Specials: Based on the BBC TV Drama Series: The complete novels in one volume. Brian Degas
38
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He barely noticed the car on his tail, holding just behind and to the right, where it shouldn’t be. Yet somehow he could sense the danger lurking over his shoulder.
Unfortunately, as he made his way along the freeway into Birmingham, Special Constable Freddy Calder’s conscious mind was elsewhere. In fact, he was on the car-phone.
‘Hi, John. Look here, I’ll be with you in …’
Raising his wrist with a snap, almost a salute, Freddy checked his Rolex – actually, an imitation Rolex, but at a quick glance no one was ever the wiser.
‘… twenty minutes. And, old chum, what I have to show you is sensational.’
His gaze momentarily shifted to the sample case lying on the passenger seat, open just enough to offer a tantalizing glimpse of lingerie, a pair of sheer lace panties to be exact. Freddy’s talent was to imagine just how they would look on virtually anyone he knew, or thought he knew, or even conceived in his waking dreams of knowing. Of course, lying on the back seat was his model, ‘Salvador Dolly’, a curvaceous cut-out figure of an ideal woman wearing only her underwear every hour of the day.
‘Listen, this latest stuff’s so light you better hold on tight to your secretary when she wears them.’
They shared a low, lascivious laugh reserved for men talking about women. Whenever he sensed a customer had the same thoughts in mind, Freddy would start counting his money.
Accidentally and simultaneously, his car veered into the right lane, although he made a swift correction in steering with a slight move of his finger. It was then that he noticed the car on his tail: a maroon Audi, a ‘mean machine’. Suddenly he was alert, but gave no outward or visible sign of alarm.
‘Well, ’course in that case she’s travelling as light as she can get. Yeah. Fantasy Island … Don’t we all! See you.’
Before he could put away the car-phone and look back to his wing mirror, he heard a Luftwaffe motor roaring behind him. Getting louder, the Audi pulled in parallel with him, then swerved toward him and back, as if testing his mettle, before finally surging ahead full throttle.
Freddy cursed. The fool in the mean machine didn’t realize whom he was fooling with. Never cross Freddy Calder.
The chase was on. Guarding his intent – Freddy didn’t want the fool to know it yet – he tucked his blue Sierra neatly in behind the Audi and started a little tailing of his own. His Sierra provided the ultimate camouflage: not new, perhaps, but trim, tidy, respectable, bright as a button, polished by a lingerie salesman’s loving hands and totally inconspicuous in ordinary traffic.
Freddy reached for the car-phone and punched the number for Divisional Headquarters ‘S’ while keeping his aim fixed on the Audi ahead. Moment by moment, the solitary suspect appeared to be accelerating, forcing the pace, maybe trying to shake his tail.
Nevertheless Freddy Calder was on the case. His mood had changed with his identity: now he was a secret agent of the law – a Special – trailing someone in a hurry.
‘Put me through to Sheila Baxter in Control, would you, Bill? Yeah, it’s Freddy Calder here.’
There was no reason to assume that the response would be immediate, efficient or professionally respectful. Nor was it.
‘Fred-dy Cal-der … Sure I’ll hold, but this is important.’
Damn the bureaucratic mind. It was this kind of red tape, he reflected, that had delayed Napoleon’s conquest of Russia, which would have been better for everyone concerned, as history had demonstrated …
Meanwhile, the Sirens were beckoning Odysseus, not only from his sample case stuffed with intimate and racy unmentionables but also from his anticipation of official sirens heralding the imminent arrival of the everyday police. And what would they think of Dolly?
Should he cover them in some way? Hide them? Absolutely not, for that was the secret of his disguise: a ‘Special’ in ladies’ underwear. Who would think to look at him? The fool in the Audi wouldn’t know what had hit him until it was too late. Freddy might appear to the casual eye to be pudgy and unimpressive, but underneath was a lion ready to pounce. When fists were flying, Freddy Calder would be the gent you’d want in there as a back-up. Many a fool had learned that lesson the hard way.
Meanwhile, at Division ‘S’ headquarters, WPC Sheila Baxter was manning the control room – and that wasn’t the only contradiction in terms. In truth, the awesome-sounding ‘control room’ constituted four walls, no windows and no room whatsoever to manoeuvre. The sole generous proportion in this room was a desk too large, and the only semblance of control, computer terminals and the usual communication gear.