Hard Knocks tcfs-3

by Zoe Sharp

  What I didn’t add, because it wasn’t included in the Manor’s information, was that if Hinkley had chosen a revolver with a longer barrel and a higher muzzle velocity than the Rohm R6-14 he’d been using, the explosive-head Devastator rounds he’d loaded might just have had the effect their name implied. Scratch another US president.

  “So, Miss Fox, what conclusions do you draw from this?” Gilby asked when I’d finally ground to a halt.

  “That Reagan’s close protection team were good in a crisis, but not so hot at planning and prevention,” I said. “They should never have let it happen in the first place. But, it does make Reagan unique – he’s the only serving US president to date who’s survived actually being shot by an assassin.”

  He smiled. “Excellent,” he said, the praise pleasing me more than it should have done. “Who’s next?”

  I regained my seat next to one of the tall windows that looked out over the rear of the house. Elsa stood up, gathering her file of papers, and walked to the front of the classroom. The students were all sitting at tables, but the instructors, including Gilby, had lined themselves up along the back wall.

  They had listened to all the presentations so far, mine included, with poorly disguised boredom. I got the impression that this was one of Gilby’s pet ideas as far as the curriculum went and nobody else could see the value of it.

  Elsa was the last to go. She reached the desk at the front and put her papers down neatly. “Good afternoon,” she said, sombre. “We have heard already about many famous events, but I would like to speak about one that is not in your library records. It is more recent, and not so well known. My subject is the abduction of a young girl called Heidi Krauss.”

  The name meant nothing to me, but it was instantly apparent that it did to Gilby and his men. It was as though someone had passed an electrical current through the wall behind them. Every one of them jerked upright and Gilby even took a step forwards, as though he was going to try and prevent Elsa from speaking.

  The German woman looked up. “Is there a problem, Major?” she asked, without inflection.

  The rest of us followed the exchange like the crowd at a top-class tennis match, heads following each volley from one end of the room to the other. Gilby must have realised almost immediately that to stop her now was going to look more suspicious than letting her continue. “Of course not, Frau Schmitt, if you feel it’s relevant,” he said stiffly, allowing a trace of doubt to enter his voice.

  Elsa brushed it aside. “She was taken from her own bed, in the middle of the night, from under the noses of her bodyguards,” she said, coolly now. “Yes, I think it is very relevant, don’t you?”

  Gilby recognised defeat when it was staring him in the face. Without further demur he stepped back to his place and waved her to continue. I twisted round slightly in my chair so I could watch the instructors as much as Elsa.

  The German woman had come well prepared for her lecture and she didn’t get it from the Manor library, that’s for sure. There was an elderly photocopier in there, which we’d all used to produce grainy pictures of our main protagonists, taken from the newspaper cuttings and books.

  Elsa already had photographs, which meant she could only have brought them with her. She tacked a line of them up onto the dusty blackboard for us to see.

  “This is Heidi Krauss,” she said, indicating an awkwardly posed studio picture of a girl who looked barely sixteen. “This is her father, Dieter, a successful and wealthy industrialist, and this is their home on the outskirts of Düsseldorf.”

  She delivered the details in a flat, almost clinical style, the way I imagine she used to report to her superior officers when she’d been in the police. She hardly referred to her notes and barely glanced at Gilby or his men as she spoke.

  Dieter Krauss, she told us, was away in the Middle East on the night his daughter had been kidnapped, just two weeks before Christmas. I realised with a jolt that she was talking about this Christmas. Heidi was at home with three household staff and four personal bodyguards. Of a Mrs Krauss, there was no mention.

  There had been trouble with the movement sensors round the perimeter of the property. They had been badly adjusted so that small animals had been causing a number of false alarms. When the system was triggered again shortly before eleven on that evening, the man on duty did not immediately alert his colleagues to a possible security breach.

  Instead, he had taken a torch and gone out alone through a side entrance to check the grounds for himself. There, a small force – more than four, it was reckoned, but less than eight – had overpowered him and gained entry through the open door.

  Leaving a man guiding them towards Heidi’s location using the internal security cameras, the intruders had closed in on her. They had used a taser stunner to instantly incapacitate her, then wrapped her in a blanket and started to carry her out, with the rest of her security team oblivious in the next room.

  Had the housekeeper not stepped out into a corridor at the wrong moment, that’s where the story would have ended. As it was, the woman started screaming. The intruders shot her in the neck, killing her almost instantly.

  The close-protection team had responded immediately to the alert, drawing their own weapons, but they had been understandably reluctant to become involved in a gunfight when the risk of accidentally hitting their principal was so high.

  Hamstrung in this way, they’d stood little chance. One of them was also shot and killed, while another received a leg wound which had resulted in amputation. They had exchanged fire but, Elsa reported, they were doubtful that they hit anyone. Certainly none of the intruders had been injured sufficiently to prevent their escape – with Heidi.

  Elsa paused and looked around at us. She didn’t seem to be aware that she held the absolute attention not only of the class, but of the instructors as well. They had frozen up like a Madame Tussaud’s exhibit, only not so lifelike. If Gilby clamped his jaw shut any tighter he was going to shatter those perfect teeth.

  “So, Frau Schmitt, what conclusions do you draw from this?” he managed to grit out from between them.

  Elsa closed her folder and shrugged. “That the bodyguards were careless and that they totally underestimated the level of threat to their client,” she said at last.

  Gilby took a breath as though he was fighting to control a temper that was rising like fire. He won, but I was sitting close enough to see the cost of that victory manifest itself in the tremor of a tiny muscle at the side of his jaw.

  He nodded, jerky. “Very good, Frau Schmitt,” he bit out. His narrowed gaze swept across the rest of us, just in case we were thinking of making any smart remarks. “Class dismissed!”

  He stalked out of the room with the instructors following him in a wave. I looked round and saw that most of the students were staring blankly at each other. Like me, they knew something was going on, but they had no idea what.

  “Well, Elsa my darlin’, I don’t know what it is that you’ve said that should upset the Major so much,” Declan remarked as he got to his feet, “but I don’t think he’ll be round to bring you a cup of tea and a biscuit first thing tomorrow morning, that’s for sure.”

  Five

  On Day Two the four of us thought we’d spike our instructors’ guns by setting our alarm clocks half an hour earlier than the six o’clock they’d told us would be our wake-up call. We should have known that wasn’t the way things were going to work.

  Todd came barging in at 5 am anyway, just like yesterday.

  When Elsa sleepily protested we had been told we had another hour in bed, he launched into a screaming fit that any drill sergeant I’ve ever come across would have stood back and admired. As he ranted, flecks of spit sprayed from his lips like a nobbled racehorse. We scrambled out of our beds and fled into our running gear before he had a full-blown embolism.

  As we hustled down the stairs I wondered briefly if Declan was right and Todd’s reaction did have anything to do with Elsa’s lecture of the
day before.

  Physical training this morning involved our usual merry little five kilometre jog, followed by twenty minutes of sprints and press-ups. Todd only finally called a halt when one of the most unfit actually threw up. I think he’d been waiting for that as some kind of signal.

  “If that’s what makes him let up on us, remind me to puke after about ten minutes tomorrow morning,” Jan said wearily as we hauled ourselves, groaning, up the staircase and headed for the showers. It might just have been the floor creaking as we traipsed along the corridors to our dormitory, but I wouldn’t have sworn to it.

  A few minutes later I was standing under water as hot as I could bear it. As I let the stinging spray pummel the back of my neck I recalled my brief phone conversation with Sean the night before. He’d asked if I was getting on OK, coping with the regime. I was beginning to think that even my cautious yes might have been over optimistic.

  I’d hesitated over ringing him so soon, as though I didn’t have enough to say to justify the call. His tone when he picked up seemed a little distant, and I’m not just talking about him being half a continent away.

  I greeted him coolly and realised I could hear the same restraint in my own voice.

  Still, when I’d filled him in on Gilby’s reaction to Elsa’s report on the Heidi Krauss kidnap, he’d seemed interested enough in that.

  “I’ll get Madeleine onto it straight away,” he’d said. “I should have something for you the next time you call.”

  “I didn’t know if it was relevant, but the way they clammed up, you never know.” I’d shrugged, feeling oddly pleased.

  “No,” he’d said, “if there’s anything you think I should know, then call me. I need to talk to you regularly, Charlie. I need to know you’re OK, that nothing’s happened to you.”

  My heart jumped, then I remembered Kirk. Of course, Sean was just protecting his interests. Keeping his conscience clear. “No problem,” I’d said, casual. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow evening, then?”

  “Charlie, are you OK in there?” Elsa’s voice, just outside the shower curtain, made me jump back into the present with a start.

  “Erm, yeah, fine,” I said, hastily rinsing shampoo out of my hair. “You head on down for breakfast. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  I almost reached for the towel that I’d hung over the rail above me, just in case she pulled the curtain aside, but it wasn’t modesty that drove me.

  I’d been very careful so far to make sure that I dressed away from the view of the other women, keeping my neck and upper body covered. I knew that if I didn’t do so, I would have to answer awkward questions about the number of scars I possessed, and their origin.

  But how did I begin to explain about the one that curved a full five inches round the side of my neck from a point below my right ear to my Adam’s apple? How did I drop it lightly into the conversation that I’d got it fighting for my life against a madman who’d already committed murder and who’d been more than willing to do so again?

  I’d thought of lying, telling people it was from an operation of some sort, but the line of it was too ragged for that to be believable. And then they start to wonder what you’re really trying to hide.

  On the other side of the curtain I heard Elsa move away and close the bathroom door behind her. I sagged back against the tiles in relief, and wondered on the chances of getting through the entire two weeks at Einsbaden without having to explain what had happened to me.

  I could only hope so.

  ***

  When I arrived in the dining hall less than ten minutes later, I was alarmed to find the place almost empty.

  “Where is everyone, Ronnie?” I asked one of the cooks who was expertly flipping fried eggs on the hot plate.

  He grinned and jerked his head towards the front of the house. When I crossed to the window I saw a group of students and instructors clustered round a car that was just being unloaded from a transporter.

  Our first class after breakfast was down as vehicle security, then we were into the driving. I checked my watch, but according to that I still had half an hour to go. Dammit. Another of their switched timetables.

  I almost ran through the hallway, out through the front door and down the steps onto the gravel. I jogged across and nudged my way between the press of bodies.

  When I got through I found they were just standing around like a group of eighteen-year olds when the oldest buys his first second-hand Vauxhall Nova SR. Nobody was doing anything interesting to the car. It was the car itself they were looking at.

  I didn’t recognise the shape, but if it’s got more than two wheels any other details tend to pass me by anyway. Even your most amazing supercar can be out-dragged and outmanoeuvred by your most average superbike, at a fraction of the cost. I know where I’d rather spend my money.

  I had to admit that this one had a certain brutish charm about it. The car was big and squat, in a metallic shade that looked expensive enough to qualify as platinum, rather than silver. Not wanting to show my ignorance, I craned my neck until I could see the badging on the rear end.

  “But it’s a Nissan,” I said, and my voice must have well given away how nonplussed I was by this fact. I’d been expecting something a lot more exotic. Maserati at the very least.

  “Do you know nothing, girl?” demanded Declan, who was nearest. The reverential tone in his voice was slightly scary. “This is a Skyline GT-R R34 V-SPEC.”

  It was little more than an unlikely collection of letters and numbers to me. I shrugged. “What’s so special about it?”

  A couple of the others sniggered. Declan rolled his eyes. “Two-point-six litres, twin turbos, computer-controlled four-wheel drive,” he listed, speaking slowly. He saw I wasn’t cottoning on and broke off, shaking his head. “Your man’s a lucky bastard, I’ll say that.”

  “Whose is it?” I asked.

  “Oh this is the Major’s new toy. Apparently he’s just had the engine tuned to over five hundred horsepower. The acceleration on this thing will be feckin’ stunning.”

  I did a quick bit of mental arithmetic. My elderly quarter-litre Suzuki produced sixty-two brake horse. Multiply that up to two-point-six litres, and it came to the equivalent of a smidgen over six hundred. It wouldn’t work out like that in real life, of course, but the theoretical superiority made me feel better.

  “You’re really not impressed at all, are you?” Romundstad commented with a smile. I recalled him mentioning that he’d done some ice rallying in Norway. “I’d have thought you’d be into all things mechanical, Charlie.”

  I nodded my head across the gravel to where the black motorbike I’d seen the day before was parked at a rakish angle. “That,” I said, “is what impresses me. A Honda CBR900RR FireBlade. A hundred and thirty horsepower from less than one litre, bog standard. A hundred and eighty miles an hour top end. Something that takes real balls to ride to the limit.” I waved an arm to the Nissan. “Not something that has a computer doing it all for you.”

  “Thank you for your comments, Miss Fox,” said the Major’s acidic voice from behind me. My heart sank. He weakened enough to allow sarcasm to creep in. “I’m sure we’re all utterly fascinated to hear your opinion.”

  I turned to find Gilby approaching. And there was I thinking you couldn’t sneak up on anyone over gravel. He was eyeing me with all the favour of something he’d just scraped off his shoe. Behind him, Blakemore was glowering.

  Gilby stalked past us and dealt with the transporter driver in rapid-fire German, signing paperwork and taking hold of a set of keys.

  “Right, people,” he said then, his voice businesslike. “I would suggest you get yourselves fuelled up because in precisely twenty-three minutes you’ll need to be out here again and Mr Figgis will be taking you over vehicle security checks before we get you into the cars.”

  We drifted away from the Nissan. Gilby climbed into it and slammed the door. Even I had to admit that the engine note had that throaty growl when he turn
ed the ignition key.

  Despite the four-wheel-drive system Declan had mentioned, as he set off the Major managed to kick up a shit-load of stones halfway across drive. Hmm, temper temper.

  I realised that Blakemore had moved alongside me. He looked from the departing Nissan to the FireBlade, and back again. “So you’d really rather have one of these,” he said nodding to the bike, “than one of those?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw his face begin to crease, and I realised he’d been fighting down a big grin in the presence of his boss. The Blade, I surmised, must be his.

  As I turned away he nudged Rebanks, who was standing next to him, and I heard him say, “Now that is my kind of woman.”

  ***

  “I don’t think in all the time I’ve been teaching here that I’ve ever come across a more useless hopeless case behind the wheel of a car than you, Charlie,” Figgis said two hours later, his long face mournful. “Have you actually got a driving licence?”

  It was the fourth time I’d stalled one of the school Audis. This to the obvious amusement of the three other pupils squashed into the back seat and the increasing exasperation of our instructor.

  The combination of unfamiliarity with cars of any description, plus left-hand drive, was doing its worst. Still, I wasn’t the only one having problems. Shirley had gone out with Blakemore in one of the earlier sessions and had apparently been reduced to tears by his scathing criticism. I was determined not to let it get to me, however much of a hash of things I was making.

  “What?” I said now, as I restarted the engine, feigning astonishment. “Driving licence? Oh, I thought it said you needed a diving licence. I can do scuba.”

  Romundstad called from the back, “The way you are going I would not be at all surprised if we are all ending up in a lake, for sure.” And there was more laughter.

  He wasn’t so far away from the truth. We were out on the roads around Einsbaden, which seemed to be made up of a mixture of twisting humps and dips, and deceptive fast open stretches like a rally stage. Working out one from the other was the tricky part.