Portrait Of An Assassin - Richard Godwin

by Near To The Knuckle

  I didn’t want to get too close, since Martoni had said no gun.

  Watching him leave one morning I saw him get into a BMW. It would provide me with the ideal hit for him.

  I’d been taught a few tricks from friends in the Royal Engineers about explosives. I had a knack for demolitions and this wouldn’t be any different. The priest lived far enough away from the life of the city for it not to be a risk to anyone else.

  I made a few calls. Martoni had given me some contacts in the city who he said would help me out.

  ***

  Marco Latressa was a small man with a heavily scarred face, and I met him at the Piazza San Pietro.

  “Mr Jack,” he said, offering me a strong handshake.

  “Lucas filled you in?”

  “Everything, I know what you need. From your telephone conversation, I ascertain much, is that correct English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, I always say, language is the first step towards a better world.”

  “And the second?”

  He laughed.

  “You are here, aren’t you? The world is full of hyenas and wolves.”

  “So, do you have access to the materials?”

  “Come.”

  He drove me to a quiet road some kilometres away and parked outside a disused shop.

  In a back room all the materials I needed were laid out on a table, pipe, watch, wires, semtex.

  I needed to get Father Anthony in his car at the right time.

  I watched him and worked out his movements.

  He always gave a heavy sermon on a Sunday. Preached about Satan’s grip on the modern world and the breakdown in family values. He would later return to his house and visit families, locally. And usually on foot. He rarely used his car, but would go shopping for groceries once a week and pay a visit to a family on the outskirts of the city every Tuesday afternoon.

  I figured he was abusing or grooming the kids. He took them sweets and spent time alone with them. He would return in a good mood and take a long bath before going to church. The timing on this hit was critical.

  One morning, watching his house from my car, I saw him coming out to talk to his housekeeper. She was late and he was admonishing her for her timekeeping. His voice was loud and carried in the still air. The woman, in her sixties, curtsied to him, and he dismissed her with a wave.

  Some English tourists, obviously lost, passed by with maps as he was about to go back inside.

  “Scusi, do you speak English?” one of them asked.

  He stopped and turned to look at them. A man with a rucksack with two women, one wearing a vest, the other shorts and a T–shirt.

  “Ye–es, I speak da English,” he said, modulating his tone.

  Shallow charm oozed from him like grease.

  They were trying to find a church. The man fumbled with a map, while Father Anthony ignored him.

  “Ye–es, it is not far,” he said, looking at the women. “But you cannot go there like this.”

  “Like what?” the woman in the vest said.

  “That,” he said, prodding her in the chest.

  “Hey, wait a minute, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Your breasts are on display, and you want to go into a church. Are you a prostitute?”

  “You’re out of order. If I want to dress…”

  “No! You are in Italy, you silly girl. Your nipples are exposed, do you have no shame?”

  The man was unsure what to do, and the other woman got involved now.

  “Hold on, you can’t speak to her like that.”

  “Another prostitute? All you English women are the same, sleep with anyone, get drunk. Mary Magdalene–”.

  “I’m not interested in Mary Magdalene,” she said. “We asked for directions, we’re in your country, I wish we hadn’t.”

  “Yes, you are in my country, and you behave like filthy whores. You expose your flesh, your bodies you have no respect for, and you as a man, are you not ashamed to be seen with these – aah!”

  “You have no right to speak to them like that,” the guy said. “In England we’ve moved into the twenty–first century you know.”

  The woman in the vest was angry.

  “You might think you’re appointed by God, but I don’t, we just wanted to look at the architecture.”

  “You asked my advice.”

  “No. We asked directions. You stand there and moralise me about how I dress. It’s my body, I choose who I let see it, who I let touch it, you creep!”

  “Everyone see it!” he said.

  And with that he reached out and pulled her vest down momentarily so that her breasts were exposed before the material snapped back.

  The group was speechless and just stood there while he turned and entered his villa, locking the gate after him.

  The woman in the vest was seething.

  “I’m going to report him.”

  “Dirty old man, that’s sexual assault,” her friend said.

  The man stood there staring at the villa.

  After a while, they drifted away looking dazed.

  I would do it next Tuesday, before he paid another visit to those kids.

  ***

  I spent Monday organising my departure. I had a ticket for the following afternoon.

  In the evening I put together the bomb over at the disused shop.

  I had a light meal and a walk.

  At two o’clock in the morning I left. There was no night porter and no one to see me leave.

  I hot–wired a car and drove round to Father Anthony’s house. It was dark. I sat a hundred metres away, checking for late revellers, frequency of traffic. It was as quiet as I’d figured it would be.

  Parking around the back in a small side road, I donned my balaclava. Then I walked to his car which was parked outside his villa.

  Checking for signs of life and seeing none, I started work.

  I got underneath and managed to attach the bomb with tape in just under two minutes. Then I activated it.

  The next time the ignition was turned it would blow. There were no other cars parked nearby.

  When I resurfaced the street was as quiet as a grave. I headed back to my car and left, dumping it in a yard some distance from the hotel.

  ***

  The next day at ten to one I parked at the edge of his street. I could see his car and was far enough away not to be seen from any of the houses.

  I waited.

  At ten past, he came out. He was carrying some bags of sweets. As he walked, he fiddled with his crucifix. He stopped, fumbling in his pockets.

  Then, sweetly, he got in.

  There was a delay.

  What he was doing?

  A car drove down the street and I hoped he would stall.

  It passed him, turning left at the end. I sat there willing him to start the engine, wondering what he was doing.

  A woman walked past and waved at him. I saw his arm wave back out of the window. She disappeared into one of the houses, and still I waited.

  Had the engine failed?

  Then I heard it.

  I felt it first, a heavy shove, then the noise followed.

  In slow motion, bits of his car flew down the road. A door slammed down on the other side, flames and fragments of metal showering the street. A wheel bounced down the road towards me. Windows from nearby houses began to break.

  I reversed out of there just as a few startled women emerged from their houses, pressing their hands to their faces, clutching their skirts.

  I returned to my hotel, got my bags and paid.

  At the airport I found a bar and waited to board.

  VIII

  I picked up my pay–cheques, and each time the amount went up.

  I was getting a reputation. My speed and efficiency were often referred to by Martoni, who began to put me onto other contacts. Work streamed in and like any business, once the momentum started, it kept going so long as I was as good as my last job.r />
  Martoni complimented me on the hits I’d carried out.

  “You are clean and follow the remit.”

  “Everyone loves a clean hit,” I said, looking over my shoulder for the person I used to be.

  I bought a place which I rarely used since I was travelling so much. The lifestyle changes you. You need to be displaced for it to work.

  I was walking toward something so tangled and twisted I was going to need something a lot sharper than wire cutters to get out.

  I carried out the hits and collected the money. I became known. Other predators began to size me up. They watched from their world, hemmed in with lies that twisted like barbed wire. They were invisible. They inhabited a criminal world outside the reaches of the legal system.

  I wondered when Martoni would want me to deal with a problem in his own back yard and I didn’t have long to wait.

  A police chief in Sicily wasn’t playing ball with the Mafia.

  ***

  I headed back to the interior, and booked into a smart hotel near the town where this guy Trappatoni was causing so much trouble.

  Dante Rossi, a key family figure, briefed me and provided my point of contact while there.

  A muscular heavy man who liked his pasta, he squeezed my hand as hard as he could when he met me, and when I squeezed back he grinned with the glow of satisfied machismo.

  “Jack, it is an honour to meet you,” he said, conducting me inside his well–equipped villa.

  We sat down with a couple of drinks and went through the hit.

  “Luca informs me you believe shooting is not the way here.”

  “That’s right,” I said, sipping the cold glass of Asti. It was summer and temperatures had already reached the high thirties.

  He leaned forward.

  “We need to send out a message. This is all about territory.”

  “I understand, and I have a way of getting that message through, loud and clear. Sometimes you need to startle people out of their complacency.”

  “I li–ike this, yes.”

  “So, you leave the hit to me, and fill me in with what I need to know.”

  “He live two kilometre from the police offices.”

  “Family?”

  “Wife, two daughters.”

  “I need access to him when he will be alone, and I need maps.”

  “It’s all here, Jack. So far as access is concerned, he work late at the police, ow you say?”

  “Station.”

  “Station, yes. He work late Friday. With family, is hard, because wife always there and daughters after school much of the time.”

  “So it looks like he’ll die at work.”

  “Si.”

  “What’s the security like?”

  “We ave keys. We ave da inside man.”

  “Good.”

  “We want to put a comrade in his position.”

  “Can I see the maps?”

  There were only two ways into the station. The front was out of the question. The back door led into the passage by Trappatoni’s office.

  “He always works late on a Friday?”

  “Almost always.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Gun.”

  This wasn’t going to be straightforward.

  ***

  Surveillance showed me that the first part of the job had been well taken care of. Rossi was right. He kept pretty much to the habits I’d been given.

  My first sighting of him showed me that the guy was tougher than the previous targets. About six one, boxer’s nose, he’d lifted weights, and looked like he knew how to fight.

  If I was going to get close, I’d need to hit him hard the first time. I decided on a traditional Mafia style weapon, which would not only disable him fast enough, but also send out a clear message, since that was what this was all about.

  He was not popular with his other officers, that was clearly visible.

  He lorded it over them and barked orders. They treated him with the sort of respect born of equal dislike and most of the time looked like they just wanted to get home.

  By chance, I encountered him in the piazza of a local town.

  By day deserted, at night wooden chairs were arranged in a circle for all the old men and local figures to sit and drink. Men only. It was like stepping back a hundred years.

  I was walking through the piazza as the chairs were being set out, and he was talking to an old man.

  Noticing me, he spoke to me in Italian.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I didn’t want to get into conversation with him and started to move off, when he switched to English.

  “Here as tourist?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You like Sicily?”

  “Very nice.”

  “You not football hooligan?”

  “No.”

  “You no like football?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “All right?” he said, and broke into a laugh.

  The old man obviously didn’t understand a word of this and was looking a little perturbed.

  Trappatoni explained to him in Italian that I was from England, then added, “These English scum come here and fuck our women, I’d like to chop their cocks off. They can’t play football either, and if they do, they fly badly and end up like bolognese.”

  They stood there laughing.

  “My friend here says he loves your country,” he said.

  And with that I was dismissed. He turned his back and walked off with the old man.

  I’d decided before I landed not to let on that I spoke Italian and understood Sicilian.

  ***

  Late one evening, after everyone had left, I went into the station.

  I wanted to rehearse the hit, make sure there were no unseen angles.

  The idea of doing a police officer in his own station was still a little uncomfortable to me.

  No one was around and the area was deserted.

  I disabled the security cameras and went in by the back. Then I looked around his office. My torch showed me that he was a messy worker. Files were strewn everywhere, together with unwashed cups of coffee and food wrappers.

  A picture of his wife lay buried under some papers and on the wall was a framed photograph of him with some Sicilian politician. Their fixed smiles had backhanders etched into them.

  I checked the drawers. He had a gun in there and some grappa.

  The other offices were neat and orderly testimony to the dedication and professionalism of his underdogs.

  Files were stored systematically, papers allotted their place in various trays, and nothing seemed out of place.

  Trappatoni’s desk faced the door to his office, so approaching him from the rear was going to be hard. I needed a distraction.

  It was midsummer.

  The countryside was browning to a hardness under the sun.

  The heat created a stillness that caught your throat as you stepped out of air conditioned cars or buildings.

  There is a shadow of menace and violence steeped in the landscape in these parts of Sicily, as if years of bloodshed have had their impact on the geology.

  While I was there, something happened that left me in no doubt what kind of man Trappatoni was.

  A local shopkeeper, used to giving protection money to the mob, refused to inform on one of them. Trappatoni was flexing his muscles, involved in political power plays which he hoped would result in a destabilisation of Mafia power in the region. Meanwhile, he had his own protection racket going.

  Locals who refused to recognise the shift in power he was attempting and stuck to the devil they knew were refused police help. Crimes were left for days without police investigation and if someone was being particularly uncooperative or represented a serious obstacle in his agenda, Trappatoni would have them burgled.

  Nothing much was ever taken, but just enough damage was caused to send out a warning shot.

  I’d seen the set up at his house
and dismissed it as being unsuitable for the hit. Too many people around.

  His wife, who was younger than him, had the hang–dog look of a woman worn down by years of hard work and orders. Trappatoni would sit around the villa barking orders at her and at night demand sex.

  I waited for the Friday night when I would do it and kept a low profile.

  ***

  His officers left at around six.

  By seven on Friday he was alone, going through papers and making his personal calls.

  I turned up at half–past.

  There was a back alley which served as the perfect escape route, leading out onto a deserted road where I parked the motorbike Rossi gave me.

  I could see Trappatoni through the window.

  He was pacing his office on the phone, shouting and waving his hand about.

  Slowly, I turned the key in the back door, pausing at each notch in the mechanism.

  Once inside, I waited in the corridor. He’d come out and walked into the main part of the station. A few minutes later I saw him return with a coffee. Then I heard his voice.

  Once it fell quiet again, I waited and inched my way round to where I could see him.

  His feet stuck out from the bottom of the desk, and I knew any attempt to get to him while he sat there would fail. For what I had planned I needed his back to me.

  Finally, he stood up. I heard a chair being pushed aside. Then there was the noise of a drawer opening and I guessed that he was going through the filing cabinet.

  I was right.

  I entered his office unseen.

  He was leaning over the second drawer, swearing in Sicilian.

  I moved quickly to within inches of him as he straightened up.

  For one second he stared at the reflection of a stranger in the room, and as he opened his mouth I swung the cheese wire round his thick neck.

  He was a heavy man and pushed back against me as the metal dug into his flesh, quickly tearing its way through skin and vein.

  He kicked up against the filing cabinet trying to throw me off, but I held him firm.

  He tried to hit me, to kick me, but by then I’d severed his carotid artery.

  It was like slicing meat. When I stopped, he slumped to the floor, his neck open like a piece of steak.