Slipknot by Priscilla Masters

he was too drunk to perform a post-mortem requiring any but the most basic of skills.
    Sullivan shrugged. ‘OK. If you like.’
    They filed into his office and Martha held back to speak to Alex. ‘Has the boy’s mother formally identified him?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How was she?’
    He shook his head. ‘Distraught. How would you feel?’
    She didn’t even want to contemplate.
    Mark Sullivan visibly improved after two mugs of strong coffee. Twenty minutes later he stood up and smiled. ‘Right then.’
    As they filed back into the post-mortem room neither Martha nor Alex said anything. It was better that Sullivan approached this case with an open mind.
    Post-mortems follow a rigid protocol. After the corpse has been stripped, Alex and another officer bagged up the clothes. Evidence: a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Obviously, like most teenagers, Callum Hughes did not wear pyjamas. She blinked away the vision of Sam stumping around the kitchen in similar clothes, scratching around for something to eat. As the mortician and Randall measured the youth’s crown rump measurement and weighed him Martha reflected how thin the lad had been. There was none of the tough wiriness of her son.
    Stop doing this, she told herself. Stop comparing. This is not Sam but someone else’s son, the only link being their age. They were born in the same year. That is all.
    Her eyes dropped downwards. This boy stabbed another. Maybe it was through desperation, maybe malice, but he is not Sam.
    She turned her attention full on Mark Sullivan and reflected. He might have been teetering on the edge of alcoholism but he was still a competent pathologist.
    He studied the boy’s face first, fingered a mark around the right eye socket, another, smaller one on the left brow and a third on the upper cheek. He touched a large bruise on the right shin then stood back for a while, frowning, finally crossing the room to study the police photographs pinned up on the board.
    ‘When he was found,’ he asked Alex Randall, ‘the back of his head was against the bed, wasn’t it?’
    Both Martha and Alex nodded. ‘I wonder if the body could have twisted,’ he said. ‘These look as though they were sustained at around the time of death. I don’t suppose anyone could verify?’
    ‘His cell mate slept all the way through.’
    Mark Sullivan’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline but he made no comment.
    He still said nothing as he severed the computer lead from around the boy’s neck, preserving the knot with great care. He handed it to the WPC who had accompanied Randall. She put it in a bag.
    ‘You might think to speak to the prison warders, Alex,’ he said. ‘Just check about the length of the cable to ascertain whether it was long enough to have allowed him much movement.’ His eyes drifted back to the boy’s face and Martha knew he was unhappy about the injuries. This puzzled her because she could see they were not serious; they had played no part in his death. But this was something she had noticed about pathologists. They like to be able to explain every lesion – no matter how small.
    Randall nodded and looked down at his notes. ‘“When he was found”,’ he quoted, ‘“he was slumped against the side of the bed, the flex looped and knotted on the baseboard which is latticed wire. There wasn’t much slack”’. He looked up. ‘I can’t see him turning around myself and hitting his face on the edge of the bed but if he was standing up then dropped I suppose it’s a possibility. Theoretically,’ he added as an afterthought.
    Sullivan met his eyes, looked at Martha, inviting a comment but neither of them said anything. So Mark Sullivan turned his attention back to the brain, his concentration deepening as he became absorbed. Martha understood that as the neck contained the vital evidence in a suicidal hanging the area had to be clear of blood. She noticed too that as Sullivan workedhis hands steadied and his eyes cleared. Now his