Free Slipknot by Priscilla Masters Page B

lad that knifed someone a couple of days ago?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Hah,’ he said, pleased. ‘I
thought
it was the same boy. Nasty piece of work. Sharpened the knife, I heard.’
    She felt she should defend the dead boy but Jericho didn’t give her the chance. ‘How did he do it?’
    ‘We don’t know for definite yet,’ she said pointedly. ‘The post-mortem’s this afternoon. But,’ she yielded to Jericho’s bright, curious expression, ‘it looks as though he hanged himself.’
    ‘Ah – these lads,’ he said with regret. ‘They will do it. Coffee now, Mrs Gunn?’
    ‘Thanks.’ As Jericho left she reflected how his hair was sobadly cut she wondered whether he did it himself. Grizzly grey, uneven, prone to sticking out in all directions, which made her cross to the mirror and take stock of her own hair. It too needed a cut. And that meant running the gauntlet of Vernon Grubb’s scrutiny. As usual she decided it would have to be put off till next week. This week was simply too busy.
    She glanced at the letter on top of the pile. It was handwritten in quite an untidy, scrawling hand. When she had read it through twice she called in Jericho. ‘Where did this come from?’
    He started rifling through the bin. ‘Don’t know. Is it important? Hah.’ He emerged with a white envelope. ‘It came in this.’
    She snatched it from him. It bore a first class stamp and had a Shrewsbury postmark. Aware that Jericho was watching her without bothering to disguise his curiosity she put the envelope in her handbag together with the letter.
    ‘Is everything all right, Mrs Gunn?’
    No. It wasn’t. He was here again, her ghostly haunter.
    Hello, Martha,
she could almost hear the voice which had whispered to her through the trees last winter,
I am here again to make sure you remember. I do have a message for you. In time I will deliver it. Be patient
.
    She should give the letter to Alex. Let the police sort it out.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Martha didn’t always attend post-mortems. She wouldn’t have had the time. But this case would attract a great deal of media attention. Callum Hughes had been young; the schoolboy stabbing had been his first offence and his suicide had occurred within twenty-four hours of his detention. There was plenty of material for a Press feeding frenzy. The other reason that she had decided to attend today’s post-mortem was that it was easier to conduct an inquest when she had watched, first hand, the pathologist reach his decision. So she drove to the mortuary.
    But she almost groaned out loud when she walked in and caught her first sight of Mark Sullivan for a couple of months. She had spoken to him a few times recently and he had sounded fine but words across a telephone line give you little idea of what state a person is in.
    He moved towards her unsteadily. ‘Martha,’ he said.
    Alex Randall was standing behind him, concern etching new lines in his craggy face.
    He met her eyes. And unaccountably Martha felt angry. Mark Sullivan
knew
that this post-mortem would be important. The skinny, small corpse lying on the slab was not a little old lady who had died of natural causes in a nursinghome. This was the suspicious and controversial death of a youth who should have lived for many more years. This was somebody’s child. The evidence the pathologist uncovered would be exposed to a court of law. There was a feeling that it was important that deaths in custody were aired right out in the open or murmurings were soon born. Failing justice, truth, the integrity of the entire British legal system. Everything they all stood for and held dear relied on this tissue evidence that Mark Sullivan was due to retrieve. And he had been drinking.
    She and Alex exchanged a quick nod.
    ‘Have we time for a coffee?’
    Sullivan looked bemused. ‘Coffee?’
    ‘Yes. A black coffee,’ Martha said firmly. Had Sullivan been a little more sober he would have picked up on the acid in her tone and known she was aware that