Denial of Murder (9 page)

‘He's fifteen!' Yewdall protested.

‘He's a big lad, you'll see for yourself any minute now. He passes for eighteen or nineteen and he does so without difficulty. The publicans round here know he's part of the local villainy and the rule of the game is that any villain who gets refused service for anything other than being drunk and out of order … well, he then has words in the right ear and the pub gets smashed up … maybe even torched. So Pancras gets his beer and comes home and sleeps till gone noon.' Lysandra Smith dogged her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘The wonder of nature … who would have thought that little old me could produce a rugby full back … all six foot of him?'

A heavy footfall was heard descending the stairs and Pancras Smith entered the living room. He was, Yewdall saw, just as he had been described: tall and muscular, though slender rather than broad-chested, with short hair and a shadow on his chin, but he appeared to be normally clean-shaven. He wore a green T-shirt, loose-fitting red jogging bottoms and white and blue sports shoes. Yewdall had to concede that he would pass for nineteen, and that he would have no difficulty in being served alcohol in any public house. Pancras Smith eyed Yewdall with undisguised hostility, clearly recognizing her as a police officer. Yewdall held his stare.

‘A rozzer!' Pancras Smith snarled. ‘A filthy rozzer! In this house!'

‘Don't go doing no bother, now, Pancras,' Lysandra Smith appealed to her son as he towered over both her and Penny Yewdall. ‘No one's in any trouble. This young lady is just asking me about someone I knew a long, long time ago.'

Penny Yewdall observed that Pancras Smith, aka Reiss, had already developed the hard-looking, cold-eyed, humourless face of the criminal. He had piercing blue eyes and a long scar on his cheek which he seemed to wear with pride, as if it were a medal. She saw a hard-hearted young man comfortably on his way to a life of crime and prison … and more crime … and more prison.

‘So what does she want?' Pancras Smith demanded of his mother in a raised voice while not moving his gaze from Yewdall.

‘I told you … just a bit of information. We're just having a chat. There's no need to get moody, Pancras. We're just having some quiet verbals … that's all.' Lysandra Smith attempted to placate her son and Yewdall saw that she was clearly in some fear of him. ‘Quiet verbals … just some quiet verbals. It's only about someone I knew before you were born.'

‘Who? That old teacher geezer you ran off with to Ireland?' Pancras Smith demanded in an aggressive manner. ‘Is it about him … about that geezer?'

‘Yes. Yes it is,' Lysandra Smith replied calmly. ‘If you must know. You see, no one's in trouble. You needn't get worried.'

‘But why?' Pancras Smith snarled. ‘Why does she want to come here and talk about that slimy toe-rag? That's all blood under the railway tracks, isn't it?'

‘Because he's brown bread,' Lysandra Smith explained with a patience which impressed Yewdall. ‘This lady just wants to know a little bit about him, but I can't tell her much 'cos I don't know much.'

‘Good. I'm glad he's dead.' Pancras Smith strode out of the living room and into the kitchen where he could be heard banging pots about, showing no more interest in Penny Yewdall.

‘His grandfather, my old man,' Lysandra Smith spoke in a hushed tone, ‘turned Pancras against Gordon Cogan.'

‘I quite understand.' Yewdall smiled. ‘Let's pick things up again. So you used to visit Gordon in the bedsit in Acton?'

‘Yes … a few times … not often. It was quite an old ride on the Tube from my old man's drum up in Southgate … didn't have to change … but twenty-plus stations … that's a long ride on the Tube.'

‘It was in that house that Gordon Cogan murdered that girl,' Yewdall said, ‘so we understand.'

‘Yes … yes it was. The house of horror … Alfred Road, Acton … number one hundred and ninety-six. It must have been a lovely old house in its day … four storey, Victorian terrace house … it had a basement, a ground floor, first floor, second floor and attic space but no one went up to the attic, not when I was visiting Gordon. Gordon had a room on the first floor. There were two other flats on that floor. Gordon had the big room at the front of the house and Janet Frost, the girl he murdered, well, she had the little box room which was above the front door next to Gordon's room.' Lysandra Smith glanced up at the ceiling. ‘It must have been lovely in its day … the house, I mean … back in the day. It wasn't up to much when Gordon was there … damp, smelly, overcrowded … but once it must have been a lovely house.'

‘It must have come as quite a shock to you when you heard that Gordon had murdered someone?' Yewdall asked, bringing the conversation back into focus.

‘A shock,' Lysandra Smith looked at Yewdall, ‘that's putting it mildly! I followed the trial in the newspapers and on the television. The DNA evidence was … so strong … but I still couldn't believe that Gordon was a killer. Even when he was half cut, and we all do and say stupid things under the influence of alcohol, I still couldn't believe he could strangle someone. He just didn't have that sort of bottle. It takes a lot of bottle to off someone with your bare hands and Gordon just didn't have it. I knew he'd been drinking at the time … or so I heard, and I saw bottles of voddy on the floor of his room … I mean, empty bottles. But that's drink – it can turn calm men into complete monsters, although voddy just made Gordon want to close his eyes and sleep. And he wasn't a big man either … though she wasn't a big girl, mind, his victim, Janet Frost. She was quite small, like me.'

‘You knew her?' Yewdall asked.

‘No … no … I didn't know her.' Lysandra Smith shook her head. ‘I met her a couple of times but just in passing … poor girl. No chance at all. She was seventeen years old and already a totally wasted smack head. Seventeen and she looked like she was in her thirties … pale skin, like she'd been bled, white and yellow eye sockets. Looking at her face was like looking at urine holes in the snow – yellow holes surrounded by white. She was shooting up like there was no tomorrow which, in her old case, wasn't too far from the truth … I tell you, by the Ancient of Days, she was a mess.'

‘That's an interesting turn of phrase,' Yewdall smiled. ‘The Ancient of Days. I've never heard it used before.'

‘Yes, it means God … from the hymn “Immortal, Invisible”. You must know it? “Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.”'

‘Yes, I know it, I remember it,' Yewdall replied. ‘“Thy justice like mountains high soaring above, thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love”. Yes, it's very uplifting.'

‘Well,' Lysandra Smith explained, ‘we had a teacher at school, the formidable Miss Armstrong, a Scottish woman who formed her words at the back of her throat, not the roof of her mouth, so even when she thought she was talking she was actually shouting, and she tended to use that expression, “By the Ancient of Days, unless I see some improvement in your work, girl, I will write to your father suggesting he takes you out of this school because he is wasting his money sending you here. Would you like that? Would you like to go to a comprehensive school among the rough and smelly children?” That's what she often would say, to me and one or two other “feet draggers” as she used to call the poorly performing pupils … “the feet draggers of this form”. Actually, I would have loved it but I kept silent, and I also didn't remind her that my father's house was in Southgate and the children in the comprehensives up in Southgate were anything but rough and smelly. And where do I fetch up? In a split-level flat on a high-rise estate in Stepney among the rough and the smelly. But when she was not angry, which was very infrequently, she explained that she used that expression because she thought it sounded less blasphemous than saying “by God”, even though it meant the same. Anyway, she retired and Gordon took her place as the French teacher. All the French I remember from school is from Miss Armstrong's “I take no prisoners” approach and nothing from Gordon's “let's be friends” approach … but our eyes met early on in Gordon's time at the school, and the rest, as they say, is history.' Lysandra Smith glanced down at the threadbare carpet at her feet. ‘But that girl, Janet Frost … a mess … like she had real craters in her forearms where she had jabbed the needle. You could see the layers of her skin … that's no exaggeration.'

‘I know.' Penny Yewdall nodded her head. ‘Believe me, I have seen the like.'

‘Yes … I imagine you have in your line of work.' Lysandra Smith looked at the packet of cigarettes. ‘Shall I have another one? Shall I have a fag? What's another coffin nail? I'm trying to cut down … no … I'd best not, not yet anyway. Each minute I can resist a fag is a victory.' She took a deep breath. ‘There was no flesh on her, Janet Frost; like she had an eating disorder … what is it? Anor …?'

‘Anorexia nervosa?' Yewdall suggested.

‘Yes, that's the name.' Lysandra Smith nodded her head. ‘She had that in a bad way. Honestly, she was like something out of a Nazi death camp but Gordon was very kind to her, you know. When he had a bit of money he bought her food and encouraged her to eat it … food she could digest … like soup. And then he strangles her? I don't think so.' Lysandra Smith shook her head. ‘He strangles her and then goes back to his room to sleep the drink off? But they … the Old Bill … you lot … The Bill finds his DHSS signing-on card in her room and bits of her underwear in his room … and they found his DNA on her body … so they said at his trial … and as he had no defence other than, “I don't remember doing it” … no defence at all, down he went … life, but at least the judge didn't set a minimum term … and that was the last I heard of Gordon Cogan until you showed up at my door telling me that he is brown bread. Poor soul.'

Pancras Smith emerged from the kitchen, scowled at Penny Yewdall and walked out of the flat without a word to, or a glance at, his mother.

‘That'll be him until well past midnight,' Lysandra Smith explained apologetically. ‘He'll roam far and wide like a hungry animal.'

‘Really?' Yewdall replied. ‘You have no control over him at all?'

‘None.' Lysandra Smith sighed. ‘He just runs with the wolves on the estate and he claims he has a shooter.'

‘A gun!' Yewdall gasped. ‘That sounds like serious stuff he's mixed up in.'

‘Yes, so he claims and I believe him. I've never known him make an empty boast. Never.' Lysandra Smith looked hungrily at the packet of cigarettes.

‘Here? In this house? In his room?' Penny Yewdall pointed to the ceiling. ‘He keeps it here?'

‘No, he says he has it stashed somewhere on the outside,' Smith replied. ‘I believe him on that as well. But he seems to see the shooter as a good way to get into the big league. He wants some gaol time under his belt. Youth custody won't cut it. He needs adult gaol time to be accepted as a serious player. He's practically sixteen now so all I can do is sit back and watch. He stopped listening to me a long time ago.'

‘If he's got a gun at his age … well …' Yewdall said, ‘I can tell you that he's fast-tracking his way to prison.'

‘I told you, that's what he wants!' Lysandra Smith succumbed to temptation, took another cigarette from the packet and lit it with the yellow lighter. ‘That's exactly his plan.'

‘Are you on the dole, Lysandra?' Yewdall asked as she watched her inhale deeply. ‘You don't mind if I call you “Lysandra”?'

‘Don't mind at all, darling – I don't mind one little bit. And yes, I am on the dole … I've been on the dole all my life. Never been employed. Not once. I don't know what a wage packet looks like.' Lysandra Smith exhaled as she spoke. ‘I do a little shoplifting; you can't get by without that. I am a little old for the game now so hardly do that anymore, but I can still stand on a street corner if push comes to shove and if the geezer is drunk enough or if he doesn't look too closely, then, in that case, I can earn twenty quid. I hate doing it but a girl has to eat and with him …' Lysandra Smith jabbed the cigarette in the air in the direction of the front door, ‘he's just like a bottomless pit when it comes to food, totally bottomless. You've seen his size … Well, I can tell you that he's got the stomach to match. I come downstairs in the mornings and open the fridge and it's like it's been raided by locusts … totally stripped bare. But if Pancras or Elliot find out that I sometimes stand on street corners then it's the end of me, and no mistake.'

Penny Yewdall instinctively took her purse from her handbag and from it extracted a ten-pound note which she laid on the surface of the coffee table. ‘That's all I can spare,' she said apologetically.

‘Oh, thanks, Duchess.' Lysandra Smith swept up the note with the practised ease and skill of a hungry ghetto dweller. ‘It's just that I got no food at all, not right now, and I don't get my old Giro until tomorrow.'

‘No worries, it'll tide you over.' Penny Yewdall replaced her purse inside her handbag and stood, preparing to leave the flat.

‘It was such a good school I went to as well.' Lysandra Smith also stood up. ‘I was so well-spoken, not just grammatically perfect but with a plummy accent. I had to lose the accent to survive here. If you put on the dog on this estate you get your windows panned in … even with Pancras to look after me … and the grammar, well, that just evaporated. If you put a well-spoken person and a poorly spoken person together and keep them together, the poorly spoken person will bring the well-spoken person down to their level of speech, not the other way round.'

‘You think so?' Penny Yewdall slung her handbag over her shoulder.