heavier
, and at the same time I notice my legs becoming
heavier
and
heavier
, and before I know where I am I've slipped into a wonderful deep state of relaxation. You can let yourself relax and you may drift off into a very pleasant state of relaxation."

Harvey increased the volume of the music. All the time just talking away, monotonic, and breathing heavily. He never altered his pitch, not once, not even for a few seconds; it was the most boring monologue he'd ever given in his entire life.
And probably the most important.

"You can sit and look at the pictures in your mind, feel the emotions, hear the sounds and I'm just going to step out to the bathroom and
..."

Very quietly he closed the door on the way out. He could hear them snoring through the closed door and halfway down the corridor. He didn't even look back.

The gnomes of Zurich supply discreet banking services and financial engineering for all sorts of interesting clients around the world, and up until recently they were pretty good at it.

The streets of Zurich are clean, not a candy wrapper in sight. Every building has its own bomb shelter fully equipped with six months rations of food, water and other necessities.

Today, like most days, the air was crisp and clean. You could see for miles.

Gerado Lererkramer walked into the main office on the fourth floor.

"I just got another fax through from the IRS in Los Angeles, sir. It's the second one we've had this week concerning a numbered account. Our client's name is Anita Broughton a.k.a. Rosie Future." The gnome slipped the fax onto his superior's desk, and stood back.

Grubach pushed his glasses up his nose. "Yes, I've already seen it. You can telephone Suzy in Los Angeles and give her the following information on that
confidential
numbered account." He almost sniggered when he said
confidenti
al, Lererkramer noticed,
then
h
e continued:

"During the period August 1982 to September 1990, we received total deposits of thirteen point seven million U.S dollars, which, at the customer's request, was converted to Japanese Yen and various other currencies. On the 19th of September 1990 we received a deposit of four point two million U.S. dollars. On 20th of September 1990 the account was closed and all funds were withdrawn. That is all you can tell her. Give her my regards and tell her she owes us one, and mention that everything worked out well for our mutual client, Mr. Joseph Goldstein." He handed some papers to Lererkramer.

Grubach puffed on his cigar, but it had gone out and it was leaving a stale taste in his mouth.

"For your information only, just out of interest, those funds were electronically transferred through Austria to Liechtenstein, then on to a numbered account in Jersey in the Channel Islands, the last four million dollars going to Moscow Narodny Bank, would you believe it or not?" He smiled and rubbed his hands together like a miser, and continued: "I'd also like to bet she hasn't had a day off in eight years. Most employees who embezzle are frightened someone will discover them the minute their back is turned and I bet that's what she's been up to, would you believe it or not?"

"Yes sir, I would believe it.
One shrewd lady, that one.
She made a good turn on her money, despite our astronomical charges and then
disappeared without trace, just in the nick of time.
Her alias
...
Rosie Future?
Is that some kind of a joke, sir?"

The desk sergeant at LAPD Headquarters was getting a little irritable.
He'd had a particularly busy morning. The usual crap as far as he was concerned.
Lots of 488s, a 261, a 415, three 11¬54s, a 10-72 and some 10-57s.
What had really been bugging him
was
the SWAT team and the hostage situation. It was still touch and go. Then there were phone calls, instructions, a veritable hive of activity best likened to a scene out of Hill Street Blues, only this was for real.