Denial of Murder (10 page)

‘Happens all the time. Believe me; well-spoken people have got to keep in each other's company if they want to remain well-spoken.' Lysandra Smith shrugged. ‘A lot of girls from my school went on to university and this is where I fetched up. I married into crime … and so this is my house. You know, I lay down each night and if I can't sleep I think … I think what could have happened to me if I'd gone to university. What would I have been now? A doctor, a lawyer … if not one then married to one … but I was expelled when I returned from Ireland with Gordon Cogan and I didn't sit my exams. I never completed my education. I met Elliot Reiss in a bar when I was all tarted up and we moved in together soon afterwards.'

‘Doesn't your father help you out … I mean, financially speaking? He can't still be angry with you for running away with Gordon Cogan,' Yewdall queried. ‘If he lives in Southgate, if he sent you to a fee-paying school, he must be quite a wealthy man?'

‘No, he doesn't help and I don't want his help,' Lysandra Smith retorted with an anger that surprised Yewdall. ‘I don't want his help at all. In fact, I haven't seen him since Pancras was born. But Pancras and my old man get on like a house on fire. In fact, he sends for Pancras quite frequently.'

‘Sends for him?' Yewdall repeated with no little astonishment. ‘You mean that he summons him?'

‘No … I mean he sends a car to pick him up. It takes him to Southgate and brings him back again later that day,' Lysandra Smith explained. ‘It's been that way for years.'

‘Well, doesn't your father make any attempt to turn Pancras away from crime if they have that sort of relationship?'

‘No,' Lysandra Smith smiled, ‘not my father … you know my father. You know Pancras, you know me and you know my father.'

‘We do?' Yewdall replied. ‘We know your father?'

‘Yes, very well. He's Tony Smith,' Lysandra Smith spoke matter of factly, ‘you know …
the
Tony Smith, Tony “the Pestilence” Smith. Sometimes “Pestilence Smith”. Sometimes just plain old “Pestilence”.'

Yewdall felt her jaw sag. ‘“Pestilence Smith” is your father?'

‘Yes.' Lysandra Smith smiled. ‘That's why Pancras dotes on him. What better grandfather could a fifteen-year-old boy who wants to be a gangster have? But thanks for the ten sovs, Duchess. Promise I'll buy grub with it, not smokes. Promise.'

‘I
t really was an open and shut case.' Detective Sergeant Darwish clasped his hands behind his head and leaned backwards as he sat at his desk. The man was, Frankie Brunnie noted, a large man, even for a police officer, with a massively broad chest, a large, bald head and huge, bear-like paws for hands. He had a warm, affable manner, at least towards fellow police officers. He seemed to Swannell and Brunnie to be a team player, a rugby fullback, playing hard but enjoying conviviality at the clubhouse after the game. ‘It was, I tell you plain,' he continued, ‘the open-ist and shuttest case you ever did see. It was no sooner opened than it was shut, all in a single day. There was nothing at all that we needed to turn to New Scotland Yard for; it had no depth, no intrigue. It was just the old, old story of two lowlifes living in the same damp, overcrowded rental building, separate bedsits but just across the landing from each other. One was an alcoholic kiddie snatcher and underage sex fiend, the other a totally wasted smack head. She was just seventeen years old but she looked older than my grandmother; both were no-hopers and one snuffs out the other. It's most often the way of it with murder.'

‘You reckon?' Victor Swannell, sitting beside Frankie Brunnie, cast his eyes around DS Darwish's office. He saw it to be neat, functional and cold, with a police mutual calendar as the only decoration.

‘Well, I'd say so,' Darwish replied cheerfully. ‘Most murders are handled locally – there are very few that require the expertise of you gentlemen from New Scotland Yard. In fact, we had one such murder last week. It was all wrapped up in half an hour.'

‘Half an hour?' Brunnie gasped. ‘That was quick. I must say that you didn't mess around there.'

‘It was all the time it needed.' Darwish smiled. ‘Picture it, if you will. Two derelicts living in a bedsit, sharing a room plus cooking facilities in a house which was falling apart around them with wet rot and dry rot and subsidence and everything else that can make a house crumble into dust. It was, quite frankly, astounding that the building was still standing upright. It looked like a gentle breeze would knock it over. Anyway, it was condemned by the local authority and about to be demolished. The council had found alternative accommodation for those two old geezers. They were in their fifties and were to be rehoused separately. So they started to divide up the flat but they argued as to who should take the television and the argument escalated into a fight. One pulled a blade … quite a serious shiv … an old military bayonet, in fact … and it did the job it was designed for all right. One was dead and the other collects a life sentence, all over a battered old television, an old black and white set. It had no value at all. Even a charity shop would not accept it as a donation. I dare say it was all a matter of pride and principle rather than the value of the television as an item of property … but that is your average murder. Here, in Acton, all over the rest of London, all over the rest of the country, all over the rest of the world, in fact, and it was the nature of the murder of Janet Frost, pale little waif and stray that she was. She was the victim of Gordon Cogan and all he could say was, “I don't remember doing it”. You know, I often wish real murders had the mystery and the richness of quality of the murders featured on TV dramas – that would make our job so much more interesting. But it's always … nearly always, grubby, cheap and impulsive; humanity at its lowest, at its worst.'

‘Such was the murder of Janet Frost, you say,' Brunnie replied. ‘I am so pleased you said “nearly” by the way.'

‘All right, I dare say that you need the occasional murder of quality,' Darwish grinned, ‘but yes, that was the way of the murder of Janet Frost. It was just like that. Just as I have described. They lived on top of each other in a house full of lowlifes, alkies, smack heads and cheap brasses; it was a real den of thieves. The perpetrator, Gordon Cogan, had been a schoolteacher until he ran away with one of his pupils – took her to the west coast of Ireland. He was lifted by the Irish boys and when his case came to court he went in front of Mr Justice Father Christmas who says Cogan's lost everything so no prison sentence is needed, and sends him down for six months backdated to the date of his arrest so he walks out of court that very day. Would you credit it?' Darwish shook his head. ‘Raping and abducting a schoolgirl – he should have got a ten-year stretch for that at least. At the very minimum he should have collected a full decade. So he fetches up in a dosshouse in Acton Town and, lo and behold, who's across the corridor but another little girl, so he goes into her drum and chokes the life out of her, doesn't he? You see, that's what lenient sentencing gets you – it gives out the wrong message, let's 'em think they can do it and get away with it.'

‘You reckon?' Victor Swannell said for the second time.

‘Yes, of course … I mean, if that little toe-rag Cogan had got the ten-year stretch he should have got, Janet Frost would still be alive … or then again maybe not given the way she was putting away the heroin, but she would have lived a bit longer anyway.' Darwish leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desktop, clasping his huge hands together. He wore a light blue shirt with the sleeves neatly rolled up cuff over cuff and an expensive-looking watch around his left wrist. He beamed at Swannell and Brunnie. ‘I hope Mr Justice Father Christmas reassessed his sentencing values after that murder. He would have read about it. He let the little pervert out for abducting and raping a schoolgirl because he's done six months on remand and within a matter of weeks he's strangled another young girl. There was no clear motive, just theft, and a little passion possibly, when he was under the influence. He was no great shakes as an example of British manhood, he was a weedy little non-descript of a man, but despite that, Janet Frost was no match for him.'

‘A small girl?' Brunnie asked.

‘About the size of your average twelve-year-old.' Darwish held eye contact with Brunnie. ‘His DNA was all over her body and also all over her room: on her shelves, in her drawers, her cupboards, everywhere. And I mean everywhere. He'd rifled her room, plundered it, ransacked it, really gone to town and there she was in the middle of it, a little naked body with a massively bruised neck and his DNA all over her … not just round her neck but all over her … No indication of sex, though, but he went all over her room. Robbery when under the influence, or so we assumed, but she had nothing of value so he took a pair of her thongs back into his room … filthy little pervert … he runs off with a schoolgirl, then he murders a seventeen-year-old for a single item of her underwear.' Darwish grinned and shrugged his shoulders, ‘Like I said. Open and shut.'

‘What did he say had happened?' Brunnie asked.

‘He claimed he had no recollection, like I said,' Darwish replied. ‘I slapped him around a bit but he still said he couldn't remember anything.'

‘You did that?' Swannell raised an eyebrow. ‘That could have backfired on you.'

‘Yes, I did,' Darwish replied. ‘I mean, within these four walls, of course, I mean between you and me and the gatepost.'

‘Dangerous confession,' Swannell growled. ‘It could still get you into bother.'

‘Come on, he got what was coming to him and it was a long time coming if you ask me … a very long time coming … the rape of a schoolgirl … then he murders a teenager for her underwear … and all he could bleat was, “I don't remember, I don't remember”. But it was a solid conviction, and so we were well happy. Why all the interest in the little toe-rag? Is he under suspicion for another felony?'

‘No, nothing like that,' Brunnie replied coldly. ‘He's dead. He's been murdered.'

‘Has he now?' Darwish smiled a broad smile and once more put his hands behind his head. ‘Well, there's justice for you, as my old Welsh grandfather would have said.' Darwish's smile was broad enough to reveal a gold-capped molar.

‘Yesterday,' Swannell added, deadpan. ‘The body was found in the street in Wimbledon.'

‘That was Cogan?' Darwish slapped one of his mighty palms on his desktop. ‘I heard about that on the radio. No name was mentioned, just that a body had been found … police appealing for witnesses, et cetera. Well, that's a turn-up for the books and no mistake … and Wimbledon … Acton to Wimbledon, that is quite a social climb. Didn't he go up in the world?'

‘Hardly,' Brunnie replied, ‘he was living in a bail hostel in Kentish Town when he was iced. We believe his body was dumped in Wimbledon after he was murdered elsewhere.'

‘I see,' Darwish replied.

‘There were no CCTV cameras where his body was dumped,' Swannell explained. ‘Somebody knew what they were doing – someone was CCTV savvy.'

‘So …' Darwish pursed his lips, ‘someone didn't like him. That I can well understand. But yes, I gave him a right pasting in the cells when he came back from the Magistrates Court after his solicitor had left.' Darwish paused, noting the expressions on Swannell and Brunnie's faces. ‘Well, he was getting away with too much, wasn't he? Abducting and raping a schoolgirl … then he strangles a tiny little seventeen-year-old. She could have turned her life around, or she'd be dead within a year anyway … we'll never know … but the point is that time was on her side, it could still all have been ahead of her. With treatment and rehab she could have had a life. Cogan got money for a bottle and when he's tanked up and gets a bit angry about this and that and forces his way into her room, very usefully for us he drops his DHSS signing-on card on her carpet, chokes the life out of her and steals her undies. His DNA is all over the shop … I mean, everywhere, like I said … and would you credit it, does he even try to help himself? No … the stupid oaf pleads not guilty. Anyway, he was found guilty, goes up before Mr Justice Very Sensible this time and collects a life sentence. He changes his plea once inside, works the system and gets parole after fifteen years. Me, I would have thrown the key into Old Father Thames and left him to rot. That's the sort of justice that I understand.'

‘Yes,' Brunnie replied sourly, ‘I think that you would have done just that. I can quite easily see you doing just that.'

‘The fact is, gentlemen,' Darwish snarled, and in doing so revealed an alarming side to his personality, ‘that you know and I know that there are just some people who should not be let out on to the street, and Gordon Cogan is …
was
one of them. So he's been topped – why am I not surprised? Why am I not very, very, very upset? What happened to the little pillock?'

‘We don't know yet,' Brunnie replied, ‘but he was filled in with great determination. Someone made a right jigsaw puzzle of his skull.'

‘Right now we are just gathering as much information as we can,' Swannell explained calmly. ‘We're looking for a motive … getting some background information … you know the score.'

‘It was probably a bit of good old-fashioned street justice,' Darwish offered. ‘A guy like that will upset a lot of people; he will make a lot of enemies. All those girls … all those angry relatives …'

‘All what girls?' Brunnie asked. ‘He had other victims?'

‘Well, on the basis that we only ever get to hear of about ten per cent of what goes on, it's highly likely that Cogan had other victims,' Darwish explained, ‘and each victim would have had a father or an older brother …'