Ripped by Frederic Lindsay Page B

done . I was out of line. But it isn't anything to do with the murder – I don't know why Peerse bothered you with it.'
    'Inspector Peerse. And let me decide what's a waste of time.'
    Meaty hands folded in front of him, the Superintendent had a countryman's complexion, though scored with lines in the cheeks and the deep pouches under the eyes that seemed to come with the job . He was new into the city and, recognising the type, Murray guessed at an uneventful progress with the neighbouring county force from constable to Training School to Chief Inspector until regionalisation had put several forces into one command structure and brought him into town as Superintendent of the Moirhill sub-division of Northern. Through the half-open door came the sound of people talking and moving about, the ringing of telephones, all of it echoing under the high roof of the school hall.
    A man in shirt sleeves holding a clipboard appeared in the opening. 'It seems it's okay for the bottom jaw,' he said. 'So that's good news, sir.'
    'What the hell are you talking about?' Standers asked.
    The man with the clipboard looked flustered. He had been standing with one hand resting on the handle of the door as if able to pause only for a moment in mid-flight. Now he came another step or two into the room.
    'The victim, sir. It seemed as if there might not be any help at all from the teeth – but it turns out they've got the front of the lower jaw and most of the right side still attached. And he had quite a bit of work done. It should help to confirm identification.'
    'Once we find out who he is,' Standers said. Unexpectedly then, he smiled and said on a different note, 'That's a good bit of news , eh, Tom. Things are beginning to move . Carry on.'
    Puzzled by the altered tone, Murray looked towards the door and saw beyond the shirt-sleeved detective the hovering ramshackle figure of Billy Shanks. Glancing back, he found Standers' eye upon him.
    'You can go,' the Superintendent said. 'And shut the door on your way out.'
    'Not for a ticking off. What gave you that idea?' Standers said. He tapped the newspaper lying folded open on the corner of the desk. 'I think this could be useful to us.'
    From where he sat, folded into a chair to which he anchored himself by one long tendril leg, Billy Shanks could see under the Superintendent's finger that morning's copy of the 'World of the Streets' column.
    'I'm glad about that. When I got your call, I was worried,' he said. 'You shouldn't have to waste your time. I wouldn't want to have written anything that caused a problem – not on a murder case.'
    'Most cases of homicide,' Standers said, taking the tone of a man accustomed to them, 'are over before they start. It's the boyfriend or the father or son – the wife who's taken one kicking too many. Most murders are family affairs, you could say. Or pub jobs – when a broken glass catches the other guy in the wrong place.' He touched his neck. 'Cut there and jump back before the blood hits you in the eye. This one could be more complicated.’
    ‘T hat's quite an incident room you're setting up out there.' Shanks wrinkled his nose at the memory of the smell that had stung his nostrils in the entrance corridor. Generations of children had left it to haunt the place, poverty's equivalent of clanking chains. It oozed from walls painted institutional green and hovered uneasily outside the headmaster's door, whose reversed title he could make out worked in spidery silvery tracery on the opaque glass which separated them for the moment from the bustle of activity. 'It surprised me to see the school opened up.'
    'It was before,' Standers said, and paused as if for a response.
    'For the Robertson case.'
    'Of course.' Twin girls, Shanks remembered, and only eleven years old.
    'It was my decision to set up here,' Standers said. 'It could be easier in the long run , if things get complicated.'
    'The way they did in the Robertson case,' Billy Shanks said in a carefully