Free Cold Steel by Paul Carson

mobile phone mercifully broke the oppressive atmosphere and everyone sighed with relief.
    'Boss,' the big man mouthed. 'It's the parents. They're outside.'
    It was Dunne who suggested meeting Dan and Annie Marks first. 'He's a fellow doctor, a colleague,' he explained as he slipped off surgical gloves and climbed out of his protective clothing. 'It's the least I can do.'
    Clarke readily agreed. He'd had to do it so often in the past he was relieved to have someone else to break the news. Also he'd heard rumours of the wheelchair-bound wife being shielded from the public eye by her husband. He wanted to see why.
    Dan Marks sat on a steel and wood chair beside a chipped formica desk in the small office that acted as waiting room. His wife, Annie, was slumped in a wheelchair beside him. Her face was pale and drawn, eyes red-rimmed and damp. Once dark hair, now flecked grey, was pulled back tightly, revealing flabby, sagging cheeks and wrinkled eyes. She looked much older than her thirty-nine years.
    'Dr Marks, my name is Noel Dunne,' a comforting and condoling hand was stretched but not accepted. 'I'm the state pathologist.'
    'Take me to my daughter,' interrupted Annie Marks. She ignored everyone, her gaze fixed firmly on the door between office and inner chamber.
    'I'm afraid…' began Dunne, hoping to cushion the horrific vision awaiting inside.
    'I am a doctor, too,' snapped Annie Marks, eyes still on the door. 'I know what death looks like. You have a body in there that is probably my one and only child. Spare me your well-meaning words.' The voice was hard and cold, clipped and definite.
    Dunne looked towards Dan Marks. The other man just shook his head. He seemed crushed. He wheeled his wife through the door and across the marble floor towards the central autopsy table. The audience moved back, averting their eyes. The body lay face up, now covered from feet to neck with a thick green surgical drape.
    'Lift me,' snapped Annie Marks and for a moment her husband started to plead then cut his own words short.
    He slipped the brakes on the wheelchair and came behind, placing both hands under his wife's armpits. His tall athletic body took the strain with ease. One detective started forward to assist but a grasping hold from Dunne restrained. Unsteadily, Annie Marks was lifted to a standing position. She gripped the edge of the white mortuary table with both hands, swaying slightly. She gazed down at the lifeless face, eyes moving from side to side, as if committing the vision to memory. Her left hand brushed a wisp of blood-matted hair away from the dead girl's forehead, then she slumped back heavily and started to sob, her control gone.
    'It's her, oh my God, it's her.'
     
     
    'She was stabbed three times, twice in the front of the chest and then in the back.' In the courtyard outside the morgue Moss Kavanagh was relaying the final post-mortem findings to Barry Nolan, chief crime reporter for the Post group of newspapers.
    'The knife was left in her back, buried to the hilt.' Kavanagh paused, imagining Nolan scribbling furiously at the other end of the line. He walked in a brisk circle to stop his legs cramping.
    'Any definite leads?'
    'Nothing yet, no suspect.'
    'Anything else?'
    'I've enough to take the whole front page if you really knew,' said Kavanagh, looking around, anxious to make sure no one was listening. 'I'm only gonna tell you enough for an exclusive, not enough to hang me.'
    'Fair enough,' Nolan agreed readily.
    Kavanagh was only too aware of recent grumbles from prominent politicians about leaks to the media. 'She might have been into drugs. I can't say any more than that. She may have been messing with drugs and got hurt.'
    'Was she raped?'
    'Nothing obvious.'
    'Anything more?' Nolan asked.
    'That's as much as you're getting, Barry. There's plenty more, but it'll have to come later.'
    'Ah Mossy…'
    Kavanagh flicked off the mobile phone. He hadn't mentioned needle-tracks. Deliberately he hadn't mentioned Tony