Portrait Of An Assassin - Richard Godwin

by Near To The Knuckle

  His wife would be out and he would get home after screwing his mistress. That gave me a window of two hours in which to end his life and make it look like a break–in.

  I decided this was the best disguise for the hit, since the offices would draw too much attention to his death.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  I checked out of my hotel and into another way across town. I collected what I needed and went over the plan again. The next day I hot–wired and hid a car. Then I waited.

  The morning dragged poisonously into the afternoon and finally I watched darkness settle. When the birds stopped singing I felt a strange sort of calm, almost serenity. As if I only had one option now, and that gave my fractured life some sort of cohesion. Like when a plane takes off, there’s no going back to check if you’ve left the gas on.

  I parked around the block, made my way into his garden and waited.

  The kitchen window was open and provided easy access.

  He was late.

  I had reckoned nine, but it was ten before I heard the car pull up.

  I crouched beneath a tree waiting for a sighting, and then saw his wife walk into the kitchen.

  She threw her coat onto the floor and fixed herself a drink.

  My head span.

  Then another car crunched the gravel at the front.

  The sound of heavy footsteps.

  I saw Stone enter the kitchen. He put his attaché case on the table.

  They started arguing, and I could hear every word.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “You fucker!”

  “It’s just sex!”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “I’ll ditch her. You’re the woman I love.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Oh come on, Sam.”

  “Don’t Sam me.”

  “I’ll ring her now and tell her it’s off.”

  “I mean for Christ’s sake, you can’t even make it to your son’s birthday. You don’t care about anyone, do you?”

  “I know, I know, I’ll make it up to him, I had a meeting. What can I do?”

  “Make an effort, you shit.” She poured herself another drink. “I mean it’s not enough that you go and rip off the taxpayer and have us hassled by paparazzi, you have to go and fuck every two–bit tart in sight. What is it? Can’t you think with your brain, instead of your prick?”

  She was getting wilder with the drink, and Stone started to pace the kitchen.

  “I work every hour under the sun to provide you with the lifestyle you need, and all you have to do is entertain once in a while.”

  “You said you’d never do that to me again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You fucker.”

  She threw her drink in his face and poured another one.

  Stone walked over to the sink, feet from where I watched.

  I could see his jowly face and he was angry. The veins on his temple were standing out, and his hands shook as he wiped the vodka away.

  “Don’t do that again,” he said, turning his back to the window.

  “Or what?”

  “I’m warning you.”

  “What are you going to do? Beat me up?”

  “Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

  “No! How would you like it if I was unfaithful?”

  “You’re not though.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “You’re not the type.”

  “Oh really?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Let me inform you, Mr fucking Stone, because that’s what you are, a fucking stone, a heartless piece of shit, that I have been having an affair of my own.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “I have been fucking, or been fucked by a beautiful young man, and guess what, he makes me come. I don’t have to fake orgasm with him.”

  “I’ve had enough of this.”

  He was moving toward the kitchen door.

  “He can satisfy a woman. He doesn’t have to pay her, like you do your tart.”

  “I said enough!”

  He spun round and hit her.

  It was a hard backhand slap that knocked her against the counter.

  She steadied herself and poured another drink.

  “I could get you arrested,” she said, suddenly calm now.

  “Look, I could be going down, you fucking little bitch.”

  She walked right up to him.

  “You don’t like it, do you? Another man with your wife, his prick inside me, and I loved it, I ate him up.”

  They were standing inches from each other.

  “You’ve had enough to drink,” he said, grabbing her glass.

  “No I haven’t.”

  She wrestled with him and finally it fell, shattering on the flagstone floor.

  She walked over to the cabinet and got another one.

  “You know, it’s interesting, the more vodka I drink, the more truthful I become.”

  “You have a problem.”

  “Yes, you. And another thing, I’m leaving you.”

  “Oh no, you’re not.”

  “You can get some other fucker to do your bloody dinner parties.”

  “I’ve given you everything you wanted.”

  “You never gave me children.”

  A moment’s silence stretched like a tightrope.

  “What?”

  “They’re not yours. You’ve been bringing up another man’s kids, and, you know what, you deserve it, you fucking loser.”

  Stone walked over to the kitchen table. He picked up his gloves and put them on.

  “Running away?”

  “Oh no,” he said.

  He made a fist, turned round slowly, and hit her.

  It was a hard blow and she knocked her head against the wall with a loud crack.

  He hit her again, and again. He hit her in the face, the wall breaking the momentum of her head.

  Her body slumped, leaving a thick smear of blood on the magnolia wallpaper.

  He leaned over to check her pulse, then left the room.

  I waited for what seemed like an eternity for him to return, wishing I’d picked his office.

  He’d changed his clothes and was carrying a holdall.

  He came out into the garden and, locking the back door from the outside, kicked it in. Then he started to mess up the house.

  I waited until he was in the living room when I seized my moment.

  Two people could use the cover of a break–in.

  Treading carefully to avoid the pool of blood, I sidestepped his wife’s body.

  He was emptying drawers onto the floor. I was almost upon him when he caught my reflection in the mirror.

  “What the–?” he said, and swung at me.

  I ducked and coming up, I pressed the muffler against his face.

  I had never intended to get so close, but this was spinning out of control. I just had to end it.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  I squeezed the Glock and blew his face away. Literally.

  His cheek and nose shot across the room, adding to the décor, sticking like lumps of meat to the flock wallpaper. He fell heavily onto the thick carpet with a peephole to his brains in his face. There were fragments of his skin and vein everywhere.

  After I cleaned myself up, I went into the kitchen. His case was still on the table.

  It lay open, and all I needed to do was reach inside and pull the file out.

  I didn’t have to make anymore mess, he’d done that for me.

  IV

  When I handed Martoni the file, the white smile broke across his face like a scar. “I always said we have every confidence in you, Jack.”

  I sat in the same chair as on the first meeting.

  “This is for you,” he said, passing me an envelope.

  I didn’t even bother checking its contents.

  After a whisky I left.

  “We will be i
n touch, and, well done,” he said.

  In the elevator down I glanced inside: 25k in readies.

  ***

  I wanted the money and out. I thought I would travel and get my head together, maybe start up my own business. Put a deposit down on a place and pick up my life again.

  There’s a difference between an order and a brief. The difference of choice, or the choices people think they’re making. Sometimes that might just mean letting other people call the shots. Deferring to authority. Copping out.

  The horizon had shifted and the sky looked bloodshot. All it took was the blink of an eye in which I blew Stone’s breath away.

  I wanted to clear the experience out of my throat. But when I looked in the mirror there was someone else staring back at me. Someone through life took on the grainy separate quality of a slow–motion film; as though moving on ice.

  If I thought my first job was complicated I was in for a ride on a well–greased helter skelter. My hands were about to get a whole lot dirtier.

  ***

  A few nights later the phone went. It was Martoni.

  “Jack. A few questions.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why the mess?”

  “Unavoidable.”

  “His face was all over the gun.”

  “It got complicated.”

  “Please. Explain.”

  “The office was never going to be the place, it had to be at his house.”

  “And his wife dies too?”

  “I had it planned. She turns up, wise to his affair and they start a domestic.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Stone did.”

  “OK.”

  “I made it look like a break–in. Unfortunately, he was quicker than I expected and I had to pop him from close range.”

  There was a long pause. I could hear him breathing.

  “It’s your first hit. We’ll be in touch.”

  V

  Travelling around Europe, when I left the Royal Marines had brought me many experiences.

  Having no family contacts, I was unconstrained by the usual ties.

  I drifted around the Greek islands, picking up casual bar work as I went, and eventually decided to explore Italy.

  It seemed logical to drift south, and one day I landed in Sicily.

  Straying away from the big towns like Palermo and craving solitude I ventured into the interior of the island. I’d resolved to get my head together and then head back to London in pursuit of employment.

  I rented a room over a crumbling hotel with only a handful of rooms in a tiny place called Pietraperzia. What bustle of activity that occurred beneath the blistering sun soon settled into a habitual quiet, giving me time to think. By day the local youths revved their motorbikes outside my window, while night time brought the parade of locals, and then a deathly silence.

  I sat and drank too much, or explored the neighbouring countryside.

  One evening, as I went out to eat, a fight broke out.

  I was passing a back alley which overflowed with rubbish and heard a man crying out.

  Two guys were knocking the shit out of him.

  I walked into the alley and as I got close one of them swiped at me.

  I dodged, spotting the duster, and managed to drop him.

  The other one pulled out a gun.

  He came right up to me and held it inches away.

  I started to back off and caught him in the groin with a kick. He crumpled, winded, while I beat him unconscious, flinging his piece into the garbage.

  I quickly got the injured man out of there and understood enough Italian to make out he had a car nearby. Then I drove him into the countryside, following his directions which consisted of pointing and banging the dashboard.

  It was a new Mercedes, which was unusual for that area, as it was fairly poor.

  Finally, we pulled up outside a large, gated villa.

  He buzzed me in and that is how I made my introduction to Luca Martoni.

  After tending to his younger brother and offering me a glass of wine, he shook my hand and thanked me.

  “You have saved his life, Jack, and I will remember you for it. You were good. Army?”

  “No, not Army, Royal Marines.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “How do I get back to my hotel from here?”

  He shook his head.

  “You do not understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  “The men you fought earlier will be looking for you. You stay here now, you are our guest. In the morning I will send some people to fetch your things.”

  “It’s OK, I can handle myself.”

  “Look, Jack, they will have to kill you. You are in a foreign land without anyone to help you, apart from my family. Don’t be foolish.”

  “What have I got involved with?”

  “I will explain. But another time. Now it is late, let me show you to your room.”

  He led me up a flight of stairs to a large well appointed bedroom with an ensuite. The trappings of wealth were everywhere. It certainly beat any other accommodation round there.

  For the rest of my time in Sicily, I stayed at his villa in Camitrice, a tiny settlement of houses between two towns. It is not even on many maps.

  I learned about Martoni and the business he conducted, and he made it clear that as much as he was grateful to me for saving his brother’s life, I was being inducted.

  He wanted to know about my military training. He introduced me to some of his people, killers and hustlers, businessmen and heavies.

  I spent lazy days around his pool, taking in the timeless landscape, lost among the olive groves. And then one day I decided to leave.

  VI

  Once you start, you get sucked into another life.

  Killing is addictive, the habits around assassination are themselves habit forming.

  After Stone I travelled around for a while, staying in one hotel after another.

  Enjoying the money, I deluded myself that was it and I would seek a new direction. The truth is, I’d already found it.

  It wasn’t long before Martoni made contact again.

  He was back in London and I met him the next day.

  He got right down to business.

  “This time, the profile is different, Jack.”

  I went through the file and was baffled. Clipping after clipping of church affairs, mostly in Italian; picture after picture of a priest at different stages in his life. A young man being promoted within the ranks of the Catholic church. Growing old. Getting status.

  Martoni sat waiting.

  “I can see you are perplexed.”

  “What reason is there for killing this man?”

  “The church is highly organised, and useful at times. People follow its message, especially in poor, uneducated communities, their belief is all they have to sustain them.”

  “Forgive me, but where is this leading?”

  “Power, Jack. Power.”

  “A highly regarded man of the cloth, who you want dead.”

  “Not me personally, but he deserves it.”

  “That’s the bit I’m missing. I get the bit about how the church works. Business as usual.”

  “Yes, business. Well, Jack, there is another business, Father Anthony has been involved in, which has been covered up by the church. He has been moved sideways, and protected by those very high up. Very high up.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “Child abuse. The man is a paedophile.” He got up and poured me a drink. “The reason all the file contains is a background and various pictures you may find useful in order to identify him is because it has been so effectively covered up, the press haven’t got wind of it. He has been abusing children since he was a young priest. He has ruined lives and used his position of trust to indulge his perversion. Your remit is to kill a paedophile.”

  “He’s been doing this for years, you say.”

  “Yes.”

>   “Your – client.”

  “My client’s children were both abused by him. The legacy of his actions, the threats he placed them under, the psychological as well as physical damage he has caused them is never going to go away. The boy took his own life last month, the girl is in a mental institution, probably for life. He had raped her repeatedly, often using a crucifix, and now, you know what his favourite sermon is?” I shrugged. “The value of forgiveness.”

  “Some things are unforgivable.”

  “I agree entirely.”

  “And the two kids you mention are the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Who knows how many he has abused? Hundreds.”

  “The biggest preachers of forgiveness are often those who want to cut themselves the most slack.”

  “The job will take place in Rome.”

  “Before the bastard becomes Pope.”

  There was the smile again, and then I was gone.

  This time there would be no gun.

  I had something else in store for Father Anthony. And when I had finished he would no longer need to struggle with temptation.

  VII

  Rome was a bustle of activity and noise.

  I checked into the Intercontinental on the outskirts, equidistant between the airport and Father Anthony’s house.

  He lived in a wealthy neighbourhood not far from his church, a huge Renaissance indulgence, where he lorded it over the other priests.

  Paying a visit there, I saw him and hated him on sight.

  As I sat taking it in, deciding where to carry out the hit, he passed me.

  He swished his robes and started to lecture another priest in Italian.

  He was a fat, bloated man with a high–pitched voice. An epicene bully who smelt of rose water and incense. Every so often as he talked, he would fiddle with his crucifix, running his pale fingers down the shaft. He disappeared shortly after shouting his orders, but I’d seen all I needed. There was something unwholesome about him, a stench I couldn’t drive away for several hours.

  I carried out what surveillance I needed, checking out his house, a wealthy villa more suited to a businessman. I wanted to kill him and leave before he had a chance to abuse more children. And all the time I kept seeing him fiddle with his cross.