Blood Sisters by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

be all kinds of trouble and they might even close down the convent.’
    Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán turned the bone this way and that. ‘Why didn’t you throw it in the bin?’ she asked.
    ‘Because it’s part of a small child’s jawbone, isn’t it? Sister Brenda said it might be a dog’s, but I did biology at school and I know it’s not a dog’s.’
    ‘Well, I’d say you’re right,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘It is a child’s jawbone, and these are its milk teeth. If you were going to show it to anybody at all, you should have showed it to us.’
    They heard the sound of footsteps inside the convent hallway and Sister Rose turned around in panic, wringing her hands together.
    ‘Please don’t tell Mother O’Dwyer I gave it to you! Please! This is what I’ve wanted ever since I was at school, to join the convent! If she finds out what I’ve done, she’ll throw me out! She’ll probably have me excommunicated!’
    Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán dropped the piece of bone into the left-hand latex glove and tied a knot in it to make it secure. Then she laid a reassuring hand on Sister Rose’s shoulder and said, ‘Look, don’t worry. We don’t have to say where it came from. But we’ll have to investigate. If there was a jawbone in the garden, there could be more bones, too, the rest of the child’s skeleton; and if there’s one child’s skeleton there, there could be more.’
    ‘I know,’ said Sister Rose, and there were tears sparkling on her eyelashes. ‘That’s why I kept it. It’s a sacred part of that poor child’s body. I prayed for its little soul. I don’t know who it was or how it died but I prayed that it didn’t suffer, and I commended its spirit to God, and to the Virgin Mary, so that She could be its mother and take care of it now.’
    ‘Well, it’s taken you some time, but you’ve done the right thing now,’ said Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán. ‘What I need to know is exactly where in the garden you discovered it. I don’t want you to show me now because we’d be seen and soon as we send a technical team to search the convent grounds the sisters would realize it was you who tipped us off. Do you have access to a computer?’
    ‘Yes, in the secretary’s office.’
    ‘Then draw me a sketch map of the garden, with a cross to mark the spot where you found the jawbone, scan it and send it to me. Here’s my card with my email address. Do it as soon as you can, please, Sister Rose. Meanwhile, I’ll be taking this jawbone to have it examined and a DNA sample taken. With any luck at all it will be possible to find out how it died, this child, and who it is. And hopefully we can find the rest of its remains and give it the decent burial it deserves.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Sister Rose. ‘Thank you so much and God bless you.’
    Unexpectedly, she gave Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán a quick hug. Then she smeared the tears from her eyes with her fingers, pushed open the convent door, and went back inside.
    Detective Sergeant Ni Nuallán stood in the porch for a few moments, looking at the door and listening to the rain crackling in the yew bushes. Then she went down the steps and walked back down the slope to her car.
    She believed in God, and in Jesus Christ, and in the perfect love of the Virgin Mary. But ever since she was at school she had instinctively distrusted those who claimed to be their representatives on earth – cardinals, bishops, priests and nuns.
    On this wet afternoon, though, she suspected that she was carrying in her pocket a small fragment of a lost child – and that small fragment had the potential to bring down whole cathedrals, and whole religious hierarchies, in an avalanche of stone and stained glass and silk and gilded mitres.
    As she drove out of the convent gates on to Gardiner’s Hill, a nun walked past her carrying a large black umbrella.
    The nun smiled at her.
    ‘You’re going to need that umbrella, sister,’ said Detective