Force Of Habit v5

by Robert Bartlett

  ‘The kid is my alibi. He saw Harris get killed.’

  ‘Jesus, that poor kid,’ Dave looked through the glass pane. ‘Or is he fessing up to save his own skin?’

  ‘No, he seems to be a good kid. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, fortunately for me.’

  He had been skulking around his brothers haunts, trying to find him to tell him about their mother. Aunty Chris had left him and his sister to go back to the hospital. Chelsea had done a runner and Danny went looking for Darren at places he’d followed him to in the past. North felt a bit better knowing that it was probably Danny Ward that he’d seen moving in the trees by the charity building and he hadn’t been jumping at shadows. The kid had gotten inside and had been hiding, shitting himself as he watched the fights and North leaving – and then witnessing what happened next. That’s how Aunty Chris knew that North had been set up. Danny Ward had gotten the hell out of there as soon as he was able and fessed up faster than a sinner at the pearly gates. Blu had finally shown up at Aunty Chris’ that morning but had done a pirouette on seeing James and had it on his toes. James had stuck with Danny and Aunty Chris. Blu’s day would come.

  ‘Where's the father?’

  ‘As far as I can make out he never had one - and that's not his mother. His mother is lying in the hospital on life support.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘And that isn't even the half of it.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Why isn't that man in a cell?’ The Chief announced his arrival. ‘Arrest that man, Sergeant!’

  Heads came round corners and popped out of doors. North gave it ten minutes before everyone on duty, inside the station and out, knew he was here.

  ‘Make a show of it and put me in the room next door,’ said North. Dave escorted him in and they exchanged words. James barred the way to the Chief.

  ‘Well done, James. Where did you find him?’

  ‘Sir, we have a witness to the Jed Harris murder in this room.’

  He looked at the wall. Pointed at it.

  ‘In here?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Chief couldn’t give a rat’s arse. He had witnesses queuing round the block to testify on the Jed Harris murder but he humoured her, smiled, she had brought him the main prize. She had brought him North.

  ‘Excellent work, James.’

  ‘It was mainly DI North, sir. The witness can testify that it was not DI North who killed Harris.

  The smile fell away. Cruel eyes focussed on James.

  ‘What is going on here?’ The anger returned. ‘We already have witnesses who said he did and his blood and prints are all over the murder weapon.’

  ‘He was framed.’

  A cackle came from behind James. They all looked at North standing in the doorway.

  ‘Killed with a pool cue,’ he said. ‘Framed.’

  The veins in the chiefs neck bulged as his jaw tightened.

  ‘Poor taste, huh?’ said North.

  He went back into the room and took a seat. He felt like stretching back, hands behind his head, feet up on the table but that would be pushing it too far, too soon. He'd get ample opportunity to rub the Chief’s nose in it. The Chief and the Super came in. The Super sat opposite North but the Chief remained standing.

  ‘I have an independent witness, not a gang member, who saw Awayday Harris killed and he can testify that it wasn't me.’

  ‘The woman?’

  ‘The kid,’ he looked from the Super to the Chief. ‘The woman killed Denise Lumsden.’

  Take that!

  The Chief had to take a moment to digest this change in events. He had been about to hang North out to dry and now here he was saying that not only had he brought in an alibi but a murderer too.

  ‘So you are saying that we have solved the Lumsden case?’

  We.

  The cheeky fucker. The Chief’s head was already back in front of the cameras. It was the only time he could keep it out of his arse for more than five minutes.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And the kid can prove you didn't kill Harris, contrary to the other dozen witnesses?’

  The sarcy fucker.

  ‘Yes, sir, and this kid isn’t a gang banger, he’s a good kid. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He filled him in.

  ‘So he can prove that you beat up a number of gang members?’

  ‘They let me - I was stitched up, Guv.’

  Talk about a dog with a bone. You clear your name, bring in a murderer and all he can think about is nailing your balls to something - anything.

  ‘Why have you got the kid sitting in there with a murderer?’

  He still wasn't buying it one hundred percent.

  ‘Long story.’

  He filled them in on the Ward family and Shannon Evans and Aunty Chris. He omitted to mention how he had coerced Aunty Chris into talking. Fortunately Aunty Chris hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell the kid yet, so they didn’t have to have a ‘she’s not dead’ conversation with him. The one with Aunty Chris could wait until they had everything on tape and the transcript typed up and signed.

  ‘The Lumsden murder wasn’t about drugs, it was about revenge. This has all been about Mason.’

  The Chief took another moment.

  ‘DCI Mason?’

  North nodded.

  ‘Donna Ward believed that Matt Mason committed murder over ten years ago and framed her daughter for it. Donna and Christine Reynolds, the woman in the next room, planned to carry out an identical murder and pin it on him to get him sent down exactly as he should have been ten years previously.’

  The chief reddened.

  ‘This is preposterous!’

  ‘Dawn Ward took her own life, inside Dipton prison, two years ago. She was in there for the murder of a young woman, Shannon Evans. She had been sexually abused, severely beaten and tortured.’

  ‘Just like Denise Lumsden,’ said the Super, helping North out.

  ‘Exactly like Denise Lumsden,’ said North. ‘And guess who the first person on the scene was, back then?’

  ‘It's preposterous. Everything has taken its toll on you North. You're chasing your tail on the word of junky whores and hoodlums who would say anything to save their skins and you to save yours.’

  North raised his voice. ‘The pair of them needed a victim to pin on Mason and they held Denise Lumsden partly responsible for Dawn Ward's ills in prison. Donna Ward didn't stop to think that maybe Lumsden was just as much a victim in all this as her daughter was and I don't think it would have mattered if she had. Donna Ward put herself on the street as bait and was picked up by Mason whose intention was to take her some place where she could suffer and scream for his pleasure without any chance of help or survival. He used the old church out in Bensham - ironically, the same one he died in, in agony. Poetic justice, or what?

  ‘Donna Ward had been waiting for her moment for two years, ever since her daughter’s death. She went out prepared. She was carrying a tazer. She was going to let Mason carry on for as long as she could, to get anything she could: break off a piece of nail to embed under Denise Lumsden’s skin, get his semen into or onto her, scratch him up and take the blood and put it beneath Lumsden's nails - because while she was doing that her girlfriend was across town butchering Denise Lumsden exactly as Shannon Evans had been butchered all those years ago. Only Mason didn't stay tazered like he was supposed to and Lumsden had to run for her life and ended up fighting for it in the Royal Victoria Infirmary. The best laid plans of vice and men and all that.’

  ‘This is outrageous! You are accusing a dead man, a man who can no longer defend himself. He has a wife and kids whose lives have been shattered and are suffering right now - I was just at his fucking funeral for Christ’s sake and you want to go casting vile aspersions. He was a good cop, just look at his record. Look at the turn out at his funeral.’

  North couldn't argue there. Mason might have been up to no good but he had maintained a prett
y decent performance record and people had liked him, he had been a popular colleague, but even if you ignored the accusations of Christine Reynolds he still had an industrial spec safe buried in concrete under his living room floor that was chocka with ill-gotten that could link him not only to the drugs but possibly to a number of murders. Of course North couldn’t tell the Chief that just yet but he felt that he had enough to get a warrant to go find Mason’s stash legally.

  ‘Denise Lumsden, Dawn Ward and Terry Rawlins were part of the Lumsden cell. Mason was the master phone. He was trafficking drugs and I will prove it. We may be able to prove he attacked Donna Ward when the lab results are in, DC James already has forensics going over what we got from Donna Ward. Any DNA we recover will be matched to Mason's.’

  ‘Contamination could have occurred if he visited her in the hospital as part of the investigation,’ said the Chief.

  ‘That's true,’ conceded North. ‘But forensics had been and gone before she was ever linked to the Lumsden case - the problem is, so had Mason. I checked with the hospital, he was there and had left his mobile number to be contacted at any sign of change in her, for better or worse, the night she was taken in. He had no reason to be there. There is no doubt in my mind that his actions put her there, he followed her there and that he was checking on her chances of survival and was ready to kill her at the slightest sign of recovery.

  ‘He knew she was in that hospital because he was right behind her when she broke through the tree line, maybe even out of his grasp, clambered over a set of railings and went pelting out onto a road and into the path of an oncoming car. He was probably watching, praying it had finished what he had started. He would have seen her go into the ambulance and would have known she could be alive. He would have traced the hospital she was taken to and found that she was in a coma and the likelihood of her dying. He couldn’t get near her and he left his number to be kept informed. He was carrying all that the stress, praying for the call pronouncing her dead, when Rawlins called him up from the Pond House with some more good news – Lumsden was dead.’

  North paused to let it all sink in.

  The Chief had gone pale.

  ‘We will never be able to match his DNA to Shannon Evans because the evidence has vanished. All of it. I want a warrant to search Mason's house, car, locker, everything. He also has a car he keeps in a lock-up across town. The car he used to pick up Donna Ward.’

  ‘But Mason was abducted with DC James. He was attacked!’

  ‘He made it look like he was attacked and that is why Rawlins went on the run from us and them. He must have heard Mason ordering his demise, out at that abandoned industrial unit and recognised his voice from the phone. He had probably seen him arrive with James. He knew the main drug dealer was a cop. He couldn’t trust anyone.’ North turned and hollered at the door. ‘Dave!’

  The door opened and Dave the Desk came in.

  ‘Dave, on the night I got sent out to an OD that turned out to be the Denise Lumsden murder, have you asked around and checked all the records for the hours following that?’

  ‘Just as you asked, Guv.’

  ‘What did you find?’

  ‘We got a call from a Mrs Renwick at five-fifteen p.m.. The recording is of an elderly voice clearly in shock. All we could make out was that there was a woman lying with a syringe in her. We despatched PC Winter and PCW Deacon and an ambulance was called. PCW Deacon radioed that the woman had been pronounced dead, had multiple syringes and had lost a lot of blood from wounds that were probably inflicted by a third party and that CID would want to take a gander. Operation Orange was in full flow, we were severely undermanned and it was a bit chaotic. The CID request was mistakenly forwarded with the initial information, that an addict had OD’d, and the officers in situ wanted someone to take a look. There was no one available and I thought of you. I must confess that when I saw you go out I felt pretty bad because you looked like shit and so when DC James came back into the station I asked her to go out after you.’

  ‘Anything happen after I got there?’

  ‘PC Winter rang whinging about being left out in the cold and was told ‘tough’. He did give a detailed description of the scene in an attempt to speed things up but we had already despatched yourself and DC James and so we left it at that.’

  ‘What is the point of all this?’

  North ignored the Chief.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I got a call from DCI Mason who said he was just checking in before checking out for the day.’

  ‘You told him about the OD and me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And James.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any signs that anyone assigned him to the Lumsden case at any time before the Chief here told him he was lead detective the following morning here at the station?’

  ‘No, Guv.’

  ‘Thanks, Dave. Could you relieve DC James and send her in, please?’ Dave left.

  North turned to the Chief.

  ‘After Mason had received the call from Rawlins he needed to know if anyone else had found Denise Lumsden and called it in. When he was told that someone had and that we were already on it he had to get involved. He had to take control. He had to stop us finding out about his involvement with Lumsden. He was now not only having to prevent us connecting him to the attempted murder of Donna Ward, but to the drug outfit Denise Lumsden was working for – as well as trying to work out who had bumped her off and why.’

  James strode in.

  ‘DC James, how did you get assigned to the Lumsden case?’

  ‘Dave sent me after you.’

  ‘You went straight to Denise Lumsden’s flat looking for me?’

  ‘Initially.’

  ‘Initially?’

  James nodded. ‘When I got to the flat you were with the witness, next door. I went in to take a look around and got a call from DCI Mason who advised that he had been assigned to head up what was now a murder investigation and he told me that DI North was on light duties as a result of an injury that prevented him taking further part and that he was no longer involved. I told him what I had found. He told me to wait for him.’

  ‘He had Rawlins running scared and liable to go running off at the mouth so he told Rawlins to stay put at the Pond House and got the landlord to play ball - he may even be a part of all this. I have to check everything Mason fed this investigation. He was covering his arse from the moment he took Rawlins’ call. He had him isolated at the Pond House while he checked if anyone else had found Lumsden. If not he could manage her disposal himself and work out what to do with Rawlins – but he found we were already on it so he tried to get control of the investigation. He had to contain it while he dealt with any links back to himself. He started shutting the drug communication network down – and he now had to shut Rawlins down. He would have to interview Rawlins as he’d been eyeballed at the scene. Rawlins knew his voice from the phone and could twig. He had to go. Only I went and threw another spanner into the works by going into the Pond House. He couldn’t just swing by and pick him up anymore.

  ‘Now he had me and Deacon effectively guarding Rawlins so he took over from us. That way Rawlins could just walk out and be escorted to a place of Mason’s choosing. James is out back so Scanlan can still waltz out the front, everyone would just think I was wrong and Rawlins hadn’t been in there in the first place, but the Super goes and complicates matters by sending Scanlan over. It was like a CID picnic out there. I'm sure Arnie will be able to tell us that Mason had to get out of the car and take a leak at some point. He had to arrange for people to come get Rawlins and stepped out to make the call. He couldn’t have him still in there when the warrant showed up. Awayday Harris was summoned. He parked up out of sight, waltzed in the front, just another punter, and legged it out the back with Rawlins. James called it in and Mason had to be seen to give chase. He got rid of Scanlan, telling him to remain in situ, just in case, and took off to deal with Rawlins, only James was i
n the middle of the road, round the corner, and he had to let her in. Now he had James on board pointing the way after them and he had to follow. Time for Plan C. He probably decided to lose them during the pursuit. He knew Rawlins would then be tucked away nice and safe and could wait.’

  ‘They did get too far ahead a few times. I was a bit vocal about it,’ said James.

  North smiled. She must have just about twisted Mason's melon clean off.

  ‘So they get to the old industrial park, Mason coshes James, ties her up, has a chat to Harris about doing Rawlins and then gets himself done over to make it look good. They probably stashed Rawlins out of the way but somehow he sees all this, sees Mason for who he really is, and has it on his toes. That's what Rawlins meant on the bridge when he said we killed his girlfriend. He meant the police. He thought Mason had done it and he wasn't to know who else on the force was involved.’

  ‘Let's get the warrant,’ said the Super. ‘Keep it as low key as we can for now.’

  ‘Low key,’ said the Chief. ‘Let's get this business over with. You're still to be held to account for escaping from custody and the assault on several individuals in doing so - and numerous other offences, I'm sure. And if you are wrong about any of this, so help me -’

  ‘Let it lie, Gerald’ the Super sounded fed up with him.

  The Chief glared at him. ‘And if I find out that you’ve been involved in any way with North -’

  ‘Give it a fucking rest!’ said North. The Chief looked like he'd had his face slapped. North liked that look. He kept on to keep it there. ‘Superintendent Egan's involvement was to bring me, someone he could trust, into a station where no one could be trusted, a station he knew had gone bad somewhere inside. Deep inside. People with some clout,’ North made damned sure that his face made it clear that this included the Chief. The Chief tried to interrupt but North steamrollered him. ‘All you ever seem to do is hinder any investigation into who these people are. At best that makes you incompetent and, at worst, one of them, either way you are part of the problem. The Super is the solution. Wake up and look at the drug crime out there - and in here! Look at Mason's drug arrest record - and everyone else’s for that matter. When was the last time anyone had a major drug bust round here?’