Blood Sisters Read Free

Bridget’s passing was sufficiently mysterious to bring out the top brass.’
    Katie ignored his hand and gave him the briefest of smiles. ‘Every suspicious death merits my attention, Mr Pardoe, even if I don’t always show up in person.’
    ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest that you wouldn’t be giving this matter your fullest attention. I’m quite sure you will. But in spite of the one unusual aspect of Sister Bridget’s demise...’
    ‘You mean the figurine?’
    ‘Well, yes, the figurine,’ said Noel Pardoe, licking his lips as if the word “figurine” actually tasted unpleasant. ‘Regardless of that, you have to understand that our nursing staff give our guests the most meticulous care and attention, and it would surprise me hugely to discover that Sister Bridget passed away from anything other than natural causes. She had a weak heart, and liver problems, as I explained to your sergeant here, and none of us expected her to be with us on this Earth for very much longer, God bless her.’
    Katie said, ‘Let’s leave the cause of death to the coroner, shall we? I’d like to see her now, if I may.’
    ‘Of course. Not a problem. Your technical people are up there now.’
    ‘I’d also like a word with your director of nursing after.’
    ‘Yes, of course. I’ll tell Nevina that you’re here.’
    He led them across the vestibule to the lift. The four of them crowded into it and stood facing each other in awkward silence as it took them up to the third storey. They walked in single file along the corridor and Noel Pardoe’s left shoe creaked on the parquet flooring like a duck quacking.
    ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said, as if he couldn’t get away fast enough. ‘I’ll see you downstairs after, when you’re finished.’
    Sister Bridget’s room overlooked the gardens at the back of the nursing home, with a view of rusty-coloured trees and a rockery where a painted statue of the Virgin stood with the Infant Jesus in her arms. Katie thought she looked as if she were waiting for a bus.
    Bill Phinner, the chief forensic officer, was standing beside the high, hospital-type bed, while a young female technician was down on her hands and knees with a small hand-held vacuum cleaner, taking samples from the mottled-green carpet. Another technician was dusting the bedside cabinet for fingerprints. Bill Phinner was lean, with swept-back grey hair, and was almost as hollow-cheeked and cadaverous as the victims he was called to examine.
    ‘Good morning to you, ma’am,’ he said to Katie, without looking at her.
    ‘What’s the story, Bill?’ said Katie. The room was uncomfortably hot and she unfastened the toggles of her duffel coat.
    Against the left-hand wall stood a tall mahogany cabinet crowded with books, most of them Bibles or lives of the saints, as well as a variety of religious ornaments and statuettes. The most outstanding was a monstrance – a stand supporting a gilded metal sunburst with a circular crystal in the middle to display a communion wafer, the body of Christ. There was also a purple crystal rosary and a plaster figure of Saint Francis with his arms outspread, surrounded by birds and rabbits. One of the rabbits had its head broken off.
    On top of the folded-up blankets at the foot of the bed, sealed in a vinyl evidence bag, lay the pale-blue figurine of the Virgin that the doctor had removed from Sister Bridget. She was staring up through the plastic with a serene expression on her medicine-pink face.
    Katie approached the bed and looked down at Sister Bridget. She was a hawk-like woman with a large curved nose, a sharply pointed chin and a tightly pinched-in mouth. Her hooded eyes were half-open, as if she were still dozing, but Katie could see that the whites of her eyes were spotted with lesions that looked like tiny red tadpoles.
    ‘Petechial haemorrhages of the conjunctiva,’ Bill intoned in his dry, abrasive voice. ‘I’d say that she was smothered with her own