Read Online Walkers by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

voice.
    ‘I am praying for my own
protection,’ he said.
    Gil turned toward the crucifix, and
then back toward Santos. ‘Protection from what?’ he demanded. ‘Come on, tell
me, protection from what?’

CHAPTER
FOUR
    H enry was asleep on the couch when
Lieutenant Ortega called around. At first, he thought that the persistent
buzzing of the doorbell was a large mosquito, and he flapped at the air several
times to get rid of it. Then he opened his eyes and saw the sunlight and the
ceiling and the half-empty bottle of vodka on the table, next to Andrea’s book
on eels, and he was jolted back to reality like a man arriving at the lobby of
a cheap hotel in a badly serviced elevator.
    He opened the door. Lieutenant
Ortega was standing on the concrete doorstep, neat and smart in his
cinnamon-coloured suit and his cinnamon-coloured necktie, his hands clasped
behind his back, inspecting Henry’s thermometer.
    ‘Eighty-two already,’ be smiled.
‘Looks like we’re in for a hot afternoon.’
    Henry smeared his hand all over his
face, trying to reassemble his features. The older he got, and the drunker he
got, the larger his face seemed to spread, and the less disciplined its component
parts seemed to become. His forehead felt like a ploughed field that it would
take hours to walk across. His jowls seemed to hang like theatre curtains. The
bags under his eyes were hammocks, in which fat and indolent matelots swung.
    ‘You’d, uh,’ he said, gesturing
behind him, ‘better come in.’
    Lieutenant Ortega walked past him
into the living-room. His suit may have looked cheap but his after-shave was
Giorgio of Beverley Hills. He stood in the centre of the carpet, carefully
tugging his cuffs and looking around him. Henry closed the door. He was pretty
sure that Lieutenant Ortega had immediately taken note of the vodka bottle and
the book on eels.
    ‘What happened this morning on the
beach, that was very distressing,’ said Lieutenant Ortega. His Latin accent was
soft but distinctive.
    ‘It was not only distressing, it was unnatural,’ said Henry. He walked
across the room, tucking in his shirt-tails, and collected up the bottle of
vodka. He tightened the screw-cap, and put the bottle back in the cupboard.
    ‘I will be talking later to the two
young people who were with you,’ said the lieutenant.
    ‘But I thought first of all that I
would like to discuss the matter with you. You are, after all, a man of
learning, are you not?’
    Henry shrugged, and sniffed. ‘Learning,
yes. Wisdom, only possibly.’
    Lieutenant Ortega leaned over the
book of eels. Henry had been reading about their dietary habits. Henry watched
him for a moment, and then volunteered, ‘There doesn’t seem to be any record of
eels attacking a human being en masse, the
way those eels did.’
    ‘Well, it’s something of a mystery,’
Lieutenant Ortega admitted. ‘We still have the beach cordoned off, and we have
asked the people from Scripps to come along and dig out the remaining eels for
us. Then perhaps we can find out how to deal with them.’
    ‘It could be a serious problem,
couldn’t it, killer eels, just before the vacation season?’
    Lieutenant Ortega smiled distantly.
‘I don’t think we have a Jaws situation
on our hands, Professor Watkins. This is probably an isolated tragedy. Some
deep-sea eels which were brought close to shore by the current. We’ve been
having some unusual tides here lately; you know for yourself how
uncharacteristic the weather has been.’
    ‘What does your medical examiner
think?’ asked Henry. ‘He seemed like a pretty opinionated kind of guy.’
    ‘Oh, him. John Belli. Don’t take too
much notice of him. He would run the whole investigation single handed, if we
allowed him. He watches too much Quincy on
television.
    He’s good, yes, I have to confess,
but he sometimes fails to see the whole picture.
    How and when somebody died is
usually not half as important as why.’
    Henry said, ‘What do you think I