Read Once Bitten for Free Online Page B

he growled. He was wearing polythene gloves and so was De'Ath who came out of the bedroom with a worried look on his face.
    “Don't touch anything,” said De'Ath.
    “I already told him,” said Filbin.
    “He already told me,” I said. “You found anything?”
    “Make-up, a teddy bear, closets full of clothes. She don't appear to have no bad habits.” He sounded disappointed.
    “You sound disappointed,” I said. “Mind if I look around?”
    “Help yourself. Just don't touch anything.”
    “Can I have a pair of gloves?” I asked him.
    “If you don't touch anything, you won't need gloves,” De'Ath snarled. “Have you got the report?”
    “I've got both - Kipp and her.” I handed them to him and looked around as he and Filbin read through the reports. The apartment was small: a lounge with a small kitchenette leading off it, and a bedroom with space for a double bed, a dressing table and little else. Her clothes were in closets which were built in to the wall opposite the bed and I used a pencil to push one of the doors open.
    There were lots of clothes hanging up: dresses, jackets, skirts, blouses, mostly cheap and cheerful stuff, the kind you'd expect to find in any young girl's bedroom. There were three framed posters on the wall, all of them movie posters: Total Recall, Gone With The Wind, and Bambi. Eclectic taste, no doubt about it. There was a fluffy toy rabbit on the dressing table, and a black and white photograph in an antique gilt frame. I bent down to look at the picture, it was of a young man sitting in a director's chair, obviously taken on a film set because in the background were cameras and lights and a tangle of thick, black wires. The man was in his early twenties, clean shaven with his hair swept back, black and glistening as if it had been oiled. He was looking over one shoulder and smiling as if he knew the photograph would end up in a girl's bedroom. It was a movie star smile, gleaming teeth and sincere eyes. On the back of the chair was the name of the film. Lilac Time. And below those words was a name - Greig Turner. It was an old photograph, and the cameras in the background seemed to belong to the golden age of movie-making, maybe before sound, even. To the right of the picture, adjusting one of the lights on a massive tripod, was a man dressed in baggy trousers and checked shirt wearing a cap like Jimmy Cagney used to wear in his old gangster movies. I wondered if Terry was a movie buff who liked to collect momentoes of old movies, but apart from the three framed prints and the photograph there were no other collectibles around. Perhaps the man in the photograph was a relative. Father perhaps? No, that couldn't be right because her name was Ferriman. Unless she'd changed it. If the man was in his twenties and the picture had been taken, say, in the 1930s, then he'd be in his eighties now. Grandfather perhaps?
    “Whatchya looking at?” asked De'Ath's voice from behind me. I straightened up. My spine clicked as I did. It had started to do that a lot recently. Arthritis setting in, I bet.
    “The photograph,” I said. “A relation, maybe?”
    “Yeah, maybe. We've about finished here, you'll have to make tracks.”
    “OK, give me a minute or two will you?”
    The bed was covered with a thick peach-coloured quilt and only one pillow had an indentation in it and for some reason I felt pleasantly pleased that Terry Ferriman appeared to sleep alone. I followed De'Ath back into the lounge. There was a small television set, a hi-fi, a three-seater black leather sofa and a matching easy chair. The carpet was short-piled, grey and featureless and the walls were white and bare. No pictures, no photographs. There were some books and CDs on black metal shelves which ran the full length of one wall and there were black blinds over the two windows. The blinds were down but open so that lines of sunlight cut through the room and drew bright oblongs on the floor. There was a black metal and smoked