Slipknot by Priscilla Masters Page A

concentration was total. Periodically he glanced back at the police photographs which were pinned up on an x-ray board but apart from that he was quite still – except for his hands.
    Now it was time to study the mark the computer lead had left. Narrow and well defined, brownish in colour with a tinge of blue at its edge and a leathery consistency to the skin. No need for Sullivan to point out the congested blood vessels above the V-shaped impression which was just above the larynx and extended almost to the boy’s ears.
    Sullivan began to slice through the tissues, working as delicately as an artist as he peeled back the layers of the boy’s throat. Martha watched him, mesmerised. She had to hand it to Mark Sullivan – he had a uniquely dextrous skill. Maybe if he hadn’t liked his bottle so much he might have become a Professor in Pathology and trained students to work as perfectly as he did. He would have been able to make a real and permanent contribution to the science. As it was he had buried himself away from academia and the hub of a university career and dived into the nearest bottle neck. Again Martha felt that sudden wash of anger at the mess he was making of his life.
    To cover her emotion she wandered towards the photographs herself and was again struck by how thin Callum Hughes had been. He had been underdeveloped, small for his age. Boys of thirteen vary hugely in the stages of their development. But she couldn’t help reflecting that his size had contributed to the bullying and the bullying had led to the assault and so on to his suicide. How cruel nature can be.
    Once Mark had finished examining the neck he opened thechest and for a while his fingers probed various orifices. Neither Alex nor Martha spoke. They didn’t want to break the pathologist’s concentration. A couple of times Mark spoke into a small Dictaphone making audio-notes as he worked. Once he looked up. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘there were some contusions on the ribs so I did a couple of x-rays. There was an old fracture.’
    Alex and Martha exchanged glances. It was the first concrete corroboration of Callum and Shelley’s story.
    ‘Any idea how old,’ Martha asked casually.
    ‘Oh, somewhere under a year.’
    His attention had moved on.
    The liver, brain, spleen and heart were weighed.
    He moved to the leg wound, measuring the bruise, exploring the tissues beneath, his frown deepening as he worked, some of his attention obviously trying to piece together Callum’s final hours.
    She waited for him to finish, peel off his gloves, throw his operating gown into the laundry bin and wash up while the mortuary assistant finished the stitching up.
    But Sullivan was pondering. He deliberated over the actions, performing them like an automaton, obviously working his way through all that he had seen, delaying the moment when he would have to present his findings to coroner and police. Even behind his glasses she could read troubled abstraction in his eyes. Something was bothering him.
    ‘Shall we…?’ He led them back into his office and deliberately closed the door behind them.
    ‘What is it, Mark?’
    Sullivan cleared his throat. To his side Alex Randall stood, almost quivering with attention.
    ‘Martha,’ he finally appealed. ‘You know as well as I do that medicine isn’t always an exact science.’
    She nodded.
    ‘I have a conflict here,’ he said. ‘It’s easy for a pathologist to extrapolate too much from the PM. And I can’t be absolutely sure.’
    ‘Of what exactly?’
    ‘Well – put it this way. There were definite bruises on the face.’
    Both Martha and Alex nodded their agreement. They’d seen them.
    ‘I don’t know whether he could have twisted at some point to cause the facial bruising.’
    Martha and Alex waited.
    ‘The trouble is that the edge of the bunk is metal. Quite sharp. Obviously sharp objects tend to give a different injury from a blunt one. The bruising on the face was not done by a sharp,