Blood Sisters by Graham Masterton Page A

Bill Phinner folded the two sides apart, Katie could see the nun’s thin, pale legs, with squiggly blue varicose veins. There were drips and runnels of blood down her shins and her grey socks were soaked with blood.
    Without a word, Bill Phinner opened up the nun’s habit even further, right up to her collarbone, exposing her naked body in its entirety. Her breasts lay flat on either side of her chest, but from just below her breastbone her abdomen had been sliced wide open. Her intestines were bulging out and hanging halfway down her thighs in beige and bloody coils, and Katie could smell the sharp tang of bile and excrement.
    She stared at the nun with her hand pressed over her mouth. She had seen worse, but this was making her stomach muscles clench and unclench. She had seen a woman in Knocka whose husband had pressed her face against an electric hotplate for over half a minute. She had seen a man in Barnavara who had fallen up to his waist in a feed-mincing machine, and had been virtually chopped in half, but was still able to talk to the firefighters who were trying to extricate him with crowbars.
    But the sight of this disembowelled nun made her feel hot and sweaty and breathless, and she began to gag.
    ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘What on earth kind of a devil did this?’
    Katie thought that she might be able to control her gagging, but she couldn’t. With her hand still pressed against her mouth, she stared at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán with watering eyes. Then she turned around and bent over the water’s edge and splashed out a torrent of half-chewed scone and raisins and warm brown cola.
    Detective O’Donovan grasped her left arm to stop her from teetering forward into the river, while Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán put her arm around her shoulders. She waited, breathing deeply, until the spasms subsided.
    ‘Are you all right now?’ Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán asked her, and she nodded and stood up straight. Almost at once, though, her stomach convulsed again and she had to lean back over the river. This time she brought up nothing but saliva, but she still felt as if her insides had been twisted into a complicated knot.
    She stayed where she was for a minute or so, but at last she began to feel better. She took out a tissue to wipe her eyes and her mouth and blow her nose, and then she said, ‘Thanks. I’m fine now. Thanks a million.’
    ‘Let’s get one of these officers to drive you home,’ said Detective O’Donovan. ‘You’ve probably been overdoing it lately, the caseload you’ve got. Either that or you’ve eaten one of them salmon sandwiches from the station canteen.’
    ‘No, no, I’m grand altogether. I have to stay here and see this through.’
    Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán said, ‘No, ma’am. I know it sounds insubordinate, like, but I really think you should go home and take it easy for the rest of the day. I mean it.’
    She was holding Katie’s right hand with her left and looking directly into her eyes. Did she realize that Katie was pregnant? There was something in her tone of voice that suggested she had sensed a change in her lately – a change that wasn’t connected to dead horses, or suffocated nuns, or her relationship with John. Maybe it was just female intuition.
    ‘No, you’re all right,’ Katie told her. ‘And don’t worry about insubordination. I appreciate the thought.’
    ‘You’re sure? You needn’t go back to the station, I could have somebody come to your house tomorrow morning to pick you up.’
    ‘No, thanks a million. I didn’t have time for any lunch and it was just an attack of the gawks, that’s all.’
    They climbed back up to the bridge while the technicians took more photographs. Katie was still feeling nauseous and she made sure that she didn’t look back down at the nun’s body. Her mouth kept flooding with saliva, but she managed to suppress any more spasms.
    After another half-hour,