Blood on the Bones Read Free

and again his fingers drew back as if they, perhaps like their cadaver, felt the flames of Lucifer's hellish pit.
    The letter and the threats inherent in the writer's taunting words would also have to wait, he reminded himself. Because before he was again likely to find the solitude necessary to consider a possible course of action, he had another investigatory show to get on the road. And before religious rites, eternal dust, or his letter, could demand attention, Rafferty knew that their well-murdered cadaver wasn't the only body likely to be subjected to indignities at the hands of Sam Dally.
    Rafferty jerked his head at Llewellyn. They walked away from the shallow grave, leaving more room for the scene of crime team and Lance Edwards, the photographer, to do their work. They followed the tape-marked path already set up by Lizzie Green and Tim Smales in order to keep the trampling of the gravesite and its contamination to a minimum. Ducking under the outer tape, Rafferty nodded a ‘well done’ to young Smales as he marked them down on his clipboard as leaving the scene. He and Lizzie Green had made a good job of securing the grave site. Timothy Smales was finally growing into the job, Rafferty realised. He no longer sulked if given a task he didn't fancy. He just gritted his teeth and got on with it. But then he'd had a good teacher.
    The best, most experienced teeth gritter in the station, was Rafferty's thought as his teeth ground together even harder as his several-stranded future opened itself uninvitingly before him. Once again, he forced himself to put one of these strands out of his mind and concentrate on the latest problem; at least, he thought, unlike the other, murder was within his compass and might, therefore, be open to a reasonably speedy resolution.
    Lizzie Green, as the more experienced officer, had, after getting Smales organised into securing the scene, also ensured that Sister Rita, the nun who had found the body, was kept isolated so she couldn't confide anything more about the corpse than she might have already revealed to the rest of the religious community. As Smales had confirmed on their arrival, the nun was being kept suitably cloistered by Lizzie until Rafferty and Llewellyn were ready to speak to her.
    Rafferty gazed around him, studying the scene. All round the eight foot high walls surrounding the convent's grounds clung the evergreen pyracantha, a climber with sharp thorns currently wearing the brilliant scarlet berries of autumn. He had been careless and had already experienced the sharpness of the thorns for himself. He had a gash across the back of his hand to prove it and to remind him to be more wary in future.
    As if the vicious talons of the firethorn wasn't enough of a barrier to intruders, in front of the climbers were grouped the equally thorny berberis. The rich red and maroon of its leaves concealed the many little stiletto-sharp barbs. Together, these two razor-edged plants could usually be expected to deter even the most determined would-be burglar.
    Rafferty wondered how many of the local villains appreciated that the high walls and all that thorny security were indicative, not of the rich plunder awaiting the more daring thief, but only of the nuns' desire to be shut away from the world.
    Because, of course, there weren't any riches. Or at least none of the sort likely to be appreciated by Elmhurst's more light-fingered residents. Unlike so much of the rest of the Catholic Church, with its fabulous Vatican, bishops' palaces and extravagant, priceless and glorious art, the sisters lived simply. As Rafferty had noticed on his arrival and passage through the community's home, their lives were austere in the extreme. They truly embraced their poverty instead of applying to it mere lip service. He found it quite humbling. But as he knew that such an emotion was unlikely to be helpful at the start of the inquiry, he glanced at Llewellyn and asked, ‘First thoughts,