Hard Targets: A Doc Palfrey Omnibus

by Richard Creasey

  “If she’s getting rid of loose ends, then how long do we have before she shuts down her safe house?”

  “That’s right,” complained Joeri from the backseat. “That’s all I am to that bitch, a loose end.”

  “But does she know that he survived the explosion?” said Benadir, nodding at their voluble passenger. “She may not be aware that he’s had the chance to tell us anything.”

  “Or she may be perfectly aware of that,” said Doc, frowning furiously with concentration as he clutched the wheel. They were shooting along the SP151 — the Via Abraham Lincoln — arrowing southwards towards Milan. “Or maybe she’s just very thorough, doing everything in her power to cover her tracks. Which means…”

  Benadir nodded decisively, “Which means that we have to get to Genoa as soon as possible. Before she has a chance to shut down her operation there.”

  Doc nodded. “Which is why I have to put my foot down.” As he spoke, he nudged his right foot down further on the accelerator.

  In the distance behind them they heard a siren begin to scream. Doc glanced at the speedometer. They had exceeded 110 kilometres per hour, the limit for a strade extraurbane principali, or B-road, long ago.

  “That’s the police,” said Joeri, looking over his shoulder, a note of surprise in his voice. “They’re coming after us. Why are they coming after us? I thought you guys were the police.”

  Benadir took out her phone, and by the time she’d finished speaking the police car pursuing them had turned into an escort, driving ahead of them at reckless speed and clearing the way as they headed back into Milan, to Linate airport.

  At the airport they borrowed Sofia’s D-Jet and posted a flight plan to Genoa. The D-Jet was a single engine five-seat plane. Which meant, with Doc piloting it, it could accommodate Rocco, Paola — the girl with the glasses — plus one other Z5 agent, and Joeri.

  Joeri seemed to take it for granted that he was going to come along, too. At first Doc had rejected this notion out of hand and Joeri seemed disappointed and a little hurt when it was explained to him that he was going to be locked up instead. But then Doc realised that his anger at the young man was clouding his judgement. The memory of last night’s attempt on his life was still overwhelmingly vivid, his leg shattering under the motorcycle tyre.

  And then there was that remark about him being a ‘gimp’.

  But when he was able to set aside his anger, and discuss the matter with Benadir, they concluded that on the whole Joeri was more likely to be an asset than a liability. “He can confirm the exact location of the house,” said Doc. They had a satellite image of the villa on their computers already, but Doc had known mistakes to be made in the past.

  “That’s right,” piped up Joeri. “I can confirm the exact location.”

  “And if necessary we can use him to get us inside the house.”

  “That’s right, if necessary I can get you inside,” said Joeri.

  “And if the shooting starts,” said Doc, “we can always use him as a human shield.”

  Joeri fell silent.

  They took off in the D-Jet, flying due south to Genoa. Thanks to their high-speed drive back to Milan, and this supersonic flight across the top of the Italian peninsula, they reached Genoa as fast as it was humanly possible to travel.

  The question remained, was that fast enough?

  *

  They landed at Cristoforo Colombo airport that was located on an artificial rectangular strip of peninsula built out into the ocean just west of the port of Genoa. Sofia had contacted the Genoa division of Z5 and there were two fast cars waiting for them with two local operatives to act as drivers and back up.

  Unfortunately the fast cars didn’t prove very fast in the congested city traffic of Genoa and the drive along the winding coastal road towards Quinto al Mare proved agonizingly time-consuming. It was the slowest part of their entire journey that day. Their drivers argued over whether it would be quicker to cut inland and take the SS1, but in the end they stuck to the coastal route. Doc stared out the window to his side, catching occasional glimpses of the sun gleaming brilliantly on the sea, and tried not to grind his teeth. They crawled along the Corso Italia, following the winding contours of the shoreline, then cut onto a torturously winding series of side streets and then the aptly named Via del Tritone.

  Finally they reached the Via Quinto and the rocky mass of headland that jutted out into the sea. A group of white buildings perched on top of the grey rocks. One of these was the villa Joeri had described. “There it is,” he said. “Pull over here.”

  It was now late morning and the sun was standing high and blazingly white in the sky, striking painfully bright reflections off the shifting glitter of the sea. They chunked the car doors shut and walked along beside an ancient stone wall plastered with tattered posters, then past a low modern building full of holiday flats and into a crescent street which replicated the curve of the headland. Tall palm trees cast spiky shadows at their base. The footpath slanted upwards, towards a series of imposing white villas beyond a high, spiked fence. At the end of the crescent nearest Doc’s party was a barred gate. There was an intercom beside the gate. They paused about twenty meters away under a palm tree. The warm air smelled of salt and sage. Doc nodded at Joeri.

  “You’re on now,” he said

  “You’re going to have to take these bracelets off,” said Joeri, holding up his wrists with a metallic jingle. His hands were still cuffed, but now in front of him rather than behind his back, as a compromise measure.

  Doc grinned coldly. “I think they stay on.”

  Joeri shook his head. “No, man. They’ve got video on the gate. The people in the house will see I’m cuffed.”

  There was no arguing with this. Doc reluctantly nodded for Rocco to unlock him. “Don’t forget,” said Doc, “We’ll be watching you and we are also able to hear everything that you say. If you try to warn them, if you give them any kind of a signal, verbal or non verbal, we’re going to smash through that gate and use you as a battering ram.”

  “Why would I want to warn them?” said Joeri in an aggrieved voice. “I’m not going to give them any kind of a signal. Those bastards tried to blow me up.” He massaged his wrists as Rocco pocketed the cuffs, then sauntered towards the gate, taking his time and squinting happily up into the sun, like any contented tourist.

  7: Feathers

  Benadir directed the shotgun microphone at Joeri as he stood outside the gate leading to the villa while Doc listened tensely on a spare set of headphones. They heard the high-pitched tones as Joeri punched buttons on the intercom keypad. There was a monosyllabic buzzing grunt by way of response and Joeri said, “Hey, it’s me. You remember me?”

  There was a pause and then another brief response and he said, “That’s right. Joeri. From Milan. You remember? I was here last week.” There was silence and Joeri said, “It’s not safe for me to be standing out here all day like this. Let me in.”

  By way of response came the metallic grinding of a gate sliding open.

  Doc realised too late that it wasn’t the gate in front of them, but another one at the far end of the crescent. And as it opened a blue Alfa Romeo shot out with a screech of tyres and accelerated towards the Via Quinto. It hit the main road, already doing a hundred kilometres an hour and disappeared to the east.

  The local Z5 men were already in pursuit, cursing and running towards their cars, leaving Doc and his party behind. Doc and Benadir started for the gate at the far end of the crescent, but it slid shut again before they got there. They turned back to Rocco and Paola who were pointing their guns at Joeri, who was standing in front of the other gate. He shrugged helplessly, as if to say ‘It’s not my fault.’

  They blew the lock on the gate with a shaped charge and went in. The compound inside consisted of three large villas. The one they wanted was in the middle, at the top of a flight of wide black marble steps. The front door was open.

  As soon as they stepped inside, they heard a
scream.

  *

  The scream came from the very top of the building. The villa was four stories high with a central staircase that wound upwards in a looping spiral. At each turn of the spiral there was a window that gave a glimpse of the sea, and the sky. The villa was set on the edge of a cliff that sheared down to the ocean, some thirty metres below. Seabirds sailed calmly in the blue sky, riding warm currents of air.

  Doc registered all this out of the corner of his eye as he ran up the stairs. He was ahead of Rocco and Benadir and Paola, despite his leg. And, thanks to the adrenalin, he was feeling no pain. As he reached the fourth floor landing, there was another scream.

  He was in a hallway with three doors on either side. On each side, two doors were open and one was closed. The screaming was coming from the closed door at the far end of the hallway, on the left. Doc ran down the hall and kicked down the door.

  Inside the room he saw a blonde girl in her late teens or early twenties standing on a narrow bed. She was holding a pillow in front of her, and at her feet was another pillow that had been slashed open. Tiny white feathers were spilling out of the disembowelled pillow and were floating in a slow, dense cloud in the air of the room, giving the scene a strange dreamlike feeling.

  The pillow had been slashed with a knife.

  Doc knew that because he could see the knife.

  It was a curved five-inch blade and it looked very sharp. It was in the hand of a grotesquely small figure, shorter than the girl cowering on the bed, and grossly smaller than Doc. The figure was facing away from Doc. It had short, cropped bristling black hair and was dressed in khaki canvas trousers and a blue and white-striped seamen’s jersey. Its dirty feet were bare. At first Doc thought it was a dwarf, but then the ‘dwarf’ turned around and faced him.

  It was a boy, no more than ten years old.

  “Aiutami!” screamed the girl. Help me.

  There was something terribly wrong with the boy’s eyes. The sclera, which should have been white, were a uniform fiery red.

  That was all that Doc was able to register before the boy came for him with the knife.

  The feathers drifting in the air danced in agitation as the boy swung the knife at Doc in a great sweeping arc. Doc dodged away from the blade and hit the bed with the back of his legs. The impact caused him to fall onto the bed. He hit the shivering mattress as the girl skipped back in terror, his head by her feet. She was still screaming for him to help her, but it was all he could do to help himself.

  The boy launched himself towards Doc, knife thrusting rigidly in front of him.

  In desperation Doc scooped up the gutted pillow and threw it in the boy’s face. The boy was momentarily blinded by a cloud of feathers and Doc bounced back off the bed and reached for the boy’s knife hand.

  But the boy could see again now and he swung the knife at Doc. It slashed him across the palms of both his hands. It was so razor sharp that it took Doc a moment to realise he’d been cut. Meanwhile the boy was launching himself at Doc in another frenzied attack.

  Doc kicked at him clumsily, deliberately using his left leg.

  The boy snarled and sunk his knife into Doc’s leg. Which was just what Doc wanted. The blade stuck in the resin of the prosthetic and the boy was wrestling frantically to get it back out.

  While he was doing that, Doc punched him.

  Any compunction about hitting a child had definitively vanished from Doc’s mind. Both his hands were slick with blood from the slashing they’d received. Droplets flew as his fist connected with the boy’s chest, sending him flying back across the room.

  “Doc!” Benadir was standing in the doorway, staring in astonishment at the boy lying on the floor, the girl on the bed, Doc bleeding. Rocco joined her.

  The boy looked at the two in the doorway, at the knife stuck in Doc’s leg, and seemed to come to a decision. He flung himself at Benadir and Rocco and, before they could react, managed to squeeze between them.

  “Get him!” shouted Doc.

  But it was too late. The boy was already in the room across the hallway, flinging the door shut behind him. The lock of the door clicked. Rocco kicked it down, and surged in, followed by Doc and Benadir.

  The room was some kind of study with a desk and chairs. They were just in time to see the boy standing on one of the chairs so he could reach the window. He tugged the window open and scrambled up onto the sill.

  Doc dived to get him, but he was too late.

  The boy jumped out the window.

  Doc got there in time to see the small body finish its hundred foot fall, to disappear into the water where the sea met the dark rocks with a cream of foam.

  “My god,” murmured Benadir, staring over his shoulder.

  “I couldn’t stop him,” said Doc. He looked at the blood flowing from his palms.

  “Doc, your hands,” said Benadir.

  “It’s all right,” said Doc. “Just grazes. It’s nothing.”

  In the hallway the blonde girl from the bedroom was sobbing in Rocco’s arms. Doc reflected dryly that this seemed to be a specialty of his. He heard a tearing sound and turned to see that Benadir had gone into the bedroom and was trying to rip up the pillowcase of the slashed pillow. She looked at him and shrugged. “A temporary bandage,” she said.

  “Here, use this,” said Doc, and he pulled the knife out of his leg and handed it to her. “It will be easier.” He grinned.

  “Come here quickly!” They turned to see Paola. Her face was pale with excitement. “Come and see.”

  They went back down the corridor to the room at the end. The room whose door had been shut when Doc came up the stairs. Paola led them inside. There, lying in matching narrow beds, apparently asleep, were two young girls.

  Identical twins.

  *

  “They turned out to be the Benedetti twins,” said Doc into his phone.

  “The children of Sofia’s friends?” said his mother.

  “That’s right.”

  “Thank god for that. And they’re all right?”

  “Fine. They were sedated, but they’ve come around now and they’re reunited with the parents.” Doc remembered the look on Signora Benedetti’s face when she’d seen them and realised they were safe again. But even at that moment, feeling all the pleasure and satisfaction at what he’d achieved, there was the gnawing awareness that another mother was still living in terror and anguish, with her twins missing.

  “But there was no sign of the other pair of abducted twins?” said his mother, as if he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “And what about the boy who jumped into the sea?”

  “We searched for him, of course. There were boats out for hours. But they didn’t find anything. We assume he drowned, but there’s no body.”

  “And the girl?

  “Elsa Olsen. She’s an au pair. Norwegian. But she knows next to nothing of any use. She thought she was looking after the twins, who were supposed to be ill. She doesn’t even know the name of the lady who brought them there. The beautiful lady.”

  “La belle dame sans merci,” said Marion Palfrey.

  “She seems to be the one who’s behind it all.”

  8: Kyphosis

  Near the University of Genoa is a public park called the Villetta di Negro, which roughly translates as the Black Cottage although in fact the name refers to the Marquis di Negro who built it in 1822. On the fringes of this lush green park, with its Lebanese cedars, sequoias and ornamental waterfall, a number of residential streets radiate outwards from the piazza Corvetto like the spokes of a wheel.

  On the most exclusive of these a woman stood outside a large mansion, hidden behind high white walls. In the centre of the wall facing the street was a narrow black wrought iron entrance gate. There was a reinforced steel mailbox fastened in the centre of the gate and a large old-fashioned lock at one edge of it. No buzzer or intercom system seemed to be in use. The gate appeared to be the relic of a bygone age,
but this didn’t seem to bother the woman.

  She reached into her pocket and took out a large iron key and unlocked the gate with an audible clang. Then the woman paused and took a quick look around the sunlit street, as if to make sure she unobserved.

  Had there been any observers, there was little they could have gleaned about the woman, except that she was expensively — and somewhat oddly — dressed. The warmth of the Genoese afternoon made the Prada raincoat she wore a strange choice of garment. The woman evidently wasn’t unaware of the sunny glare of the afternoon, though, because she also wore a pair of wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses which did as effective a job of concealing her face as the raincoat did of hiding her body. Her hair colour was an enigma as well, concealed under a Hermès scarf.

  Satisfied that no one had seen her, the woman went through the gate and closed it carefully behind her.

  Inside the high walls, the front garden of the house was a pleasantly cool, shadowed space. ‘Garden’ was perhaps too grand a word for a rectangular space that was largely paved over with slabs of concrete. What trees and bushes remained had been allowed to grow wild and unruly, and the concrete was covered with a layer of dead leaves.

  The woman paused in the cool shade here and took off her sunglasses and scarf, revealing a face of memorable beauty. Her eyes and hair were a lustrous black, like India ink when it catches the light. In her hair was a silver comb. She unbuttoned her coat and gave a sigh of relief. Tight leggings revealed every detail of shapely legs and lush hips. Her breasts were small and she wore no bra. Her white silk blouse was thin enough to reveal the dark aureoles around her nipples. She took off the coat and slung it over one arm, looking around at the garden.

  The only ornamental feature here was a bust of Shakespeare set in a recess in a wall. Beneath it was incised a quotation, in English.

  Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

  Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.