Force Of Habit v5

by Robert Bartlett

  He was lifted back onto the chair.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he mumbled. But he knew that it was.

  ‘Is he okay to talk to Doc?’

  ‘He’s fine, he just had a bit of a panic attack.’

  North watched the doctor put the used syringe away, for disposal later, pack up and leave. He turned to the suspect.

  The suspect talked.

  He knew that he’d been driving too fast. Usually he was so careful. People were always getting angry at him, driving too close behind, flashing their lights, beeping their horns, making gestures and shouting from angry faces. He could see them in the mirror but didn’t let on. He couldn’t understand people. He was only obeying the law. Why should they get angry when he was obeying the law? It didn’t make any sense. But he hadn’t been obeying the law that night. He’d been angry. He’d been replaying the conversation he had had with his boss at the end of his shift when he should have been going home. He’d been running an alternative version, one where he was giving his boss a piece of his mind instead of just standing there and accepting a double shift that had been forced on him, yet again. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Just because the others had families. He’d been livid. He had gone beyond words and was pummelling his bosses face in when he had hit her - she just came out of nowhere. One instant the road was clear the next there was a horrendous thump as the front of the car hit her and then the crunch of the windscreen and the metal buckling as she was thrown up onto the roof.

  It wasn’t his fault.

  Was it?

  He didn’t think it would have been any different if he had been doing thirty – she just ran out into the road, she hadn’t even been on the pavement, he didn’t know where she came from.

  North steered him back on track.

  He had stamped on the brake but his hatchback was too old and too entry level for antilock braking and he’d gone into a slide. He couldn’t see anything. He remembered screaming until he had hit something and the car had stopped. He hadn’t been able to move at first. It took him a while to come to his senses and then check he was okay. The door had refused to budge and that sent him into a deeper panic. He was trapped. He couldn’t move. Eventually his brain had suggested clambering over the passenger seat but the seatbelt had held him back. He was never going to get out. He’d worked himself into a bit of a state. It seemed to take forever before he managed to fall out onto the wet tarmac and felt the cold rain on his hot skin. The car had mounted the pavement and hit a sign. He had clawed his way onto his feet and walked back along the road.

  Her back was to him. She was lying on her side. She was wearing a dress but he could see her bum. He remembered the feeling as blood had rushed into his penis. He kept that bit to himself. He told them that he had looked around, scared, wondering where she had run from – or who. But there was nothing. No one. Where had she come from? She was cut all over and there was a lot of blood. He stood staring at her, thinking ‘Oh my God, I’ve killed her’.

  ‘Was it my fault?’

  He was holding her when he was lit up by another car on the road.

  ‘Then the ambulance came. And the police.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

  ‘I don’t have one of those mobile phones. I’m on my own, I don’t need one.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go for help?’

  ‘I couldn’t leave her, not like that, not all alone. I didn’t want her to die thinking she was all alone. I knew someone would soon come along even at that time of night.’

  ‘From experience of crawling those kerbs at night.’

  Stuart Wright flinched and looked at the ground, away from the policewoman. He knew that man would be horrible and now he’d gone and messed his chances with her.

  North was wondering if he was full of shit. If the other car hadn’t shown up would he have spirited Donna Ward away, finished her off and left her lying in a ditch somewhere? Did he pick her up with that intention? Why would Donna Ward be out prostituting herself?’

  North continued reading the report.

  They had searched Stuart Wright’s house. Everything had been neat and tidy, everything had a place to go, clothes ironed, bedding folded, food stuffs ordered and squared away, like with like, labels forward, as was his extensive porn collection. Some of it took an acquired taste but all of it was legal. Same on his PC and nothing had been hidden, it was all nicely filed and categorised, easily found.

  That had made contacting the escorts easy.

  Not keen on talking but less up for a visit from a bunch of uniforms, blue lights bathing the neighbours twitching curtains they had talked to a DC. Five women he’d used from time to time, all after his previous arrest. They cost more than girls on the street but he wouldn’t be busted again. They all remembered him. He paid for the full girlfriend experience but didn’t want the experience to end. He wanted to take them out on dates and a couple had even let him – for a price. Four had finally told him where to get off when the stalking started, bumping into them in the supermarket, in town, at the gym. A couple had boyfriends who they had threaten him off. The fifth had only seen him a couple of times, she was his latest port of call, and he hadn’t gone overboard as yet. They all thought he was a bit creepy but that kinda went with the territory, you know?

  His boss had confirmed the double shift but it had finished at ten. Wright claimed he had just been driving around but he could have picked up Lumsden and vented the rage he had been feeling towards his boss - and towards himself - after losing Donna Ward. But neither Denise Lumsden or Donna Ward had been prostituting themselves for some time and neither had any reason to be working the streets. They were doing fine. And you’d have to be some special kind of psycho to pick one woman up, get only half the job done, and then go off looking for another. And the two women had the connection through Dawn Ward. It seemed too much of a coincidence for both of them to have been randomly attacked by a maniac for kicks - and on the same night. It was more probable that it was as a result of the connection.

  Both attacks had to have been carried out by the same person. They were just too similar not to be. Lumsden had all those syringes in her but they were added post-mortem and Donna Ward hadn’t been killed. This guy had no connections to ‘the network’. If he did he wouldn’t have hung around until the police showed up - it wasn’t like he hadn’t had ample opportunity to stroll away, or even to finish Donna Ward off and stroll away. It seemed like he was just some sad, lonely man with poor communication skills and some dodgy wiring.

  But why would an organised network attack the women in this way when they had professionals on tap, like Rawlins’ shooter? Were some kind of messages being sent? Or was somebody killing just for kicks? Either way Stuart Wright felt wrong. He didn’t fit. Still, they had enough to get an extension to hold onto him for a bit longer so North went for it. You just never knew. But there was something else...

  He went to the incident room. They had a map on the wall with locations key to the investigation marked on it. He found the place where Donna Ward had been run down. It already had a pin in it. The Lumsden investigation had already lead them there.

  North would lead a team out there come first light.

  TWENTY-NINE

  An orange glow hung over the roofline up ahead. North pulled up in front of the copper keeping a slippered crowd at bay. People were roaming about in their pyjamas and dressing gowns. There were kids with teddy bears. It was like a scene out of the Poseidon Adventure.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Fire’

  ‘No shit.’ Some coppers were more suited to a paper round. ‘What’s burning?’ But he already knew. A pattern was emerging.

  ‘The derelict church.’

  Had Harris twigged that he had been followed? First the pub, now the church. They obliterated any connection they felt might compromise them – Lumsden, the pub, the phones, Rawlins, Donna Ward, maybe even Dawn Ward, and now the church. They cut away the links th
at could lead back to them and sent out powerful messages to others in the way that they did it.

  I wouldn’t like to be in Awayday Harris’ Hush Puppies.

  ‘You had to evacuate all these people? I thought it was all business premises round here these days.’

  ‘It is. They’re from two to three blocks away. They came to have a look.’

  ‘Fuckers. What the hell happened? Where’s Mason?’

  The PC shrugged and slung a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Probably over there keeping warm.’

  What was it with all these young PCs always crying about the weather? The whole generation was soft. That’s what happens when they grow up thinking it’s okay to moisturise and drink alcopops.

  North went under the tape to get closer. There were three engines at work. North skirted the scene, moving within the trees, twenty feet or more from the gravel car park and could still feel the burning heat on his hands and face. He sparked up a maglite. The fire was well under control by the time he found it. Days of rain had saturated the earth between the trees and he found a patch that had become waterlogged. Anyone stepping in it would be sucked in up to their ankle. North could see part of what he believed was Donna Ward’s missing shoe peeping from the mire.

  The patch of ground lay between the church and the boundary with Prince Consort Road. North went through the bushes and looked over the fence. To his left a ‘Children Crossing’ sign was leant over backwards, the metal pole supporting it having been shunted a fair few degrees when Stuart Wright’s car had hit it. He headed back towards the church. The flames were completely out now.

  Alarm bells rang.

  A familiar smell wafted into his nostrils. His senses went to defcon one, searching beneath the overpowering smell of smoke and burnt wood.

  There it was.

  Barbecue.

  Sickly. Sweet. Only people didn’t have barbecues at five am on cold midwinter mornings in Bensham.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  The fire brigade was almost in a position to venture inside. They spoke in hushed tones but he could tell by their faces that they could smell it too. One came to fend him off. He flashed his badge and asked for an SP asap.

  He then went back into the road and went around the block. When he had completed the circuit he widened his search pattern. He found Mason’s empty car two blocks away. Back in the church a fireman had found a black, twisted shape. A human shape. Steam rose from it into the cold morning air.

  THIRTY

  Her face lit up.

  ‘Woke with a morning glory, did we?’ she teased him. ‘Well I’m afraid your journey has been wasted. I’m not off sick, I’m off because the girls are.’

  He didn’t know what to say. What could you say?

  ‘Bee...’

  ‘What?’ the light faded from her eyes.

  ‘It’s Matt.’

  Colour drained from her face.

  She knew the score. Everyone related to someone on the force knew the score. They all dreaded the knock on the door.

  ‘Matt?’ Was all she could manage. Her eyes pleaded with North for everything to be okay. North could only shake his head in the negative. She started shaking. Saying ‘No’ and ‘Matt’ alternately as she slid down the door frame. North caught hold of her but she tried to fend him off.

  ‘I'm sorry, Bee,’ he lifted her as gently as he could against her efforts to repel him, while checking the Family Liaison Coordinator was still in her car. She was just getting out. He figured it was okay. The initial meet was always going to be the tricky part. He didn’t want Family Liaison picking up on his relationship with Bee. They had managed to keep it discreet this far and right now was no time to be finally sharing the secret.

  The fight went out of her and she became a dead weight. He carried her inside. By the time he got her to a chair in the living room she was hysterical. Sobs gave way to loud cries and moans that were unnerving in the small room. When he tried to put her down she clung to him. Buried her head in his chest. Two small heads peered into the room. Confused. Frightened.

  Shit.

  The two little girls came in. They were in their pj’s, snot running from their noses. They burst into tears on seeing their distraught mother.

  Shit.

  They came and clung to her, their mum clinging to North, all three sobbing their hearts out, emitting noises that had North’s blood squirming through his veins. He wished he was any place else. He’d even take his chances in Harris’ Hush Puppies.

  THIRTY-ONE

  It was almost ten on Saturday evening and there were lights on inside the charity building and the Luton van and Harris’ car were parked outside. North knew he wasn’t in there burning the midnight oil in an attempt to put the Sally Army out of business so what the hell was he up to?

  This place had checked out. It was charity owned premises. Eddie George had gifted it. He owned and leased a lot of the local land and property - you didn’t get the moniker Mr Newcastle for nothing. North liked him, as most everyone else up here did, and he hadn’t wanted to consider his involvement in any of this but there was no getting away from it now. The Chief would love it if it was true. Only headlines on such a scale could draw some of the negative attention away from him. A problem shared is a problem halved and all that.

  He thought about calling to check up on Bee but didn’t have to ponder too long before deciding against it. He’d had another day from hell and didn’t see any point in prolonging it just as he had begun to leave it all behind. He’d spent the morning with Bee, her kids and a tea machine from family liaison. As soon as her sister had showed up he had made his excuses and left.

  The afternoon took a turn for the worse. He’d taken another kicking from the Chief. It was all his fault that Mason was out there when he had no right to be. The Chief seemed to have forgotten who had been in charge of the investigation. The press were on his case about how safe could the public be when he couldn’t even protect his own. The Chief had to appoint people, put liaisons in place, HR had to be contacted, paperwork filled out, communications issued. The Chief, probably with one eye on those watching, was putting Mason forward for a plaque in the Force Garden of Remembrance.

  He had North deliver a full report and then demanded they bring Harris in for questioning. He wanted the bookies raided and Stafford arrested. North had argued that they didn’t have shit, that Harris was their only chance at getting to the heart of this thing. They already had everything Stafford had to tell and they could probably get the women working in the bookies to admit to the system they were running and that they handed Harris the cash on a regular basis but the people up top were running their business on a need to know basis and you could bet your arse that that was all they knew and if Harris refused to blab then they were screwed. Even if it shut down their prison enterprise it was only a small part of this. Everyone else would carry on, business as usual, and that included Lumsden’s, Rawlins’ and Mason’s killer or killers. Harris was a bagman not a killer. But the Chief wanted to be seen to be getting somewhere fast, regardless, and North had to drop Eddie George’s name into the hat. The Chief had looked like he was about to bust a blood vessel.

  The Super had introduced a calming influence. Managed to talk the Chief into holding off – at least until tomorrow. The Chief held North’s arse accountable and scheduled a meeting for eight the next morning when he would decide on the next move. They would assess the investigation, appoint a new lead and restructure the team. This was now a whole different ball game. Now they were hunting a cop killer. North didn’t expect to figure too highly from here on in. The station itself had been a solemn place. He had taken the first opportunity to slip out.

  He had Aunty Chris and Awayday Harris on his radar. He had chosen to go after Harris first. Aunty Chris could wait. She didn’t seem to be going anywhere, anytime soon. If she was going to have it on her toes she’d have gone already. He had called the hospital and there had been no change to Donna Ward. The social had grant
ed Aunty Chris temporary custody of her kids. Darren Ward was still walkabout.

  The organised tail on Harris had gone out the window. North had been preoccupied so James and Deacon had taken it upon themselves. Night watch had reported that Harris’ car hadn’t moved all night and no one had come or gone from his house, though he could have snuck out the back to meet someone, or cadge a lift, and gone back in the same way. Whatever, he was in there come morning. Every now and then you could see him moving about.

  James and Deacon had taken the baton and had been scratching their arses all day, half of it at the end of Harris’ street and the other half at the garage across the road from the charity. Harris had come out of his front door late that afternoon, there had been no visitors, and he got in his car and arrived at the charity at four. No other vehicle had gone in or out of the lane since.

  North had told them about tomorrow’s meet and sent them home. Then it had been more of the same for him. He’d taken an initial gander, just to make sure Harris’ car was still there and then he’d waited. By ten he’d had enough. His time at the front of this case was fast running out. He’d come over on foot to take a closer look. All was quiet. Still. Outside the arc cast by the glow from the building it was pitch black. All the other buildings between the river and Park Road were hidden in the darkness, all the car parks empty. This part of town had shut down for the rest of the weekend. What was Harris doing in there?

  North wondered if Harris had done a bunk, left the lights on with no one home. Had he cottoned on to them? He could be down the pub, right now, taking the piss out of them, laughing with his mates. The ones who had killed Mason and set fire to the church. North hoped that they had killed Matt first and not put him in there alive. Had they secured him like they had back at the old industrial unit and then struck a match? It was one autopsy he would pass on. North mulled over the possibilities. It did nothing to calm the storm that had been building inside him since the charred remains had been found and they couldn’t find Mason. They knew that they had found him, of course, but they had to be sure, and rolling back a sheet for a close relative to take a butcher’s at the burnt offerings just wasn’t going to cut it so they had pulled out all the stops.