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CASEBOOK OF GEEZA VERMIES

  I picked up more signs of my quarry along the banks of the upper reaches of the Thames, on the outskirts of Pangbourne, a village on the borders of Oxfordshire and Berkshire as exclusive as it is picturesque. It’s about four or five miles North-west of Reading. The vibratory patterns this Humphries has left in the vegetation are as easy to follow as an eight lane motorway. At one particular point he had stopped and by leaving hard, tangible evidence, the Professor has made a big mistake.

  Alerted by swirling bands and spirals floating as rainbows on the surface of the river, I came across his scent. Carelessly left in a small patch of rushes by a still sleeping chestnut tree between the water and the railings of a pub garden was a small bag of rubbish screwed up with some highly significant bread and pastry crusts. These were definitely alien to the area - ducks, otters and various rodents make up the majority of the fauna to be found around here and I doubt very much that any of them nipped off to the pie shop for lunch.

  And if any of them did, at least they’d have put their garbage in the bloody bin! I know pubs take a dim view of people using their facilities these days if they’re not customers, but I don’t think they’d mind about the rubbish! The fact that this guy dumps litter all around the countryside makes me even more determined to grab him. That really sticks in my craw.

  Anyway, the trail is no more than two days old. Hopefully I can nab him for the weekend.

  Later...

  Damn! He’s smarter than I thought. I tracked him all the way through Reading only to find he has got himself onto the M4 and gone off towards London! It’s like a bloody Wasp’s nest that place, but I have no choice; I have got to follow him. I had already parted company with Joe – Reading was as far as he was going – so I’ve now got to find myself another lift.

  Even if I had my car with me there is no way I’d be driving into the City, not a chance mate! Congestion, congestion charges, road rage, astronomical parking fees – I vowed long ago never to take my car into London again. So here I am, stood at Junction 10 where the Professor’s trail heads East, trying to thumb a lift to the Big Smoke.

  Ah, here we go - a lorry has just pulled up. Right then, to London.

  Later, again...

  Damn it, he’s slipped the net! I kind of knew that once he made it to London his trail was as good as lost, but hope drove me on. Bernard Hope, of Hopes’ Haulage to be precise. He was delivering a truckload of new, blue plastic seats to one of the football stadiums dotted around the capital. A likeable guy and very well spoken for a lorry driver. He told me he started out as a mechanic before switching to work for one of the main banks in a small Lincolnshire town. Through the years he worked his way up to become manager of the branch, but he said his heart had always been in engines, so he quit and started his own haulage company.

  I asked him how he coped with all the aggression you find on the roads these days. He said it was nothing compared to all the hassles and shenanigans he had to deal with in the bank.

  “Besides,” he continued motioning to his thirty-something ton lorry, “people don’t tend to get angry with this. They store it up and let it all out on some unsuspecting granny further on down the road.”

  Eventually he dropped me off pretty centrally – Zone Two, tube users would have called it. With so many people bustling about I would have had enough trouble latching onto him if I was only half an hour behind, but nearly two days? This was going to be difficult. Very difficult.

  However, a quick toke on Old Smokey showed me quite an aura of blackness which he’d left in his wake, so although it was pretty laborious I finally managed to track him South of the River to a phone box in Kennington where he had made a few calls. No one else had used the box, amazingly, but it was damned hard getting a trace. I could only pick up hints of the first call. I knew he had made a couple of others, but how many and to whom there was no way of knowing.

  The phone itself was like putrid treacle and I had to make sure I didn’t put the receiver too near my head or else I would have got a load of sticky, tar-like strands – the decomposing left-overs from his voice - all over me. It was bad enough getting them on my hands, but if they had gone down my ears, or in my mouth - urrrgh! Foul, man.

  Anyway his call had been to a British Airways booking agents and as I tried to pour my mind into the memory of the phone line I had to fight through clouds of distortion so thick that it was not so much cutting through them with a knife as having to hack through them like a Victorian explorer, carving his way through the jungles of the Congo. Too much damned time has elapsed! Africa is all I got. He is going to Africa, and he is going tonight. First class.

  So now I have got to contact Cripplesby to see what he wants to do. If we are still going ahead with the case then I had better find out exactly where he has gone to. There is something about this guy. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m picking up some very dodgy vibes about him. He’s as slippery as an eel in butter and is hiding his tracks pretty well.

  The fact that he is trying to hide them at all reaffirms that he’s up to something - whatever this is about, I’ve only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg. There is more to this than meets the eye. Much more.

  Something ugly. Something tricky.

  Tricky, perhaps, but not impossible.

  ***