Revision: Crime of Passion

I'm waiting on a delivery - the perfect time for revising old drafts:

Crime of Passion

He was a rum punter, that one.
Just ambled through the door
one afternoon, trailing hemp
from the neck. 'You need the work,'
he said, 'and I want work doing.'

So we sat chatting for an age,
detailing the case: players
and promises and stuff -
his quick, sad smile a crack
of dust between unshaved cheeks.

'He told me to do it,' he repeated,
as if the jingle of his assertion
could set his story straight.
But the shekels shackled him
to the time and place.

'You need to see the bigger story,'
he told me, standing to move
as the cock struck sundown.
'Anyone can get their hands
nailed to a plank of wood!'

I turned him over in the end,
showed him back to his page
in the book. The man was wanting
miracles - a publicist
or a poet: not me.