LITMIR.BIZ

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and covers his mouth with his handkerchief as Daphne continues, "That's why Minnie never used bad language or got drunk. She thought that would prove that she was rightfully the Queen's sister in place of Margaret."

      "You'd better stop," laughs Bliss under his hand, "or I'm going to have to leave."

      It's Wednesday, and in just five days Minnie Dennon has become the nation's best friend and everybody's feeble old granny, and her passing has pricked the conscience of an entire generation. Retirement centres and homes for the elderly across the country have been inundated with visitors. Florist's deliverymen and personal-alarm salespeople have lined up at the doors. Her gruesome death has been detailed, debated and discussed by a host of social activists in the press and has been held by every right-thinking media personality to signify the ills of today's society. Whilst, on the other hand, Ronnie Stapleton has been soundly vilified as a drug-addicted, Internet-obsessed freeloader who was more than happy to bump off some penniless old woman for the price of a box of matches to light his tokes.

      However, the penniless part of the equation is a conundrum not easily resolved by Bliss, or any of the investigation team headed by Detective Inspector Mainsbridge. And Sandra Piddock, the travel agent holding Minnie's tickets, had been little help.

      Sandra had spent the evening of Minnie's demise at the Odeon cinema with her boyfriend, Lenny, and when she arrived at work the next morning she was still inwardly chuckling about the crazy man in a wedding suit marauding his way down the High Street after the movie.

      "Oh my God," her colleague laughed, shoving the Daily Express under Sandra's nose. "Was that him?"

      While Ronnie Stapleton's face had been pixelled out of the front-page photo to protect his rights prior to him being charged, David Bliss, in his tattered tailcoat, was clearly identifiable. However, Sandra failed to connect the name of the murder victim with Minnie, the customer whose commission was going to buy her a diamond bracelet for Christmas, and had no idea that the sweet little old lady would not be collecting her tickets — until the man in the photograph, accompanied by Daphne Lovelace, walked into her office a few minutes later.

      "Mrs. Dennon only paid the three thousand deposit," Sandra told them, once Daphne identified herself as Minnie's prospective travelling companion, then she took on a hopeful look. "Have you come to pay the balance, Mrs. Lovelace?"

      "I'm afraid we won't be going," Daphne replied with the trace of a tear. "Mrs. Dennon's had a very serious accident."

      "Accident" is a nice euphemism, thought Bliss, but it doesn't begin to explain the traumatic manner of Minnie's demise. Nor did their visit to the travel agency explain how Minnie had somehow eaten through nearly thirteen thousand pounds in the past few weeks.

      "I'd like to know what she did with it," Bliss said to Mainsbridge the morning after Minnie's death, but the other officer still had Stapleton in his sights.

      "I reckon the little tow-rag stashed it before you nabbed him. He had plenty of time."

      "I'm not so sure…" Bliss replied vaguely, having repeatedly watched the tape of Stapleton's initial interview, in which the young man blubbers continuously while denying that Minnie's purse contained anything more than the four pennies found in his possession.

      "It was a bunch of bullshit. She didn't have squat," Stapleton whimpers as he massages his bloodshot eyes. "All that crap about proper teapots… it was all bullshit."

      "Are you trying to say that there was no money in Mrs. Dennon's bag?" Mainsbridge questions in disbelief.

      "Fourpence, that's all. You know that already."

      "I don't know that. In fact, I think there's a lot you're not telling me."

      "It wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been so f'kin poncy."

      "So, it was her own fault she died. Is that what you're saying?"

      "I didn't push her, honest."

      "Then why didn't you stay at the scene? Why didn't you phone the police?"

      "With my form, who would've believed me?"

      Stapleton's form — a year's probation for indiscreetly lighting up a reefer in a bus shelter occupied by a young constable aiming for a spot on the Drug Squad — has been kept from the press to ensure an unbiased jury, but his guilt has already been sealed. There is not a person in Westchester who doesn't claim to know the young villain, and there are few who believe that the gallows are too good for him.

      Stapleton's shell-shocked parents have been besieged in their tomato-spattered home since the morning papers dropped the news on neighbour's doormats, and uniformed officers have been standing guard around the clock, though they have been unsuccessful in stopping the occasional missile. A tearful televised appeal by the accused teenager's father, Reginald, for his son to be given a fair trial was soundly booed by a lynch mob in his local pub, and the builder for whom he subcontracted had been on the phone, though not to offer support.

      "I'm sure you understand, Reg," he said, without saying anything. "If it was up to me. But the clients won't like it. I've had calls already."

      "Are you firing me?"

      "Let's just say we're giving you time to sort out a little domestic problem."

      The feeding frenzy had become insatiable by mid-afternoon on the day following Stapleton's arrest, when a raucous throng had lined the route from the police station to the courthouse as he was transferred for his first appearance. Thousands of keening women threw eggs and hammered their fists on the armoured truck carrying the young prisoner. Reporters, rushing out of the crowd with cameras held high, attempted to scoop a candid picture, and several television stations had cut into regular programming to show the event. "I am the resurrection and the life…" begins the mitred bishop solemnly, and the cameras home in on him as he proselytizes to Minnie over her flag-shrouded coffin.

      The Union Flag, normally reserved for the high and mighty, symbolizes the extent of public feeling and the shrewdness of the church in aligning itself with the proletariat. But the nationwide television coverage has more to do with speculation that a low-grade Royal will put in an appearance rather than any need to appeal to the masses.

      "… He that believeth in me, thou he were dead, yet shall he live," continues the bishop, leaving Daphne muttering under her breath, "Minnie's got a problem, then. She gave up on him years ago."

      The tumultuous public gnashing of teeth that has swept the country since Minnie's death has been driven by the persistent press coverage. For the first few days following the incident, the sight of Minnie being physically sucked off the end of the platform by a two-hundred-ton monster proved infinitely more captivating than the inert body of some eighty-year-old who'd been splattered to death in her bed by a lunatic with a cricket bat.

      The digitally enhanced moment of Minnie's spectacular evaporation would certainly win a prize in any competition for the world's funniest video, were it not so macabre, and most television presenters have done their best to make sure that the majority of people watched, by warning them not to. "Viewers may find the following pictures disturbing," they say in apparent seriousness, and macho teens, inured to video violence, email and text their friends — "Hey. Did you see the old biddy get zapped by a train?"

      The major television news networks capitalized on Minnie's spectacular demise ad nauseam, until public indignation eventually shut them down. But the contentious decision to show the video in the first place, as much as the sight of Minnie being whipped away on the front of the express, has galvanized public opinion. The storm over the bootlegging and leaking of the video has given the government a headache which, by the morning of Minnie's funeral, has become a fullblown depression for the chief constables of the two police forces involved. Yet, despite exhaustive enquiries by both the Hampshire and British Transport Police, the culprit has not been found.

      Another government headache, though less agonizing, has arisen over Ronnie Stapleton's treatment in the remand wing of the local prison. The televised image of Minnie's sensational downfall incensed many of the more respectable prisoners. Burglars, bank robbers and everyday car thieves bandied together in their revulsion

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