Denial of Murder by Peter Turnbull Read Free Book Online Page A

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.’
    â€˜That’s interesting,’ Yewdall commented. ‘So nobody attacked him when he was released from custody?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Why do you say that?’ Tom Ainsclough asked. ‘You seem to be wholly sure of what you are saying.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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