Hard Targets: A Doc Palfrey Omnibus

by Richard Creasey

  Doc took out his iPhone and checked the local map for a route to Edgar Honnington’s house. As he was putting it away, it rang. He didn’t recognise the number, but it was local. He answered it cautiously.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello,” said a voice with a Canadian accent, “this is Inspector Hestings. We met a little earlier today.”

  Doc leaned forward, all attention. “Yes, inspector. What can I do for you?”

  “Well it seems we’ve got someone in custody down here at the Police Operations Building who says he’s one of your guys.”

  “What do you mean, one of our guys?”

  “He says he’s a Z5 agent.”

  Doc was silent for a moment. “What’s his name?”

  “Just let me check. Something foreign, Dutch I think.”

  “Dutch?”

  “That’s right. I may not be pronouncing it correctly. Joeri Van der Veet. Is that how you say it? Joe-ree?”

  “Actually, it’s pronounced ‘Yuri’,” said Doc through clenched teeth.

  “You know him, then?”

  “Oh yes.”

  9: Positive Pressure

  The Police Operations Building — which Doc soon learned that everyone, including the cops, actually referred to as ‘the cop shop’ — was located at 303 Prideaux Street in the Old City Quarter.

  Joeri was in a cell at the back of the building.

  He looked up eagerly when Doc came in.

  “My old friend!” he said. “So good to see you. How is the leg?”

  “Pretty good, thanks,” said Doc. “It hardly hurts at all. Especially compared to the headache that I’m starting to get.”

  “Headache? Oh, you’re joking. That’s fine. So when do I get out of here?”

  Doc came into the cell and sat down beside Joeri on the bunk. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit. He looked at Joeri. “So you’re working for Z5.”

  “That’s right. Undercover.”

  “As part of a motorcycle gang.”

  “That’s right, I infiltrated them. Hence the garb.” Joeri patted his leather trousers and motorcycle club tee shirt. “I’ve got a really cool leather jacket, too, but they took it away from me when they brought me in here.”

  “Along with a large quantity of weed.”

  “It wasn’t such a large quantity. Hardly enough for personal use, even. Anyway, it’s all part of the cover. The cover for my undercover mission.” Joeri grinned. “Didn’t your mother tell you?”

  “No, she didn’t, actually. Not everything, anyway.”

  Joeri grinned, “So you didn’t know it was me, eh?”

  “That’s the little detail she omitted.”

  “You’re surely not still holding a grudge because of that small incident in Milan? I mean, you only ended up with a few bruises. You were fine. I ended up behind bars in that hellhole San Vittore. If anyone should be holding a grudge, it’s me.” Joeri seemed pleased with this logic.

  “So how is it going,” said Doc. “You undercover mission?”

  “Great! I’ve got all kinds of valuable information for you. Intel, as you guys call it.” Joeri studied Doc eagerly. “Let’s get out of here and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it now?”

  Joeri studied him dubiously. “Don’t you want to go and get a coffee or something?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Joeri shrugged. “Well, okay. So I get here and I infiltrate the gang — quite a bunch of guys, I can tell you — and I discover that just before I arrived there was a big buy made. Of very high quality cocaine.” He nodded eagerly. “And that’s exactly what I was told to look out for. Some high roller buying cocaine of the finest sort. Because that’s the guy that you’re looking for, right? That we’re looking for. This Professor Rondivallo. And that’s who must have made this buy.”

  “And you missed it.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t my fault I missed it. It happened just before I arrived.”

  “What about subsequent purchases?”

  Joeri made a sad face. “Well, that’s the odd thing. There was just that first buy. And then nothing. And if he’s as into the nose candy as everybody says, he should have re-supplied by now. But nothing.” Joeri shrugged helplessly. “And I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground. If he’d bought more, I’d know about it.”

  Doc started to get up. “Okay, that’s that, then.”

  “Hey, where are you going? Hang on. Wait a minute. Just because I wasn’t here when that first buy happened doesn’t mean that I didn’t make enquiries so we could find out who made the buy, and trace Rondivallo.”

  Doc sighed and looked at him. “And did you make enquiries?”

  “Sure I did. Discreet enquiries. I didn’t want to get my head blown off with a sawn off shotgun. That’s what they use in this part of the world, by the way, to settle disputes.”

  “And did you find out who made the buy?”

  “Sure. It was this guy nobody knew. But — wait — he came highly recommended. By the prison network. The cons’ network. He was a friend of a friend of somebody who was doing hard time in the States.”

  “Do you have a name for him?”

  “No. You got to be really careful asking questions like that. You can get your head blown off.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any information at all concerning his whereabouts, or anything that might connect him to Professor Rondivallo?”

  “Not at this current moment, no.”

  Doc got up and started for the door of the cell.

  “Hey, wait, where are you going?”

  “So long, Joeri.”

  “Don’t go. You haven’t heard what I’ve found out.”

  Doc turned and looked at him wearily. “What have you found out?”

  “This guy, the one who bought the cocaine, he’s just one of a group of very heavy people who have arrived on the island lately. Someone has been bringing them in, hiring them. They have a job for them.”

  “And what is the job?”

  Joeri shrugged. Doc turned away again and started for the cell door. “And then there’s the syringes,” said Joeri.

  Doc froze. He came back into the cell and sat on the bunk again. “What syringes?”

  “The same guy who bought the coke wanted to buy a lot of syringes. Clean syringes. They’re not that easy to get hold of from legitimate suppliers.” Joeri smiled. “For some reason people think they might be used for taking illegal drugs. So now you have to buy them on the black market. And this guy wanted to buy a load of them.”

  “And did he get hold of them.”

  Joeri nodded. “Oh yeah.”

  “But you have no idea what he wanted them for.”

  Joeri shook his head. He had a hurt expression on his face. “I don’t know why you’d say that. I know exactly what he wanted them for.”

  “What?”

  “Inoculation. Immunisation. Whatever you call it. These guys, this gang someone is assembling — they’re being given shots to protect them from something.”

  “From what?”

  “I don’t know. But I think you do.” Joeri was smiling again. “I did good, didn’t I?”

  Doc got up from the bunk. “You did pretty good.”

  “So I can go now?”

  Doc shook his head. “No, Joeri. You’re staying here. Locked up for your own safety and everyone else’s.”

  Instantly Joeri was on his feet. “Hey, that isn’t fair. We had a deal. I’m working for Z5. And I’m doing a good job. You’ve got to let me go.” He took an aggressive step towards Doc. Doc didn’t seem at all intimidated, though. In fact he smiled as if he’d be glad if Joeri kept coming at him.

  And behind Doc, in the hallway beyond the open cell door, Inspector Hestings appeared again from the alcove where he’d been discreetly waiting and listening. Joeri stared at the two men and sat down on his bunk again.

  “It�
��s just not fair,” he said sulkily.

  Doc stepped out of the cell and Hestings locked the door again, sealing Joeri inside. They walked down the hallway and back through a heavy security door into the front of the building where the offices and administration sections were located. “He’s quite a character,” said Hestings.

  “He certainly is,” said Doc.

  A sergeant approached them holding a slip of paper. “Excuse me sir,” he said to Doc. “There’s a message for you. Your mother asked you to call her. Right away.”

  Doc felt his ears and neck burning. He managed to thank the man and excused himself from Hestings. He found a quiet corner of the office where he could make a phone call to England. In a minute he was connected to Brett Hall.

  “I understand you’ve made contact with our undercover operative,” said Marion Palfrey.

  “When were you thinking of telling me who you’d hired?” said Doc

  “I was postponing it for as long as possible, because I expected exactly the sort of reaction which I am getting now.”

  “How could you have used that guy?”

  “Because he was perfect for the job.”

  “Perfect?” Doc fought to keep his voice down.

  “And I don’t want you interfering with him in any way.”

  “What do you mean, interfering?”

  “With his investigation,” said Dame Marion.

  “There isn’t any investigation. I’ve taken him off the case. I’m leaving him locked up here in jail. It’s the best place for him.”

  “It most emphatically is not. I want him out of jail immediately and resuming his investigation. That is a direct order. And if I don’t have confirmation within the hour that you’ve complied with it, then it’s you who is going to be taken off the case.”

  She hung up. Doc stared at the silent phone. He knew his mother wasn’t joking.

  It was hard to say which was worse, the expression on the faces of Hestings and the sergeant when he went back to them and explained that he’d changed his mind and they would have to let Joeri go after all…

  Or the expression of triumph on Joeri’s face when he pulled up on his motorcycle beside Doc’s Audi outside the Police Operations Building, waved cheerfully and called, “See you, stumpy!” before accelerating away with a clamour of exhaust pipes.

  *

  Edgar Honnington’s house was a large handsome Frank Lloyd Wright style structure, all flat roof, dark wood and glass set in a hillside overlooking a nature reserve just off Yellow Point Road on a peninsula north of Ladysmith. The owner’s housekeeper, a middle aged woman called Miss Summers with improbably orange hair, was waiting for him when he rang the bell. She opened the unusually thick front door to allow him to enter and, as Doc stepped into the house, he felt an odd rush of escaping air.

  The interior of the house was spacious and pleasant, with a great deal of natural light. The floors were all wood, covered here and there with rugs. The place was decorated with a vast quantity of native Canadian art — Honnington’s passion. Doc was particularly impressed by the large, brightly coloured wooden masks, which seemed to combine the features of human beings and predatory birds.

  The housekeeper led him into the kitchen and proceeded to make him a glass of overly sweet iced tea while Doc got around to asking the question that had brought him here.

  “Was there any chance that Mr Honnington might have been bitten by a mosquito just before he fell ill?”

  Miss Summers chuckled. “Oh, no,” she said. As if such a thing was an absurd impossibility.

  “Why do you laugh?” asked Doc gently.

  The housekeeper explained that Honnington had suffered from a wide range of allergies, so that house was effectively kept hermetically sealed. None of the windows opened and the doors were all of the heavy duty variety Doc had observed, and were kept shut religiously. Ventilation for the house was provided by a specially designed system housed in the void under the roof. This purified the incoming air with an elaborate filtration system and pumped it around the house under positive pressure — hence the strange breeze he’d felt flowing out of the house when the door had been opened.

  “So even if a mosquito did try to get in when one of the doors got opened, the pesky little rascal would get blown right back out again,” said Miss Summers.

  Doc saw her point, but he felt he had to be thorough. “But a mosquito could still be carried in on a visitor.”

  Miss Summers laughed again. “What visitors? Mr Honnington hardly ever had any visitors.”

  “So no one came to see him on the day when he fell ill?”

  Miss Summers frowned. “Well, yes, actually someone did. But it was just Raymond.”

  Doc felt a faint stirring of excitement. “Who is Raymond?”

  “He’s a native artist. He made a lot of the objects of art you can see around the house here. Mr Honnington buys a lot of stuff from him. Raymond came by that day, just before Mr Honnington got sick, to show him some new pieces. He bought a few of them, too.”

  “Do you know Raymond’s last name?” said Doc. “Do you have a contact address or phone number?”

  The housekeeper shook her head doubtfully, frowning. “No, but you won’t have any difficulty finding him. He’s got a website. ‘Island arts and crafts’.” She wrote the name down on the back of an envelope and gave it to him.

  Doc thanked her and left the house, a blast of positively pressured air following him out. As he walked to the Audi his phone rang. It was a local number again, but it wasn’t Inspector Hestings this time.

  It was Eva Flowers. “Hi, Doc,” she said. “Where are you at the moment?” There was an artificial cheerfulness to her voice that instantly worried Doc.

  “I’m just leaving Honnington’s house,” he said.

  “What did you find out concerning the possibility of a mosquito bite?” There was still that note of tension in her voice that bothered him.

  “Not entirely impossible, but not very likely either. Are you all right?”

  “There’s been two more cases,” said Dr Flowers.

  “Shit,” said Doc. “Are they mosquito related?”

  “Not as far as we can determine at this stage.” She hesitated. “That’s one of the strange things about them.”

  “You say one of the strange things? What else is there?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know both these people. Not personally, but I know of them. They’re both collectors of native art, like Mr Honnington.”

  Doc stood absolutely still, the phone pressed to his ear. He turned and looked back at the house he’d just left. Through the big windows he could see some of the masks he’d so admired. “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, that’s not such a big deal. I mean, so many people collect native art. I do myself. It could just be a coincidence…”

  “That three of the five victims all share the same hobby?” said Doc. “I think that’s more than a coincidence.” Doc found that he had his hand in his pocket clutching a folded piece of paper. The envelope Miss Summers had given him. He took it out.

  “Listen,” he said. “Do you know an artist called Raymond? He has a website called Island Arts and Crafts?”

  “Oh, Raymond Maple. Yes. Why?”

  Doc felt a steady building beat of excitement. “Do you know if those two latest victims bought pieces off him?”

  “Hmm, I can’t say for certain. But it is more than likely. Raymond is really good. A lot of people buy his work. I’ve bought things from him myself in the past.”

  “Do me a favour,” said Doc. “Don’t buy anything else from him for a while.”

  10: Cedar Road

  Doc drove back along Yellow Point Road with a sense of mounting exhilaration. He was certain his investigation was beginning to get somewhere. His stomach felt hollow with excitement. Then a surprisingly loud rumbling noise informed him that it wasn’t just excitement that was making it feel so hollow. When was the last time he’d e
aten?

  He decided he needed some food, some fuel to keep him going. Something fast – a snack. Some fruit would be ideal. Then he remembered that when he’d been driving to the house he’d seen a corner gas station on the intersection of this road and another one. He checked the GPS for the name of it. Cedar Road.

  The gas station had a store attached to it and, outside a number of stalls selling fruit and vegetable and other food.

  A small farmers’ market.

  That would be ideal he decided. He checked the GPS again and increased his speed. He’d be there in a minute or two…

  The first inkling Doc had that something was wrong was when he saw some apples lying on the road in front of him. There were a lot of them, several dozen, and it seemed wrong to just drive over them, so he slowed to a stop. Then he glanced at the grass verge at the side of his road to his right and saw a man laying there, an empty cardboard box beside him.

  Doc switched off the engine of the Audi and got out.

  The man was in his fifties, with bushy white hair, wearing a red and blue lumberjack shirt and jeans. He was lying on his back, eyes closed, evidently deeply unconscious. Doc leaned over him to check his breathing. It was deep and slow. Then Doc noticed something on the man’s face. A livid red mark.

  It wasn’t from a blow however. It looked more like the sort of weal left by an allergic reaction. Suddenly Doc remembered Eva Flower’s words.

  More like an allergic reaction than a normal mosquito bite

  He heard a buzzing, keen and sharp, just above his left ear. Doc leapt to his feet, hands flailing all around his head. He saw a mosquito darting away. Doc looked at the man, at his Audi, at the apples lying in the road.

  The apples.

  The man had clearly been carrying them in the box when he collapsed. He had just bought them and was walking home with them. And Doc knew where he’d bought them. Along the side of the road was a thickly planted screen of shrubbery, but just beyond that was the intersection of the roads, where the gas station was located. It was only ten metres away. Doc jogged towards the cross roads, running with an odd loose-limbed gait, shaking his arms and moving his shoulders back and forth to discourage mosquitoes alighting.