Denial of Murder

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Who told you that Pestilence Smith had strangled the girl?’ Vicary asked. ‘Or did you witness it?’

  ‘Dunno … and no, I didn’t see it. I wasn’t one of his soldiers then … all Pestilence’s crew knew it was him – two of them were there, they saw it go down … but Quoshie was strung out, they said, desperate for a fix and Pestilence was her supplier. He made her put on a pair of gloves, rubber washing-up gloves, and take the sweat from the teacher’s body … he was half undressed ’cos it was a hot day … and then wipe her hands all over the dead girl and especially round her neck, and then all over the room. They said that Pestilence had found out that someone’s sweat will have their DNA in it and back then DNA was all that was needed for a conviction, so the teacher geezer was well fitted up.’

  ‘All right,’ Vicary growled. ‘Then what …?’

  ‘So Pestilence heard that the teacher geezer was looking for Quoshie to get her to turn Queen’s evidence against Pestilence. Like she was going to do that, some hope, you would think … I mean … this teacher was just not on this planet but Pestilence heard about it, and he also heard that Quoshie was actually thinking of doing what the teacher wanted her to do. She was feeling all guilty, you see, so Pestilence wasn’t taking no chances. He had them both snatched and taken to the lock-up on Copenhagen Street, then sent for me and her and Davy Bootmaker.’ Ryecroft once again looked longingly at the blue sky as if he was wishing himself to be somewhere else, somewhere a long way away.

  ‘Just carry on,’ Vicary prompted.

  ‘Well, me and her and Davy Bootmaker got to the lock-up and those two, Quoshie and the teacher geezer, were well trussed up in the back of a van and we were given directions to a cottage in Hampshire. Pestilence rents it now and again … assumed name and hard cash. It’s fairly remote. Sometimes Pestilence likes jobs done well out of London.’

  ‘We know,’ Vicary remarked. ‘We have been there.’

  ‘How did you find it?’ Ryecroft asked. ‘We cleaned up. Well …’ he turned to Rita Hibbert, ‘she cleaned up.’

  ‘Not as well as she might have done,’ Vicary remarked, ‘and you didn’t keep Cherry Quoshie and Gordon Cogan very well supervised. You must have left them alone for a bit … even a short time. I dare say that it will all come out in the trial but let’s just say for now that Cherry Quoshie left us a present where she knew we’d find it and where you wouldn’t think to look, and that led us to the cottage where we found Cherry Quoshie’s fingerprints and Gordon Cogan’s fingerprints on the underside of a table … and also on the inside of a drawer.’

  ‘I cleaned all the surfaces,’ Rita Hibbert protested, ‘like you told me to do. I never thought about the underside of the table or the inside of a drawer.’

  ‘You read the Daily Mail when you were at the cottage?’ Vicary confirmed.

  ‘Yes.’ Ryecroft nodded. ‘Davy Bootmaker likes it for the sports reports. So do I.’

  ‘We know.’ Vicary smiled. ‘We found both your fingerprints on the sports section.’

  ‘I told you to get rid of that paper!’ Ryecroft turned angrily to Rita Hibbert. ‘I told you to burn it.’

  ‘I did,’ Rita Hibbert protested, ‘I took it outside and burned it on the fire on the back lawn.’

  ‘Not all of it, you didn’t.’ Vicary spoke calmly. ‘Cherry Quoshie must have seen you reading the sports pages and when you had finished and she was alone she must have taken out a page from the sports section and put it in a drawer underneath an older sheet of newsprint used to line the drawer hoping, even knowing we’d find it and hoping, even knowing that you would not check the newspaper to see whether or not all the pages were there. But we found it and we found Bootmaker’s dabs and your dabs on it.’ Vicary addressed Ryecroft. ‘And we found Cherry Quoshie’s prints and Gordon Cogan’s prints on the same page … and the date of the paper puts all four of you there at the same time.’

  ‘Can you put me at the cottage?’ Rita Hibbert asked.

  ‘Not forensically but the keyholder, the lady in the village, she will be able to identify you as being the person to whom she gave the key for the weekend in question,’ Vicary advised. ‘She remembers you well, Rita. All dolled up like you were going out to a night club, instead of hiking boots and a green jacket which is what all other people who rent the cottage wear for a few days of birdwatching. She remembers you well. She gave a good description of you, in fact.’

  Rita Hibbert looked crestfallen. Her sister glared at her and mouthed, ‘Half-wit’.

  ‘It’s enough to put all three of you away for murder, if Bootmaker is still alive, that is, and that remains to be seen. Murder times two, in fact.’ Vicary emphasized the point. ‘So it’s really time to start working for yourself, both of you.’ Vicary paused. ‘The burn on Cherry Quoshie’s leg; who did that?’

  ‘Davy Bootmaker.’ Ryecroft hung his head.

  ‘With you holding her down?’ Vicary suggested. ‘She would not have just lain there.’

  ‘Yes … outside … with a gag in her mouth.’

  ‘Then you both did it,’ Vicary advised, ‘in the eyes of the law you both caused the injury. What caused it?’

  ‘A long metal bar with a sort of circular metal bit welded to the end. Pestilence had it made up. He called it his ‘persuader’. He told us to use it to get information from Quoshie about who she had said what to. She claimed she hadn’t told no one nothing, even when we threatened to burn her again … so we believed her.’

  ‘Brave girl,’ Brunnie commented. ‘Brave, brave girl.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vicary nodded in agreement, ‘it makes Anna Day an exceedingly lucky woman, a very exceedingly lucky woman indeed.’

  ‘Who’s Anna Day?’ Ryecroft asked. ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘A friend of Cherry Quoshie’s. Cherry Quoshie told her the gist of what had gone down fifteen years ago in the house in Acton and when Anna Day finds out that Cherry Quoshie didn’t give in to torture so as to keep her name from reaching the eager ears of Pestilence Smith then she might be very willing to make a statement, out of a sense of gratitude if nothing else,’ Vicary explained. ‘I know I certainly would.’

  ‘And me,’ Brunnie added. ‘And me.’

  ‘So the case against you is building quite nicely,’ Vicary smiled. ‘From our point of view, that is, not very nicely from your point of view.’

  ‘I have to ask you,’ Brunnie said, ‘where did you get the coal from … to build the fire?’

  ‘Pestilence got hold of it from somewhere, don’t know where,’ Ryecroft replied. ‘When me and her and Davy Bootmaker got to the lock-up on Copenhagen Street, the coal was already in the back of the van, plus the kindling, plus the branding iron thing, plus a golf club, plus Quoshie and the teacher geezer.’

  ‘So at the end of it all the golf club was the murder weapon?’ Vicary confirmed.

  ‘Yes,’ Ryecroft confessed, ‘but Davy Bootmaker did them both … I swear.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Vicary said, ‘you’re all as guilty as each other … all three of you.’

  ‘Including me?’ Rita Hibbert protested.

  ‘Including you, pet,’ Vicary smiled. ‘You’re fully part of it.’

  ‘What will we get?’ She hung her head.

  ‘Life,’ Vicary replied, ‘but … full confession, give evidence against Pestilence Smith, who is the person we really want, not his foot soldiers. With good behaviour you could be out inside ten years, still young enough to build a life.’ He paused. ‘OK … on your feet. Lawrence Ryecroft, I am arresting you for the murder of Cherry Quoshie. It may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, anything you later rely on in court.’ He paused. ‘All right, that will do for now.’ He put a pair of handcuffs on Ryecroft. ‘Tell me something, Larry,’ he said, ‘why did you dump the two bodies in Wimbledon?’

  ‘No CCTV,’ Ryecroft replied. ‘Simple as that.’

  ‘Yes, we thought that was the reason,’ Vicary replied. ‘Then you joined the commuters later in t
he morning?’

  ‘Yes, we spent the night in someone’s overgrown front garden in the next street then left when folk started walking past on their way to work,’ Ryecroft explained. ‘We joined them ten minutes apart. Davy left first.’

  ‘But why dump them both in the same place?’ Vicary asked. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Got away with it once … why not again?’ Ryecroft said. ‘It seemed like a good idea. Davy suggested it. So I said “why not”?’

  ‘But that made us realize there was a link between Gordon Cogan and Cherry Quoshie, so we looked for it … and here we are,’ Vicary spoke calmly. ‘If you had dumped the bodies twenty miles apart we would not have linked them and there would not have been this investigation, and you would most likely have got clean away with it.’

  ‘You idiot!’ Rita Hibbert leapt up at Ryecroft and clawed his face. ‘You idiot! You idiot!’ She screamed until she was restrained by her sister and Frankie Brunnie who put his handcuffs on her and arrested her, also for the murder of Cherry Quoshie, saying, ‘There will be more charges, but as Mr Vicary has just said, that will do for now.’

  Tom Ainsclough met Harry Vicary as Vicary brought his car to a halt outside Beresford Removals and House Clearances on Copenhagen Street, Whitechapel. ‘Whatever happened in there,’ Ainsclough said, ‘well … it wasn’t pleasant, sir, not pleasant at all.’

  Harry Vicary nodded, got out of his car and walked into the gloom of the lock-up. Tom Ainsclough followed Vicary as he walked through a small open door which was set in a larger door. Within, the lock-up was dimly but sufficiently illuminated by two low-powered bulbs. ‘It seems so,’ Vicary mumbled. ‘Seems so.’

  ‘A SOCO team is on its way, sir,’ Ainsclough advised, ‘but the dark staining on the concrete … that will be blood … two teeth beside the blood …’

  ‘Yes, I see them,’ Vicary replied, ‘clearly human, even to my untrained eye. They’ll have once belonged to Davy Bootmaker … and the blood will be his … and the rest of him … who knows?’

  ‘Shallow grave in Epping Forest?’ Ainsclough suggested. ‘Or waiting to be put in the river after dusk has fallen?’

  ‘Probably either, the river or the forest, they are where the bodies of all felons who vanish tend to be found. If they are found at all.’ Vicary glanced round the lock-up. ‘No windows,’ he observed, ‘no one to look in when whatever happens in here is happening. He’d be alive if he had kept his mobile phone on. Part of me feels sorry for him despite what he did to Cherry Quoshie and Gordon Cogan.’

  ‘Do you think it’s time we paid a second call on Tony “Pestilence” Smith,’ Ainsclough asked, ‘with a warrant this time?’

  Vicary smiled. ‘Yes, yes I do. Larry Ryecroft and Rita Hibbert are talking to us; they’ve already got both eyes on reduced charges and early parole. That’s sufficient for a warrant for his arrest and if this lock-up is leased in his name … then … well, then that’s more than sufficient.’

  The front door of Tony ‘Pestilence’ Smith’s house in Southgate was found to be open when Harry Vicary, Tom Ainsclough and six constables arrived to execute the arrest warrant. Vicary stood on the threshold and called out ‘Police!’ There was no response from within the house. He called again. He heard his voice echo strongly within the building but there was no answering call. Vicary entered the house, followed by Ainsclough and the constables, then ‘proceeded with caution’ as Vicary would later write in his report, calling out as they did so. Eventually they found Tony Smith in the lounge of his home.

  He was sitting on the settee. Arms by his sides.

  His head was slumped forward.

  He was dead.

  The police officers stood in a silent semicircle looking at the body. The bloody knee caps, the small, bloody hole in the throat just below the Adam’s apple. They saw an empty wallet on the carpet at his feet.

  ‘Robbery gone wrong?’ Ainsclough suggested, breaking the silence.

  ‘No …’ Vicary replied, ‘there is no sign of a forced entry. He knew his killer and let him … or her into his house. The killer then did the business, helped himself or herself to the contents of his wallet and walked out leaving the door open. Job done.’

  ‘Her?’ Ainsclough queried. ‘You think a female did this, sir?’

  ‘Small-calibre bullet holes,’ Vicary observed. ‘A .22, that’s a woman’s gun. A man’s preference would be for a .38. Minimum.’

  ‘A contract killing perhaps?’ Ainsclough suggested. ‘They like .22’s, they’re quieter and neater. If you can get close enough to the victim a .22 is the preferred weapon of a contract killer, so I understand anyway.’

  ‘Still don’t think so,’ Vicary replied. ‘Like I said, he knew his killer. And a contract killer wouldn’t drill the kneecaps like that. This is personal. Somebody hated him and wanted him to know his time had come, and they disabled him so as to be able to take their time. No, this is very personal … and there’s an awful lot of hate here. An awful lot of hate.’ He paused. ‘All right, this is a crime scene; secure it at the front door, please. Whistle up a SOCO team and a pathologist. You know the procedure.’

  The pub was called the Empress of India and he chose it because the name appealed to him. He walked into the saloon and saw, as he had expected, that it was occupied by only about half-a-dozen people enjoying an early evening beer. He took the gun from his jacket pocket and shot it into the ceiling, then he shot at the bottles of spirits behind the bar which, as he had hoped, sent the customers rushing for the door and to the safety of the street. It also, as he had also hoped, sent the barmaid running to the back office to make an emergency call whilst the publican, neatly dressed in a blue shirt, dark trousers and a gold watch stood quite courageously, thought the man, at the bar looking at him.

  The man walked up to the bar and asked for three pints of strong lager: ‘The strongest you’ve got.’ He laid the gun on the top of the bar. ‘Don’t touch it,’ he said in a warm manner. ‘It’s loaded … and you don’t want your old dabs on it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, mate, I won’t.’ The publican, a large, clean-shaven man, pulled the first pint and stood it on the bar.

  The man picked up the drink and downed it in one go. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a wad of ten-pound notes. ‘That’s for the drink and the damage,’ he said. ‘He never carried less than one hundred and fifty sovs … so that should be enough. Put it out of sight before the cozzers get here; they’ll only want to keep it as evidence.’

  ‘I think you’re right.’ The publican swept up the money and pocketed it. He put two more pints of lager on the bar top. ‘You know how the Bill work all right.’

  ‘The armed cozzers have a twelve-minute response time in central London.’ The man picked up the second pint. ‘Do you think I’ve got time?’

  ‘Three pints in twelve minutes …? A young bloke like you …?’ The publican nodded. ‘Yes, it can be done.’

  The young man carried the two pints of lager to the nearest table and sat at it. ‘I’m on my way now,’ he announced proudly. ‘You need some prison time under your belt – you don’t get nowhere without prison time. I mean real prison, not youth custody, but real prison … like my old man … he’s in Parkhurst doing a long stretch for armed robbery.’

  ‘Is that right?’ The publican rested his two meaty hands on the bar and leaned forward. He no longer felt frightened of the youth.

  ‘It’s right.’ The youth gulped the beer. ‘I’ve just blown away my grandad. I thought he was all right, all this time I thought he was all right, then my mum, she told me this afternoon … she told me why she would never visit him. She told me what he used to do to her when she was a girl … I mean, still at school.’

  ‘Oh, yes …?’ the publican replied calmly.

  ‘Yes, so I got my shooter from where I keep it and I visited him. He let me in, all welcoming like.’ Pancras Reiss gulped down more beer as the two-tone police klaxons were heard. ‘Reckon that’s my transport.’
He drained the second glass.

  ‘Reckon it is, reckon you’ve still got time to do it … get three down you,’ the publican spoke encouragingly. ‘Go on, son … go for it.’

  ‘Yes. So I waited until he was sat down then I popped his kneecaps so he knew I was the business, then I told him what I was going to do and why. I never thought I’d see Pestilence so frightened.’

  ‘He’s your grandfather? “Pestilence” Smith? The publican spoke as if impressed. ‘“The Pestilence” Smith?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pancras Reiss picked up the third pint. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I pay protection money to him. So, yes, I know him.’

  ‘Not anymore you don’t.’ Pancras Reiss drank more beer as the klaxons reached the street outside the pub. ‘Not anymore you don’t pay no protection money, you don’t pay it anymore.’ He drank more beer. ‘Then I popped him in the throat … just the once but I knew it would be enough … I stood over him until he stopped making gurgling and wheezing sounds … but I’ll be all right inside, no one is going to carve me up in the showers for icing the man who raped my mother … and that is real street cred.’

  The two armed officers burst through the door. The publican held up one hand in a gesture of calm. He pointed to the gun on top of the bar as Pancras Reiss stood some ten feet away and finished the third pint.

  ‘There you go,’ the publican smiled, ‘I told you you could do it.’

  The dart thudded into the board. John Shaftoe looked pleased as he strode forward to remove it from the double thirteen slot.

  ‘Good arrow, mate,’ his partner said. ‘That’s the game.’ Shaftoe glanced at his wife who sat with other women in the corner in front of a schooner of sherry. She smiled at him and gave him the thumbs-up sign. They were in the tap room of the Noah’s Ark on the Old Kent Road in Deptford. They were among their own kind, ‘touching base’ as they had promised they would.