1956 - You Find Him I'll Fix Him by James Hadley Chase

Author:James Hadley Chase [Chase, James Hadley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

II

It isn't often that I lose my temper, but when I do, I have a field day. The sight of the Renault gave me a rush of blood to my head.

I became determined to find out who the driver was, and what he was playing at. So long as the car was behind me, there wasn't much I could do about it. Somehow I had to get him in front of me, then I could crowd him into the kerb, force him to stop and get a look at him. If he wanted to play it rough, I was in the mood to hang one on his jaw.

I drove around the Colosseum with the Renault fifty yards in the rear. When I reached a dark patch in the road, I slammed on my brakes, swung the car to the kerb and pulled up.

Taken by surprise, the driver of the Renault had no chance to stop. The car shot past me. It was too dark to see whether the driver was a man or a woman. The moment the car had passed me, I let in my clutch and went after it, sending the Lincoln forward with my foot squeezing the gas pedal to the board.

The driver of the Renault must have guessed what I planned to do. His reaction was quicker than I expected. In his turn, he trod on the gas, and the Renault surged forward.

It went streaking down Via dei Fori Imperiali like a bullet from a gun.

For a moment I thought I was going to catch him. My front bumper was only a foot off his rear fender, and I was ready to swing the wheel over and hit him, but he began to pull away.

We were travelling now at around eighty miles an hour. I heard a shrill, indignant police whistle blasting somewhere in my rear. I saw beyond the speeding Renault the Piazza Venezia looming up. I saw the slow-moving traffic ahead, and my nerve faltered. I knew I couldn't roar into the piazza at this speed without hitting a car or killing someone. My foot went down on the brake pedal and I slowed.

The Renault leapt away from me. Its horn gave a long, warning blast, and then the car went screeching into the piazza, missing two cars by inches, and forcing another to skid to a standstill. Only slightly slackening its mad speed, the Renault, its horn blaring, stormed across the piazza, and disappeared into the darkness and towards the Tiber.

I heard the police whistle shrill again. Anxious not to have an argument with the law, and pretty certain I had been travelling too fast for any policeman in this light to have taken my number, I swung into the Via Cavour, slowed down to a respectable speed and took a long circular run back to the Colosseum.

I was rattled that the Renault had got away, but I would rather he escaped than for me to attempt to compete with his kind of driving.

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