Free Blood Sisters by Graham Masterton Page B

said Katie, looking at Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán with her eyes wide. Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán frowned, and mouthed, ‘What?’
    ‘He says she’s about the same age as Sister Bridget. Late seventies, early eighties, something like that.’
    ‘Where was she found?’
    ‘She came down in the Butlerstown River, that’s what he said, right by the Glanmire Bridge.’
    ‘I don’t follow you. What did he mean “she came down”?’
    ‘It seems like she was hanging from three gas balloons, ma’am. Hanging by a cord around her neck.’
    ‘ What ? I can hardly believe this.’
    ‘Sergeant Finlay says he’s closed off the road. He’s been down to inspect the body to make sure that life was extinct but otherwise nothing has been touched.’
    ‘Okay, Patrick. I was supposed to be going to Dromsligo to look at all of those dead horses, but I think the horses will have to wait. I’ll be down directly. Have you notified the Technical Bureau yet?’
    ‘Not yet, ma’am, but I will.’
    Katie pushed her iPhone back into her pocket.
    ‘Another elderly nun,’ she told Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘This one was floating through the air, apparently, hung from three gas balloons. She’s landed in the Butlerstown River.’
    ‘Holy Mary. No wonder you couldn’t believe it.’
    ‘Come on,’ said Katie. ‘I’m beginning to think that we’re being plagued by nuns.’

9
    She climbed over the low limestone wall at the side of the bridge and made her way cautiously down the precipitous slope that led to the water’s edge, pushing some of the bushes aside and grabbing at others to stop herself losing her footing.
    Detective O’Donovan was already there, along with Sergeant Finlay and three other gardaí from the Glanmire Garda station, which was only a few metres down the road. Tangled in the trees beside them were the silvery-grey balloons. Two of them were almost completely deflated now, but one was still bulging and bumping in the breeze. The nun was lying face-down in the bushes, with her feet in the river. The cord with which she had been suspended was still knotted around her neck.
    ‘So what happened?’ asked Katie, holding out her hand so that Detective O’Donovan could help her take the last few steps down to the river bank.
    ‘Two young mums were pushing their kids across the bridge and they just looked up and saw these three balloons coming down and getting themselves all snagged up in the trees,’ said Sergeant Finlay. He was a short, round man with a bristly grey moustache and two double chins. He looked as if he were close to retirement, if he didn’t explode first. ‘They came rushing down to the station, “There’s all these balloons, there’s all these balloons, with a nun hanging off of them!” I thought they were messing to begin with, but you never saw anybody in such a panic.’
    ‘And by the time you got here, she was definitely dead?’
    ‘Oh, no question,’ said Sergeant Finlay, shaking his head from side to side as if he needed to convince Katie beyond any doubt at all that there was nothing he could have done to save her. ‘Her eyes was wide open but she didn’t blink when I waved my hand in front of her face and her lips was blue. I felt for a pulse, but nothing. Apart from that I haven’t interfered with her at all. This is exactly how she landed.’
    Katie looked around. The river here was only about twenty metres wide, and shallow, and the peaty soil had stained it to the colour of weak tea. It ran very slowly, so that further away from the bridge there was an archipelago of green weed. The breeze was rustling in the trees, but apart from the swishing of passing cars, and the gardaí talking to each other, the afternoon was strangely quiet, as if God had said, Hush, one of My servants is sleeping her very last sleep .
    She approached the nun’s body, with Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán close behind her. The nun lay on her stomach with her head turned to the left, so