The fact that her latest potential target, DCI Campbell McKenzie 'currently' lived in Edinburgh was one of the attractions enticing her to make a bid for his assassination on HitsforBits: 'currently' being the operative word, for if her bid was accepted and she was given the contract, DCI Campbell McKenzie wouldn't be living for much longer.
Until she found out if the job was hers or not, she wouldn't get too excited about seeing the city. She had plenty to occupy her mind where she was.
Alessandra was a good cook. She liked to cook to relax, and she found that when standing in the kitchen and creating a meal, she could empty her mind of most other thoughts and just immerse herself in the smells she created, and the food she sliced, diced and prepared.
However, she didn't yet have any ingredients to cook any of her favourite meals, so she decided to walk into Fort Augustus and visit the supermarket before it closed. On the way, she thought she might visit the Monastery, take the tour which Gavin had recommended and see if it wasn't too late to sample the apparently delightful tea and scones.
Locking up her caravan and leaving, she said hello to a few of her new neighbours who eyed her curiously, and stopped to help an older man who was slowly walking towards the beach, resting on a stick.
"I go down to the beach every day at this time, take my flask with me, have a cup of tea, and see if I can spot Nessie. I've been doing it every day for ten years!" he explained.
She accompanied him through the gate onto the cobblestones, helped him down to the water's edge, and helped set up the portable canvas chair he’d brought with him.
"I'm Robert," he volunteered. "Thank you."
"And I'm Alice," she replied.
"I know. We all know. Word travels fast of new arrivals to our strange little community."
"Strange?"
"Well, we're not a typical cross-section of humanity, are we? We're all here for the same reason, all obsessed with the same dream. To see the monster... whatever it takes, however long it takes..."
She nodded, smiled, and then turned and walked along the beach to the gate at the bottom of the path that led from the beach up to the monastery.
The path took her up the side of a big, granite, Victorian building. It looked very out of place, sitting at the south end of the now teeming tourist resort. Its grand facade with tall double-storey windows and the two large towers with sharp, pointed roofs that pierced the sky above, adjoining a thin, tall, church, all reminded her of something more out of a Harry Potter film, than a house given over to the service of God.
As she worked her way around the side to the public front entrance, she absorbed the atmosphere of the place and was surprised to feel the calm and solitude which exuded from the building and the grounds around it.
Walking up to the main entrance, she saw a sign advertising tours and checked her watch, pleasantly discovering that the next one would be in thirty minutes and was ‘free’, but which also left time for a refreshing cup of tea beforehand.
The tea shop was at the back of the monastery, in an elevated position above the working gardens where the monks grew crops to sustain the faithful. The tea shop was surrounded by wonderful panoramic glass windows that afforded those within an incredible view of the loch, which spread out before them and headed into the distance north towards the city of Inverness.
If ever there was a place to sit and watch the loch in comfort, this was it!
She sipped her tea and slowly savoured her scone, keeping her eye on the loch, hoping. It occurred to her that on the tour, she must question the tour guide about how many monks had seen the monster. Surely, over all the years the monastery had been here, they must have had many sightings!
Two voices on her left caught her attention, interrupting her thoughts. Half turning to discern their origin, she discovered that two police officers had sat down at a table several feet away, had taken off their hats and were obviously trying to relax during a moment off duty.
Their conversation immediately drew her in.
Another body had just been discovered on the lake, having floated to the surface.
Shot through the back of the neck.
"Could have been executed and then dumped overboard." One voice had suggested.
"Looks like it. They're calling in police divers now."
"Shit. I told you, as soon as they found out that the first body belonged to a top Russian mafia boss, I knew this was going to get messy."
Alessandra had not known that Kuznetsov was Russian mafia, but the news did not surprise her. She'd suspected it.
Either that or some sort of billionaire oligarch who had fallen out with the Russian leadership. And in today's world, you probably didn't become an oligarch without breaking some rules somewhere.
Now the police divers were being called in, it was probably only a matter of time before they also found the third body. But so what? Although it was tempting to stay and listen for any more titbits of information which the policemen may casually, and rather stupidly, let slip in public, Alessandra saw from her watch that the tour of the monastery was due to start quite soon and she didn't want to miss it.
By the time she arrived, there was already a small line of people standing in front of a board advertising the tour and stating 'Queue here".
Alessandra had always found that one of the most endearing aspects of the British: their love of queuing. She knew it was a sign of respect for others, recognising the value of other human beings and their time, and supporting the importance of the idiom 'first come, first served.' How long would that great British quality last, she wondered to herself as she lined up behind a rather large and 'round' couple with American accents, with so many migrants now flooding into her Italy, most of whom were intent on making their way to Germany or Britain. None of whom were in any hurry to queue for anything, and whose manners and philosophies on life were all very, very different to the British.
She thought of the tea and cakes she had just eaten, the umbrella for the rain she was carrying, and the fact she was now standing patiently in a line with other people: she was practically British herself!
Then she laughed to herself as she thought of yet another great British trait: the fact that the British never complained. She looked at the people in front of her, who were already beginning to grumble that the tour was three minutes late in starting. Maybe four.
What a bloody disaster!
They were meant to be on holiday, relaxing.
She was half-tempted to lean forward and tell them to chill-out, as the Americans she knew so quaintly put it, when a small man with a black cassock and a classic bald patch in the middle of his head - a 'tonsure' - opened up the main door and stepped outside, looking every inch like the image of a monk you would possibly ever imagine. A character straight out of a book, except smaller.
"Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen, p-p-p-p-please, come this way! C-c-c-come inside, just in case it starts to r-r-rain!" The monk announced, stuttering his words, and making Alessandra's heart go out to him. "How brave," she thought to herself, "to be a tour guide, with such a speech impediment!"
She followed the tour group inside, into a wooden panelled entrance room, where the monk greeted them and gave them a brief history, discovering that its proper name was St. Benedict's Abbey, completed in 1880 and was a Benedictine Monastery.
Beyond that, she began to lose interest in the fine points of the religion, their daily life, and what they practised, but as they moved from the first room and started the tour around the building, she was fascinated by the architecture.
Hanging back towards the rear of the group, she continued to warm to the small monk who led them around. He was jovial, light-hearted and friendly, and Alessandra couldn't help but like him.
After about twenty minutes, they came to a quadrangle and gardens surrounded by cloisters - a covered walkway with the inner edge comprising a low wall and large impressive stone arches. It was dark in the cloisters, and the rain was now pouring down int
o the open garden in the quadrangle beyond. The draught brought by the falling rain as it pushed the air gently outwards into the open cloisters brought with it a wonderful smell of roses and herbs; the sound of the raindrops falling gently onto the plants pleasant and relaxing.
The tour walked around the cloisters, listening to the little monk point out various pieces of architecture and statues. Half-way around the quadrangle, the monk stopped and tried to climb up onto the raised wall overlooking the inner square, so that he could address the group from within one of the arches, and so that everyone could see him properly.
Seeing that he was struggling to climb up, Alessandra quickly stepped forward and offered him an arm to rest on, and a hand to help lift him up.
The little monk hesitated before accepting her gesture.
He looked at her, his dark brown eyes meeting hers, his face suddenly blank of expression.
He cocked his head to one side, his eyes appraising Alessandra, then lifted his head back up again.
He blinked. Nodded his head slightly, then smiled.
Reaching out, he rested his hand on her arm, and pushed down on it, at the same time accepting the hand she placed under his elbow as she helped lift him upwards.
With her help, he turned slightly and clambered up onto the ledge of the small wall, but as soon as he was there, he turned back towards her.
Without her consent, or any indication of what he was about to do, he reached forward and placed both hands on her head. Then spoke.
"Bless you child." He said.
It was only three words, but it caught Alessandra completely by surprise.
She felt the presence of his hands upon her head, and sensed his touch.
Instead of immediately lifting his hands as she might have expected, they seemed to linger there, gently, softly, almost caringly, and although it could only have been for the briefest moment, that moment seemed to stretch itself out and last for far longer than it must actually have been.
The moment carried with it an incredible feeling of intimacy ... and something else that she couldn't identify.
Alessandra felt mesmerised. She closed her eyes. Her head fell slightly forward, in an almost unconscious act of supplication and acceptance. At that moment a strange sensation travelled up and down her spine.
It was like an electric current had passed from the monk to her, and something tangible, something incredible, passed between them.
She felt his hands lift off her head, but although they were gone, the incredible, almost peaceful feeling of intimacy remained, pervading her body.
Her head was still bowed forward, her eyes closed.
For a moment, her brain seemed to slow down and stop, the world around her ceasing to exist. She was cocooned in silence. In nothingness. In peace.
And then she heard the monk speak.
His voice was soft, above her, talking about something she did not immediately understand. She struggled to open her eyes, and found that they resisted, almost as if they were glued shut. She tried blinking, hard, and they came slowly open.
Lifting her head, she blinked several times again, and then looked up.
The monk was speaking normally, addressing the rest of the tourists.
He was speaking about the quadrangle, the architect, the plants and the flowers.
She looked up at him, and he was reaching out his hand towards her.
Automatically she responded by offering her arm and hand once again, and this time he immediately accepted her offer of help.
She helped him down off the wall, and when he had both feet on the ground, his hands still resting on Alessandra, he looked up at her face, his gentle eyes meeting hers, and he simply smiled.
"Bless you," he said very quietly, "for you are now blessed."
Then he turned away from her, and walked off down the corridor, the rest of the tour group following him.
Alessandra stood rooted to the ground, not understanding what had just happened. Indeed, something strange HAD just happened. Something very peculiar.
She felt weak.
Nauseous.
The world around her seemed suddenly unclear.
Different.
Unsteady.
Turning from the rest of the group, she hurried quickly back around the quadrangle, saw the sign for the exit, and just made it through the entrance door to the world outside before the world began to spin, she bent forward and vomited.
"Bless you," the voice in her head said, "For you are now blessed."
Straightening herself and wiping her mouth with a tissue from her pocket, she backed away from the entrance to the monastery, turned in her stride, and then hurried away from the building as quickly as her legs could carry her.
Chapter 10
Scotland
Edinburgh
Saturday
11.30 p.m.
Campbell McKenzie sat at the back of the Fiddler's Arms, leaning against the wall and listening to the in-house Ceilidh band, his eyes closed, his fourth pint half-empty, and his life ruined.
He'd been there two hours already and had no intention of leaving any time soon.
Fiona had returned, briefly, earlier that day.
She'd thrown a copy of the Scotsman newspaper down on the floor, looked at him... just looked at him without speaking, and then left.
Campbell had already seen the paper. Fearing the worst, he'd been out first thing in the morning to buy a copy. It was all there. The whole story, or at least as much as they had been legally allowed to print without being in contempt of court and ruining the prosecution. Obviously, Peter had failed to stop it being printed today, as he'd hoped. The only consolation, which was practically none at all, was that Campbell had managed to tell Fiona before she read it.
Fiona had not returned home on Friday night. He'd called her best friend, and she'd confirmed she was there, before denouncing him as a little shit. Then she'd hung up.
When Campbell had picked up the paper from the floor earlier that morning, there was a sticky note stuck on the page that ran his story.
Its message, hand-written by Fiona, was clear and succinct.
"Please pack a bag and please leave the house by this evening. I would prefer you out of my sight."
The message was typical of Fiona. Even at this time, she was courteous and polite. She could well have written, 'Pack a bag' and, 'I want you out of my sight!' exclamation mark, but instead she'd said, 'please' and 'prefer'.
Over the years, whenever Campbell had read about divorce cases, or heard tales of woe from his own friends, he'd always been stunned that the woman should presume that the man should leave the property. Why? In the modern age of equality, if they were that bloody equal, surely in all divorce cases statistically half the women should leave the house too? Campbell had always promised himself, half-seriously, that god forbid his own marriage ever hit the rocks, that there was no way he was going to just vacate his own house.
However, now, given the facts, and knowing that it was he who'd ruined her life and not vice-versa, he didn't even question it.
He packed his suitcase, two in fact, and was gone from the house by later that afternoon.
By six o'clock he was entrenched in a Premier Inn, and by nine he was in the pub.
"Hey, Dumbell!" a familiar voice caught him off-guard, shouting sufficiently loudly directly into his eardrum to make him jump. "What the hell have you gone and done this time!"
It was statement, not a question mark. And although his best mate had just called him his childhood nickname, Dumbell, instead of Campbell, this time it was entirely appropriate, and Campbell knew he used it deliberately.
"Shit, Brian, you almost gave me a bloody heart attack! Don't bloody do that, okay? And how did you know I would be here anyway?"
"I read the paper, I called you, you didn't answer. I called the house, Fiona answered. She told me she'd kicked you out and here was the obvious choice. This is where you come to think, to forget, and to get p
issed, right?"
"Yeah. Except you're a bit late. I'm almost pissed already. Just not enough."
"Anyway, pull up a pew, Bri, but do me a favour and first get me another pint, and a wee nip of Teachers too. And get the same for yourself." Campbell commanded, thrusting a twenty pound note at his friend.
Luckily, as Brian returned, the band finished for a nicotine break, and Campbell was able to give Brian the lowdown on what had happened, without shouting.
"You complete and absolute twat!" Brian summarised the situation. "How the fuck could you do that to Fiona? She's the loveliest woman in the entire world! You idiot."
Campbell looked at his friend, another long serving officer in Police Scotland, with whom Campbell had been best friends ever since their first days at the police college together.
"Another pint?" Campbell asked, "And maybe we should move over there? The band's about to start again, and I don't want to shout."
Campbell fetched another round and Brian got a couple of quieter seats at the front of the pub away from the band.
"I can't remember DI Wessex. What did she look like?" Brian asked. He was also a DCI but stationed elsewhere on the other side of the city. Their paths did not cross too often professionally, but at least once a week in their leisure time.
"Let me show you," Campbell replied, leaning across a table and picking up a copy of the Scotsman that was lying there. He flicked open the paper to page nine, and pointed at the picture of her half way down the page. "I thought you said you'd read the article?"
"I did, but not in the Scotsman. It was in the Mail."
Campbell's face fell. "The Mail? You're joking, right? How the hell did they get hold of the story?"
The Assassin's Gift Page 10
