Force Of Habit v5

by Robert Bartlett

  ‘You can't go in there like that,’ he said.

  She looked at herself as best she could without a reflective surface to hand. ‘What? I don’t understand.’ North was pleased to see shock manifest itself on her mush. She was more afraid of not going through with it. She wanted this. She wanted to redeem herself in everyone’s eyes.

  North swallowed some barely chewed sausage and bacon. ‘You look pathetic,’ he waved a laden fork at her.

  James' eyes flared and she glared at him.

  ‘Hold that thought!’ he sprayed. A bit of egg landed on the table in front of her and she took a step back. ‘That's how you go in there,’ he shovelled in another load.

  James screwed her face. ‘You're disgusting. Now you've cleaned up the outside you need to start within.’

  ‘That's it. Attitude,’ he waved the fork at her some more. ‘Hate everything.’

  ‘Don't you mean everyone?’

  ‘No, I mean everything. If you bump into a coke machine you give it the evils.’

  She actually let out a laugh. Just the one, but it was a start.

  ‘That's the spirit,’ he lobbed in some tea and smiled a food free smile. ‘She will be full of attitude. You need to be prepared for it, meet it head on and give her some.’ James pulled the chair away and sat diagonally opposite him, away from the egg he’d spat onto the table. ‘You know, shit happens to all of us and just because some of us can laugh about it and take the piss out of ourselves down the station doesn't mean it hurts any less inside but our own ego and pride can be greater adversaries than the villains we come up against. If you can conquer those you'll go far. There's not many that can. You're smarting but you have to learn from these things and learn to let them slide or they’ll begin to poison your perception of things - just look at Scanlan and the Chief. Scanlan’s bitter and twisted and blames everyone but himself for his situation and I’ll bet you that it has never once occurred to him that maybe he should at least try to change his ways. The Chief cares too much about how he is being perceived instead of just getting on with the job and that effects how he does it. If you take care of the job at hand, the job will take care of you, Just James. Of course some people just aren’t cut out for it - like Scanlan.

  ‘Plenty of shit will be thrown your way and it isn't true that that which doesn't kill us automatically makes us stronger. It's how we cope. How we react. How we go forward. What we are made of here,’ he prodded a temple, ‘determines the suicides from the heavyweight champions and you are made of the sterner stuff, Just James. Don’t get caught up in the ego trips and all the big hairy bullshit and you won’t only go far but you will do some good for all of us when you get there.’

  ‘You know, you make a lot of sense for someone who has a habit of winding up the wrong people. I’m beginning to think that you do it on purpose.’

  ‘What can I say? Gateshead charm school isn’t exactly top of the government league tables - and I wind up exactly the right people,’ he grinned. ‘How was your briefing?’

  ‘You mean debriefing.’

  ‘Was that an attempt at humour?’ he smiled.

  She smiled back. She looked up the clock on the mess wall, big and prominent to keep everyone punctual.

  ‘Showtime,’ said North.

  ***

  Twenty miles away Shontelle-Leigh Stafford was going stir crazy in seg. They kept you banged up for twenty-three hours out of twenty-four with no way of telling what time it was until a tray arrived. Her head converted minutes into hours. It seemed like days since they had dragged her in here.

  She had been sent down the block less than a day ago for behaving in a violent and threatening way. That was how the Governing Governor of Dipton closed female prison had put it when she removed her from association under Rule 4 and placed her in the segregation unit and it was all a great big steaming bowl of dog crap. When she found out who was stirring it they would find out what behaving in a violent way was, all right. In fact they could shove the threatening part up their backstabbing arse, Shontelle-Leigh was going to get straight down to it. The bitch was dead. Bitches, hopefully. One wasn’t going to be nearly enough for her, the mood she was in.

  Right now she was more concerned about herself. She had an appointment she wasn’t going to be able to keep that could have some proper serious repercussions. She knew, she’d suffered them before. Some bitches were going to pay big style.

  There was a clatter of keys and the door clanked open.

  ‘You have a visitor.’

  She felt so relieved that she didn’t even have a pop at the screw or stop to think that she shouldn’t have been allowed visitors. She had bigger shit to worry on. The visitor could make all that go away.

  ***

  DC James looked as rough as nuts but no one batted an eyelid at her face and arms all cut, scraped and bruised. It was nothing new here. Inmates, visitors, prison officers, you name it, they all carried fresh battle scars in some shape or form at one time or another. She had also dressed just like any other charver come to visit one of her rough arse mates.

  James pushed her mobile under the glass wall and a gate officer returned a laminated card with a number printed on it, as receipt. She listened as a number of other items that were illegal inside was reeled off. James stopped chewing at the word ‘gum’ and spat it in the bin, indicated that she didn’t have anything else listed and the first door into the prison slid aside.

  Once through it she had to wait in a confined space, no more than six feet square, while it closed. A click announced the release of the door in front of her, which she had to pull open. It was thick and heavy but the metal glided smoothly on its hinges. It slammed home as she closed it behind her and another click had her locked inside.

  A guard was waiting and she was taken into a small room lined with lockers. She was asked to place the bag she was carrying into one of them. The guard checked the pockets in the white puffer jacket North had trodden up and down the station floor. It was filthy. Her clothes were the cheapest looking a charity shop had had to offer. A low cut sleeveless top finished above her navel and leggings clung to her arse and thighs, finishing just below her knees. Her skirt finished way above them. She was well out of her comfort zone.

  Just as North had begun to show signs of redemption in her eyes he had come up with this plan. True, she didn’t have to do it, North could have found another detective, or PCW, to do it, but James still felt that she had a lot of ground to make up and was going to take any chance to do so that came her way. She was regretting taking this one. North had better be right about this.

  It looked a certainty that they had stumbled onto something big but she still wasn’t sure that he really knew what he was doing. Was there method in his madness? There was unconventional and then there was North. Last time he had gotten her involved she had ended up in the hospital. Now she was in jail, made-up like a cheap trick and acting as a drug smuggler. Who knew where this one would end up.

  He had inked a number of fake prison tattoo's on her arms, declaring her love for Lee Boy and her hate for everything else. They were so vile. They disgusted her and she couldn’t wait to get them all off. What if they didn’t come off? She wouldn’t put it past him to have used indelible ink. She’d scrub herself raw if she had to. The realistic artwork also had her wondering what lay beneath North's own shirt sleeves. Was there anything there, from another time? Another life? Nothing would surprise her about that man.

  A wand traversed her in silence then she was patted down, not too intimately. There was no dog today. There were no other visitors coming through just now either. James closed her locker and pocketed the key into the jacket. She wanted to zip it up tight to cover her body and had to force herself to leave it open. She felt naked. Vulnerable. She signed a visitors book and took a seat. She tried to focus on looking hard. Angry. She thought about North. He had better be so right about this.

  The Deputy Governing Governor came and introduced himself. The hiera
rchy in here was worse than in the police force. The actual Governing Governor was dividing his time between North and an arse covering operation. The Chief had given him the good news last night and hadn’t needed to advise him that he best go get himself a pair of asbestos underpants.

  Deputy Dawg led her to yet another locked door and they were buzzed through into another no man’s land. He had a pouch attached to his belt from which he removed a set of keys held by a chain. He opened the door on the other side of the small space and they went through and he locked it again. They were outside. She followed him across a yard. On the other side they stopped and went through the procedure again. You wouldn’t want to be desperate for a pee in this place. He indicated she go in first, his eyes taking a walk all over her as she passed. Inside the building he pointed the way and she moved off. He stayed put. She could feel his eyes burning into her backside all the way down the corridor.

  The ubiquitous sounds of heavy doors clanging, keys and chains rattling and inmates shouting accompanied her along a stark corridor, even though she wasn't even on an actual wing. At the end she turned and entered a large, tired looking area the size of a small hall. Coke and crisp machines at one end, a raised platform in one corner at the other, a vantage point for a guard and a podium for the Governing Governor to address his staff at briefings. A load of tables and chairs in between, only a couple of them taken up by carefully selected prisoners and their visitors. A couple of other visitors were sat on their own, waiting for their nearest and dearest to be led in.

  James sat at a table facing the door through which the prisoners were ushered in and continued to look around. There were a couple of other guards to the sides. James wondered if any of them were mixed up in it all. There had to be an officer or two taking cash, or being blackmailed, or threatened, to turn a blind eye, with the potential scale of things.

  If North was right.

  The door opened and Shontelle-Leigh Stafford swaggered into the hall like she owned the place. Maybe she did. She stopped, filling the door frame as she looked around the room. Her eyes found James’ staring back at her.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she shouted at James. ‘Have I got a fucking telly on my head or what?’

  The guards perked up.

  James struggled to interpret the thick Geordie accent, but even if she had been deaf there was no mistaking the ugly expression on her ugly face.

  ‘Denise,’ was all James could think to say. She had no hope of imitating a Geordie accent but North had told her to do something about her posh. Anything. She’d had a go at cockney and he hadn’t exactly filled her with confidence. He said she sounded like a cross between Dick Van Dyke and Mary Poppins. She had persevered.

  Stafford swaggered towards James, checking out the guards from the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I didn't recognise you,’ she was right in front of James now. ‘Has that bastard been beating you again?’

  Her arms came up and around and James was pulled into Stafford who positioned herself so that she had her back to one guard and a table of visitors between them and the second. The third was behind them.

  A strong hand held James’ neck, Stafford hugging her close, James unable to pull away even if she wanted to. Stafford had her right arm inside James’ jacket pushing a hand down her back, over her arse and back up again. Then she started to kiss her. James was unable to escape the clinch, her head held firm. The hand moved to James’ front, over her breasts and onto her exposed belly, all the time touching, feeling. James tensed as the woman’s fingers slipped inside her leggings and became almost paralysed as they pushed on inside her pants, through the brush - and then lingered - before finally pulling at the package secreted there. Stafford had given her a much more intimate search than the guard had, before deciding that it was safe to move in for the drugs.

  A guard shouted them apart.

  Stafford pulled away having crotched the gear inside herself and sat down. It had taken no more than fifteen seconds. Seconds that would remain with James for her lifetime - but seconds that had proved North to be right. She sat too.

  ‘The bastard doesn’t mess around does he? Lumsden’s still warm and here you are. And what the fuck happened to you?’ she indicated James face. ‘Don’t tell me you upset him already?’ She leaned in close and it took every effort for James not to flinch away from her. ‘Or did he get you to do Lumsden?’ she laughed.

  ‘I refused to come,’ said James.

  Stafford laughed again. She was feeling better now someone had been in touch. Everything was back to normal. Same shit, different contact. She had been all worked up about nothing, thank fuck.

  ‘What about a new phone? How am I supposed to distribute this?’

  James heart was racing.

  They were in.

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ James played her part.

  ‘I can see how you got to look so pretty. You better watch your mouth, girly, or I’ll make that handy work look like a make-over.’ James stared her out, her heart pounding in her ears. ‘What happened to Lumsden, anyway? Did Lumsden refuse to come anymore? Is that why he did her?’ James couldn’t help feel a buzz of excitement every time Stafford said ‘he’. She knew who ‘he’ was. ‘She was well shitting herself every time she came in here, fuck knows how she didn’t get caught. He must have put the right shitters up a few screws in here. Who are you, anyway?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Damn right you're no one. Look at your poor, slutty little arse. Another one of his crack whore addicts. But I need to know who you are, girl. What is your name?’

  ‘Michael Fucking Caine, bitch,’ said cockney James, surprising herself with the ferocity with which she said it. But they now had Stafford by the short and curlies and she was through playing games. She wanted to hit the shower and the mouthwash. ‘Let’s just ride this out and then go our separate ways,’ said James.

  Stafford put her hardest look on.

  ‘My God you’re ugly,’ James added.

  Stafford looked like she was going to explode.

  ‘Now, now. He will not take kindly to the pair of us and twenty-five grams of his finest getting nicked, now, will he?’

  It did the trick. Whoever he was this brick shithouse was scared of him.

  ‘I’ll get you,’ said the shithouse.

  ‘My arse,’ James was getting into the swing of things. ‘Look at the state of you, you fat fuck. If you aren’t up for parole pretty soon its got to be odds on that you will have a heart attack and die before you get out of here, you fucking lard-arse, but I hope you do get out because I’m going to break every one of those fucking fingers that touched me. You couldn’t just frisk me and take the gear, you had to cop a feel of a real woman, one where you can tell where the chin ends and the tits start, you party sized sack of shit.’

  Shontelle-Leigh Stafford stood. She had to remove herself from the situation before she properly fucked up. She strutted off carrying the cellophane wrap in her.

  James had accomplished her part. She’d handed over twenty-five grams of talcum powder and made sure that Shontelle-Leigh Stafford was wound up so tight she couldn’t think straight.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Shontelle-Leigh’s relief had been short lived. She was taken directly from the visiting hall to be searched, escorted by two senior officers hand picked by the Governing Governor and who had been made very aware that they were being monitored every step of the way. Support was near at hand in case she kicked off. Not close enough to prevent one of the guards receiving a broken nose and the other to be taken down by a kick to the bollocks. She was aiming a kick at his head when the tazer fired.

  They carted her down to the chair while they could, got her in it and set it to work before she fully recovered. It was a tasty piece of kit. State of the art. It scanned. It found. The rubber gloves went on.

  ‘An external investigation into the torture and murder of Denise Lumsden lead us to Jenny Gibson who lead us to you,’ Nort
h adopted a direct approach as he paced about her. He didn’t have time to dick about. He wanted information fast.

  ‘Who the fuck is Jenny Gibson?’ Stafford had to be scared but was still acting hard. Putting up a front.

  ‘Your visitor friend, Denise Lumsden’s replacement.’ North decided to pin a name to DC James character. ‘They’re greedy and found a replacement too quick. She was already an informant. She’s in there,’ he pointed at a random wall, ‘writing up her account of events.

  ‘You just received a bag of pure heroin from her that’s way too big for one woman’s personal use, even one as big as you. That’s another five to ten for you, and you won't be getting out half way through your current sentence anymore, so you can kiss another two years goodbye and start looking forward to twelve, minimum. Probably more as this has been a regular occurrence for the past year – we have the exact dates and times.’

  North could see it all sinking in. He pressed on.

  ‘How old will you be then, Shontelle-Leigh. How old will your kids be?’

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘They will probably be in here with you by then, out there, all alone in the world, without your guiding hand to keep them on the straight and narrow,’ he smiled at her.

  ‘So you’re a comedian. Fuck you.’

  ‘You’re right, it will be doing them a favour keeping you banged up in here. They will be far better off without you out there, fucking up their lives as well as your own.’

  ‘Stop going on about my kids!’ she lost it. Leapt from the chair. North shoved her back in. Her feet were free but her wrists were cuffed. He moved behind her and pressed down on her shoulders, holding her there. The battered and bruised fucker was a lot stronger than he looked.

  ‘No one knows you are here. Everyone is in lockdown. As far as they are concerned you are still in seg. As of now nobody knows you are here. If you don’t start co-operating that’s going to change to your detriment.’

  ‘What the fuck are you on about?’

  ‘Talk to me about the drugs and we keep this between us. If you don’t, I get word out that you talked to me anyway. We both know where that will end up.’