Hard Targets: A Doc Palfrey Omnibus

by Richard Creasey

  There was a gun in his hand, a Sig Sauer. Doc took it. They hadn’t had a chance to obtain any weapons on the way here, everything was moving too quickly, and he was glad of the comforting weight of it in his hand. He checked the clip. It was fully loaded. The man had never had a chance to fire it.

  “Give it to me,” hissed Sofia, reaching for the gun. Doc shook his head. He’d let her drive here, but now they’d arrived he was taking charge.

  “They’re my girls,” whispered Sofia fiercely. She made a grab for the gun and he moved it out of her reach.

  “That’s why I’m hanging on to this,” he said.

  “This is my house and they are my girls!”

  “That’s why the situation needs to be handled by someone else,” said Doc. “Someone who’s detached. You shouldn’t even be here.” He wished Sofia would just shut up and let him think. They were moving towards the front door of the house, which stood open, a cheery glow shining out into the darkness of the garden. It looked incongruously welcoming in the cold silence of the night.

  “Give it to me,” insisted Sofia. She reached for the gun again, and again he held it away from her.

  “Quiet!” Doc stopped and she stopped beside him, glaring at him furiously, impatiently.

  “We have to get inside,” she hissed.

  “No.” Doc shook his head. He had to think. He was missing something. He stood and stared at the front door of the house, Sofia vibrating with fury at his side. He had missed something, some clue…

  Something vital.

  A matter of life or death…

  The dead man. He had been lying with his head towards the house. So he had been moving towards the house when he’d been shot.

  He’d been shot in the back.

  Doc spun around just in time to see a figure coming through the gate from the street. He aimed and fired without thinking. The figure went down. Sofia jerked at his side, with surprise but no fear. “They were waiting for us!” she said. “An ambush.”

  She hurried to the gate and looked out into the street while Doc bent to examine their assailant. A middle-aged man, potbellied, respectably dressed in casual clothes. He might have been a school teacher out for an evening stroll and a cup of coffee. Except for the gun in his hand. He’d sat down with his back against the garden wall. He was quite dead. Doc had hit him through the centre of the chest, causing massive trauma and an instant fatality.

  Doc took the gun from him. The rubber grip of the pistol was still warm from the man’s hand.

  Sofia came back in from the street. “All clear,” she said. Strangely, the act of almost being killed had calmed her. Doc handed her the dead man’s gun.

  “Here,” he said. “You’ve got one now.”

  *

  The two men inside the house must have been counting on their comrade on the street to keep watch, because they weren’t ready for Sofia and Doc.

  They went up the grand central staircase silently, tensely, holding the dead men’s guns, but they needn’t have worried about making the noise. The pair of men were trying to break into the safe room using two cutting rigs which created a hellish sizzling noise that obliterated any other sound in the room.

  The safe room was built into what had once been a large upstairs bedroom. The new installation had now swallowed most of the space in the room, leaving just a narrow annex inside the doorway from the upstairs hall. The annex had a yellow and pink Persian carpet and two Louis Quinze chairs to make it look less like a dead zone, but it was essentially just a shallow rectangle in front of a blank white wall with a large black painted door set in the centre.

  By the look of it, Doc and Sofia had arrived just in time. The safe room door was fixed in place by a total of eight steel rods which ran into the steel and concrete frame surrounding it. And the men were just cutting through the eighth rod when Doc and Sofia appeared in the doorway behind them.

  Both men were intent on their task and unaware that they had company. They had been wearing neat business suits but each had stripped off his jacket for the sweaty work of cutting through the door, revealing matching shoulder holsters with automatic pistols cradled in them. There were grey patches of sweat on their white shirts and the cutting torches cast an eerie blue glow in the darkened room.

  With gestures Doc indicated that Sofia should deal with the man on the left. He’d take the one on the right. She nodded.

  Doc took aim carefully. He wanted to take at least one of these men alive. He hesitated… Where best to hit his target? A shot in the leg would put him out of action, but it ran the risk of him bleeding out if Doc hit the femoral artery. Doc decided to take the risk. He tightened his finger on the trigger…

  Two shots thundered beside him, echoing over the noise of the cutting torches. Both men went down. Doc stared in astonishment at Sofia. She had shot both of them. Now she stepped coolly into the room and stood over the men. Before he could stop her, she fired two more shots, one into the head of each man.

  Doc was speechless.

  She looked at him. Her eyes were dark with a cold, implacable fury.

  “They tried to hurt my babies,” she said.

  The dead men had dropped their cutting rigs and the blue flame of one was sizzling an ugly black scorch on the Persian carpet. The other started to chew away at the elegant gilt leg of one of the Louis Quinze chairs.

  Doc switched off one of the torches. Sofia turned off the other.

  3: Motorcycle

  Within minutes of Sofia taking out the two men, other Z5 operatives began to pour into her house. The scene was secured and ambulances arrived to take away the bodies of the four casualties.

  After her cool execution of the intruders Sofia had become almost frantic again, desperate to be reunited with her children.

  But this was easier said than done. The cutting torches had ruined the locking mechanism for the door so that it no longer operated. An intercom beside the door had also been destroyed, but Sofia was able to call through some of the ragged gashes left by the cutting torches and tell the nanny and the twins that they were safe now. The hysterical voice of the nanny and the wails of the twins could be heard responding from the other side of the ruined wreck of a door.

  They had all been admirably cool and brave while they were under assault, but now that rescue was in sight, everyone just seemed to have decided to let go.

  Doc and Rocco, one of the local Z5 men, carefully inspected the mangled door and decided the only thing for it was to finish the job the dead men had started and cut through the final rod that held the door in place. Doc found himself in the absurd position of arguing with Rocco about who should have the honour of doing this, but in the end he gave up and sank down gratefully into one of the Louis Quinze chairs – the one without the leg that wasn’t half burned through — and became a mere spectator.

  Rocco did an admirably brisk and efficient job of cutting through the final security bar while Sofia watched anxiously and offered a lot of unnecessary advice. He left a tiny splint of metal intact on the bar and then switched off the torch. The girls and the nanny were told to stand well back and then Rocco tried to kick the door down. Eventually, with the help of three other Z5 men, they managed to snap the final fragment of the durable bar and the door collapsed inwards with a demonic clatter. No sooner was it flat on the floor than the two little girls came racing across it, as if it was a drawbridge, and into the arms of their mother.

  She seized them and hugged them fiercely and all three began to cry.

  The nanny, a pale looking young woman with terror wringing her pretty features, emerged shakily from the safe room and also began to weep. She looked around and, presumably because he was nearest, threw herself into Rocco’s arms. After his initial surprise, Rocco didn’t seem to find the embrace of the sobbing young woman disagreeable.

  Doc arose wearily from the antique chair. His leg was killing him and although it was still early it felt like it had been an awfully long night. He limped out of the
room, leaving the sound of weeping women behind him, and hobbled carefully down the long staircase towards the front door of the house.

  Sofia would be safe now. Every Z5 agent in northern Italy seemed to have descended on the house. Half a dozen were outside in the grounds, dispersed and vigilant, and the rest were in the large kitchen making coffee and looking for things to eat.

  Doc took out his phone to call for a taxi and found a message waiting for him. He read it with a sick, sinking sensation.

  Things had turned out all right for Sofia, but it seemed that others hadn’t been so lucky. Benadir reported that two other couples that had attended the charity ball — the parents of two sets of twins — had both had their children abducted while they were there.

  They hadn’t had the advantage of an alert nanny and a safe room.

  Why twins? thought Doc. What the hell could it mean?

  His mind tried to grasp the problem, but it slipped away like a wet bar of soap. He felt a sudden longing for the council and comfort of Benadir. He rang her and she said she’d meet him at the hotel. She clearly wanted to know what had happened at Sofia’s house but she restrained herself from asking, for which he was profoundly grateful.

  In the end he was spared the chore of ordering a taxi and got a lift with a Z5 intern, a slender, languid girl with huge black-framed spectacles who worked with Sofia’s team in the installation out at Milan airport. She was almost shaking with excitement at the recent dramatic events, but she drove smoothly and efficiently through the city traffic and didn’t ask Doc any unnecessary questions, which endeared her to him.

  Doc and Benadir were staying at the Straf Hotel in the Via San Raffaele, a stylish little boutique establishment, centrally located, which they’d chosen for its proximity to the opera house and the sights and attractions of Milan generally. They had been planning to enjoy those sights and attractions in the course of a long, lazy weekend. He remembered Benadir’s excitement when they’d been planning their itinerary.

  What had his mother called it? A “jolly”.

  All that seemed like a million years ago. Now all he wanted to do was take off his leg and climb into bed with Benadir and sleep for a week.

  The girl with the glasses dropped him off at the intersection of Piazza della Scalla and Via San Raffaele. She would have driven him all the way to the hotel but he wanted to walk for a few minutes, or limp for a few minutes, to clear his head. He thanked the girl and she tooted her horn and waved as she drove off into the night. Doc wandered, his mind thankfully blank. Too much had happened, he had received too much input. Now he just wanted to put his brain in neutral and let his subconscious sort things out.

  The question of the twins kept trying to surface – why abduct twins specifically? But he forced it from his mind. He looked at his reflection in the shop windows as he passed and was startled at how dishevelled he looked. The immaculate elegance of his tuxedo had been deeply compromised. A gunfight will tend to do that.

  Doc found himself standing outside a branch of Agent Provocateur and staring in at a display of expensive lingerie. He didn’t remember seeing that before. He checked his phone and found he was in the Via Santa Radegonda, which ran parallel with the street where his hotel lay. He must have taken the wrong turning.

  Drowsily, he doubled back, heading north. He came to Piazza della Scalla again. There was a pedestrian crossing here. He waited for the traffic to ease and went over it, moving around the sharply angled corner of the buildings and finally he was back in the Via San Raffaele. There was another pedestrian crossing in front of him. Once he was on the other side of it he’d be on the same side as his hotel. He felt unutterably weary, but he was almost there now. Almost back in the arms of Benadir.

  As if summoned by his thoughts, he heard her voice. “Doc!” He looked up and saw her standing on the other side of the street, waving to him. His spirits lifted and he smiled and waved back to her. He checked both ways — you couldn’t be too careful about the traffic in Milan — and started slowly across the pedestrian crossing.

  “Doc!” This time there was something different about the tone of Benadir’s voice, something that cut right through him.

  “Doc, look out!”

  The motorcycle came out of nowhere, swooping down the night time boulevard, it’s engine noise gunning and echoing off the shop fronts in the narrow street. It was moving at an implausible speed, reckless and relentless and heading straight for Doc. He took a hasty step backwards, out of its path…

  And the motorcycle changed its course.

  Aiming straight for him.

  The motorcycle was right on top of him now. The noise was overwhelming. He heard Benadir scream as he threw himself backwards. He landed on his back, drawing his legs in. But he was too late.

  The motorcycle hit his left leg and tore it off.

  4: Linate

  “I understand Sofia’s people have grown you a new leg,” said Marion Palfrey.

  Doc repressed his impatience. He knew that this was his mother’s heavy-handed attempt at humour and that it concealed her genuine concern for his safety and wellbeing. He said, “That’s right. I’m with them now.” He glanced around him at the brightly lit space of Z5’s Milan HQ. It was a hangar at Linate airport that had been converted into a state of the art workspace. Overlooking the floor was the large glass enclosed office used by Sofia and nicknamed the ‘Aquarium’. He could see Benadir in there now, leaning over one of the large computer screens where Sofia kept track of her world.

  Sofia herself was still at home with her children, understandably enough, but she had given Doc and Benadir carte blanche to use her facilities, and her people were doing everything they could to assist. “The techs here have been very helpful,” said Doc. “As you say, they’ve used a 3D printer to ‘grow’ me a temporary plastic prosthesis. Just until they can assemble a proper replacement.” He remembered lying on the pavement of the Via San Raffaele, the motorcycle roaring past, the tearing pressure as his left leg was pulled free, the shattering of it under the fleeing rear wheel of the bike.

  It had been an almost lethal contact, much too close for comfort. Yet in a way it had been a relief. The bloody leg had been bothering him all day. “I’ll only be wearing the plastic unit until they can build me a proper new one.” This hangar was where Doc’s prosthetic limbs had been designed and built. He’d been lucky; if he was going to lose a leg, Milan was the best place in the world for it to have happened.

  “Build one?” His mother’s voice was coldly affronted. “Surely they don’t have to build one from scratch.” She sounded angry, but he knew her anger was just displaced anxiety after his close encounter with the bike.

  “Well, not quite from scratch. But they didn’t have one in stock, so to speak. Nothing fully assembled. So they’re going to have pull together the components—”

  “Pull together the components?” said Marion Palfrey. “That doesn’t sound very satisfactory. I am going to send you one of your spares from Brett Hall. Remind me when we get there, Andy,” she said in an aside to the chauffeur who was driving her Bentley Mulliner. Andy murmured something Doc couldn’t hear, but which Doc was sure was an obedient affirmative. Then his mother addressed him again. “I’ll have it air couriered to you immediately.”

  Doc did a quick calculation in his head. He concluded it was highly unlikely that one of his spares could get to him from England before Sofia’s team had assembled a new model hear at Linate.

  But he didn’t tell his mother to abandon her strategy. It would make her feel useful. It would give her something to do, and hopefully keep her off his back.

  “That’s a good idea, Mum,” he said.

  “There, I’ve already done it,” she announced with satisfaction. He could hear the clatter of a computer keyboard as she briskly typed instructions to some hapless underling. “It will be with you in a matter of hours. Now, what do we know about this bastard on the bike?”

  Doc grinned. He’d hardly ever he
ard his mother use profanity and in other circumstances it might have shocked him to hear her utter even such a mild term as ‘bastard’. But right now it gave him a warm, affectionate feeling. She wanted to find the motorcyclist even more badly than he did.

  “We want to find him and nail him to the wall,” said Marion Palfrey.

  “Well, that might prove to be easier said than done. The people behind this have proved very professional and have done a good job of covering their tracks.”

  “Really? There are three of their number dead at Sofia’s townhouse, which doesn’t seem to speak so highly of their professionalism.”

  “That was the exception to the rule,” said Doc. “The other abductions were carried off without a hitch.”

  “Those poor people,” said Marion. “The parents. They must be terribly worried.” Doc considered that this was a classic example of British understatement. “What were their names again?”

  “The Mancinas and the Benedettis.” He remembered the couple he’d been introduced to at the opera house. The plump, smiling woman. She wouldn’t be smiling again any time soon.

  “It is extremely odd that all those targeted were identical twins,” said Marion. “Do we have any theories yet as to why that might be?”

  Doc glanced up at the Aquarium where Benadir was still busy at the screen, the light from it glowing on her intent, beautiful face. “The only scenarios we’ve been able to come up with concern deception.”

  “Using one twin to impersonate the other,” said Marion. “Is that what you mean? It hardly seems to make any sense.”

  “Perhaps using them in a situation where people don’t know they’re twins and it’s an advantage to have them in two places at once,” suggested Doc.

  “But why use children? Why not adult identical twins?”

  Doc shrugged. “I don’t know. But one thing is for certain; this Africa Child charity was directly involved in the kidnapping. They gave free invitations to the parents of all the twins.”