Free Cold Steel by Paul Carson Page A

Molloy's discovery.
     
     
    'Are those her clothes?'
    Molloy had arrived as the autopsy was ending. He hated everything to do with the morgue, the sights, the smells, the sounds, the confrontations with death. He usually busied himself with routine work and had this worked out to a fine art, slipping in when he knew most of the cutting and sawing and weighing of organs was over. Even then he spent the time poking at forensic material.
    'Are those her clothes?' he repeated, his usual worried features deepening.
    Jennifer Marks' pants, skirt and bloodstained T-shirt lay on a spare autopsy table. With the tip of a biro he pushed at a grass-stained Nike trainer. 'Was she wearing these?'
    Noel Dunne ignored the questions and continued scribbling on his clipboard. One of the white-suited forensics, a tall balding man with pock-marked face, moved closer.
    'Yeah, that's all we brought back.'
    Molloy wasn't happy. His nose was within an inch of the black skirt, scrutinising it, then he moved to the T-shirt, then to the trainers, then back to the skirt.
    'She certainly wasn't wearing those at school.' He related his visit to the convent, what he'd learned, what he felt he hadn't learned and what he'd sensed. He pointed his biro at the collection of clothes and trainers. 'They're very strict about uniforms. There's no way she would have been allowed into classes in that gear.'
    One of the detectives flicked through a notepad. 'She didn't go home after school. Maybe she changed somewhere?'
    Clarke rested his crutch on a bench and leaned his back against it for comfort.
    'Everything that was found is here. There is no other clothing,' he said.
    Molloy poked at the skirt with his pen, turning it over, then inside out. 'What's this?'
    The tone of the question stopped everyone. One by one they gathered. The inside hem of Jennifer Marks' short black skirt had been cut right round. Traces of blood, now brownish-rust in colour, clung to the rent stitching. In one area a sharp-edged stain was visible.
    'Get me the knife,' ordered Clarke and the hemp-handled murder weapon was slid out of the evidence cylinder. With gloved hand Clarke placed its tip over the stain. It matched perfectly. No one spoke for a moment.
    'What was he looking for?' Noel Dunne asked the question running through everyone's mind.
     
     
     
    8
    7.12 pm
     
     
    'Have ye any scag? Come on, Jimmy, I'm dyin'. I need a hit.'
    Micko Kelly was back on the streets. The ache in his limbs and belly grew by the minute, the craving even faster. He felt disorientated and unsteady yet his legs carried him towards the usual haunts. The streets were busy as shoppers and drinkers lingered in the warm evening sunshine.
    'Waddye lookin' for, Micko?' A weasel-faced youth in dirty denims with cloth cap pulled firmly down on his head shuffled nervously up and down the pavement outside a pub in Dublin's Moore Street. He held a mobile phone under his jacket.
    'Scag, Jimmy. I'm dyin', Jimmy, come on, don't fuck me about. Have ye any scag?' He flashed a knife handle tucked into his tracksuit waistband. 'I'll carve ye if ye fuck me about.'
    Jimmy backed off. The handle looked bloodstained. 'How much have you got?'
    Kelly pulled a wad of recently mugged twenty-pound notes from a side pocket. 'Gimme a hundred.'
    Jimmy dialled, then walked away, mumbling into the phone. Within ten minutes a lean, tough-looking denim-clad thug with four silver rings in both ears strode straight up to Micko Kelly and stuffed a brown paper bag under his left arm. As fast as his shaking hands would allow, Kelly passed five twenty-pound notes over.
    'Yer lookin' great, Micko,' lied Narko, the dealer. 'Need anythin' else?'
    'Nah,' growled Kelly. He began his tortured journey back to Hillcourt Mansions.
    'Waddit you give him?' asked weasel-faced Jimmy, head bobbing from side to side as he checked for police. His bloodshot eyes blinked repeatedly, unaccustomed to the brightness of the sunlight. Jimmy preferred the dark.
    'Fuck