Denial of Murder

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Why not? It’s just a normal pub, like any other East End pub.’ Yewdall sat adjacent to Derek Cogan.

  ‘Yes … but it’s a pub with a history. What was his name … the gangster, George Cornell, he was shot in this pub by Ronnie Kray … a pub full of witnesses and no one saw anything. Do you know where Cornell was sitting?’ Cogan looked curiously around the pub. ‘I have to lose my brother in order to get in here and fulfil an ambition. It’s a funny old world.’

  ‘Before my time,’ Yewdall replied offhandedly. ‘I wasn’t even alive then … and the pub will have been refurbished since the mid-sixties when that accident occured, probably many times over, in fact.’

  ‘Yes … I suppose.’ Cogan continued to look around him at the high ceilings, the solid furniture. ‘On a healthier note, do you know that this pub was where the Salvation Army was born?’

  ‘Inside a pub!’ Yewdall forced a grin though she still felt uneasy with Derek Cogan. ‘That’s rich. But no, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Well, outside actually.’ Derek Cogan nodded to the window. ‘John Booth preached his first sermon right outside this pub, out there on Whitechapel Road. The paving flags will be the same. They won’t have changed.’

  ‘You live and learn.’ Yewdall sat back as Tom Ainsclough placed a tray of drinks on the table: a mineral water for Yewdall, an orange juice for himself and a whisky for Derek Cogan.

  ‘Gordon was a teacher,’ Derek Cogan explained as he sipped his whisky. ‘He was a bright boy, he was the bright spark of the family, he was just brilliant … our Gordon took school in his stride, got his degree when he was twenty, his MA at twenty-one and his BEd at twenty-two – three degrees and still just twenty-two years old. All in the bag at that age. Imagine.’

  ‘Not bad.’ Ainsclough sat opposite Yewdall with his back to the window. He drank his orange juice, savouring the vitamin C which he imagined coursing through his veins and then resolved to eat more fruit, reasoning that if he was sensitive to the vitamin C then it must mean that he was suffering from some degree of deficiency in it. ‘Not bad,’ he repeated, ‘not bad at all.’

  ‘Yes. It was very impressive. We were very proud of him.’ Derek Cogan spoke softly. ‘He was set to fly high in the world of education, an early head of department, possibly an early headship. He was a linguist. All set for a glittering career but it all came at a dreadful price. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Gordon was a savant … but equally there was an immaturity about him. So … a lovely future lay ahead of him, and then he had an affair with one of his pupils.’

  ‘Oh …’ Yewdall groaned, ‘so he lost everything. Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Yes.’ Derek Cogan put his hand to his forehead, ‘Yes, that is it exactly. That’s what I am saying. She … the pupil, the girl in question, was fifteen, he was twenty-three … just an eight-year age gap … nothing much in adults but in the eyes of the law she was a minor and he was an adult and they didn’t keep it discreet, just the opposite, in fact. They ran away together. Would you believe it? In mid-term as well. It made quite a splash in the media. It was widely covered by the newspapers and the television channels. The authorities were fearful for the girl’s welfare, you see, so they made sure that the press and the television and the radio people were all over the story like an army of driver ants.’ Derek Cogan took another deep breath. ‘It was so embarrassing. I can still feel the shame. It nearly destroyed mother; fortunately her apparent frailty hides an inner strength … But that was Gordon … it was Gordon all over … He was my younger brother – very brainy but that came at a price, like I said, because he was also so very immature. He and that girl were very well-suited because they were both on the same emotional level. They were both fifteen-year-olds … in a sense.’

  ‘I see,’ Yewdall murmured. ‘I was assuming a much younger girl had been taken against her will.’

  ‘Yes … you see, it’s not quite the situation that his conviction for abduction and rape would suggest.’ Derek Cogan sipped his whisky and then continued, ‘Anyway, they ran away to Ireland and they lived in a guest house in Galway for a few days, until the owner of the guest house recognized them from the television and newspaper reports and alerted the Garda. The Garda arrested Gordon and handed the girl over to the Irish social services. They were both returned to England. Gordon was put under arrest and remanded in custody while the girl was placed in the care of the local authority for a brief period before returning to her parents. The English social workers had to make sure that it was safe for her to return home, you see.’

  ‘Of course,’ Yewdall replied.

  ‘It clearly was safe because she went back home quite quickly. Gordon was held on remand, as I said … no going home for him, and he was eventually put on trial. Fortunately for Gordon he went in front of Mr Justice Easter, who has subsequently died. I read his obituary in The Times – ‘the lenient judge’ as he was described, probably befitting a man whose surname was that of a Christian feast. He was certainly very lenient with Gordon; in fact, he could not have been more lenient. He said before sentencing Gordon that he knew he had a reputation for leniency and that he was going to add to that reputation in Gordon’s case.’ Derek Cogan took another sip of his whisky. ‘The judge, Mr Justice Easter, explained that he had taken into account the crime was driven by passion on both sides, and that he was also taking into account Gordon’s very sensible plea of “guilty” which meant that his “victim” was saved from being cross-examined by an aggressive defence barrister, which would have been very difficult for her and might have risked causing her great emotional damage. Mr Justice Easter also explained that no prison sentence he could pass would cause Gordon more damage than the damage he had already brought upon himself: the glittering, safe career that had been ahead of him, the early head of department, the early headship … he had lost it all. No more employment in teaching, or any profession for that matter, not with such serious-sounding criminal offences against his name, and also because he was, by then, a registered sex offender. Mr Justice Easter had thusly allowed for the fact that Gordon’s future was, by then, a bleak one. Any employment he might be able to obtain would be low grade, very low grade indeed, with poor conditions of service, no job security, no pension at the end of it all … nothing.’ Derek Cogan took yet another deep breath before continuing. ‘And you know, the really annoying thing is that the girl was only a few weeks short of her sixteenth birthday. For the sake of not waiting for a few short weeks – a couple of months at most – Gordon’s life was in ruins. It was over. If only … if only … if only they had been more discreet … if only they had kept their love affair hidden from the world until after she turned sixteen, then what they did would not have been illegal. Gordon would have lost his job, he would be finished in teaching because having a sexual relationship with a pupil, even if she is over the age of consent, is still a sackable offence, but he could have carved out a good career as a linguist because he would not have criminalized himself. He was just very emotionally immature … he could not see beyond the end of his silly, stupid nose … and they were both consumed with passion … as in the old Romeo and Juliet number … what is that phrase?’

  ‘A pair of star-crossed lovers?’ Yewdall suggested. ‘Is that the phrase you are thinking of?’

  ‘Yes,’ Derek Cogan smiled briefly, ‘that’s the phrase. That’s it exactly. Driven by emotion and they, particularly Gordon, who should have been in control, did not think logically … it was all very impulsive. So kindly old Mr Justice Easter took all that into account and sentenced Gordon to six months in prison, backdated to the date of his arrest, which meant he walked out of the court that day, having been arrested and remanded more than six months previously. It all happened back to front for him; he served his sentence, then was put on trial, then released from custody. But his life to all intents and purposes was over by then. His real sentence was just beginning.’

  ‘I see,’ Yewdall replied, allowing a little more warmth to en
ter her voice. ‘I can see what you mean now when you described your late brother as being “silly”. His record, as I said, suggests something much more unpleasant.’

  ‘Oh, yes, don’t I know it.’ Derek Cogan took another sip of his whisky. ‘His convictions conjure dreadful images of a young girl being taken against her will and bundled into the back of a car and all the sordid rest of it. So yes, I know how badly it all reads but, as I said, it was the actions of an immature young man and soon-to-be sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who were both hopelessly head over heels in love with each other. In fact, they were actually arrested whilst they were strolling up Shantalla Road in Galway, holding hands.’

  ‘That’s a precise location you mention,’ Ainsclough commented. ‘It’s very interesting in its precision.’

  ‘Ah … yes … yes … perhaps I should explain.’ Derek Cogan nodded gently. ‘I’d better explain. You see, our parents did not use the annual holidays to introduce their children, Gordon and I, to different parts of the UK – you know, Cornwall one year, Devon the next, Scotland the next … then the Isle of Man … the Isle of Wight. No … we went to Galway every summer, without fail, because that’s where our parents had spent their honeymoon. So year after year, summer after summer it was two weeks in Galway for us. Gordon and I got to know the town and the surrounding area well, very well indeed. And Gordon might have got three university degrees but they were all taken at the University of London so for Gordon, Galway was the only other place he knew outside London. Where else to take his girlfriend when they ran away together but to Galway and, I believe, there was in fact, by coincidence, an Irish connection for the girl. Her parents came from that part of Ireland, and she had also visited Galway often, so she was apparently very happy to be taken there. It was something that they had in common – Galway was a home from home for them both.’ Again Derek Cogan paused. ‘So … to continue … anyway, when Gordon was sentenced there was total uproar in the court. I mean total pandemonium. Her father was there and her extended family … a whole team of them: men with rings in their ears and their hair tied back in ponytails, but I mean in a very manly fashion … they were real bruisers, you understand, really heavy-looking, beefy, brawny guys and all with that pinched face of a criminal. Geezers that you would not want to meet up and mess with, geezers who are used to people stepping out of their way when they walk down the street. And the women of the family … my God, the women … thin with cold eyes and hard faces, really spiteful-looking females, and all of them shouting in protest against the lenient sentence, saying things like, “We’ll be out there looking for you, Cogan”, and “There’s nowhere for you to hide, Cogan”, you know … threats like that, but it was all for show at the time – nothing but hot air.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Yewdall commented. ‘So nobody attacked him when he was released from custody?’

  ‘No, but he very sensibly made himself scarce. He at least had enough common sense to do that. He moved into a bedsit in Acton Town, well away from where he used to live and well away from the school he used to teach at. Then, just a few weeks later, he was arrested for the murder of a young heroin addict who lived in the same building.’ Derek Cogan looked to his left, then to his right and said, ‘Now … now I tell you that did not, and it still does not, make any sense at all. The affair with one of his pupils, well, yes, all right, that was the sort of ridiculously stupid thing that Gordon would do, he would indeed do a stupid thing like that, an action borne out of his emotional immaturity … but murder? Prison didn’t harden him up all that much, not in just six months, and during those six months he was kept in the vulnerable prisoners unit, among all the paedophiles – the real paedophiles – so he never mixed with the hard men who would have toughened him up somewhat. You know, nothing added up about the murder. Nothing added up at all.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Tom Ainsclough asked. ‘You seem to be wholly sure of what you are saying.’

  ‘Because it just didn’t and it still doesn’t add up and deliver. It just … just does not add up and deliver.’ Derek Cogan drained his glass and put it down heavily on the table top. ‘It makes no sense. It makes not the slightest sense at all.’

  ‘Would you like another whisky?’ Ainsclough pointed to Cogan’s empty glass. ‘I sense you need one. I sense you are about to tell us a story.’

  ‘Oh … oh … I shouldn’t, I really shouldn’t, but it’s been quite a day,’ Cogan smiled in a resigning manner, ‘so yes, yes I would like another whisky … thank you … it will help me to explain things.’

  As Tom Ainsclough walked leisurely across the floor of the Blind Beggar towards the bar, Penny Yewdall asked Derek Cogan what he did for a living.

  ‘Nothing.’ Cogan beamed his reply. ‘I’m retired.’

  Yewdall saw a thin-faced man, balding, bespectacled, tall yet thin-framed, almost skeleton-like. ‘I was a teacher like Gordon but whereas he went to the university and taught high-ability pupils in a private day school, I taught remedial classes in a large inner-city comprehensive, having only attended teacher training college. Like I said, Gordon had all the brains in our family. It was like he had my share on top of his fair share. In the school I taught at we had children who arrived at the age of eleven and still could not read or write or do elementary arithmetic. It meant that I was really a primary school teacher with teenage pupils … and their handwriting … you had to see it to believe how awful it could be. It was as though they were writing using matchboxes dipped in mud, but we teachers in the remedial group always derived a great deal of satisfaction in ensuring that very, very few pupils left our school without basic literacy or numeracy. It was a very rewarding part of our job. Ours was a large comprehensive school where the brightest pupils went on to university and the less bright into some form of gainful employment … and … regrettably not a few became known to you people … mostly for petty crime but I am pleased to say that I don’t think we ever produced a career criminal. Oh … thank you,’ Derek Cogan reclined as Tom Ainsclough set his whisky down on the table in front of him. ‘This really has to be my last.’

  ‘So … Derek,’ Ainsclough prompted, ‘not adding up and delivering, you were saying.’

  ‘Yes.’ Derek Cogan sipped the whisky. ‘So after he was released from custody, Gordon went to live in a grubby little bedsit in Acton Town. It was not easy for him but he was courageously trying to rescue what little he could from the mess he’d made of his life. He was able to obtain a little translating work now and again but nothing ever became permanent. The convictions, you see, worked against him as the judge had said they would, so mostly he was on the dole and getting a little cash-in-hand work. In the early days he worked damned hard to keep away from the drink and he began to attend a non-conformist church which accepted him as a repentant sinner. You know, the old hallelujah handshake foxtrot, and he went along each Sunday for the human company more than anything else, you know the sketch, someone to have a chat with over coffee after the service. I would visit and write to him and let him have twenty pounds now and again, plus whatever mother could let him have out of her state pension … it was all we could afford. You don’t enter teaching for the money, that’s for sure, but the main thing was that Gordon was living cleanly and not sinking into crime. He also seemed to be avoiding the bottle.’

  ‘Good for him.’ Yewdall raised her mineral water to her lips. ‘Was there any contact between him and his girlfriend? His ex-pupil?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Derek Cogan replied, ‘but I would not be surprised if there had been some form of contact between them. I mean, they were utterly committed to each other, and he was on remand for just six months and so they could have picked things up upon his release and done so quite easily.’

  ‘What was her name?’ Yewdall took her pen and notebook from her bag.

  ‘Lysandra Smith.’ Cogan smiled. ‘Smith’s a bit of a common name, though not Lysandra … but you’ll most likely be easily able to trace her despite her common s
urname.’

  ‘Really?’ Yewdall raised her eyebrows. ‘We will?’

  ‘Yes … she will be in her early thirties now and along the way she has acquired a criminal record.’

  ‘Oh …’ Yewdall smiled. ‘That will help us greatly. We will need to chat to her.’

  ‘I thought it might.’ Derek Cogan held his glass but didn’t lift it from the table top. ‘Yes, once, a few years ago now, I read a small filler in the evening paper about a woman of that name and of the age she would have been, acquiring a conviction for shoplifting.’

  ‘We can check that easily enough.’ Penny Yewdall wrote the name on her notepad. ‘Conviction might be spent but nothing is erased from the Police National Computer. Any and every conviction remains on record.’

  ‘So I believe. Anyway, things settled down for Gordon,’ Derek Cogan continued, ‘bedsit living, dole, a few jobs, hand-outs from the family but eventually the drink became a failing with him. This stuff.’ Derek Cogan tapped the side of his glass. ‘I mean the heavy bevvy, not just a few beers in the evening but drinking bottles of spirits at home, and he hid the problem by drinking vodka …’

  ‘Hid it?’ Yewdall queried.

  ‘From himself,’ Cogan explained. ‘I mean he hid it from himself. Vodka has so few impurities you can demolish a full bottle of it in the evening and wake up the next morning without a hangover.’

  ‘Yes.’ Yewdall nodded. ‘I am aware that that is the case with vodka.’

  ‘As opposed to drinking a bottle of this stuff,’ again Derek Cogan tapped the side of his glass, ‘or a bottle or two of red wine which will cause you to wake up feeling like your head is being crushed by a steamroller … there is just no aversion therapy at all to be had with vodka. So Gordon would buy a bottle when he had the money and he’d drink it at home. It was in the midst of that lifestyle that he was arrested for murder.’ Cogan paused. ‘That was a bolt from the blue, I can tell you … a real bolt from the blue, and his victim was a seventeen-year-old heroin addict who had had a flat in the same building. In fact, her flat was just across the hall from Gordon’s room. I saw her once during one of my visits, a pale, sickly-looking waif of a girl. She could pose no threat to anyone, yet he allegedly strangled her, and he was no Mr Universe.’