Force Of Habit v5

by Robert Bartlett

‘You have a sudden urge to shop?’

  He told her to keep on, pointed her into the Marriott car park opposite. ‘Not retail therapy, Deacon, aqua therapy. I'm going for a swim.’

  ‘Psychotherapy is what you need and I don’t think you should be going swimming with those wounds.’

  He got out.

  ‘And you don't have a cossy.’

  ‘I trust in Ted,’ he flashed a snazzy piece of boxer. ‘No one will notice the difference.’ He strode off.

  Swimming?

  She waited until he was inside then followed him, just in case he hadn’t gone nuts and was up to something.

  ***

  North swam.

  He'd always found it the best thing for bad hangovers so maybe it would help with whatever the hospital had pumped into his system. It was also good exercise and it gave him the time and environment in which to think and relax. He always signed up to a private club. The pools were smaller but public baths were too crowded for him these days, no matter what time of the day or night that you showed up. Private was pricier during the day and that kept the numbers down further. Deacon watched from the other side of a glass wall. Several old scars were clearly visible alongside the new on the powerful arms and shoulders that pulled him effortlessly through the water. Water that hid his tears.

  His body was run down and his mind dulled by chemicals. He began to concentrate only on his movements as he glided from end to end, focussing on the rhythm. His breathing slipped into a regular pattern. His mind emptied. After several lengths he began to feel a sense of calm that he had not felt since he was last with her. With Sarah. She was right, he had neglected his old routines for too long. She was right about a lot of things. He racked the pace up a notch.

  Then another.

  And another.

  ***

  ‘You nearly sank that large woman towards the end there.’

  ‘Were you checking up on me? Or just peaking?’ he grinned. It felt good. It felt real. Deacon smiled back.

  ‘Making sure you didn't drown yourself, more like, the state you are in.’ But he looked different. She studied him, trying to see if he'd topped up with a little something. ‘What do they put in the water back there?’

  ‘There is a reason why they call them health spas, Deacon. Don’t worry, I’m not on anything stronger than cold medicine. I’ve taken the pledge,’ he held up an arm, oath style.

  She took another, long look at him. It was like a bulb inside of him had been replaced with a much higher wattage. Maybe she should take him back to the hospital and get him checked out.

  ‘I'm still driving,’ she said.

  He still felt like shit from this cold. He'd load up on Red Bull at the station. Pick up some Day Nurse. Blast each nostril with Sudafed. Deacon reversed out of the bay. She wondered what had put the spark back in him but didn’t feel comfortable asking. Being honest with herself she was conscious that maybe it wasn’t a ‘what’ but a ‘who’ that she wouldn’t want to hear about. Not that she could imagine North getting so personal but his reaction to the question would be enough for her to know.

  ‘These posh places, they lay on towels then? I take it you didn't nick somebody else’s?’

  ‘What do you take me for, Deacon? Of course they lay on towels,’ he chuckled. ‘Not pants though. I've had to go commando.’

  She tried not to think of the noises she had heard coming from the bog in his flat that morning.

  ***

  ‘Kevin? Thanks for getting back to me.’

  James listened to the officious prick wax lyrical. He was different today. He sounded like he might be trying to impress her. She remembered the things North had said the day before and couldn’t help thinking that maybe Kevin had had that wank and had been fantasising about what lay behind the dulcet tones on the other end of the line.

  Someone walked over her grave.

  ‘Hey, no, that's cool. Anything is a great help, we're pretty stuck right now.’ She remembered what North had told her. What the heck. ‘You're my only hope,’ she went all Princess Leia on him.

  She could almost hear his chest puffing up as he began to elaborate on his investigations that expanded way beyond the limited base information she had given him to work with. He lost her for a while as he spoke like he was curing cancer about ‘A’ and ‘B’ party numbers, circuits, switches and masts. He talked quickly, excited, proud. James had to get him to give her the Janet and John version. She perked up and grabbed a biro.

  ‘Kevin, you are a legend.’

  Kevin already knew that. He often told those around him. Now he was a legend by appointment to Her Majesty's Constabulary. James felt sorry for his colleagues. He was going to be even more insufferable than he was already.

  ‘Fantastic. And you can email that to me?’

  He went all officious again.

  ‘Okay, two emails: a password in the second -’

  He corrected her.

  ‘Half a password in the second, the other half you are about to give me over the phone. Excellent.’

  It was exhausting talking to him for even a few minutes. She couldn't keep this up for long but she had to admit that he sounded like the kind of guy you needed looking after your data if you didn't want to end up on the six o’clock news because it had been left on the four-thirty from Paddington.

  ‘Kevin, is it okay to contact you direct if -’

  He interrupted her again. James hated being interrupted.

  ‘Great,’ only a few more seconds, she told herself. We might need his help again. ‘And if anything arises your end, please feel free to get in touch with me,’ she finally got to hang up.

  ‘You tease,’ said North.

  James swivelled round.

  ‘I thought you were in the hospital?’

  ‘Touché. How would that look, me putting my feet up after you and Mason did runners? Was that laughing boy on the phone? Has he started stalking you already?’

  ‘Those doors that keep slamming in our faces,’ said James. ‘He might just have gone and stuck a foot in one for us.’

  ***

  ‘What have you got on the shooting?’ said North.

  They were all in the small incident room.

  ‘We are following up a number of reports from MOPs who think they heard or saw the shooter at over a dozen different locations, we have people going door to door at all of them, we are collecting CCTV from the area, we have people checking footage from the TV channel and we are checking out all vantage points onto the bridge but we just don’t have the resources to get anywhere fast. Fully fit and all leave cancelled with everyone working double shifts we wouldn’t have the resources. We really need a break,’ said Mason. ‘The area covers a whole bunch more than a grassy knoll and a book depository and even now they still wonder about that outcome. Our shots could have come from any one of several hundred sources. We have started with the rooftops that line the river to the south and east of the bridge and then we will arc out from the river. We’re told that the types of rifles that fire such rounds mean that it could have been fired from half a mile away which includes blocks of flats up in Gateshead central and if the shot came from a window we are screwed if we don’t pick anything out of the footage or a witness report pays off. Look at all the glass out there, we can’t go inside every home, hotel room, office – you get the picture. The autopsy may help us narrow it some but let’s face it, even with a general direction and some indication of angle of trajectory we'll still be pissing up a rope in the wind on this one. It's obviously professional and even if we find the site I don't expect we'll skip onto some rooftop and find a gun, shell casings and a pile of fag butts lying next to a copy of the Idiot's Guide to Sharpshooting all nicely decorated in smudge free prints with a match just waiting in our database. The method of this murder is far removed from Denise Lumsden’s but somehow they are connected and we have to accept that we may never find the man who actually pulled the trigger. We have to focus on whoever ordered it.
So let's see what we do have.’

  ‘James has been looking into Lumsden’s phone records and has uncovered what looks like a network of people operating in small groups, each with a group leader, and with one person in overall charge,’ said North.

  ‘You can tell all this just from her phone records?’

  ‘James hit it off with a man who can. He used the half dozen numbers in James’ phone, but the key was the number Rawlins dialled from the Pond House – a number also in Lumsden’s phone. That number belongs to whoever’s in charge – we are calling it the master – and it lead us to a bunch of others. James’ man was able to isolate phone numbers into groups by the calls they made and their calls covered a hefty chunk of urban area. All the numbers are dead and all were unregistered mobiles. Not one had ever communicated with a number we could get a handle on and they all went offline after a text from the master phone the night Denise Lumsden was found dead.’

  ‘What did it say?’ asked Mason.

  ‘The phone company do not keep records of any deleted text messages at this time,’ said North.

  ‘This all has to relate to the drugs,’ said James. ‘Why else would such a communication network exist? The ring-leader was communicating only with group leaders who, in turn, each communicated with a handful of dealers who are probably selling on to smaller fry, outside of their network, who are then selling to users. The higher up the chain, the more distance there is from the streets. They all probably have new phones already, and are up and running, business as usual, sans Lumsden.’

  ‘There are no other numbers to go on? No live ones?’ asked Mason.

  James shook her head.

  ‘I still don’t understand how you can draw such conclusions from dead mobile phones with just one user name.’

  James looked at North. He gave her the nod.

  ‘We started with Denise Lumsden’s calls. She only ever called half a dozen numbers, the master and five others. Those other numbers only ever communicated with her. Our theory is that Lumsden’s little group was probably one of twelve self-contained units, each probably unaware of how many other units existed and everyone ignorant of other group members, that way, if any one person is compromised the worst that can happen is that they only put their own group at risk. The only connection is the master. The telecoms guy put together this chart for us,’ she pinned a copy to a board. It had twelve columns, each listing between six and ten telephone numbers. Above the columns a single number was typed, the master phone, and a line had been drawn from it to the first number in each column. ‘The master only ever communicated with one phone in each group, the group leader, and all the other phones in each group only ever communicated with other phones within their own group – that was how the telephone guy could isolate them. This looks like a tight outfit with amazing discipline and enough manpower to control a sizeable area. So far we haven’t seen any contact outside of their network other than the Rawlins’ call from the Pond House. Lumsden doesn’t strike you as the disciplined professional type so she must have been shit scared of someone to keep it all so clean. They all must be.’

  ‘With good reason,’ said Deacon, looking at the Lumsden crime scene pictures on the wall.

  ‘Are you saying that all we have here is a diagram and no names to label it with other than the victim?’ said Mason. ‘That cell phone forensics on Lumsden could only pull a bunch of dead, no name phones? We really are screwed. The Chief’s going to have the mother of all fits.’

  North smiled at the prospect.

  ‘Let’s run through what we do have on them,’ he got in before James. ‘Lumsden had a couple of boxes of flat packed burger bags. These would be easy to knock off and would be supplied to her and the other groups so that they could be used to make onward deliveries – Lumsden had one ready to go with a hundred wraps in it. Nobody gives you a second glance if you're carrying one of those around town. Denise Lumsden was cutting pure product, packaging it in tenner wraps and selling bags of a hundred to her regular contacts for cash. The network dealers probably had their cash in a similar bag so that when they met up with Lumsden they played subtle swapsy and walked away. They probably then sold it on to small time dealers outside of their network. This is a well organised gang and the money men are pulling the strings well away from the streets.’

  ‘So what are you suggesting, that we stop and search everyone in town who has a McDonalds?’ said Mason. ‘Based on a theory?’

  ‘So what went wrong that got Lumsden killed like that?’ Deacon kept them on track. ‘Do you think that she was inflating the price and pocketing the difference? That was some wad in her freezer.’

  North shrugged. ‘Fear plays its part in all this but these people aren’t stupid and I would guess they make sure their people get an alternative incentive. In the potential scale of things twenty grand is peanuts to them but more than someone in Denise Lumsden’s position could ever dream of. But we can’t rule out the possibility that they were purely putting the frighteners on poor sods like Denise and that she decided to help herself. She could have started cutting it a bit finer so she could sell more and keep a cut for herself, who knows, maybe she was bankrolling a new start for herself someplace else. They found out, killed her and stuck the needles in as a warning to others working for them but then why leave the drugs and cash? Same goes if another outfit did it in retaliation for stepping on their toes.’

  ‘This is all very pro-active of you but it doesn’t give me anything to arm the Chief with against the men upstairs and the cameras outside and I’m not going in there and telling him that our current best option is to go out there mob handed and search everyone with a fucking McDonald’s,’ said Mason.

  ‘It won’t come to that,’ said North. Unfortunately. ‘Thanks to DC James we have another option. Mobile phones are just that – they are mobile. They move about. But two in Lumsden’s little unit don’t. They only ever make or receive calls from the same place. All the calls for each phone always go through the same phone masts. Phone one always uses mast A, and phone two always uses mast B. Fixed locations.’

  ‘How much does that help us? Doesn’t that just give us an area covered by each mast the equivalent of the search for the shooter?’

  ‘You really have to start training your mind to latch on to the positive.’

  ‘Easier said than done when you have to go brief the Chief every five minutes.’

  ‘Anything near either of them that stands out as a potential call site?’ said Deacon.

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ North added two print-outs to a space on one of the evidence boards. He’d circled a large building in each. There was little else on each page. They all moved in closer.

  ‘They look like some kind of secure estates.’

  ‘Prisons?’

  ‘Prisons,’ said North. ‘It looks like Denise Lumsden was also being used to smuggle pure heroin into Dipton and Stanegate as well as supplying people servicing the streets with cut product. We have found that she had regular appointments at both that never coincided with her cycle, all marked on her calendar, and two cellophane packages that were fit for purpose were found at PC Winters place that we believe he stole from Lumsden’s. The heroin is a hundred percent match. The cellophane throws off sniffer dogs, should they be using one, and they would be secreted inside her when she went in,’ he pointed between his legs. ‘She was getting good to go when she was killed. The product would be cut inside the nick to get the maximum heroin in on each trip.’

  ‘You said, ‘It looks like?’’

  ‘We haven’t gotten any further, DC James only just got the information that allowed us to piece this together. It’s time to put it to the test. James, call the prison pretending to be Lumsden and check that she is down to visit tomorrow.’ He turned to the others. ‘That's the next date marked on her calendar.’

  ‘Won't they wonder why a dead person's calling?’ asked James.

  ‘They'll just be looking at a list of names and times,
it won't even register.’

  ‘Why don’t we just tell them who we are and ask?’ said Deacon.

  ‘We will, but we’ve already had enough data protection, red tape, big hairy bullshit on this one so we’re going to check the easy way first.’

  James dialled. Did the honours. Lumsden was booked in to visit Dipton female prison in the morning. James dialled again.

  ‘Lumsden was also due to visit Stanegate prison in the afternoon but the inmate she was due to visit has already been released. It was Rawlins.’

  ‘Good work, Just James.’

  Suddenly she felt better. Quite a bit better. She had been down since the incident out at the old industrial unit and had felt that she had been fobbed off with low rate routine tasks ever since. Now she was a key part of the investigation.

  ‘Maybe she just snuck Rawlins a phone and was getting him off by talking nasty after lights out,’ said Deacon.

  ‘But what about the other phone? It's at a women’s prison,’ said James.

  ‘Maybe she drives on both sides of the road.’

  ‘You'd have to be real unlucky to have your boyfriend and girlfriend banged up at the same time.’

  ‘Mixing with prostitutes and addicts, it isn’t exactly impossible. But couldn’t Rawlins and the woman just be loaning them out inside. Using them to barter for fags and stuff.’

  ‘Except they only ever contact the one number, Lumsden’s, and all the calls fall around the dates on Lumsden’s calendar. All of these periods of activity follow an initial call from the master to Lumsden. It's giving out the orders and they cascade down. The master phone is a boss. Maybe the boss. Rawlins called that number from the pub and it got him killed.’

  ‘Who was she visiting in the woman’s prison?’ said Mason.

  TWENTY-TWO

  DC James appeared and North waved her over to his table. ‘I'm starving,’ he forked a mouthful of fry up. His bloodstream had cleared and his head didn’t hurt quite so bad this morning. Hunger had kicked in. ‘Not having anything?’

  She shook her head. He could see she was nervous.