The Assassin's Dog

by David George Clarke

  Without a second thought he pushed his feet hard against the floor and launched himself sideways, screaming Jennifer’s name as he did.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Already disoriented by the mind-splitting cacophony blasting from the speakers, Jennifer hardly registered her name being screamed before she found herself hurtling sideways. A split second before, as Gus Brooke collided with her, there had been a heavy thud of metal on bone and blood had spattered onto Jennifer’s face and upper body.

  Unable to control how she fell, Jennifer and the chair to which she was tethered skidded across the platform until she came to rest on her side.

  She looked up, but there was no sign of Gus Brooke or the chair he had been sitting on.

  Without warning, the flashing from the light show vanished and the unbearable assault of jarring music ceased, a vacuum of silence engulfing the factory. As the residual echoes in her ears faded, Jennifer slowly became aware of a different sound coming from elsewhere in the building, the sound of a dog barking.

  Registering the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, Jennifer spat in disgust as she worked out the blood wasn’t hers. She had no idea what had happened, but it seemed that Gus Brooke had been hit by something large and heavy, something intended for her.

  She twisted her head to look up, expecting to see Rosselli standing there with a large weapon in his hand, something like a baseball bat. But he wasn’t; he was standing twenty feet away looking angry, the Glock still in his right hand pointing at the ground.

  “What the hell just happened, Rosselli?” growled Jennifer.

  Rosselli’s eyes focussed on her. “The young detective saved your life and in doing so, sacrificed his own.”

  “Yes, but what happened? What did you hit him with?”

  Rosselli ignored her question and walked over to the edge of the platform. As he peered down into the loading bay, he nodded his head slowly.

  “Yes,” he said. “If the block didn’t kill him, the fall did.”

  “Block?” yelled Jennifer. “What block?”

  Rosselli turned to look down at her. “The metal block that was intended for you. It’s a pity; it’s such a painless and unexpected way to go.”

  “I don’t understand, but since I’m still alive for the present, would you please stand this chair up so I haven’t got my face in the dirt?”

  Rosselli lay the two remote controls he was holding on the ground behind him, bent over to grab the chair back and yanked the chair and Jennifer with it into an upright position.

  “I tried to make it comfortable for you, detective sergeant, an instant death, like being shot in the back of the head.”

  “So why not just shoot me in the back of the head? Why set up this ridiculous performance?”

  Rosselli weighed the gun he was still holding in his hand. “It may have to come to that, although I’d still rather not. You see, it’s always easier for me if someone else gets the blame.”

  Jennifer was nodding as she worked out the sequence of events. “Now I understand. You caught Gus in the act, found out his connection with Trisha’s death and how he was trying his hardest to worm his way out of it.”

  “More or less, detective sergeant. It was such ungentlemanly behaviour. It showed no respect for your poor colleague.”

  “So you decided he should pay?”

  “I decided he should not get away with it, yes. The full sequence of events together with the evidence will be made available to your colleagues, and, of course, to his wife.”

  “Judge and jury,” said Jennifer, not even trying to hide her disdain. “And since he would be dead, he’d have no chance to explain his actions, to defend himself.”

  “I am surprised, signorina, you sound almost sorry for him.”

  “On the contrary, I think the way he behaved was despicable, but I don’t see why he had to die.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to, not at this point.”

  Jennifer was staring at the man’s eyes, trying to follow his reasoning.

  “Yes, I see now. You wanted to have him blamed for my death as well as Trisha’s. The story would be something like: after realising I had worked out what had happened, he knew I wouldn’t hesitate in having him arrested, so he decided to kill me too. You would have been invisible in the whole thing.”

  “Brava, signorina! You have a good mind. But there is no ‘would have’ in it, I will remain invisible. What will be found along with your superintendent’s body will be Detective Brooke’s and—”

  “Mine,” interrupted Jennifer. She hesitated as the fear she was feeling began to overtake her self-control. She knew she had to keep talking, just in case someone was on the way. She didn’t see why they should be; she had well and truly screwed-up, but it was her only chance.

  “Do you honestly believe you haven’t left evidence of your presence here? Our forensic people are excellent; they will find something.”

  Rosselli shrugged. “What if they do? What are they going to compare it with? I exist on none of your databases, and these buildings have been overrun with your police officers all looking for the superintendent. I suspect anything I have left will simply merge into the background. White noise. The presence of a third party won’t occur to them since they will be far too angry with their own dead detective constable and too eager to blame everything on him. I think I am safe.”

  Jennifer knew he was right. Why should anyone suspect that someone apart from her and Brooke had been at the factory? If Rosselli set up things carefully, Gus’s death could be made to look accidental, a slip-up when he was intent on killing Jennifer. Rosselli could easily put Gus’s fingerprints on the buttons of the remote control she’d seen him place on the ground; it would look like he released another load by mistake. She knew there was another; she had looked along the rails and seen it lined up and waiting. All Rosselli had to do now was to reposition her and the chair in its path.

  “You seem to have thought of everything, Signor Rosselli,” she said in Italian. “You are clearly very professional in what you do.”

  Rosselli tilted his head in appreciation of the flattery. “I am the best there is, signorina,” he said. As far as he was concerned it was a statement of fact; modesty was irrelevant.

  Jennifer nodded her head. “Tell me,” she said, still trying to stall for time. “What am I worth?”

  Rosselli frowned, not understanding the significance of her question. “Are you making me an offer, trying to outbid my client?” he replied, amused at the idea.

  Jennifer rolled her eyes. “As if …” she said. “No, I meant, what did you get paid? From what you say, you are an assassin and from your accent, you must work for one or more of the Italian mobs. If you are the best, you would expect a high fee. I just wondered how much I cost your client.”

  Rosselli laughed. “A lot of money, signorina. My client paid me a lot of money.”

  “And your client was who? Let me see … Maurizio Cambroni is dying or perhaps even dead by now, although he might have ordered it. I’m guessing Ettore Cambroni. Am I right?”

  Rosselli didn’t answer. He had decided it was time. Goccia was still barking in the distance and he wanted to go to her, calm her down. Besides, he was finding the conversation difficult. It broke all his rules. He never engaged with the target, never got close, and this exchange with Jennifer Cotton reminded him why. He liked her. She was brave, she was clever and she wasn’t going to capitulate to him. Not like the spineless Gus Brooke who had been putty in his hands. No, although she knew exactly what was coming, he would make it quick and she would still feel nothing.

  He picked up one of the two remote controls and punched the buttons on its panel. Immediately the factory space was filled with the same deafening discordant cacophony of sound he had played earlier. He saw Jennifer flinch at the onslaught to her ears as the lights flashed along with the noise.

  Rosselli tossed the remote control to the floor and grabbed the back of the chair to which Jennifer
was tethered, dragging it across the platform to align with the path of the second rust-encrusted hoist and block. Not wanting to see the fear that he was sure would be in her eyes, he remained behind and slightly to her left as he reached down for the second remote control.

  Part Seven

  The Assassin’s Dog

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  In the storeroom where she’d been left with one meagre biscuit, the normally patient and unflappable Goccia was pacing the floor in canine anguish.

  Several minutes earlier, wrenched violently from her slumbers by the painful bombardment of sound pulsating through the entire factory buildings when Rosselli switched on the discordant music, she had leapt in fear from her blanket, her eyes wild. The noise battering her hypersensitive ears was inflicting physical pain, as terrifying as it was disorienting.

  She had barked frantically, bouncing around the room in an attempt to distance herself from the attack, while at the same time, she feared for her master. She was desperate to find him, to be reassured by him; she needed his gentle, human contact.

  She was still barking when the sound abruptly stopped, but she kept barking and kept bouncing. She wasn’t stupid; she knew about doors. She had opened them in the past. Not without difficulty, but with persistence, she had succeeded. And this door had a handle rather than a round knob.

  However, try as she may, even though she managed to pull on the handle several times in her attempts, her efforts were insufficient; the door remained closed.

  Although exhausted with the effort, the agitated Goccia kept pacing. Up and down, up and down, her eyes hardly leaving the door handle, barking at it with every pass.

  She was starting to flag when the onslaught of sound started again, as loud if not louder than the first time.

  With a screech of terror as she jumped in shock at the renewed attack on her senses, her ears flattened and her gums receded to bare her teeth. She had to get away. Throwing herself at the door, she groped furiously at the handle, trying to grab it in her mouth or catch it with her feet.

  On her third crazed attempt, she succeeded. The door flew open. With the metal barrier of the door removed, the wall of sound was now even louder, but nothing short of annihilation would have daunted the pug’s determination. She raced along the corridor from the storeroom, her nose following her master’s smell as if drawn along by an invisible line.

  When the corridor opened onto the wide platform, her eyes fell immediately onto Rosselli. She skidded to a halt, barking as she saw him drag a chair with a person in it across the wooden floor. But the noise was too intense; her bark, although loud, couldn’t compete.

  She could smell blood, which disturbed her. Something was wrong; she had to help her master.

  Bounding across the platform just as Rosselli finished positioning the chair, she saw him half turn and reach out for something lying on the floor. His hand had almost found it when the pug racing towards him came into his peripheral vision. He paused in shock.

  “Goccia! How did you get out?”

  Extending his arms towards his beloved dog, Rosselli’s immediate thoughts were that someone had opened the storeroom door and released her. Probably taken by surprise to find a dog, whoever it was would have turned to watch her bound off in the direction of the platform. But there was no doubt in his mind that whoever it was would soon recover their equilibrium and there was also no doubt in his mind who the person, or worse, persons might be. The police.

  Thinking rapidly through his alternatives as Goccia bounced in excitement in front of him, Rosselli focussed his eyes on the area around the entrance from the corridor. He could see no movement, but if they were good, they would be carefully but rapidly working their way along the corridor, one covering the other as they alternated their advance, any noise they made totally masked by the barrage of sound coming from the speakers.

  He reached for the sound-and-light-show remote control only inches from Goccia’s paws. The dog bent her head to his hand, licked it and playfully jumped backwards, delighted to have found her master once more. After picking up the remote control, Rosselli straightened up, feeling for the buttons as he once again looked towards the corridor, the Glock still in his hand ready to shoot in an instant. Focussed as he was, he didn’t notice that in jumping backwards, Goccia’s rear paws landed on the other remote control that was still lying on the floor, her broad pads depressing both buttons.

  The first button of the pair had already done its work in dispatching the hoist with the metal block that had shattered Gus Brooke’s skull, but the other was ready for action.

  Twenty metres from where Rosselli was standing, the metal coil of a tiny heater started to glow, softening and finally melting the taut nylon line running two millimetres above it. As the line snapped apart, the wheels of the trolley bearing the load of the second hoist began to roll.

  With his eyes fixed on the entrance from the corridor, Rosselli’s fingers pressed the remote control buttons to stop the deafening noise and switch off the light show. In the split second before the hoist and its heavy load reached him, the assassin heard the rumble of wheels on rails. His head turned sharply to his right, his eyes looking upwards in the direction of the sound. The same split second was long enough for him to work out what had happened but not long enough for him to complete his final cry.

  “Gocc—”

  Resigned to her fate in the hands of a professional assassin, Jennifer had offered no resistance when Rosselli had yanked the chair to which she was tethered across the platform into the exact place for the remaining block to hit her. She slumped in the chair, hoping he might have miscalculated the height, hoping the speeding load would fly past above her head. But she knew it wouldn’t; this man wasn’t an idiot. He had every last detail accounted for and factored in. It would smash into her head with the same bone-crushing efficiency that had killed Gus Brooke. And with the awful noise, she wouldn’t hear it coming.

  A kaleidoscope of emotions flashed through her brain, but the dominant one was regret that she had let Derek down. She had gone out on a limb and paid the price. He would never know that she was about to call in reinforcements; he wouldn’t know that Rosselli had caught her and forced her into the factory. He would simply think she had been her normal impetuous self, that she had felt compelled to risk everything in the hope of finding Trisha alive, that in her reckoning every second wasted could have been crucial to Trisha’s survival.

  What he would eventually know was that the risks he thought Jennifer had taken were a waste of time. Trisha had been dead for days, dead since the night of her disappearance, dead since a stupid, avoidable accident had snatched away her life, dead and dumped like so much garbage by an insensitive man in fear for his own survival.

  She felt a tear roll down her cheek and she angrily shook her head. As she did, on the edge of her vision she saw Rosselli bend to one side. He was on her left and far closer than she thought. She twisted her head farther to her left and now in the corner of her eye she saw a flash of the excited form of Goccia jumping in front of Rosselli.

  This made no sense. Rosselli had shut the dog away somewhere. Had she escaped? Something had gone wrong which meant that not everything was going to plan. She already knew what was about to happen if she remained still, but if Rosselli was distracted, she might be able to change that.

  Without warning, the discordant cacophony ceased and the lights stopped flashing.

  Hunkering down as far as she could in the chair, Jennifer shifted her weight to the right and pushed as hard as she could against her feet, launching herself sideways away from Rosselli.

  As the metal block flashed past only millimetres from her head, she heard a strangled cry that sounded like it could be ‘Goccia!’ interrupted by the sickening thud of metal on bone. For the second time in a few minutes, a thick spray of blood spattered onto her face and body.

  The eerie silence that followed Jennifer and the chair skidding to a halt on the wooden platform was qu
ickly shattered by two bewildered barks. From her almost upside down position, Jennifer turned her head awkwardly towards the sound and saw Goccia standing on the edge of the platform looking plaintively down to the loading bay below. There was another bark as Goccia sat herself down, followed by mournful whimpering, the sound horribly similar to the crying of a distressed child.

  “Goccia!” called Jennifer. “Goccia! Good girl. Come here. It’s all right, no one’s going to hurt you; you’re safe now.”

  The pug turned its head towards her. Not many people apart from her master addressed her by name. But this person had and her voice was soft and kind.

  She looked back down at the twisted form of her master lying half on top of another man in the loading bay below. Instinctively she understood that although there was something terribly wrong, there was nothing she could do. Standing up, she let out a final long, mournful whimper, took a last look down and walked sadly over to Jennifer.

  Try as she may, Jennifer couldn’t persuade Goccia to come any closer than a couple of feet. Initially, as the pug approached her, she thought the dog would come right up close and perhaps even lick her face. But then she remembered she was covered in blood, its harsh smell overlaid with the sweat of fear that would have soaked into her clothing and now be confusing the dog’s senses. But the dog made no attempt to run away. Instead she sat and stared sadly into Jennifer’s eyes while Jennifer talked quietly to her.

  “We’ve got something of a problem, Goccia,” she said. “I can’t really move very far.”

  The pug looked at her suspiciously, not understanding.

  “Of course,” said Jennifer and switched to Italian. “Your owner spoke to you in Italian all the time, didn’t he?”