Denial of Murder by Peter Turnbull

‘It’s been that way for years.’
    â€˜Well, doesn’t your father make any attempt to turn Pancras away from crime if they have that sort of relationship?’
    â€˜No,’ Lysandra Smith smiled, ‘not my father … you know my father. You know Pancras, you know me and you know my father.’
    â€˜We do?’ Yewdall replied. ‘We know your father?’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜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.’

FOUR
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Half an hour?’ Brunnie gasped. ‘That was quick. I must say that you didn’t mess around there.’
    â€˜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