Force Of Habit v5

by Robert Bartlett

  Silence.

  ‘Exactly, the odd dealer every now and then and it’s not because Dodge got cleaned up on your watch. The streets were beyond our reach and someone in here was involved. Someone who knew what was going down and when and where and was telling the main supplier. Someone was protecting them. They were always one step ahead. This place was ensuring that the largest drug organisation in this part of the country was operating unhindered. They might as well have had a licensed franchise, for fuck's sake - it’s McDrugs out there. You've become too obsessed with image, trying to create a perception through the bullshit you feed the media. Operation's like Orange may be great publicity and get all the right noises from the media but they aren't doing shit down on the streets and the streets are in a right fucking state. You are finished Harrington and you can jump up and down and scream and shout until you're sick as much as you like but when you tire yourself out and start to think, you will see that I am right. You remember that don't you, Chief? Thinking?

  ‘I don't believe that you are involved. I think that you are just a bad manager, of situations and people. You've become self-important and have too much ego. Heads will roll for this. If we are lucky it may be just one. Yours is going either way so you might as well try and go out with some dignity. Hopefully it was only Mason that was involved. Even if we get a DNA match with Donna Ward only one other crime will have been solved. We still have to find Harris’ and Mason's killer and the head of the drug supply. This doesn't end with Mason. He couldn't have been running this alone. It has to be bigger than that.’

  ‘How big?’ asked the Chief.

  North shrugged.

  ‘Big enough for them to kill a bent copper who was one of them.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said the Chief. The room was silent while the Chief thought. ‘OK, the Denise Lumsden case is closed, the rest is all new. We'll handle it. You are going home.’

  ‘You need all the trusted manpower you can get. Drugs aside, if Mason was involved in Shannon Evans’ death then others had to be. He couldn’t have covered it up all by himself. He couldn’t have pinned it on Dawn Ward all by himself. We need to find those who helped him. We need to talk with the detectives on that case. They are at the start of all this.’

  ‘Do you know who they were?’ asked the Super. He already knew. North had briefed him on the whole lot. This was all for the Chief’s benefit.

  ‘The lead investigator has retired, a DCI Mitch Mitchell. She had to be involved.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Do you remember her?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She was the Chief Super before me, before she retired, but most of the North East know Mitch Mitchell.’ It was North’s turn to look perplexed. ‘She had thirty years service and left on a full pension at forty-six. Not that she needs it.’

  Too right if she was part of this set-up, she must be raking it in. But North didn’t get it.

  ‘How does that make her famous?

  ‘Two years ago she became the second Mrs Eddie George.’

  North exchanged looks with the Super and James. This was bigger than a bank bosses pension. The Chief started wondering if he would still get to collect his.

  ‘You got him!’ Arnie crashed his way in.

  Things just kept getting better and better.

  ‘Come in, Ken,’ said the Chief. ‘There have been some new developments. You’ll be heading up a new line of enquiries.’

  Scanlan came inside.

  ‘He’ll be heading down to the cells, is where he’ll be heading,’ said North.

  The Chief had a ‘what now’ look.

  Scanlan mouthed off.

  ‘Where did you go after Mason put you out of his car outside the Pond House?’

  ‘What?’

  North repeated it. ‘You were meant to stay on but you buggered off. Where were you when I called asking about James and Mason?’

  Scanlan went into one.

  The Chief could only watch and feel the hole in his stomach grow.

  ‘Was it the same place that you had just been to when I called you about Darren Ward?’

  Scanlan went quiet.

  ‘Oh no, not you too. What have you done, Ken?’ asked the Chief.

  ‘He was with Chelsea Ward. She has been brought up as Donna Ward’s daughter but she is her granddaughter. She is Dawn Wards’ child.’

  ‘Oh, God. What have you done, Ken? What have you done? Are you involved in all this?’

  ‘In all what? I just took her under my wing, that’s all.’

  ‘You took her under your scrawny bouncing arse.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’

  ‘Oh, it was beautiful was it? Suddenly all those soppy lovey-dovey pop song’s made sense, did they? Songs the pair of you slow danced to down her school disco - she’s fifteen, for fucks’ sake. Fifteen!’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘I didn’t know. She looks much older!’

  ‘Not on her birth certificate she doesn’t. You knew how old she was. She had been processed already. Cautioned. She had a record you helped disappear. A record you made sure stayed clean. How many other kids have you groomed while on juvy duty?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that! I hadn’t seen any records the first time - and she came on to me. She looked much older,’ his head went into his hands. He started crying. ‘By then it was too late.’

  They sat him down. Read him his rights. Set the tapes running.

  He’d helped her out of a jam and she had returned the favour by getting him into a bigger one. One he couldn’t escape from unscathed. She was young, fit, flawless and up for anything likely to be in her own best interest. He was too busy not believing his luck to realise the only luck heading his way was all bad. She’d lured him into bed and had been blackmailing him since that first time. Any arrests for prostitution were handled in that first phone call to Arnie. She was raking in almost two grand every weekend working for an escort agency and trawling bars for footballers and celebrities in the week. She had an iPhone 4, just like Harris, and she had been using it to make movies, just like Harris. HD ones. You could easily tell who it was inside her. She had sent Scanlan an excerpt as proof. It was still on his password protected phone. He had probably been using it at home for a spot of DIY in between his visits.

  Once he had helped her out that first time she had taken the opportunity to get him on a retainer. She had fucked him and filmed it. He was hers. She had sweetened things by keeping on letting him in but she had still charged him, all be it at a discount rate. He was only a copper after all and couldn’t afford her, not on a regular basis. She had kept Scanlan on a leash just in case she got in any kind of trouble he might be able to help her or her brother out of. North didn’t think he was involved in the drugs.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said the Chief. ‘Drug addicts, traffickers, murderers and paedophiles. What kind of force have I been running?’

  ‘A force of habits,’ said North. ‘Bad ones.’

  ‘I’m going to get nailed to a tree for this.’

  ‘By the nads,’ said North.

  FORTY

  ‘I don't envy him his next press conference for this lot. ‘Hi, you know we have two dead cops? Well, as it turns out, one was kind of responsible for the death of Denise Lumsden, you see he killed a girl some years back, fitted up another to take the fall and the patsy’s mother killed Lumsden in a revenge plot. The other dead cop was a junkie who OD'd on dope that he stole from the Lumsden murder scene, dope that the other dead cop had supplied and who was murdered by the drug cartel he was working for. Oh, and there is growing evidence that he got sexual gratification from the infliction of terror, humiliation and pain and so enjoyed a spot of rape, torture and murder in his spare time. You are all welcome to join the pool to guess how many bodies we finally pin on him.’ And that’s just for openers.’

  ‘You think that Mason was definitely our big fish?’ said the Super. North had told him everything.

  ‘He was probabl
y the big fish inside the force at this time,’ North nodded, ‘but I think he inherited it. I think he became a part of something when he was found over Shannon Evans’ body. And I think our fish took to it like a fish to water.’

  ‘Any sniff of minnows?’

  North shook his head.

  ‘Not even Scanlan?’

  ‘I don't think he was involved in this but you never know. I'll have someone go turn over his place, his car, take look into his accounts, but we already have enough to sweat him dry. If he is involved he'll talk.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’m going over to Mason’s place with a JCB and a fine tooth comb.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Go wherever it takes it me,’ they said together.

  ***

  Bee didn’t look best pleased to see him. She said nothing but left the door ajar and walked away. As soon as the first kid clapped eyes on him she started crying and that started the second off.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Another woman appeared. She looked as chuffed as Bee. She shepherded the kids back upstairs.

  ‘You going to your sisters?’

  He was pleased to see her nod. That meant she would be out of here for the search. He could wait until she was gone.

  ‘I don’t want to see you anymore.’

  He had been dreading this moment and now here he was getting perfect news. Every scenario he had dreamed up had him in her future plans now that they could openly be together. A weight should have been lifted from him but North’s ego kicked in.

  ‘Why? I thought we had something special going.’ He wanted her out of his life but it hurt his pride coming so easily from her.

  She laughed. She’d just buried her husband, her kids were howling upstairs and she actually laughed. At him.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He didn’t.

  She came close, voice low.

  ‘We fucked. It made us feel good. It’s over. You had a good thing going and you have probably been shitting yourself at the prospect of a ready made family, but its okay. I can’t be with you anymore. You’re good fun, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t want to be a father any more than I want you to be one to my kids - and I really don’t want you as a father to my kids. I’ve lived that life already. I need to move forwards not back. We need a grown up,’ she smiled. It was tender. He forced a smiled back. ‘One with a nine-to-five where we don’t have to worry about him making it home alive each day.’

  North wondered if they had a box for that on match dot com.

  ‘So what do you want?’ she said.

  ‘Want?’

  ‘Don’t mess about, North. Wild horses wouldn’t have dragged you to my doorstep unless you needed something pretty bad. You would have stayed away and waited to see what I did, hoping I just went away quietly.’

  It was scary how much she could read him from the little he had given her.

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘We think Matt was involved in something. I have a warrant.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You used me.’

  He had, but not in the way she meant and no more than she had used him. He hadn’t targeted her on account of Mason but could see that there was no point in trying to convince her. She believed that he had slept with her to investigate her husband. She thought he was the lowest of the low. He let her vent.

  ***

  ‘Why her,’ Deacon shot a filthy look in James direction. North was having a bad woman day. Bee had left and they were searching her property. She had left him a set of keys.

  ‘Why her, what?’

  ‘Why did you trust her and not me? Was I just another suspect to keep an eye on?’ She was steaming. ‘What did you think, that I was in on your stabbing? That it was all planned that I came to your rescue just so you would trust me and keep me in the loop so I could inform the bad guys?’ She was mad as hell. ‘You don't trust me.’

  ‘Of course I trust you, that was the problem, everyone knows I do. I couldn't contact you because there was a good chance they would be monitoring you. You, the Super and James were the only people I could trust here. I couldn't risk your career.’

  ‘So you went to James. You didn't mind risking hers.’

  ‘She came to me. She wanted to help and it was odds on she could do so without jeopardising herself or me. She had put in a complaint about me and made her feelings about me very clear to them, about how I was unfit for purpose - she’d bloody well as much as bugged my phone so she could get a case against me and that’s how she found me. They all thought she hated me and that was true for a while but she's a smart cop and she never let that sway her. She started to find out things that led her to come find me. To help me.’

  ‘She helped you? Kept you hidden and helped you?’

  North nodded. ‘She worked out that there were inside people involved and she knew I couldn't be one of them. That I was their diversion.’

  ‘Are you and her ...?’

  ‘What? No. She thinks I'm a squalid.’

  ‘A squalid?’

  North nodded, ‘She turned it into a noun just for me.’

  Deacon smiled. They both laughed.

  James hollered from the front room.

  It hadn’t taken her long to find the safe. North had given her the room to check over while he and Deacon made searching sounds in the kitchen. The boys had ensured the flooring no longer fitted quite so snugly, leaving just enough to draw the eye. North called it in and they arranged to send over forensics, a man-who-can to go to work on the steel box and a PC to relieve James out front.

  ‘So, I guess this is your way of telling me that I’m back in uniform,’ said Deacon, still in her PCW gear from that morning. ‘Thanks for the opportunity, I owe you one.’

  ‘You saved my life, this doesn’t even begin to repay that. I’m the one who still owes you, and you're a good cop. You deserved it.’

  ‘And I was the only one you could trust.’

  ‘I'd pick you anytime Deacon, not just because I trust you or because you saved my life but because you are the best. It won't be long before you are out of uniform for good and your current spell isn't over yet. This isn't over yet.’

  ‘But we have Denise Lumsden’s killer and proof that Mason was involved in the drug operation she was a part of and a pretty good case that he controlled not only the cell she belonged to but the whole network.’

  ‘We still need whoever killed Mason, even if they were doing the world a favour.’

  ‘It’s going to be another of the Choirboys. You’ve got two hopes of getting them to talk,’ said James.

  ‘After all we have been through, still the sceptic, eh, Just James.’

  ‘A realist. You know that it is fact. And what proof have we of Mason’s involvement? That safe could be empty. It might not prove anything. All we have is the word of Christine Reynolds, a self-confessed murderer. Unless...’ she looked from North to the safe and back again. ‘What have you done?’

  Deacon looked at her shoes. North looked James straight in the eyes but kept schtum.

  ‘These people have been well organised. Well disciplined. They haven’t been sloppy. If Mason is involved it means he hasn’t been sloppy either. He wouldn’t have left that board showing. What did you do? Come here during the funeral? You know what’s in it don’t you? Did you pocket that twenty pound note instead of handing it over at the bookies? Have you planted it in there so they can match it to the number we put on record?’

  ‘Whoa, slow down, now you’re crossing the line. You can scrutinise my methods but I do not change circumstances. I do not plant evidence,’ he sounded more sad than angry. He thought James had come further than this. ‘I was stitched up and on the run. I needed to clear my name and catch those responsible and, as you said, all I had was the word of a self-confessed murderer that Mason was a wrong ‘un, you had unearthed facts that tied int
o her statement but we still didn’t have enough. I needed more than the word of someone trying to save her own skin. I had to try and find something concrete on Mason so the boys went in when everyone was at the funeral. Only after their visit did I believe it was safe to come in.’

  ‘Did they find any money in there?’ said James. ‘Will we find the same amount?’

  ‘So we’re going after Chief Superintendent Mitchell?’ Deacon tried to redirect proceedings.

  North held James’ eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  North nodded. They were okay.

  They followed him to his car. He took out a netbook that booted in fifteen seconds. He launched his internet browser.

  They women exchanged questioning looks.

  North tapped at the keyboard. Stars appeared as he typed a password. They moved in closer as a colour photograph filled most of the screen. To the left and right were coloured dials, bars and buttons. In between was an aerial photo showing a cluster of fields and a road with its B classification number on it. In the middle of all this was a green circle next to a large house. A mansion.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘The Enforcer,’ said North.

  ‘The what?’ said Deacon and James.

  ‘A live map delivered from the Enforcer GPS tracking system.’

  The women looked at one another again.

  ‘What is it tracking?’

  ‘The white Luton. The charity van.’

  ‘You bugged the charity van?’

  ‘The evening Jed Harris got killed, when I was on my way into the Charity building, I stuck the magnetic device to it, out of sight. I figured we couldn’t follow him for much longer without either losing him or him cottoning on to us, and we could spend days wasting our time following his actual day job all over the north east. With this I could get a log of where he had been and when and get out to him anytime I wanted.’

  ‘Where did you get it? I haven’t seen any paperwork and I’ve been up to my backside in your paperwork,’ said James. ‘No, wait – your friends again, right?’

  North smiled. ‘You can buy these on the internet for three hundred quid.’