The Assassin's Dog

by David George Clarke

  A derisive snort came from the darkness on the other side of the table. “I very much doubt it, Signor Cambroni. The woman is a British police officer. She will have been given extensive unarmed combat training; you wouldn’t stand a chance against her.”

  Rosselli paused to let his client absorb what he had said, before adding, “which is why you have me.”

  Ettore could sense the supercilious smile on Rosselli’s face as he peered into the darkness, even though he couldn’t see it.

  As with the end of their first two meetings, a silence of finality fell on the room, but again, Ettore didn’t dare to challenge it until given permission. After ten minutes, the same clunk he had heard before sounded and the lights in the room flooded him with too much brightness.

  The assassin had gone, leaving one of the doors on the far wall standing ajar. Ettore looked down at the folder open on the desk, Ginevra’s face still taunting him. He stood and made to turn, but before he did, his eyes fell one last time on the photo. He had no desire to take the folder and its poisonous contents. The snarl returned and he spat with explosive force at the face. As he turned and walked away, a grim caricature of a smile distorted his lips. The die was cast.

  Chapter Sixteen

  With the exception of Switzerland, which required an extra layer of careful planning, Rosselli preferred to work in continental Europe. The reason was simple: with open borders, he could drive everywhere and take his weapons with him.

  Not that he could afford complacency since there was always the possibility of a random border check, especially when re-entering Italy in an Italian-registered car. The trick was in the choice of vehicle. Nothing ostentatious, just smart enough to be outside the border officers’ radar. But even small risks were to be avoided. If he were caught in possession of his weapons, his life would unravel and he would spend the rest of it in prison. This was why he had customised the two vehicles he used on assignments outside Italy with concealed compartments in their boots to carry the guns and knives that were his stock-in-trade, and behind their dashboards for a selection of passports and other documents. He had never been stopped, but if he were, his secret weapon was Goccia. The combination of the cute pug batting her eyelids and Rosselli disguised as an ageing professorial type minimised the chances of his car being subjected to detailed scrutiny.

  Crossing the channel to England added further complications. Rosselli needed a selection of weapons and being more than cautious, he was loath to involve a third party. To his way of thinking, if more than one person knew a secret, it was no longer a secret. It would be relatively easy through mob contacts to obtain the guns and knives he would need to use if arranging an ‘accident’ became unworkable, but he didn’t know them, these British thugs, didn’t know whom he could trust, didn’t know who had built-in prejudice to foreigners and might therefore be persuaded to loosen their tongues.

  Rosselli kept both vehicles in a secure back-street lock-up in Rome’s working-class Testaccio district. He kept his weapons in the same lock-up, but in a concealed climate-controlled vault built into the cement floor.

  Having confirmed Jennifer’s identity, Rosselli began to flesh out his preliminary plans for her assassination. There was much to do even before he reached England, but he had done it many times; it was simply a question of following his own well-constructed protocols.

  He chose the larger of his customised cars, the five-year-old Toyota 4x4, for transporting his equipment to England, his plan being to take the most direct route through the Italian and French motorway systems. Traffic cameras would record his vehicle, but that was of no consequence since once in France, he would change the vehicle’s genuine Italian plates for fake ones. Once in England, he would store the Toyota in a double-size garage behind a parade of ageing shops in Caterham, south of London, a lock-up bought for hard cash many years before. For his assignment, he would use one of his false identities to rent a right-hand drive, UK-registered car.

  Before leaving for England, Rosselli gave himself a month to prepare. He was obsessive about physical fitness, his daily routine a punishing round of weights and exercises. But in the lead-up to an assignment, he redoubled his efforts to ensure he was in optimal condition. His timing and responses must be as perfect as humanly possible. And to assist him in this, his adored and trusted partner Giorgio monitored and encouraged him every inch of the way.

  The pair would spend time at a spa on the coast south of Rome where their privacy was guaranteed and where Giorgio would supervise Rosselli’s training. They both knew that Rosselli’s job entailed high risk, that the chances of either getting caught or being killed could not be taken lightly, shrugged off as if he were some two-dimensional villain in a spy movie.

  Giorgio was no assassin; he could no more take another person’s life than take his own. Both were anathema to him. It had therefore surprised him to find that he had no problem with Rosselli’s chosen career. Since the start of their relationship seven years before, he had relished his role as Rosselli’s behind-the-scenes support, his sounding board for creating new and innovative ways of dispatching Rosselli’s targets as humanely as possible, since neither of them enjoyed the thought of the targets suffering. Giorgio was the one exception to Rosselli’s views on secrets; with Giorgio, he discussed almost everything.

  After a particularly gruelling workout two weeks into their stay, the pair had showered and were sitting together on the generous balcony of their spa suite enjoying breakfast. Rosselli looked up from where he was spreading lavender honey on a piece of soft pastry he had pulled from a cornetto. “Is something wrong, amore? You seem distracted this morning.”

  Giorgio sat forward and laid a hand on Rosselli’s arm. “Only the usual, Cosimo. It’s the way I always feel when you’re going away for a job. I know I can’t come with you, and in that respect, I’m insanely jealous of Goccia who, I notice, is maintaining an aloof superiority in my presence at the moment.”

  Giorgio smiled and reached out his other arm towards Goccia, who was stretched out on the tiles to his left. At the mention of her name, she raised her head, her eyes flicking from one of her adoring owners to the other.

  “You’re a wicked little strumpet, Goccia; you know you are and you revel in it, don’t you?”

  The pug rolled onto her back, her eyes now directing Giorgio to rub her belly.

  Both men laughed. “Too sweet,” said Rosselli.

  He took Giorgio’s hand. “I know how you feel, amore, I hate being away too. But if we want to maintain this exotic lifestyle, I have to use the talents God has given me. And it’s not as if my targets are good people. The world is a far better place without them.”

  “I think that’s part of it, Cosimo. From the file you’ve assembled on this English policewoman, she was only doing her job. There’s nothing to say that she’s intrinsically a bad person.”

  Rosselli nodded. “Yes, that bothered me too when I was given the assignment. But I have to regard her as an adversary. After all, she wouldn’t think twice about arresting me and locking me up for the rest of my life, given the opportunity. And if that happened, my clients would be forced to look elsewhere for someone to tidy their lives for them.”

  His whole upper body joined his arms in an emphatic shrug. “I’m the best, amore, and more to the point, I am humane. I care about my targets. When I separate their bodies from their souls, I can almost always guarantee they will feel nothing. I am completely different from others in my profession, most of whom are emotionally challenged automatons. Many of them actually enjoy inflicting pain.” He closed his eyes as he shuddered distaste. “So unprofessional.”

  He leaned forward, both hands now flat on the table. “You see, amore, this Jennifer Silk is a thoroughly capable officer, it’s true. But in the execution of her work, she upset the equilibrium of my clients. The Cambronis weren’t bad people; they were just crooks. No one was hurt by their fraudulent schemes. After all, their targets were rich and the rich can afford to see a
little of their wealth fall by the wayside. But they have been hurt. I could see the pain in Ettore Cambroni’s eyes, the suffering he has borne to see his father dying in a dreadful prison. I can’t imagine that this Jennifer Silk cares one jot about that, which makes her no different from the automatons I mentioned. She knows the risks. She should consider herself lucky that I, Cosimo Graziano Rosselli, will be the one to catapult her to heaven. In my hands, she won’t feel a thing. It will be instant; one moment she will be alive, the next her soul will be on its way while her body crumples to a lifeless shell.”

  Giorgio’s smile was tinged with uncertainty.

  “I know all that, Cosimo, amore mio, and I agree that you are probably the most conscientious and kind assassin in history. I know you will be merciful and dispatch her with compassion. What worries me is that she is so good at her job. If she should get a single notion she is being targeted, not only would entire squadrons of British police officers be mobilised to hunt you down, she would be setting one trap after another for you herself.”

  Rosselli sat back in his chair. “I think you worry too much. You must remember that she has no idea she has been targeted, and neither will she suspect an old man with a dog. Goccia and I have a number of cards to play, not the least of which is the princess herself. Such a beautiful lady by my side is bound to distract.”

  Giorgio nodded. “You’re right, of course, and you are the professional; I am only an enlightened amateur, thanks to all your briefings over the years. The problem with these overseas assignments is the unknown. Normally, we weigh up everything together, but we can’t in this case since you have so much still to establish: where she lives, whom she lives with, where she works, what the best method is for her. I know you have done this many times entirely on your own, and you have always been successful. But I’m not sure you have ever been up against a person such as this. And she’s a woman too.”

  Rosselli laughed and wagged a finger at Giorgio. “That’s a rather sexist remark. I’m sure that feminists would object if they thought they weren’t entitled to equal status as assassins’ targets.”

  Giorgio giggled involuntarily, as he tended to when teased, a trait that Rosselli found endearing but one that also reminded him that Giorgio’s limited control over his emotions would make him a useless assassin.

  “Look,” continued Rosselli, “just because I’ll be in one country and you in another doesn’t mean we can’t confer. I have a totally secure line through a series of proxies. The conversation itself will be encrypted and the source will bounce around the world at an incredible rate. Our discussions will be impossible to monitor or trace. I’ve put the same system on the phone you’ll use back in the apartment, so every day I can bring you up to date with what I’ve found and what I’m planning, and you can add your much-appreciated counsel to the discussion. Work for you?”

  Giorgio nodded enthusiastically. “It will give me great peace of mind, amore. I shall be living the assignment with you.”

  “Well, in that case, it’s time we stopped worrying and relaxed in this marvellous place. We have two more weeks; we should make the most of it.”

  But then Goccia ate something that disagreed with her, resulting in several anxious visits to a nearby vet. And no sooner had she recovered and returned home than Giorgio contracted a serious chest infection. Their planned month became five weeks, six and then seven, and it wasn’t until almost eight weeks after his final meeting with Ettore Cambroni that Rosselli drove away from the couple’s apartment in Rome. Goccia, excited and perky in the rear seat, couldn’t understand why her two masters were so emotional.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rosselli’s drive through France to Calais and the Eurotunnel was quieter than he expected, given it was late August and still the holiday season. He far preferred the thirty-five-minute tunnel journey to any ferry crossing, remaining in the privacy of his car with a dozing Goccia being infinitely more civilised than having to mix with hordes of families on some ferry’s public deck. Once he had presented Goccia and her papers to the pet reception at the Calais terminal, the two of them were essentially invisible.

  The drive up to Caterham was equally uneventful, roadworks on the M20 and heavy traffic on the M25 notwithstanding, and by late afternoon, he had checked into an Ibis hotel only half a mile from his lock-up garage. Not trusting the outdoor car park attached to the hotel, once he had taken Goccia for a short walk, he drove straight to the lock-up.

  Sealed behind the locked garage door, Rosselli spent an hour dismantling the floor of the Toyota’s boot to gain access to the secret compartments. After this, he removed a panel at the rear of the glove box to retrieve several hidden passports. After stowing everything inside a large fireproof vault buried in the garage floor, Rosselli reassembled the Toyota’s interior, set the alarms and traps that would be activated if someone broke in, and returned to the hotel.

  Relaxed now that his weaponry was no longer at risk of theft, he called up the encrypted app on his iPad that gave him CCTV views of the lock-up’s interior as well as links to all alarms and confirmed the same app was fully operational on his phone. Slipping the phone into his jacket pocket, he looked across to Goccia. He knew she was itching to check out the myriad new and exotic smells from countless local dogs and to leave notice announcing her arrival.

  “Let’s explore, shall we, little lady?”

  Goccia bounced in anticipation as Rosselli attached her lead to her collar.

  The walk was punctuated by endless stops and starts as Goccia navigated her way through a paradise of odours. But just as she could hardly contain her enthusiasm when she set out, once she was sated, she followed her usual pattern of sitting, snorting and turning her eyes to Rosselli’s.

  “Basta, little one? Enough?” he said. Goccia agreed by thumping her tail on the ground. “OK, let’s go back and get something delicious to eat and drink.”

  The something delicious was spirited out of a cool box in Rosselli’s overnight bag: doggie pasta for Goccia and a gourmet mixture of the finest Italian cheeses, prosciutto, bresaola, salumi and plum tomatoes Rosselli had chosen for himself on the day he left Rome. There was only enough for a few days, after which he would have to resort to the gastric assault of British food, but for now, to celebrate their successful arrival, he would indulge himself with the best.

  As for the wine, he had six bottles of his favourite Sicilian red in a chilled carrying case that kept them at precisely 18ºC. At this stage of the assignment, he could enjoy a celebratory glass or two, but once he began to close in on his target, his days and nights would be entirely alcohol-free.

  The following day, accompanied as always by Goccia, Rosselli walked the mile to the car rental agency where he had pre-booked an innocuous Ford saloon in the name of Martin Smithson, a name he had used on a number of occasions and for which he had a genuine UK driving licence and a credit card from a UK high-street bank. It had required a little ingenuity to set up the bank account and licence some fifteen years before, but once in the system, it had been a simple matter to maintain them. If no flags were raised, nothing was ever checked.

  Once back at the lock-up, he changed the rental’s number plates for a pair of fake ones and swept around the outside of the car with a device designed to detect the presence of an embedded GPS transmitter. He didn’t expect to find one; he had carefully chosen the smaller rental company because it had not yet switched to tracking its cars by GPS, but he liked to be sure. Company policy could change at any time and websites were not always kept up to date.

  It was late afternoon by the time he finished, and he chose to spend another night in the hotel before heading up to Nottingham for the more difficult part of the assignment: finding the woman he thought of as Jennifer Silk.

  Although Rosselli had been to England many times, he had never been to Nottingham. However, in recent years, he had taken advantage of the opportunities available online for becoming intimately acquainted with a town or city before
ever setting foot in it. The method was foolproof. While still in Rome, he spent many hours studying street maps of Nottingham and working his way around every street on Google Earth’s Street View until he knew the city better than a taxi driver. It was an approach he had found invaluable on many occasions, since having correlated a map of a town with its Street View images, when he arrived, it would be as if he had lived there all his life, the buildings, streets and intersections all comfortably familiar.

  To Rosselli’s amusement, on the afternoon of his arrival in Nottingham, he was standing in the city’s Market Square dressed in his usual elderly gentleman disguise with Goccia at his heel when a bewildered tourist approached him with a map and asked him the way to the Castle.

  “It’s that way, my friend,” answered Rosselli without hesitation as he pointed the man in the right direction.

  The system worked.

  He was aware from his search of the online newspapers that Olivia Freneton had worked for a squad of the Nottingham police called the Serious Crime Formation. Jennifer had worked for the same team and as a starting point, Rosselli had to assume she had returned there. Another search gave him the address of the building where the SCF HQ was situated. Walking up past the Theatre Royal to the streets behind, he quickly located the old four-storey building that had once been a police station. He was closing in.

  While confident of being able to identify his target should she exit the building, he could hardly hang around waiting for that to happen. And besides, more information on her and her squad’s activities might give him some creative inspiration for an imaginative ending to her life. He looked down at Goccia.

  “Another little walk, principessa, then we’ll settle ourselves in the nearest pub and see what transpires.”

  Goccia wagged her tail in approval.