Blood Sisters Read Online Free Page B

look?’
    ‘Of course. But be careful. It’s very steep and slippy and I nearly took a hopper myself. It’s better if I go first.’
    Tadhg Meaney led Katie and Detectives Horgan and Dooley to the deep cleft in the rocks where the path down to the beach began. Then the four of them made their way down to the cove, clinging to the rocks and gorse bushes to stop themselves from losing their footing. Detective Horgan had bought himself a new pair of tan brogues only the day before yesterday and he swore under his breath all the way down.
    ‘Less of the effing and blinding if you don’t mind, Horgan,’ said Katie, as they came to the most precipitous part of the climb. ‘You can indent for a new pair when you get back to the station.’
    ‘Sorry, ma’am. They were in the sale in Schuh and they only had the one pair my size.’
    Once she had managed to climb down to the beach, Katie turned around and looked at the tangled heaps of dead horses. The tide was out now, almost as far as it would go, and their bodies were draped with stinking strands of dark-green seaweed. Gulls were screaming overhead, angry at being disturbed from their pickings.
    Without moving them, it was almost impossible to count exactly how many horses were lying there because their legs and their heads and their ribcages were so intertwined, and some of them had rotted and collapsed into the carcasses of the horses lying underneath them. Closer to the foot of the cliff, though, the bodies were not so seriously decomposed and three or four of them looked almost as if they might suddenly stir and clamber on to their feet at any moment.
    Two technicians were carefully high-stepping between them, taking photographs, and the intermittent flashes seemed to make them twitch, even those grinning skeletons that looked like horses out of a nightmare.
    Those that had still had eyes were staring at Katie balefully. What am I doing here, lying on this beach, stiff and dead and broken-legged?
    ‘That’s one thing they always get wrong in the films,’ said Tadhg Meaney looking down sadly at a large bay gelding with a hugely bloated stomach. ‘When a horse dies in the films, its eyes close. They only do that because it’s sentimental. When a real horse dies, it carries on looking at you. And as you know yourself, superintendent, quite a few humans do that, too.’
    ‘Do you think that the horses were still alive when they were thrown off the cliff?’ asked Katie.
    ‘The one I had to put down was still alive, of course. About the rest of them I can’t really tell you for sure – not until I’ve carried out a full autopsy. Even then it might be difficult, except if they were euthanized beforehand or if they’d already fallen from some sickness or other. Equine flu, maybe, or encephalopathy, or Cushing’s disease. Or if they’ve eaten something poisonous, like foxgloves, or buttercups.’
    ‘How old are they? Is it possible that they’re past their best and somebody just wanted to get rid of them without having to pay for a licensed knacker’s?’
    ‘Yes, that’s perfectly possible. I don’t know how much Fitzgerald’s are charging these days, but it must be close to a hundred and fifty euros. Multiply that by all of these carcasses and that comes to a fair expense.’
    Detective Dooley said, ‘Maybe somebody is charging horse owners the knackery fee but simply dumping the animals here and pocketing the proceeds.’
    ‘I’ll lay money it was knackers,’ Detective Horgan put in. ‘I think we should take a trip up to Knackeragua and ask them a few pertinent questions in Gammon.’
    ‘ Travellers ,’ Katie corrected him, sharply. Secretly, though, she couldn’t totally dismiss his suggestion that these horses might have been illegally disposed of by somebody from the Pavee community. Prejudiced or not, it had been almost the first thought that had come into her head.
    ‘I’m surprised they didn’t sell them for horsemeat,’ said Detective