Read Online Innocent Blood by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

could put you in touch with your dead grandmother and find out what she did with that cultured-pearl necklace you always wanted so badly.’
    â€˜How the hell do you know about that?’
    â€˜Because I can read your mind. And because I met your sister about three days ago at the Roeg Gallery and she asked me if there was any chance of my tracing it for you.’
    â€˜You fake.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Nevile. ‘If I’m such a fake, tell me who was killed right here.’
    Lorraine lifted up the clipboard that was dangling from her belt and leafed through it until she found a diagram of all of the dead and injured. ‘Amy Cutter, aged eight and a half. She was Pam Cutter’s daughter – you know, the actress who plays Kirsty Harris in Time Of Our Life .’
    Nevile looked at Frank as if to say, there you are, what did I tell you ?’
    Frank said, ‘OK, I’m about three-tenths impressed. Why don’t you take a look at the van, see if you can’t work out who the killers were.’
    â€˜Well . . . I’ve already done that. That was Lieutenant Chessman’s first priority.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜There’s very little in the van in the way of psychic imprints. Maybe it was something to do with the bomb going off only two or three feet away from them. They were atomized in a millionth of a second, so their spirits didn’t have the time to make an impression on their immediate surroundings. The man left a very faint resonance, the driver. I’d guess that he was a loner, quite a disturbed kind of individual, with some very odd beliefs about forces from outer space. His name could have been David but he was usually known as something else, something Arabic like Hassan.’
    â€˜Is that all? No hint of where he came from or why he did it?’
    â€˜I’m working on it, but that’s all I’m getting so far.’
    â€˜How about the woman?’
    â€˜Hardly a whisper. Not even a name or a part of a name. All I can pick up is a taste of vinegar.’
    â€˜ What? ’
    â€˜I can taste things, and smell them, as well as see them in my head. It’s called eidetics. If I taste salt in my mouth, it’s usually something to do with bells ringing. If I taste copper, like a mouthful of pennies, it’s anxiety. Vinegar, that’s vengeance. The taste of vinegar means that this lady was very, very sour about something, and she wanted to get her own back.’
    â€˜Well, I guess that could be a clue, couldn’t it? There couldn’t have been many women who felt so sore about The Cedars that they wanted to blow it up.’
    â€˜That’s what I suggested to Lieutenant Chessman. He’s initiated a search through the school records, to see if anybody was aggrieved enough to do something like this. She could have been a parent, or somebody whose child was refused entry, or maybe a former pupil with some kind of imagined grudge.’
    â€˜It could have been political. Some nut who has a fanatical objection to private education.’
    They walked back to the gates together. Frank said to Nevile, ‘How come you thought that you knew me? Have we ever met before, and I just don’t remember it?’
    â€˜I don’t think so. But there’s something about you . . . some aura . . . I saw it as you came walking along the street.’
    Nevile stopped and looked into his eyes so seriously that Frank began to wonder if he were gay, and that this was one of his come-on lines. He was even more concerned when Nevile said, ‘Give me your hand – your left hand.’
    Frank did what he was told. Nevile held it for a while, and to Frank’s discomfort he closed his eyes and began to rub his knuckles with the ball of his thumb.
    After a while, however, he opened his eyes again and said, ‘ Now I know what it is. You have a spiritual companion. That means you have