innocent until

  There hasn’t been a murder here in years: 
  the razor gangs have gone, the bookies too 
  and vice-squads bought with cash, hot goods and beers, 
  as have the girls who hurried clients through
  the brothel managed by a psychopath 
  shot dead one night by a fiery pimp, whose sun 
  flared briefly till he died, the aftermath 
  of third-rate gin. Life changed and no one won. 
  Now corporate traders share good-humoured meals 
  in bistros, boasting of the ways they wring 
  fat profits from their tax-reducing deals 
  and renovations, scorning anything 
  suggestive of the days of gangland crime, 
  conspiring artfully while killing time.