Hard Targets: A Doc Palfrey Omnibus

by Richard Creasey

  “So that they would be away from home and provide an opportunity for the kidnappers. Of course.” His mother cleared her throat. “I have to admit that I was wrong and you were right.” Doc grinned as he listened. He could hear how hard it was for her to get the words out. Apologies did not come easily to his mother. “You were very sensible to fly to Milan to investigate these people.”

  “So it wasn’t quite a ‘jolly’ after all,” said Doc.

  Marion chose to ignore this comment. “I am assigning some people at Digby Mews to look into Africa Child from this end. To trace the money chain. It’s quite an elaborate web and difficult to entangle. And I’m afraid I can’t spare many people. Our investigation into the threat to the US Fifth Fleet is still ongoing and must take priority, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Doc absently. Some thought was nagging at him. Something about Signora Benedetti. The smile on her face as she’d described how she’d met Sofia…

  “Now, those dead men at Sofia’s house. Surely they must offer some kind of lead?”

  “No,” said Doc. “Total dead end.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Believe it,” said Doc irritably. They all had criminal records but there were no connection between any of them, and they had all dropped off the official radar several years earlier, as if someone had hired them and made very sure that they left no traces.” But that wasn’t what was important at the moment. What was important was Signora Benedetti and what she’d said. “I’ve just realised something,” he said. “All those parents of the twins met at the same place. Some kind of study centre which was researching identical twins.”

  Marion Palfrey instantly saw the implication. “You think they might be involved, too? Whoever was behind this study?”

  “It would be a damned good way of keeping track of twins.”

  “Well, tell Sofia’s people to get onto it,” said Marion Palfrey briskly. “We have enough on our plate here in London. And don’t give it top priority. Top priority is finding this shit with a motorbike.”

  Doc grinned. The profanity level was ramping up. “Unfortunately, like I said, that may be a tall order. These people are very well prepared, and very well equipped. The guy on the bike had some kind of EMP device.”

  “And he used this electro magnetic pulse to do what? Knock out the traffic cameras in the area?” One thing you had to say about his mother — she wasn’t slow on the uptake.

  “Exactly,” said Doc. “We wouldn’t have any trace of him at all if Benadir hadn’t been quick-witted enough to take a picture of him with her phone.”

  “Good girl,” said Marion fiercely. “Well, get onto it right away and report back to me when you’ve made some progress.” She hung up, as usual without a farewell and without ceremony. Doc grinned and rose from the sofa where he’d been sitting. It was a well- padded floral sofa and looked quite odd among all the high tech desks, machinery and computer consoles which filled the vast space of the hangar. But maybe it wasn’t so out of place. There were also beanbag chairs dotted around, several refrigerators full of food and a very elaborate coffee machine. Sofia’s staff liked their creature comforts.

  There were five of them working now, busy in white lab coats, including the girl with the glasses who had given him a lift. He nodded to them as he walked past, cautious on his new leg, and started even more cautiously up the long glass staircase to Sofia’s office.

  Benadir was waiting for him inside the Aquarium. “My mother says you’re a good girl,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  “What did I do to earn such high praise?”

  “You took a photograph of what she calls the bastard on the bike. She also called him a shit.”

  “He was a shit,” said Benadir, smiling. “But that photograph wasn’t as much use as you might think. The bike he was riding didn’t match the number plates on it.”

  “Of course not,” said Doc. “These people are professionals.”

  “And both bike and plates were stolen on the previous day. So that’s as far we get with those.”

  Doc smiled back at her. “Yet your cheerful demeanour suggests to me that the situation isn’t totally hopeless.”

  Benadir’s grin widened. “Well, the bike and the plates were a washout. The RST Shadow one-piece motorcycle suit he was wearing doesn’t give us any clues. And the visor of his helmet was smoked glass, so we couldn’t see his face.” She turned to the screen on the wall behind her that featured a large, high definition image of the man on the motorcycle. The suit he was wearing was all black and the helmet canary yellow. “But the helmet itself — that’s another matter.”

  Doc leaned forward, feeling the first stirrings of excitement. “What have you found out?”

  5: Helmet

  The garage was located in a small city called Muggio, a satellite suburb of Milan, located some 20 kilometres to the northeast. Doc arrived there with Benadir driving in convoy with six other Z5 operatives including Rocco. Upon seeing Rocco, Doc had to suppress the urge to ask about Sofia’s nanny. When he’d last seen them, the couple seemed to be growing quite attached to each other.

  Their convoy consisted of three cars and they drove into Muggio on the Via Milano. The sun was just coming up, a splash of reddish orange through the car window to Doc’s right. They drove through town and then turned left onto the Via Leonardi Da Vinci. Here, just past the post office, they turned right down a narrow side street. The street was situated on a hillside and continued downwards along a gentle slope — which they knew from studying maps and from their satellite reconnaissance - was extremely useful. Doc gave a prearranged signal and all three cars cut their engines.

  They coasted silently down the hill, a ghostly convoy, until two of the cars stopped outside a series of long, low, grey buildings with corrugated iron roofs and a sign advertising the Da Vinci Garage and Auto Workshop. The third car continued just past the garage to where a small access road turned to the left and angled behind the buildings.

  Coasting on momentum, this car, driven by Rocco, drifted down the road in total silence before coming to a stop. When they were all in position, they climbed out of the vehicles. The sky was still deep blue, but steadily growing lighter, and a thin line of orange light was creeping over the rooftops to their left. Doc and the others turned to the right and approached the garage. Birds were singing in the dark trees further up the hill.

  There were three entrances to the garage. A small side door, a large metal sliding door at the front for admitting vehicles and a staircase at the rear which led up to an office. In the centre of the large sliding door was another, normal sized door. Two of the Z5 operatives took the side door, Rocco and two others took the back and Doc and Benadir and one other operative, a thin nervous young man, took the one in the middle of the sliding door.

  Each team fed a thin fibre optic flatworm in through the gap between their door and the doorframe and used it to study the immediate vicinity on a handheld screen, and then went in. Rocco’s team opened their door using a shotgun round in the lock. The shot sounded like the beginning of a medium-sized war in the stillness of the small town dawn.

  The other two doors proved to be unlocked and open.

  So they went in.

  The garage was large and shadowy and cold inside. It smelled of fresh paint and freshly brewed coffee. It was empty except for a very startled young man who had been sitting at a workbench sipping the coffee and eating bread and cheese and a neatly sliced apple spread out on an open newspaper in front of him. The young man was tall and chunkily built, with curly blond hair. He was dressed in black jeans and a sleeveless grey tee shirt with a Harley Davidson logo on it.

  When he saw that there were five people pointing guns at him, he slowly put his hands up.

  “All secure up here,” said Rocco from the office on the level above them — a sort of narrow cabin affair affixed under the high roof. A rickety wooden staircase led down into the garage and Rocco and his
team descended this. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else here.”

  Now that they’d safely taken control of the situation, Doc lowered his gun and looked around, the adrenaline ebbing in his veins. There were several vehicles in the long garage, one Fiat jacked up over an oily work pit. The place was grubby but well organised, with the tools neatly arrayed on boards along the back walls. Long workbenches held more tools — and other items. There were the expected auto parts, but also some things that seemed distinctly out of place in a provincial garage. Half a dozen laptop computers, a number of printed circuit boards attached to some kind of test equipment, and two curious headsets.

  These headsets looked at first glance like large headphones, but when Doc picked up a pair he saw that there was a kind of white plastic skull cap arrangement which opened out in sections, accordion fashion, so that the entire scalp of the wearer would be covered. He opened out the skullcap and looked underneath. There were what looked like electrical sensors neatly mounted to the white plastic, joined up by thin pathways of copper.

  “Better put that down,” said Rocco.

  Doc glanced up at him in annoyance. “What?”

  “Don’t touch anything. Now we’ve secured this place we need to send in a forensic team.”

  Rocco wasn’t necessarily wrong, but Doc remained annoyed. There seemed to be some confusion over who was in charge of this operation. Doc had no doubt that he and Benadir had seniority, but Rocco seemed to think that since it was a local undertaking he was in command.

  “So put that thing down, whatever it is,” said Rocco.

  Doc didn’t want to get into a turf war. But still he didn’t put the headset down.

  “Yeah, don’t touch it,” said the blond suddenly. He had been getting steadily more relaxed after the initial surprise of the raid, and now it seemed that the friction between Rocco and Doc had given him the confidence to speak up. That was not a good thing — to let the opposition see that your team has internal divisions — and Doc’s anger deepened.

  So he slipped the headset inside his jacket. It was an almost childish act of defiance, but he would be very glad of it later.

  Rocco glared at him furiously, but didn’t say anything. He too had realised that it was dangerous to let their prisoner see any dissension among them and his professionalism had taken over. “Shut up, Blondie,” he said, turning to look at the man.

  “Can I put my arms down now?” said the man. Blondie was a good name for him. There was something narcissistic and arrogant about him — the sleeveless tee shirt to display his heavily muscled arms, the carefully styled curls of his hair.

  “No,” said Rocco.

  “Look over here,” called the nervous young man who’d followed Doc and Benadir in. He pulled a tarpaulin off a long low shape behind one of the workbenches and revealed a motorcycle. It was the same one that nearly killed Doc a few hours earlier.

  “And look at this,” said Benadir. She lifted up a long black garment hanging over the back of Blondie’s chair. It was the Shadow one-piece motorcycle suit. Doc came over to inspect it, and as he did so he saw something he hadn’t noticed before. On the bench, beside Blondie’s interrupted breakfast, was a canary yellow motorcycle helmet. Doc grinned and went to pick it up.

  “Don’t touch that, gimp,” said Blondie. Doc ignored him, pretending to study the helmet, which was heavy and cold in his hands. But inside he was furious that the man had noticed him limping. He thought he had been walking normally on his newly fashioned temporary leg.

  Then he realised something.

  He hadn’t been limping. He smiled and turned to the man. “Why do you call me gimp?”

  “Because of your bad leg.” The man’s accent wasn’t Italian. And his English was fluent. To Doc’s ear he sounded Dutch.

  “How do you know I’ve got a bad leg?” said Doc.

  Blondie suddenly fell silent, realising that he’d trapped himself. He knew Doc had a bad leg because he had seen the prosthetic splinter under the wheels of his motorbike the previous night. It was a bad slip. Then suddenly the man shrugged and grinned, apparently deciding to accept his blunder. He lowered his arms and folded them on his chest. He seemed very relaxed for someone who’d been taken prisoner at gunpoint in a dawn raid. “So you’ve got a replacement, eh?” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Doc.

  “Pretty quick work. But then you were pretty quick last night, too. For a cripple.” He smiled an evil smile of challenge at Doc.

  Benadir crossed the room in three quick strides and grabbed Blondie by the earlobe. She held this delicate piece of flesh between thumb and forefinger and squeezed hard. He cried out in pain and almost raised his arms to defend himself. But the way everybody suddenly pointed their guns at him discouraged this course of action.

  “Be polite,” advised Benadir, releasing him. The man rubbed his ear and gave her an affronted look.

  “How the fuck did you find me, anyway?” he said. His voice had the petulant, aggrieved note of a child on the verge of tears, protesting against the injustice of the world.

  Doc rapped on the yellow helmet with his knuckles. “This,” he said simply.

  Blondie narrowed his eyes in disbelief. Benadir smiled at him. “That’s right,” she said. “You went to a great deal of trouble to steal an untraceable bike and number plates, and to knock out all the traffic cameras that might pick you up.” A note of mockery crept into Benadir’s voice. “You did all that, you took all those precautions, but you still wore that helmet.”

  Blondie gazed at her in puzzlement. “So what?”

  “So, it’s a very distinctive piece of kit. Custom made and probably one of a kind. Using pattern recognition software we looked through traffic camera footage for a two hundred kilometre radius around Milan for the day before your attack on Doc. It showed you on a different motorcycle, driving right up to this garage.”

  Blondie’s mouth was hanging open. “Shit,” he said. “She told me not to wear my helmet.” Doc’s heart leapt with triumph. She. It was the first concrete fact they had learned about the opposition.

  It sounded like one person was directing the operation — at least this part of it — and that person was a woman.

  “There was another helmet provided for me, along with the suit. But I like my own one. I’ve got it customised just the way I want.” Blondie shrugged philosophically. “I guess I should have listened.”

  They handcuffed his hands behind his back and led him out of the garage. It was warm outside and the sky was clear and pale. The birds were singing more loudly and a fresh breeze carried the smell of flowers. It was going to be a beautiful day.

  Rocco sent one of his men around the back to fetch their car and came with Doc and Benadir. He was reluctant to let go of their prisoner. Blondie was his prize and Rocco didn’t want to entrust him to anyone else. Doc was torn between amusement and annoyance.

  They had just reached the cars on the opposite side of the road when the garage exploded.

  There was a deafening roaring sound, a gust of superheated air strong enough to knock them off their feet and then a fiery rain of debris all around. Doc found himself kneeling in the road beside their car, shakily struggling to get up. Benadir was helping him. His ears were ringing. He turned back towards the garage.

  The walls of the structure were still standing, but the roof was gone and an oily black cylinder of smoke was rising, twisting towards the sky. Orange flames licked at its base.

  Blondie was lying face down on the road, unable to get up because of his hands handcuffed behind his back. Rocco helped him to his feet. Blondie’s face was streaked with dirt. He stared at the burning building.

  “That bitch,” he said. “She tried to kill me!”

  6: Genoa

  Blondie turned out be a Dutch national by the name of Joeri Van der Veet, 25 years old with a police record relating to minor drug trafficking and speeding offences. He had never been to prison, although that was a prospect that
was definitely looming now. He didn’t appear daunted by the possibility, though. After the incident of the exploding garage, he just seemed glad to be alive.

  Z5 were still trying to determine the cause of the explosion. The best guess seemed to be a time device. If so, they had been miraculously lucky to have left the scene just before it had detonated.

  Although the man that Rocco had sent around the back of the garage to collect his car hadn’t been so lucky. He’d been killed instantly when a chunk of concrete from the rear wall had hit him.

  In any case, the incident had thoroughly spooked Joeri. He seemed to interpret it —quite rightly — as a savage and deliberate attempt to guarantee his permanent silence. So he proceeded, by way of reprisal, to tell them everything that he knew. He seemed to have no loyalty whatsoever to his former employer. Which was fair enough, as he pointed out, since she had no loyalty to him.

  In any case, as Benadir put it, “He not only had a helmet the same colour as a canary, he sang like one as well.”

  Unfortunately, although Joeri told them everything he knew, what he knew didn’t amount to very much.

  He didn’t know the name of the woman who had hired him, or of anyone else in the organisation. He did describe the woman — “The most beautiful babe I’ve ever seen. A little bit old for me, but I don’t mind that, you know. A cougar. A MILF. Though I don’t think she’s anyone’s mother.”

  The one concrete piece of information he could offer was the location of a safe house where he’d met the woman, and the rest of the team.

  A coastal villa, in Genoa.

  *

  Joeri told Doc and Benadir most of this in their car on the way back to Milan.

  As soon as he heard about the house in Genoa, Doc began to calculate furiously. And increase the speed of their Lancia, until they were hurtling along the road dangerously close to the point where the car would go out of control. When Benadir shot him an anxious glance he explained to her.