‘You’re not from the prison. What are you, some kind of copper? You’re fucking thick if you don’t think this will be all over the prison anyway.’
‘How?’
‘You’re the copper, you work it out, you wanker.’
Confirmation that there were members of the prison service involved. She must have assumed a new phone would get to her through that route. Everyone in here would find out what had just gone down. People on the outside too.
‘Then your only hope is to help us put an end to all this.’
‘No one's going to believe that shite. I make a call, tell them how you came in here clutching at straws and its all sorted.’
‘You never called anyone but Denise Rawlins. We know about the system and how it works and about how it all went offline after Denise Lumsden was killed. About how it all started right back up again, everyone getting a nice new shiny phone. Everyone but you,’ he slipped in some bullshit. ‘They've killed the existing network and have a new one in place. Maybe they have you down to play a long term part in the new set-up and maybe they don't. Denise Lumsden was killed for a reason and someone was making a point in the way that they did it. I can tell you the bits about Denise’s death that they didn’t get to put in the papers if you like. It took time. He was enjoying himself.’
The smirk vanished. She went pale. He pressed on.
‘You were her contact. Maybe she was skimming. Maybe they think that you were involved. Maybe you are skimming. Maybe you're next.’
Maybe North was a frustrated actor.
‘I don't know nothing and it’s a good job - he's head the ball. When I first come in here I worked over the previous girl in an attempt to take her business. It looked too easy not to - she was nothing like your usual Baron. I should have known better, realised there was good reason no one had already done it. Next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital where I was told that I’d been in a coma for three days. Then I get a visitor who tells me that the only reason I’d been in a coma was because they had fucked up and that I should have been dead and how I won’t be so lucky next time.’
‘He told you this? You saw him?’
She looked at him like she was an idiot.
‘How do you know it wasn’t him?’
‘Because it was a she and it was just some kid. A wannabe gang banger type. She probably didn’t know shit other than what she was sent in to say. It was her crew that put me there.’
North remembered the two kids who had attacked him in the Pond House and the kid seen running from the arson. They had been gang bangers. Choirboys.
‘A street gang attacked you in prison and tried to kill you?’
‘Are you for real?’ she mistook his surprise for incredulity. ‘They practically run this place.’
‘Any gang in particular?’
‘It shifts with the comings and goings.’
‘What did you mean by ‘previous girl’?’
‘The girl what did this before me, fool.’
‘What girl?’ North wondered how long had this been going on.
‘Fuck you.’
‘It’s hardly going to be difficult to find out who you beat up on, even if you were never officially grassed for it.’
‘Then go do it, Sherlock.’
‘Look, you are responsible for the regular receiving, cutting and distribution of pure heroin every other week or so and you expect me to believe that you don’t know who you are doing it for?’
‘I had no choice, I was told to when the last girl carked it.’
‘Carked it? How?’
‘OD.’
‘Convenient for you.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘You admitted trying to muscle in once before.’
‘Like I was going to do that again. This time they came to me.’
‘And you always do what you’re told, good little girl that you are.’
‘Like I just said, last time I crossed them I was lucky to wake up, fucked up, in hospital. I was kept in for three weeks. When I was told I was up, I wasn't turning them down. I also figured it best to be on their team, anyway - if you can’t beat them join them, you follow me?’
‘Them?’
‘They'll kill me.’
‘They'll have plenty time to do it with another ten to fifteen stretch added on to your current sentence. It must have been on your mind already, wondering what was going on out there, Denise Lumsden’s murder all over the telly and no contact from the outside world. Maybe wondering if you were next. Have you been messing with the merchandise? Making it go a bit further. Taking a slice. You just couldn’t help yourself could you? Not even knowing what would happen to you if you got caught could stop you. They were using you under threat and you weren’t getting shit. You didn’t think that was right.’
She kept looking at North. She looked for a long time without saying anything. He could almost hear the cogs turning.
‘You fitted me up,’ she said. ‘Somehow you got Lumsden’s schedule and fitted me up. You leaned on that poor fucker to bring the next drop in for you so you could get something on me.’ Realization began to dawn across her ugly face. ‘You don’t know nothing. It probably wasn’t even drugs that skank gave me. You ain’t got shit on me.’
She wasn’t as daft as she looked.
‘We have every visit, every call and every text between you and Denise Lumsden – as well as what you just told me. It’s your call. You help me and I help you, or you go back inside and take your chances after I get the word out that you’ve been in here talking to the filth, and exactly what you’ve been doing with the gear you receive – just in case they don’t know already.’
‘Bastard.’
‘Who are 'they'?’
‘You’ve killed me.’
‘Maybe you were already dead. Marked like Lumsden.’
She swore again.
‘I’m your only hope.’
She swore some more. He let her. Waited for the cogs to grind on.
‘I have no idea who runs it. It was all up and running well before I got dragged into it, but I got the impression that the girl before me knew who was behind it all and she was shit scared of him. She was a strange one right to the end. She was due for parole and went and OD’d on her own shit the week before. Can you believe that? I can’t believe it was an accident. She knew her stuff. I reckon she topped herself, the fucking weirdo.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Ward. Dawn Ward. Only everyone in here called her ‘Damn Weird’.’
‘And she never mentioned a name?’
‘She never said a word to me. Not ever. You wouldn’t after what I did to her, would you? Even if she, or anyone, let it slip you’d probably just get a gang name. They’ve all got their gang names. They even follow them into the system and go in their jacket but if he has no record then you’re no better off. The gangs rule the roost in here. They have their stupid rivalries, usually over the most ridiculous shit you ever heard or saw, real petty stuff mainly, shanking each other, but when it come to the drugs they are all involved. All the protection is run by them and they deal out the punishments. They get people like me to do the real dirty work, to take the high level risks while they operate in the background.’
‘But you said that they are the ones dishing out the kickings. That’s hardly in the background.’
‘Well, durr, they have to be seen to be an effective threat, and you get far less for giving someone a kicking than dealing class A drugs and that’s if anyone even backs up a complaint. But me and them, we are just the bottom layers. There have to be others and the higher up you go the further they are from the dirt. He’s up the top keeping his hands nice and clean.’
‘You seem to have given this some thought.’
‘One thing we aren’t short of in here is time to think. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Time to think on the error of our ways so that we can repent and be rehabilitated.’
‘Doesn’t it seem a bi
t of a sophisticated set-up for a street gang?’
She shrugged.
‘What’s so sophisticated about scaring the shit out of drug addicted street whores and making them carry shit into jail and then terrorising some poor fucker like me into receiving, cutting and dealing it. They aren't doing anything gangs the world over are already doing, someone has just gone and got this lot better organised at it.’
But she only had a limited view on things – like they all did, everyone else involved. The gangs were being used at a low level and they were just kids who were probably controlled by elders. The elders would be more involved, making some real money. Controlling and supplying their own turf. But someone else was supplying them and they were using people like Denise Lumsden to do it. Had someone gotten greedy and tortured Lumsden for her boss’ name? It seemed like a nice set-up with everyone getting gravy but people will be fuckers.
‘How do the punters pay? They don’t have the cash in here.’
‘Baccy, favours,’ she turned to the female officer standing by the door. ‘Sometimes my fanny needs some special attention,’ she smiled, looking the female screw in the eye as she poked out her tongue and wiggled it.
‘They aren't in this for canteen goods, tabs or so you can get your fanny licked. There must be half a kilo of pure heroin coming in here over a six month period, supplying a potential market of several hundred, a large part of that market already addicted when they come in. After a month or so inside a decent percentage of the rest will be ready to try anything to help them get through the long, boring days. By the time you've cut it you probably have a couple of kilos of product at four or five times the going rate out on the street. We are talking thousands and thousands of pounds. How do they get paid?’
Nothing.
He was tired of the pissing about.
North sank into a chair like a doll deflating as the rush that had powered him through the last two days collapsed. Every door he forced open was slammed back into his face. He didn't blame her. She had to protect herself. She had to live in here and had already tasted a dose of the medicine waiting for anyone that did him ill. She was more scared of him than North and he was no closer to finding out who he was than when he first entered Denise Lumsden’s maisonette. It was also likely that she was telling the truth, she wouldn’t know who he was. Only a handful of people would know. But she would know something.
‘Okay,’ he spoke to the officer. ‘End the lockdown. Get a trustee, or whoever, to go mop out the seg unit so they can see she isn’t there and then send her back to her usual cell. Put the word out that she’s been talking to the police. It shouldn't take long to get to those that need to know. Make sure plenty of people see her going back in.’
‘The bookies down the village.’
‘What?’
‘They go to the bookies down the village.’
‘Are you fucking with me?’ She didn’t look like she was. ‘How?’
‘Down the only fucking road there is way out here, how do you think?’
‘How does the bookie thing work?’ he kept his patience.
‘You fill out a ticket and pay at the window.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘Straight up. You grab a betting slip, write the persons name, date of birth in case of same name problems, the name of the nick, the amount you are paying - it’s a score a wrap - and hand over the ticket and cash at the window. Nobody around is any the wiser.’
‘Then you get a call with the orders.’
‘Texts. I knew you were having me on, you didn’t have shit. No telephone calls or text info, no nothing. Shit.’
North nodded as he pushed some juice through his melon. It made sense. She gets caught with the phone before deleting the names and she makes out it's a lottery syndicate, a list for Santa, any old flannel. Everyone knows she's talking bollocks but what can they do? Slap her wrists for having a phone. The bookies actually made sense. If they owned it they could both receive and launder the cash.
‘Why do they have to write the name of the nick?’ He already knew but he wanted to hear it.
‘They only tell me the shit I need to know but it don't take a genius to work out this can't be the only nick they are supplying, Sherlock.’
TWENTY-FOUR
‘I don’t suppose that there is anyway you can make dead sure that she’s incommunicado for a couple of days or so, is there Guv?’
‘It would be our pleasure.’
What else were they going to do? They were already in deep shit. The sooner they started shovelling the better.
‘And is there any way you could let me have a list of all of Stafford’s and Dawn Ward’s visitors?’
The Deputy looked to the Governor. The Governor checked the shine on his shoes.
‘That was a truly tragic case,’ said the Governor.
Ya-da, ya-da. Save the sugar and sympathy for when the cameras start rolling, please.
‘I can get a warrant if it’s protocol. I’m sure I could have one issued and faxed over within the hour, considering.’
‘If I recall correctly,’ the Governing Governor finally piped up, ‘part of the whole tragedy was that she had barely any visitors during her entire stay with us, wasn’t that so Steve?’
Pass that buck. Steve will definitely be needing the asbestos underpants when the caning starts with that slippery fucker as his boss.
‘She only ever had a couple of visitors,’ he forced out. ‘Her mum, Donna, she used to come regularly, every other week. I had to get to know the history. I had to represent the prison at the funeral,’ he sounded even less happy about this than he did about everything else. ‘There was only her mum and one of her mum’s friends at that.’
‘Was she the other visitor here?’
‘No, the other visitor wasn’t at the funeral. I did contact her, from the details we had, but she didn’t show.’
‘Was her name Denise Lumsden?’
He examined his shoes. Nodded.
‘Same pattern of visits she has been making to Stafford?’
He made a show of squeezing his melon. North knew they would have been pulling all this information as it left Stafford’s lips. They’d had a live feed into North’s interrogation.
A nod.
‘And the visits to Stafford started after Dawn Wards death?’
Another nod.
Stafford had been straight up. Fucking hell, they had a prisoner OD and were probably so busy covering their own arses they allowed a ten grand a month drug supply to continue uninterrupted. Maybe one of them was involved. North hoped so but took some satisfaction in that all their arses were hanging in the wind now. North thanked them and they all went through the goodbye formalities, all smiles and handshakes, all the while everyone wishing that North had never been born. North and James were escorted out and North skipped down the stairs to the car park.
‘This is unprecedented,’ he said. ‘It’s off the scale. We have a drug supply and distribution network the length and breadth of the region that even reaches inside the ranks of the police force and the prison service as users and suppliers. Can you imagine the almighty shit-fest when this all gets out?’ It didn’t bear thinking about. ‘They seem to be using street gangs as enforcers and that means that they are also being used to supply to the end users, all looking after their allotted turf.’
‘So Operation Orange is hitting the streets because rival gangs are getting too big for their boots and trying to expand their ground. Lumsden just happened to live in Choirboy country so they keep popping up on our radar. I don’t know how they did it but using all these feral elements is bound to lead to war.’
‘What do they care? Think about it, it would be in their best interest if it all ended with only a handful of larger outfits. That would make for some serious organised crime.’
They got into the car.
‘They are charging double the street price inside. Stafford said a score a wrap. The amount we just delivere
d -’
‘Who delivered?’
‘You delivered, and yet another great job you did too, Just James. There could be twenty-five grams going in every other week, that adds up to half a kilo a year, which is a hundred grand in this prison alone and its been going on for years. That’s a lot of twenties changing hands each month. They don’t want the hassle of having to move that amount of cash out as well as getting the drugs in, so they not only set up a payment system but one that lets them launder the money.’
‘Any team this well organised and supported could well be controlling most of the drug traffic in the north east.’
North nodded. ‘And aiming to be the only supplier. They must be making tens of millions.’
‘You sound like you admire them.’
‘And do you know what the best part is? About this supply set-up into prisons? On top of everything else they don’t even have to worry about a load of gear getting seized inside because they already got paid for it. They don’t ship any in without an order and full payment up front. It’s Dope-Direct. Of course I admire them.’
‘Do you think she was skimming? Cutting it a bit thinner for a bit extra.’
‘Stafford?’
‘And Lumsden, I suppose’
‘Stafford for sure. She wouldn’t have been able to resist and once she knew what happened to Lumsden her guilty mind had Lumsden at it too and was expecting them to come for her next. The brick shithouse would have been shitting bricks. She must have thought she was in the clear when you showed up with the goodies.’
‘And Lumsden? She had twenty-two grand stashed.’
‘Maybe, but twenty-two grand was probably her cut. These people aren’t daft, they may use a stick to coerce people into all this but they will be dangling a juicy carrot to make them want to keep at it. They’ll be paying them way more money than they ever made on the streets or would get on a factory line. Even Stafford probably got some sort of cut, paid to someone on the outside.
‘Lumsden alone was probably responsible for distributing upward of half a million quid’s worth a year. Part of that went into the prisons where she didn’t get involved in the money side but she would have had to deal with two to three hundred thousand in cash for the street deals. Twenty-two grand could be her end, it’s around ten percent. She didn’t seem to be spending any of it. You would think with Rawlins gone, unable to snort and drink it away, that she would have treated herself to some clothes or jewellery but all she had that was fairly new was a relatively inexpensive handbag. My guess is she was saving every penny until Rawlins release date, which should have been at least another year away if that judge had done a proper job, and she’d have done a runner just before he got out.’
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