Blood Sisters Read Online Free PDF

like the tattered flags and torn uniforms at the end of a bloody battle.
    ‘I just can’t understand why the people who threw these horses over the cliff didn’t contact us first,’ he said. ‘They could have done it anonymously. I think it’s well enough known that we only put down horses as a last resort and that we do everything we can to find them a shelter. So why this? You have it absolutely, superintendent. This is nothing short of a massacre.’
    ‘But I assume they’ve all been microchipped – apart from the foals. You should be able to tell who their owners were.’
    ‘Hopefully. I was talking to your technical fellow and we’ll arrange to have the bodies transported to Dromsligo. We have an empty shed there, where we can lay them out decent-like and carry out a proper post-mortem.’
    * * *
    They all climbed back up the cliff. By the time she reached the top, Katie was panting for breath and her stomach muscles felt tight. Detective Horgan gave her his hand to help her up the last few feet between the rocks.
    ‘Thanks a million,’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t think I was going to make that.’
    Another two patrol cars had arrived and she could see four reporters standing around the Land Cruiser smoking and talking to the gardaí, including Dan Keane from the Examiner and Jean Mulligan from the Echo , although the RTÉ van still hadn’t showed up and neither had Fionnuala Sweeney from the Nine o’Clock News . Before she went to talk to the press, however, Katie walked back to her car. She climbed into the passenger seat and reached over to switch on the engine to warm herself up. Then she took her chicken sandwich out of the glovebox and sat there steadily chewing it, even though she was sure she could still taste seaweed and rotting horse in the back of her throat.
    She opened the bottle of apple and blackcurrant Jafsun she had brought with her and took a swallow, and then for no reason at all that she could think of she started to cry. She glanced over towards the small crowd of officers and technicians and reporters gathered by the edge of the cliff and was relieved that none of them were looking in her direction. She wiped her eyes with a tissue, but she still felt a lump in her throat and she couldn’t eat any more of her sandwich. She crinkled it up in its kitchen-foil wrapper and put it back into the glovebox.
    * * *
    Dan Keane from the Examiner was the first one to approach her as she walked back towards the cliff edge. He took a quick last puff at his cigarette and then nipped it out and tucked it behind his ear. Jean Mulligan came close behind. She was a fiftyish woman with pouchy cheeks and wiry grey hair, an experienced journalist who had recently returned to write for the Echo after her husband had died.
    ‘Morning, superintendent!’ Dan called out. He had to shout because of the buffeting noise of the wind and the thin, high whistling of the grass – like a thousand schoolboys all around them whistling between their teeth. He yanked his notebook out of his raincoat pocket, but then he quickly had to clamp his hand on to his brown trilby hat to stop it from blowing away. Jean Mulligan produced a digital voice recorder, but she, too, had to hold down the left-hand lapel of her coat so that it wouldn’t keep slapping her in her face.
    ‘Your man from the ISPCA said he’s counted twenty-three dead horses down on the beach there.’
    ‘There may be more,’ said Katie. ‘We’ll only know for sure when we’ve separated them and lifted them all up to the cliff top. Some of them are very badly decomposed, so it’s not easy to give you a final body count, not just yet.’
    ‘They weren’t washed ashore, were they, superintendent?’ asked Jean. ‘I mean, they weren’t driven into the water from a beach further along the coast? Or deliberately thrown into the sea from a ship? Or being ferried on a boat that sank? Perhaps the tide brought them here.’
    ‘No, Jean, the ISPCA officer