Broken Angels (Graham Masterton) by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781781852194
Publisher: Head Of Zeus
Published: 2013-08-28T23:00:00+00:00

29

Katie slept badly. She dreamed that an intruder had broken into the house and was hiding in another room, but she didn’t know which one. In her dream, she stood in the corridor, perfectly still, holding her breath, but the intruder must have been holding his breath, too, because she couldn’t hear him.

‘Who’s there?’ she said, trying to sound authoritative. ‘Whoever you are, you’d best be showing yourself, with your hands on top of your head.’

No answer. Perhaps she was mistaken and there was no intruder after all. But she didn’t dare to go back to bed, in case he came rushing into her bedroom when she was asleep and attacked her with his hammer.

Her alarm woke her just before 6 a.m. She climbed out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom, and stood under the shower for over five minutes with her eyes closed. Afterwards, she stared into the steamed-up mirror over the washbasin as if she didn’t recognize the face that was staring back at her. Her wet hair was plastered over her shoulders and her breasts like a merrow, a voluptuous Irish mermaid.

Mary, Mother of God, she thought, why does my life have to be such a mess? She was tempted to ring up Chief Superintendent Dermot O’Driscoll and tell him that she was resigning, as of now; and then calling John to say that she would definitely come with him to San Francisco, whether he found her a job with Pinkerton’s or not. She felt so exhausted. She felt so weighed down. She may have looked like a merrow, but a merrow who had to drag the whole of Cork City behind her in a net, with all of its chancers and drug dealers and pimps and political wheeler-dealers, while the love of her life sailed blithely away to the other side of the ocean.

She dressed in an oatmeal-coloured sweater and dark brown trousers. Then she went into the kitchen and made herself a mug of black coffee. She stood by the kitchen sink to drink it, looking out over her small back garden. The sky was grey and it was raining. The stone statuette of the Virgin that stood in the middle of the rockery had a drip on the end of her nose.

Her phone rang. It was Detective O’Donovan.

‘Morning, ma’am. I got hold of that photograph from the Examiner. Tim O’Leary, the night editor, dug it out of the files for me. I’ll be taking it around to the technical boys as soon as I can.’

‘Thanks, Patrick. I’m going to the hospital now to see my sister but I should be in around 9.30.’

‘Well, we’re all praying that she gets better real quick. We’ll probably get the forensics back later today – not that your man left us much in the way of physical evidence. Only that felt-tip marker and a couple of partials on the living-room door, but in truth they could be anybody’s.’

‘I’ll see you later, Patrick. Thanks for your prayers.’

‘They work sometimes, ma’am.

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