Floods 5 by Colin Thompson Read Free Book Online

hurriedly stitched up the professor’s chest where she had previously slashed it open for easier access to his insides.
    â€˜Well, what are the guidelines in these situations?’ said Grusom, playing for time.
    â€˜There aren’t any.’
    â€˜OK, let’s check our options,’ said Grusom. ‘A pulse means a heartbeat. A heartbeat means life and life means consciousness. The obvious thing we should do is treat the professor’s wounds and nurse him back to health.’
    Avid stuck an elastoplast over the bullet hole.
    â€˜Of course,’ Grusom continued, ‘if we can revive him then he should be able to tell us who killed him.’

    â€˜Except that he wouldn’t be dead any more.’
    â€˜True.’
    â€˜And anyway, they might have crept up behind him or it might have been dark. He might not have seen his assailants.’
    â€˜Right, well,’ Grusom said, at a loss for words. ‘First we must, umm, err, ascertain exactly how dead Professor Randolf Open-Graves is.’
    â€˜I don’t understand,’ said Avid. ‘Aren’t you either dead or not dead? You can’t be a bit dead, can you?’
    â€˜Normally, no,’ said Grusom, ‘but you must remember where we are. This valley has the highest wizardy and witchy concentration anywhere on Earth. Every day there are dozens of strange people here, some of whom, I imagine, are capable of things that neither of us could even begin to imagine.’
    â€˜You’re right,’ said Avid. ‘I suppose it means the seventeen million, fourteen thousand and eleven scientific facts we learned at FSI School could be meaningless.’
    â€˜Exactly,’ said Grusom. ‘And that just can’t be true. So let’s ignore the pulse, assume he is dead and move on – though I suppose we’d better sew back on all the bits that have fallen off, just in case he’s still alive.’
    But the professor was dead. All of him was completely and totally one hundred per cent dead, deceased and not alive. The pulse, which vanished shortly afterwards, was not his. In fact, it belonged to Transylvania Waters’ most evil spy, the Hearse Whisperer, who was hiding in the dead professor’s body for reasons that will be revealed shortly.
    Joining the professor back together again was easier said than done, as anyone who has ever tried it will know. As soon as you stick a needle and thread through old skin, it splits. Staples are no better unless you can get them to stick into bone. The only reliable way to join bits of dead body together is with Dr Julian Frankenstein’s Two-Pack Low-Fat Corpse Adhesive. 22 Grusom and Avid didnot have any in their kits, though, so did the best they could with brown parcel tape.
    â€˜First we need to examine the crime scene and look for prints,’ Grusom said. ‘You do that while I check the flakes from the fingernails with my Super-High-Power-Expert-Electron-Microscope.’
    â€˜That’s fine, boss,’ said Avid, ‘but we don’t know where the murder or murders took place.’
    â€˜In a case like that,’ said Grusom, ‘the body is the crime scene. So examine that for fingerprints.’
    Within two hours Avid had a perfect set of prints.
    â€˜Amazing,’ said Grusom. ‘I’m impressed. Where did you find them?’
    â€˜On the end of the victim’s fingers, boss,’ said Avid. ‘And before you hit your head against the wall and roll your eyes, the prints do not belong to the professor.’
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜Absolutely. His own prints are all over his body and clothes and possessions. The ones on the ends of his fingers do not match them at all.’
    â€˜It couldn’t be that perhaps you’ve got it the wrong way round?’ Grusom suggested. ‘And all those other prints are the killer’s?’
    â€˜Well, naturally that was my first thought, but when I