Blood Sisters (59 page)
Authors: Graham Masterton
‘Kyna—’
Before she could say anything else, though, Kyna stepped into the hallway. ‘
Eugh
, what a
terrible
day! And the heating’s on the blink in my flat! It’s freezing! Oh, you have a fire lit, that’s fantastic!’
Liam appeared in the living room doorway. His face was ghastly with strain.
‘Kyna Ni Nuallán. Surely you remember her.’
‘My God,’ said Kyna. ‘Inspector Fennessy! I don’t believe it!’
Liam stared at her. ‘Oh,’ he said, dully. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘But what are
you
doing here?’ asked Kyna, still talking cheerfully. ‘I thought we’d seen the last of you! We
all
thought we’d seen the last of you!’
‘Kyna—’ said Katie, but she didn’t have to say any more because Liam stepped back into the living room and raised his gun again.
‘What’s going on?’ said Kyna. ‘What’s he pointing that gun at us for?’
‘He came here to shoot me,’ said Katie, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘By order of Bryan Molloy.’
‘What?’ said Kyna, and then she turned to Liam and said, ‘
What
? You came here to
what
?’
‘Shut up and put your hands up and shut the fuck up!’ screamed Liam.
Kyna said, ‘No, I’m having none of this! You put that gun down!’
‘
Stay where you are
!’ Liam’s voice rose into a shriek.
‘Kyna,
don’t
!’ Katie shouted at her, but Kyna threw herself at Liam and knocked him backwards. He stumbled over the coffee table and hit his head against the leg of the couch and Kyna fell on top of him. For a few moments they struggled together on the carpet, Kyna repeatedly lifting her arm to punch him.
Katie had already turned towards the nursery, where she kept her gun, when there was a very loud shot. She turned back to the living room doorway to see Liam rolling Kyna off him, onto her side. The white sweater she was wearing under her raincoat was stained with blood, which was already spreading fast. There was smoke in the room and the smell of burned propellant.
Liam was pulling himself up on to his feet and he was still holding his gun. Katie hurled herself towards the front door and opened it. She ran out on to the driveway and out through the gate on to the pavement into the drizzle.
‘
Help me
!’ she shouted, running towards the car where the two protection officers were still reading their newspapers.
Both of them immediately opened their doors and climbed out.
‘He’s armed! He has a gun!’ Katie gasped as she reached them. ‘He’s just shot Kyna!’
Liam came running out of the gate and skidded to a stop like a character in a Charlie Chaplin film. He saw the two protection officers and stayed where he was, although he didn’t put up his hands.
‘Get in the car, ma’am,’ said one of the protection officers, opening the back door for her. ‘Keep your head down.’
Katie got into the car and lay down sideways. She had a sudden twinge of agonizing pain in her stomach and she felt as if she might be bleeding, but all she could think of was Kyna lying on her living room floor with her bloodstained sweater.
For a long time she could hear nothing, only a passing car. Cautiously, she raised her head over the seat in front of her and saw the two protection officers standing about twenty metres away from Liam, both with their pistols drawn. It looked as if they were talking.
Then, quite deliberately, Liam raised his gun and pointed it into his right ear. Katie saw one of the protection officers bound towards him, but Liam fired before he was even halfway there. Liam’s brains sprayed in a clutter into the beech hedge and he fell on to his side on the pavement.
Katie pulled herself out of the car at once and called out, ‘Ambulance! Call for an ambulance!’
She ran past Liam’s body without even glancing down at him, and into the house. Kyna was still lying on the carpet and Katie knelt down next to her.
Kyna’s eyes were open, even though they looked unfocused, and she was still breathing. A thin runnel of blood was sliding out of the side of her mouth on to the carpet.
‘Kyna, there’s an ambulance coming,’ said Katie. ‘Please, stay with me, darling. You’re going to be grand, I promise you. Please stay with me.’
‘Cold,’ whispered Kyna.
Katie wrestled off her jacket and covered Kyna with it. Then she leaned forward and stroked her hair and kissed her.
‘Stay with me, darling. We’re going to be so good together, you and me. Don’t you dare think of dying on me. Don’t you dare.’
‘Cold,’ said Kyna.
~
We hope you enjoyed this book.
The next thrilling instalment in the Katie Maguire series will be released in summer 2016
For more information, click one of the links below:
About the Katie Maguire series
An invitation from the publisher
Blood Sisters
Katie Maguire hunts a serial killer targeting nuns in the gruesome new thriller from Graham Masterton.
In a nursing home on the outskirts of Cork, an elderly nun lies dead. She has been suffocated. It looks like a mercy-killing – until another sister from the same convent is found viciously murdered, floating in the Glashaboy river.
The nuns were good women, doing God’s work. Why would anyone want to kill them? But then a child’s skull is unearthed in the garden of the nuns’ convent, and DS Katie Maguire discovers a fifty year old secret that just might lead her to the killer... if the killer doesn’t find her first.
‘One of the most original and frightening storytellers of our time.’
Peter James
‘One of the few true masters.’
James Herbert
‘Graham Masterton’s best book yet, and that’s as good as they come!’
John Farris
‘His setting is unique, his killer is gruesomely fascinating, and his storyteller is visceral and graphic.’
Booklist
‘A superlative writer.’
Philadelphia Inquirer
‘The living inheritor to the realm of Edgar Allen Poe.’
San Francisco Chronicle
‘[Masterton] moves from the familiar and credible to the fanciful and disturbing. The drama is tense, the writing superb.’
Sunday Times
‘Multifaceted and fascinating.’
Los Angeles Times
‘A mesmerizing storyteller whose fascination with the finer points of human weakness and deft touch keep the pages turning.’
Publishers Weekly
G
RAHAM
M
ASTERTON
was a bestselling horror writer for many years before he turned his talent to crime. He lived in Cork for five years, an experience that inspired the Katie Maguire series.
Find out more on Graham’s website,
www.grahammasterton.co.uk
or connect with him on Twitter,
@GrahamMasterton
K
ATIE
M
AGUIRE
Katie Maguire was one of seven sisters born to a police Inspector in Cork, but the only sister who decided to follow her father and join An Garda Siochana. With her bright green eyes and short red hair, she looks like an Irish pixie, but she is no soft touch. To the dismay of some of her male subordinates, she rose quickly through the ranks, gaining a reputation for catching Cork’s killers, often at great personal cost. Katie spent seven years in a turbulent marriage with builder Paul Maguire, with whom she bore, and lost, a son. She is now in a long-distance relationship with Irish-American John Meagher.
One wet, windswept November morning, a field on Meagher’s farm gives up the dismembered bones of eleven women…
Their skeletons bear the marks of a meticulous butcher. The bodies date back to 1915. All were likely skinned alive.
But then a young woman goes missing, and her remains, the bones carefully stripped and arranged in an arcane pattern, are discovered on the same farm.
With the crimes of the past echoing in the present, D.S. Katie Maguire must solve a decades-old murder steeped in ancient legend... before this terrifying killer strikes again.
White Bones
is available
here
.
As they came nearer, the black-clad body came into view, lying on its side in the shallows…
One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a body floating in the Blackwater River: the mutilated corpse of a retired music teacher. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the mark of a garrotting wire.
The Garda want to wrap this case up before the press get hold of it. But when a second man is found murdered, the body bears all the same marks as the first. And Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire fears this case carries the hallmark of a serial murderer…
Broken Angels
is available
here
.
On a bloodstained mattress, a burly man lies dead. Gunshots have shattered his face, and, where his hands used to be are two bloody stumps. A terrified girl kneels over his body. She is half-naked, starving, screaming. She has been trapped here for three days.