The Assassin's Dog

by David George Clarke

  “What sort of dog!” yelled both Connie and Henry together as they remembered the man in Bar Fulvia.

  “A pug,” replied Felice, surprised at the forcefulness of their response.

  “We’ve seen him, I’m sure of it,” said Henry, and proceeded to fill in the details for Felice.

  “So, he was focussing on you, gathering information.”

  “Listened to music all the time,” added Connie. “On an iPod.”

  “Probably a disguised amplification device,” commented Felice. “He would have been tuning into your conversations. From the information about the photographs, it looks as if he was trying to identify Jennifer. He’s probably been recruited by the Cambronis. Or Ettore Cambroni, at least. The old man died in prison a few weeks ago. Although I say it myself, we did a good job of erasing all traces of Ginevra Mancini and her connection with Jennifer. He would have come up against a brick wall with that, so perhaps he tried another way. Once he found out about Jennifer’s connection to you, Henry, or perhaps Connie’s connection to the gallery, he will have decided to go down that route.”

  “We must contact Jennifer immediately,” said Henry.

  “How long ago was it that he was in your area bewitching your gullible young lady?” asked Felice.

  “At least two months, maybe longer, wasn’t it, Connie?” said Henry.

  “Yes,” replied Connie, “it was about that long ago we saw the man with the pug in the bar. But that man was far older than the one in the photo.”

  “Of course!” exclaimed Henry. “He was in disguise. That’s what was familiar about him. The overall head and body shape. God, I’m so stupid! I’m an actor; you’d think I would have noticed something. I’ll do some more work on the computer.”

  “Two months?” repeated Felice, his tone serious. “We know where this man lives, we’re just powerless to do anything about him. I’ll get some eyes out, see if he’s still here. We might be able to hassle him, worry him enough to make him back off.”

  “And if you can’t find him?” asked Connie.

  “Then Jennifer needs protecting.”

  “In that case, Massimo,” said Henry, “we should take action right away. I’m calling Jennifer now.”

  After repeated attempts to speak to Jennifer, Henry called Derek, who was still waiting for his turn in court. He answered immediately.

  “Derek,” said Henry. “At last. Have you any idea where Jennifer is? I’ve been trying to get hold of her and there’s no answer.”

  “She should be at home by now. It’s late afternoon and … why? Is something wrong?”

  “Don’t know, but there could be. Let me explain.”

  Henry hurriedly summarised what had happened with Sonia two days previously and the result of their conversation with Felice.

  “Christ!” exclaimed Derek. “An assassin! She has been following up hunches about Trisha’s disappearance. She was going to snoop around Gus Brooke’s cottage, just the outside, she promised, and then the factory. Again she said she would only … oh, shit! I’ve just remembered. There was some bloke in the pub opposite the SCF. One evening after work. A couple of weeks ago. He had a dog with him, a pug with what Jen explained was an Italian name. Let me think. Yes, some wag made a play on the name in English.”

  “What was it?” asked Henry.

  “Gotcha,” said Derek.

  “Goccia,” repeated Henry. “A drop. It would be suitable for a little pug.”

  “Yes,” replied Derek, his voice barely more than a whisper. He was no longer interested in the dog.

  “Listen, Henry, I think I know where she is. She’s inside that bloody factory. I’ll call you back.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Gus Brooke ran cautiously across the factory yard, not wanting to announce his arrival. He didn’t know what to expect, but he wanted to maintain the element of surprise.

  He stopped at the foot of the main stairs to the upper floor and listened, but he could hear nothing. Treading lightly, he ran up the stairs, stopping at the top to listen again. Nothing. Where the hell was Rosselli? Had he walked into a trap?

  Listening for any sound while his eyes swept the area ahead of him, Gus edged slowly forward along the short corridor leading to the large cargo platform. As he came level with the entrance, he saw Jennifer standing by the metal storage bins along the rear wall. She was holding a length of rope.

  “Shit!” he muttered through clenched teeth. What was she doing? Waiting for him? She certainly wasn’t moving. He needed to take decisive action, protect his back.

  His jaw set, he strode forward, his eyes fixed on Jennifer.

  “What the hell’s going on, sarge?” he said, as he walked into the cargo area.

  “You tell me, Detective Constable Brooke,” replied Jennifer. “How come you’re here? Has the boss ordered a new search of the place? Do we have more troops on the way?”

  “I, er, I was going to ask you the same thing, sarge.”

  “Which one of those were you going to ask me, detective constable?”

  Brooke ignored her questions and instead asked one of his own.

  “Why are you here? Thyme said you were off today.”

  “I was, but curiosity got the better of me. After mulling over all the possibilities and impossibilities and getting nowhere, I decided to take a look at the improbabilities.”

  “I don’t understand,”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. And neither does that fact that you’re standing here, trying to appear the picture of innocence when you know full well that Trisha McVie’s body is lying in the bin behind me.”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you seen the body? How do you know it’s there?”

  “Because I told her, Detective Brooke,” said Rosselli, stepping out of the shadows.

  Gus jumped in shock as he whirled around to face Rosselli.

  “You bastard!” he yelled. “You said you’d—”

  “She had already worked it out,” snapped Rosselli, holding up his hand. “I had no need to tell her anything.”

  He waved the gun in Jennifer’s direction.

  “Go and stand next to your sergeant, and Gus, remove your phone from your pocket and toss it over to me.”

  When Gus didn’t move, Rosselli fired a shot that whistled past him.

  “Do it!” growled the assassin.

  As the phone hit the floor in front of him, Rosselli nodded. “Thank you.”

  He picked up the phone, switched it off and tossed it aside.

  “Now, I think it’s about time we moved on to the next stage of the day’s proceedings,” said Rosselli as he glanced at the images from the CCTV cameras on his phone. “I want you both to walk over to those chairs and sit down. The detective sergeant on the right, and you, Detective Brooke, on the left. And please, both of you, do not even think about diving off in different directions and then trying to rush me. I can assure you that if you were to do that, you would both be dead before you’d taken more than half a step.”

  “Signore,” said Jennifer, “have you forgotten what we were talking about before Brooke turned up? I should still like to see my friend’s body.”

  “Jennifer,” said Brooke, “I really don—”

  “Don’t you dare called me by my first name, Detective Constable Brooke,” snapped Jennifer. “You lying, duplicitous bastard!”

  Turning her back to him, Jennifer fixed her eyes on Rosselli. “Well?”

  Rosselli’s eyes flickered back and forth between his two captives as he made a decision.

  “You, detective,” he sighed, waving the gun at Brooke, “clear the rest of the ropes from the top of the bin behind you, lift the lid and pull aside enough of the ropes hiding the superintendent for your sergeant to see her head. You, detective sergeant, stand to one side of the bin.”

  Realising the futility of resisting, Brooke turned and pulled the remaining ropes from the lid and with great hesitation in view of the smell he was expectin
g, he opened the bin. Jennifer glanced to her side but could see nothing yet of Trisha’s body.

  Groaning with reluctance, Brooke leaned into the bin and hauled at the ropes. After tossing a number of them aside, he stood back, the sweat pouring from him.

  “Say what you want to say to your friend, signorina,” said Rosselli in Italian. “But make it quick.”

  Taking a deep breath, her mouth quivering with emotion, Jennifer turned and looked into the bin. When she saw Trisha’s battered, lifeless face, she felt her legs start to give way beneath her. Gus Brooke was watching and automatically took her elbow to steady her.

  She glared at him but didn’t resist.

  “I’m not all bastard,” he muttered.

  “But you’re responsible for this.”

  Gus shook his head. “It was all a terrible accident. She fell in my bathroom. I was asleep in bed. I—“

  Jennifer held up a hand to stop him. She didn’t want to hear any more.

  Turning her attention to her friend’s body and using one hand to steady herself further on the edge of the bin, Jennifer leaned over and gently stroked Trisha’s hair.

  “I don’t know that I’m going to be in much of a position to change any of this, Trish,” she whispered, her voice so quiet that neither of the men could hear her. “I’ll do my best, but I have a sneaky suspicion that wanker with the gun has plans for me to join you. Either way, I want you to know that you were the bestest piss-artist friend in all the world and I’ll never forget you.”

  She kissed her fingers and pressed them against Trisha’s cold forehead. “Love you,” she said.

  She stood up straight and took a step backwards. “Close the lid,” she said to Brooke.

  As Brooke did as she instructed, Jennifer stole a look at his face. The cocky, self-assured womaniser was nowhere to be seen. He had aged ten years in as many minutes, his features sagging, his eyes hollow, but still she found it hard to have any sympathy for him, not when Trisha McVie was lying in the bin beside them.

  She turned towards Rosselli. “Thank you, signore,” she said.

  “Prego,” replied Rosselli. You’re welcome.

  With Rosselli still pointing the gun at them, Jennifer and Brooke walked away from the bins towards the open edge of the platform area and the two metal chairs. Apart from being sure she was going to be shot, Jennifer couldn’t work out the man’s plans. It was clear to her now that he was a mafia hit man, an assassin, and that she was his target. Why was he taking so long about it? And what role, apart from collateral damage, did Gus Brooke play in the proceedings?

  “I should like you both to sit in the chairs as I instructed just now,” said Rosselli. “You will have ringside seats for the show I’ve set up for you.”

  Jennifer looked ahead, wondering if he was intending to make them jump or whether to expect a bullet in the back of the head. She estimated the drop into the loading bay was about five metres. Unlikely to be fatal, but the injuries could be bad. So it was probably a bullet.

  Rosselli stood to one side, offering them no chance of making a grab at him. Jennifer paused and turned to him.

  “You didn’t answer my question, signore,” she said, reverting to Italian again.

  “Question?”

  “Who are you? Or more specifically, what is your name? It can surely do you no harm to tell me that. Not now.”

  Rosselli narrowed his eyes. Jennifer Cotton was a brave young woman. He was pleased that even though she knew he was going to kill her, there would still be the element of surprise. She wouldn’t see or hear it coming. She would simply stop existing.

  He took a deep breath. This was new territory for him. “Rosselli,” he said, finally, his accent reverting to the strong Sicilian of his youth. “Cosimo Graziano Rosselli.”

  Jennifer nodded and walked on.

  “Please sit down and wait,” called Rosselli as they reached the chairs. “The show will begin in a moment. Keep your eyes on the wall opposite.”

  He watched as they sat down, almost surprised by their obedience. But sitting wasn’t enough.

  “Detective Brooke,” he called. “Before you get too comfortable, on the floor to your left are some plastic ties. Be so kind as to take two of them and secure the detective sergeant’s wrists to the chair arms.”

  When Brooke hesitated, Rosselli took several steps towards him. “Now, detective!” he commanded.

  Gus stood and reached for the ties. Selecting two, he followed Rosselli’s instructions, although he carefully didn’t tighten the ties as far as possible, not wanting to hurt Jennifer.

  But Rosselli was onto him. “Tighter!” he insisted, watching as Gus complied.

  “Good,” he said. “Now sit again and secure your own right wrist to the chair arm.”

  Sighing angrily, Gus did as he was told.

  “Excellent,” said Rosselli as he moved closer.

  “Hmm, I think yours could be a little tighter too, Gus,” he added as he peered at the tie. “Pull on the end, please. That’s right. Now, keep your other wrist firmly on the chair arm while I secure it too.”

  He looped a plastic tie around Gus’s left wrist and pulled it tight.

  “Good, I think we’re ready.”

  The appeal of the rail and hoist system to Rosselli was that it could so easily be modified for his purpose. It comprised two pairs of rails running in parallel from the rear of the cargo platform to the void over the loading bay, on which hoists ran on wheels on one pair of rails or the other. Crates of goods could be hung from the hoists for lowering into the loading bay. The rails were inclined at a few degrees from the horizontal to allow the hoists to roll from one end to the other under the pull of gravity.

  Given the length of the rails was some twenty metres, this arrangement would be dangerous without something to brake the hoists carrying the goods since over that distance they would pick up substantial speed. Hence the designers had included rubber pads to slow the hoists on their journey every two metres to ensure the rolling hoists would never be moving too fast.

  But with time and neglect, the pads had deteriorated, making them easy for Rosselli to remove. Now, once a hoist was allowed to run unchecked the full length of a rail, the angle of tilt was such that it would be rolling at more than twenty kilometres an hour before being stopped by the substantial buffers at the far end, more than enough to cause instantly fatal injuries to any head that happened to be in the way. Rosselli had chosen two old and rusty metal blocks he’d found lying in the cargo area as the heavy loads to hang from the hoists. Both had jagged projections from their surfaces that would make them even more effective.

  Releasing either of the two loads was a matter of pressing one or other of two buttons on a remote control. Each would trigger a small battery-powered heater aligned under a length of nylon fishing line that held its load in place. Once the line had melted, which would happen three seconds after the remote button was pressed, the load would be on its way from the rear of the cargo area towards the loading bay.

  The only problem with the loads accelerating along the rails was that in spite of extensive cleaning, oiling and greasing, they weren’t completely silent. There was still an underlying rumble from the wheels that would forewarn his victims. In the end, the solution was simple: compensating noise. Rosselli hated any form of pop music; he saw it as trite, repetitive and often painfully noisy. But for his purposes today, noisy was good. With one hundred and fifteen decibels blasting from large, battery-powered bluetooth speakers he had positioned only metres from where they were sitting, neither Jennifer Cotton nor Gus Brooke would hear the rumble of pulleys on rails. And the final distraction? A light show from a portable projector of abstract flashing lights pulsing in time with the dreadful music.

  Rosselli made one final check of his equipment before pressing a button on a second remote control. The projector burst into life and a mesmerising montage of abstract and semi-abstract images flooded the wall opposite the platform. He saw his two victi
ms’ heads lift as the images distracted them. Seconds later, the relative silence of the factory buildings was shattered by the jarring scream of heavy metal music, chosen deliberately for its atonality and acoustic assault. Rosselli smiled as he saw the pair twitch as if they had been electrocuted.

  He waited ten seconds for the noise to torture their ears before cranking up the volume to maximum. Five seconds more and he hit one of the buttons on the main remote control to release the first of the hoists.

  Gus Brooke was confused. He had fallen for Rosselli’s story and was resigned to the fact that for the rest of his working life he would be an informer to organised crime. But at least he would be alive, and he would have a wife and a home. He wouldn’t be in prison for the way he had handled Trisha McVie’s death.

  The involvement of Jennifer Cotton had taken him by surprise. When Rosselli had called that morning to summon him to the factory, hearing Cotton’s name blindsided him. But it turned out she knew all about him and blamed him for the death of McVie. Which made her in many ways a more dangerous adversary than Rosselli: he was a crook while she was a no-nonsense honest cop.

  And now Rosselli intended to kill her, that much was obvious, even though they seemed to have a rapport going on in Italian.

  So why was Rosselli going through this whole pantomime of sitting them down facing across the loading bay? And now, out of nowhere there was a disorienting light show, with enough flashing to bring on an epileptic fit. And if that wasn’t enough, the worst music he had ever heard, a cacophony that could hardly be called music, was blasting his ears from speakers close to where he was sitting. He winced, the noise was physically painful, and just as he thought he could cope, it became louder.

  He dropped his head and tried to push his left ear against his shoulder in an attempt to block out the sound. As he did, there was something else, a low frequency vibration he could feel through the chair. Was the floor about to collapse? He twisted in his chair. Jennifer was hunched over, her eyes screwed shut. Forcing his body further round, Gus glanced backwards and in the glare of the projector light saw a large metal block hanging from a hoist racing towards them.