The Martyr’s Curse. Scott Mariani

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       Chapter Thirteen

      The man was no monk, that was for sure. He was from the outside, but he was no ordinary outsider either. It seemed strange to see anyone here not clad in monastic garb, and even stranger to see a man in black combat trousers, black high-leg military boots, black multi-pocket tactical vest, black ski mask, shooters’ gloves and utility belt. Then again, under the circumstances, maybe not so strange.

      The dead man had been packing some sort of semi-automatic pistol before someone had disarmed him and left him with an empty holster. Presumably, the same somebody who had shot him twice in the head with the same nine-millimetre ammunition that had been used to dispatch the other victims. The empty shell cases were lying nearby. His eyes were open and glazed in the holes of the ski mask.

      Ben touched three fingers to the guy’s neck and held them there for a moment before he whipped off the ski mask and looked at his face. The guy was somewhere in his mid-thirties, white, dark-haired, not ugly, not handsome, not a memorable face, but one Ben wouldn’t be forgetting for a long time. It wasn’t a monk who’d shot him. Aside from the obvious reason why that couldn’t be the case, Ben could think of an even more compelling one. This guy had been alive much more recently than any of the monastery’s dead residents. He wasn’t quite warm to the touch, but he was in a considerably fresher state than they were. Ben grabbed the black-clad right arm and wagged it from side to side and up and down and then let it flop limply to the guy’s side. No sign of rigor mortis yet. The shoulder and elbow joints were loose and flexible. The blood on his face and all down the front of his combat vest was still wet, barely tacky. He’d been dead for well under two hours. Maybe even less than one.

      Which told Ben two things. Firstly, unless something extremely bizarre had taken place involving two rival armed gangs happening to choose this spot for a shoot-out and managing to hit almost nobody except bystanders, this fellow had been killed by his own team. The precision of the gunshot wounds in his head made it impossible that he could have accidentally taken a stray bullet intended for one of the monks. This had been deliberate. Ben had absolutely no idea why.

      Second, it told him that the perpetrators hadn’t long since left the monastery. If he’d turned up even just an hour earlier he might not have missed them. In turn, if he was right that the attack had happened at around 4.30 in the morning, it meant they’d lingered here quite some time. After killing everyone and securing the place for themselves, they’d then hung around for the next four or so hours.

      Doing what? He had no idea about that either. What had they wanted? What could have kept them busy for so long?

      Ben kneeled by the body and removed both gloves to examine the dead guy’s fingers for nicotine stains, wanting to know if this was the bastard who’d stubbed the cigarette out on Père Jacques. No stains. He let the hands flop in the dead guy’s lap and next frisked him for any kind of ID. No big surprise to find none, but he did find a phone. He slipped it into his own pocket with a view to checking through it later, and then turned his attention to the small black zippered haversack the guy had slung over his left shoulder. It felt unnaturally heavy, for all the size of it. The black nylon strap was dragging on the man’s clothing, weighing him down. At first Ben thought of spare armament, extra magazines, boxes of ammunition.

      But then he unzipped it and looked inside, and frowned.

      Now he was really confused.

      There were two items inside the bag, both identical in size and shape, both cool and smooth and hard. Between them, they accounted for the unusual weight. They weren’t boxes of ammo or backup weapons.

      Ben lifted one out with each hand and stared at them.

      The gold bars glittered in the sunshine.