Denial of Murder (6 page)

‘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 surname.'

‘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.'

‘Allegedly?' Tom Ainsclough echoed. ‘You say allegedly?'

‘Yes … yes … I do,' Derek Cogan repeated, ‘he allegedly strangled her. I say again, he
allegedly
strangled her. Allegedly.' Derek Cogan sipped his drink. ‘Gordon always claimed that he was innocent and he was a truthful man by nature. He was also an unlikely sort of person to strangle someone. He was slightly built, mild mannered, bookish, living quietly, trying to rescue something of his life. All right, he was also drinking by then but drink just made him sleepy, not violent, and he would not readily associate with a rough street girl who injected herself with narcotics. I mean, if someone strangles someone else … I would have thought that that suggests passion, which suggests a relationship. It didn't make any sense. It still doesn't make any sense. No sense at all.'

‘But he was convicted,' Yewdall pointed out. ‘There must have been solid evidence against him, for him to be convicted of murder.'

‘Yes, there was,' Cogan advised, ‘they found Gordon's DNA on her body, especially around her throat … and all over her room.'

‘Good enough,' Tom Ainsclough commented. ‘That sounds good enough to me.'

‘So the police thought, but despite that Gordon pleaded not guilty and he did so against legal advice.' Derek Cogan sipped his drink once more. ‘Again, you see, that is Gordon. He pleaded guilty to the abduction and rape of a fifteen-year-old because he was guilty and he had an integrity about him, and he would only plead not guilty if he believed that he was not guilty. He was my brother, I knew him well, but DNA does not lie and unsurprisingly the jury found against him. He collected his mandatory life sentence, but he consistently refused to accept his guilt and was classified as an IDOM. “In denial of murder”.'

‘Yes … thank you …' Yewdall replied coldly, ‘we know what IDOM stands for.'

‘Sorry … of course you do. Sorry. Sorry.' Derek Cogan held up his hand and then continued. ‘I was so proud of him sticking to his guns like that, and not admitting guilt, so as to be able to work towards his parole. He was a man of integrity … and in fact you do read of DNA results being compromised which will invalidate them, so they can lie in a sense. Because of that we began to think that was what had happened and we planned for him to appeal against his conviction.' Cogan looked as if he was mustering strength. ‘Then, talk about another bolt from the blue, he damn well changed his plea to “guilty”. He did ten years as IDOM and then changes his plea. I was devastated. I couldn't – I freely confess that I still can't believe that our Gordon could kill someone, not the younger brother that I knew, but there he was, as large as life, putting his hand up to it. I was … well, as I said, I was devastated. I did not visit him for a long, long time after that. I just could not bring myself to face him. Then I went from being disappointed to being annoyed with him. In fact, I was furious. Livid. Why on earth would he want to murder a seventeen-year-old drug addict? What on earth was his motivation? What had been the nature of their relationship? But anyway, he became a model prisoner, and he eventually got re-categorized down to a Category B and then Category C prison, and was in time released on licence five years after he changed his plea.' Derek Cogan took a deep breath. ‘He kept himself well away from mother and I, but we would receive the occasional postcard, now and again, usually letting us know of a change of address. He was last living in a bedsit in Kentish Town. So that was his life. That was the life of Gordon Cogan. Newly out of university as a highly qualified teacher, kept on remand for six months and then released, his life in tatters, then arrested for murder a few weeks after his release, inside for fifteen years, released again and a matter of weeks after his second release he was murdered. It was as if someone really wanted him dead. As I said, nothing adds up and delivers.' Derek Cogan drained his glass. ‘I don't think I can tell you anything else. I must get back to Richmond now. Poor mother … she won't accept the news until I tell her that I have seen poor Gordon's body. God rest him.'

Inkerman Road in Kentish Town was, as Swannell and Brunnie discovered, a straight, narrow road lined with three-storey, flat-roofed, mid-Victorian terraced housing. The houses were painted in sombre whites and greys and blacks, and the street enjoyed one or two trees growing from the pavement along its length and at either side of the road. Gordon Cogan's prison release address was on this street, close to the junction with Alma Road.

Inside the house, Gordon Cogan's room revealed itself to be neat and cleanly kept, though, Brunnie thought, perhaps a little threadbare and spartan. Nonetheless, it read correctly for a man on limited income who had very recently been released from fifteen years in prison. The bed was made correctly with the prescribed ‘hospital corners' and all items were neatly in their place. It was evidently the room of an institutionalized man.

‘He hasn't been here very long. He was very recently transferred from another hostel,' the warden of the bail hostel was a softly spoken Asian man of medium build, ‘but he was not ever any bother at all. He was always quiet and always sober.'

‘When did you last see him?' Swannell casually opened a drawer at random and saw that it contained a few items of inexpensive and well-worn clothing, all neatly folded.

‘Friday. He signed out after breakfast on Friday morning. He always seemed to be a man about a mission.' The warden held on to the handle of the opened door. ‘He once told me that he was looking for someone, but not in a threatening way, you understand. He said that he believed that the person he was looking for could help him, and that he would return mid-evening, have a meal and then stay in his room until the next morning. I reported him to the police as being in breach of his licence conditions when he had not returned by eleven p.m. on Friday, as I am obliged to do. But … deceased, you say?'

‘Yes.' Brunnie nodded. ‘I reckon you can notify the probation and aftercare service that you have a vacant room.'

‘I suppose so.' The warden spoke solemnly. ‘I'll parcel up his belongings. Does he have any family?'

‘Yes, though we understand that they thought that he was living independently in a bedsit, not in a probation service hostel,' Swannell replied. ‘They'll be in touch about his things.'

‘Very good.'

‘Did he say anything about the person he was looking for,' Brunnie asked, ‘in the non-threatening sense?'

‘Only that she was a woman.' The warden glanced round the room. ‘He said, “She can help me”.'

‘She?' Brunnie repeated. ‘She?'

‘Yes,' the warden replied, ‘I'm certain he said, “She can help me”.'

The phone on Harry Vicary's desk warbled. He let it ring twice before making a leisurely long arm and lifting the handset up to his ear. ‘Detective Inspector Vicary, Murder and Serious Crime Squad.' He spoke in a calm yet authoritative manner.

‘Good afternoon, sir,' the voice on the other end of the line was male, equally calm and also with a certain warmth. It had, Vicary believed, a strong echo of the West Country about it: most probably Devon, he thought, not Somerset, possibly east Cornwall, but most likely Devon. ‘Detective Constable Trelawney here, Wimbledon Police Station. About the motor vehicle that was burnt out in our patch last night or early this morning …'

‘Ah, yes … any luck?' Vicary changed the phone from his left to his right ear.

‘I am afraid not, sir. I have no news to report. We have traced the owner, who lives in north London and hadn't even realized that his car had been stolen. He seems quite genuine … a young lawyer … he is not a criminal type at all.'

‘I see,' Vicary replied. ‘I had expected that sort of result, but it had to be checked out anyway.'

‘Of course, sir.' Trelawney took the phone from his ear, enabling Vicary to hear the background noise of the interior of Wimbledon Police Station as Trelawney coughed. ‘Excuse me, sir,' he said, ‘wretched summer cold.'

‘No worries,' Vicary replied patiently.

‘The car might, but only might, be connected to the murder in Lingfield Road,' Trelawney continued. ‘We have trawled through all the CCTV footage we could muster which covers the immediate area and have picked up the car turning from the Ridgeway into Lingfield Road at three fourteen a.m., from where we lose sight of it.'

‘But it did turn into Lingfield Road?' Vicary asked. ‘You are certain of that?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘It has to be the car that was used to transport the body,' Vicary mused.

‘My thoughts also, sir,' Trelawney replied. ‘The car was burned out in Parkside Gardens, which is just beyond Lingfield Road as you drive from the Ridgeway. We have enhanced the footage of the car and observed two male-looking figures wearing hoods, and the driver was wearing gloves.'

‘Those will be our suspects,' Vicary growled. ‘Hoods. Gloves. Hiding themselves like that.'

‘Again, our thoughts also, sir.' Trelawney coughed again but courteously away from, not into the phone. ‘We then trawled through the footage of folk leaving the area later that morning, the commuters, but we could not see any likely candidates.'

‘That doesn't surprise me either,' Vicary growled again. ‘As we thought at the time, they would most likely have hidden in someone's front garden and emerged when the first commuters began to walk past them, and they would also have taken off their hooded jackets and replaced them with sports jackets or some similar garment. They might even have had business suits under the hooded jackets, and pushed their hooded jackets into briefcases … really looking the part. I also think that they would have left the area separately, each using a different route as well as walking separately. Did you see any indication of race?'