Force Of Habit v5

by Robert Bartlett

  North had an adrenaline rush. He had to focus to maintain his poker face. He kept his eyes on hers. He had a hundred questions but he said nothing. There would be plenty of time later.

  This was it.

  ‘After her final visit, Donna said that Dawn had been different. She said that she had looked like she had aged years in the couple of weeks since she had last seen her. Said it was like the life had already gone right out of her. Then Dawn told her that her nightmare would never be over. That he would never let her go, even if she got let out.’

  He!

  ‘She said that a policeman had got her dealing drugs inside. She recognised him from her trial. Not long after she was banged up she was badly beaten and had to be taken to hospital. He showed up and told her that he had had her done over just to show her how easy she could be got at inside. He told her how easy her Chelsea could be gotten at on the outside. So she did what he said. She was receiving drugs every other week then dealing it inside. There was a well organised system in place. When she came up for her first chance at parole we were all really excited. Then life got turned on its head,’ she took a drink and looked back at North. ‘And you know what that’s like.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘They just fitted you up for a murder you didn’t commit, just like they did little Dawny.’

  North was taken aback. They were still looking for him. It was still all over the news, ‘if you see him don’t approach him, call the police, he’s highly dangerous’ and all that jazz. ‘I don’t understand. How do you know that I didn't kill him?’

  ‘Because -’

  Her senses broke through the grief and alcohol. Her defences went up.

  ‘Well, I mean -’ All of a sudden she didn’t seem to want to explain. ‘You're here aren't you? They must have cleared your name.’

  North didn’t think that that was what she had been going to say, but he decided to park it - in the short stay. Aunty Chris was keen to move on from the subject. She started to blab.

  ‘The sick bastard had told Dawn to fuck things up and make sure she didn't get parole. He told her that he had done all those things to Shannon Evans, not Dawn. That he had picked her up and she had taken him back to the flat, on account of the weather and he didn’t want to do it in the car. He’d paid extra. When they got there Dawn had been out of it, the needle still in her arm. He killed that girl with Dawn in the room and fitted Dawn up. She said he was laughing at her, at her reaction. Then he told her that he would do exactly the same to Chelsea and to her mam if she said anything: ‘not that anyone would believe her’, he said. He described the vilest things.’ she held out the glass. North poured. She drank it down in one. ‘And he told her that if she ever got out that he'd do Chelsea and her mum in front of her and make sure she watched and listened and then he’d make sure she went down for it all, just like he had before. Dawn wasn’t on the drugs when she died. She used them to kill herself.’

  North risked a look at James. James could hardly contain herself either.

  ‘Donna took to the library and it didn't take long to find out the policeman’s name from the stories about Dawn’s trial in old newspapers and stuff. She called the station, asking for him, straight out, just like that, making up some excuse, and found out that he had become some fancy detective in the CID. That made Donna even madder, her Dawn dead and him getting on in life. We waited by the police station of an evening, day in, day out until we spotted him and followed him. Following someone isn't like on the telly. We kept losing him. Sometimes he would just go to a pub and get rat arsed and then go home. Then one day we managed to follow him across town. He opened a garage in a block and changed his car over. He went looking for women in the kinds of places me and Donna used to work. Street whores with bad habits. He only ever went to them when it was tipping it down, which made it easier to follow him and before long we knew where to wait for him on rainy nights. Donna got a plan. It had taken us over a year to get that far and then it took us another year before we were in the right place at the right time and he took the bait. Donna had seen him once before but there was competition and he went for a younger girl. We tried asking about her, got a first name and that was it. No one knew ought about her, or wouldn’t say. We never saw her again. It was obvious what could have happened to her and I pleaded with Donna to give it up but she was having none of it.’ She fell silent. North left her to it for a few minutes. She didn't start up again.

  ‘Donna didn't have any weapons on her when she was found injured out on the road so she must have dropped it or had it taken from her,’ North gave her a push. ‘How was she aiming to kill him?’

  ‘Kill him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She wasn't going to kill him.’

  North didn't get it. A years planning, another waiting to execute the plan - but with no execution.

  ‘I don't understand,’ he said.

  ‘The plan was for her not to get killed. I was the one doing the killing.’

  ‘You followed them but lost them?’ It made sense. The remorse. The terrible thing she had done was that she had lost them and abandoned Donna Ward to a fate worse than death. She wasn’t there to kill him in time.

  Aunty Chris gave him a quizzical look. ‘I wasn't following her. That was too risky.’

  ‘Riskier than leaving her alone in the night, posing as a street prostitute, with a man you thought was a psychopathic killer? Who you suspected of being a serial killer – a killer of prostitutes? Or are you saying that you knew where he would take her and you would be waiting there, ready for them?’

  It sounded like a shit plan and his face showed he thought so.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I told her it was fucking stupid but she wouldn't have it any other way. We could have beaten the fucker to death any night he was mortal. We could have watched him call a cab and then pulled the car up outside ourselves, shouted him in, he wouldn't have known the difference. We could have let him get in and then fucked him up good and proper, she could have had him taken anywhere, spent some time with him, but she wanted him to suffer like her Dawny had suffered and worse. She reckoned the only thing worse than being banged up was being a copper banged up, in amongst all them that you put there. The high profile attention the case would get, he would be all over the telly, everyone would know. His wife, kids, friends - no one would see or speak to him again. He would be left to rot and suffer. She wouldn't settle for anything less than total destruction.’

  ‘Even if it meant her dying in the process?’

  She shook her head and wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve.

  ‘Dying definitely wasn't part of the plan. She had to live for it to work. We needed stuff for it to work. Donna went to get it.’ North stopped breathing. ‘We got a tazer through a bouncer I know,’ she did a half laugh half cry. ‘Donna had me test it on her a few times. She wanted to know exactly what happened and for how long. She got me to time it. Then she tested it on me, to see if it was the same, me being a bigger build. It knacked but she didn't flinch. She had such a look in her eyes...’ Aunty Chris went quiet. The liquor had stopped her shaking but was making her pretty drunk. She poured herself another drink and stared off into space.

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You said you went to get stuff, that Donna went to get stuff from the policeman.’

  ‘Evidence.’

  ‘A confession?’

  An exaggerated shake of the head. She was drunk all right.

  ‘Stuff you need.’

  ‘Who needs?’

  ‘You, the cops.’

  North didn't understand. Maybe he should have stopped her drinking when she had first stopped shaking.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To prove that he tortured and killed Shannon Evans, not Dawn.’

  ‘But how? What were you trying to do to prove that he killed that girl over a decade ago and clear Dawn’s name?’ Now she looked confused. ‘If yo
u wanted his DNA you could have just knocked him out when he was pissed but I’m afraid that it still wouldn’t have done you any good. The original evidence has all gone. He must have destroyed it. There is nothing from the crime to match any DNA against.’

  ‘There would have been if the plan had worked.’

  ‘Aunty Chris,’ the fat kid appeared. ‘What’s wrong Aunty Chris?’

  He rubbed at his eyes.

  Then they fell on North.

  James let out a cry as the kid backed into her and his full weight dropped onto her foot. The kid never even noticed. His eyes were full of fear.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said James, ‘we’re police.’

  The kid’s eyes never left North.

  ‘I saw you,’ he said.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  It was a quiet crescent at the end of a cul-de-sac, only the one way in and out, and the back gardens butted up against those of houses in the surrounding streets. The kind of nice suburban location that most families aspire to. The house itself offered plenty of cover from prying eyes, while making it easy to watch for anyone approaching. Street could see how it could be the perfect location for a right dodgy fucker.

  The house had been double glazed and fitted with a new front door a couple of years back. Street, Girl and Tonto were off the porch and standing in the hall within fifteen seconds. The door hadn't been double locked. Street fed a piece of fashioned aluminium through the letter box and pulled on the handle inside the door. Voila. A piece of piss. They separated to search the three bed as quickly as possible. Outside, Deacon was in full uniform. The perfect look-out.

  Tonto found it.

  Street had already searched the living room and missed it. It was easy to see how. They attached the Vorsprung durch Technik and put the kettle on while it went to work. The nice little piece of German kit started working the combination. It could have this type of safe open within four hours, tops, but that would be pushing it. It had to get lucky fast.

  ***

  North ignored the guy trying to direct him into one of the many spaces and drove on, out of sight, into the overflow car park where he took a stroll and waited, trying not to be seen. By the time the hearse crept in there was already a sizeable show of black out front. It held back until the flag draped box containing Greg Mason had been borne inside the chapel by six uniforms, then it trailed in after his nearest and dearest. North slipped in behind them and merged into a rear pew.

  Up front a framed photo of the family Mason sat before the flower clad coffin. Greg, Bee and the two girls wearing new clothes and wide smiles before a background you only ever saw in portrait pictures. The photographer had tried to affect a natural scene but this only seemed to add to the staged feel of it all to North. A fabricated picture of perfection presented to the outside world as they rotted from within.

  While the eulogy droned on about Mason’s family and the world they meant to him, North viewed the image as an appropriate sham. They were asked to reflect on Greg as a song piped up and North was subjected to three and a half long minutes of some eighties drivel about goodbyes. Sobs resounded about the place. When it finished they were told that his girls had chosen a poem to read out but they didn’t materialise and the vicar had to recite it himself.

  North looked at Bee for the first time. She was up front on the opposite side of the aisle and her girls were clinging to her, crying, one on either side. She had an arm around each. On either side of the kids, older couples were squashed in. He guessed his and her parents. When the button was discretely pushed and the curtain closed around the box, one of the old women, who must have been about seventy, cried out, ‘Greg, my baby!’

  North wondered what Miss Marple would have to say about him having Mason's place ransacked while Mason was being burnt for the second time in a week. She had been on the telly this morning and was on every newsstand shelf, in glorious Technicolor, her face beaming down from several of the weekly glossies. She was clearly enjoying every second of her fifteen minutes. The old Doris had done well.

  When they all rose and the congregation started moving into the garden of remembrance North’s concern for his future returned in spades. Bee was great fun but she had been great fun because she had been using him as much as he had been using her. It had been a nice little arrangement but things had changed. What if she looked to turn to him on a more permanent basis? The thought scared the shit out of him. He couldn’t do it. It had been all about the sex for him. Nothing more. He had nothing else in common with a devoted mum whose hobbies seemed to be restricted to fashion and celebrity. And then there were the kids. North hated kids.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ slipped out.

  The fucker next to him patted him on the back.

  ‘These things are always harder when there are children involved.’

  North nodded back. If only they knew the truth of it. Everyone filed out into the garden of remembrance through a door at the opposite end of the chapel to where they came in. North went back out the front door and took a look into the garden from the outside. People were passing along the line of flowers that had been sent, checking out the tributes. The Chief was offering his personal condolences to Bee. People were hugging one another. He saw the kids again, inconsolable, their dad violently taken from them. He was unable to prevent another image of himself consoling them, of him taking his place. He turned away, sucked in the cool morning air and blew it out, fast and noisy. Tension built up. As he started the car his jaw was clenching as he ground his teeth together. Someone was going to pay for this. Before he got the car in first his new phone vibrated in his pocket.

  ‘How did you know it was this guy?’

  ‘What’d you find?’

  ‘The jackpot. He’s only got a bloody great fuck-off safe in his floor. This is not for stashing your missus’ trinkets and a bit of spare cash - not unless your missus is Marie Antoinette, it isn’t.’

  ‘The fucker.’

  ‘It’s embedded into a reinforced concrete floor in his living room. Very neat job. It’s beneath a sofa and under a solid wood floor covering. You can't even see the join when you know where it’s at.’

  ‘Tonto comes good again?’

  ‘You bet. Inside is the golden ticket: a couple of pounds of pure h and fifty grand cash that makes for a very nice finders fee, thank you very much,’ then his voice dropped. ‘There is also some jewellery in there but it’s out of place. It’s all cheap stuff. Nothing you couldn’t pick up for under a tenner at Accessorize.’

  North didn’t say anything.

  ‘Does it mean what I think it does?’ said Ray.

  ‘I reckon.’

  Souvenirs.

  ‘Jeez. There must be over a dozen pieces in here.’

  ‘So how did you know this about the dead guy?’ Ray changed tack.

  ‘My DC and a grieving lesbian put me on to him.’

  ‘His missus is a lesbian? I didn't see that one coming,’ he took another look at the nearest photo. She was very passable. ‘I figured you had to be on that for sure and had been poking around in here when you weren't poking around in her.’

  ‘She's not a lesbian.’

  ‘I knew it - you dirty dog!’

  ‘You can talk!’

  ‘That was twenty years ago and none of you will ever let me forget it!’

  ‘It was a nasty episode.’

  ‘That should have served as a lesson to us all. I was young and impetuous and her husband was banged up. She needed consoling.’

  ‘My marriage went down the toilet remember? I needed consoling.’

  ‘And you just happened to console this guy’s missus. You must have suspected him of something?’

  ‘No more or less than I suspected most everyone else in the station. Me and her started working together when I got put on light duties and a little light flirting followed.’

  ‘A lot of heavy petting more like. And the rest.’

  ‘Turned out she had unfulfilled needs too, how was I supposed
to know it was because her husband could only get his jollies through a spot of torture, mutilation and murder?’

  ‘Well, all’s well that ends well, and all that. At least you don’t have to worry about him. Mind you, what are you going to do about her now things have changed?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got enough on my plate already.’

  ‘What about this lesbian?’

  ‘The girlfriend of the mother of one of his victims. It's a long story. I'll tell you later - you had better get out of there. Ask Deacon to hang on until I can get cover. I'm going down the station and see if I can talk them out of banging me up again.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  ‘Don't you ever go home?’

  Shock. Disbelief. Relief. As soon as each emotion formed on Dave the Desks' face it morphed into the next. He turned and looked through the glass panel behind him to see if anyone else had seen North. It was empty. Jill must have popped out but she could be back at any moment. He turned back to North. His face had finally settled on fear.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he almost whispered. ‘Only you could show up at a nick with every copper in England looking for you.’ He took another glance over his shoulder and then looked at the people with North. His mouth opened but nothing came out.

  ‘It's okay, DC James is with me,’ said North.

  Dave's mouth stayed open.

  ‘It's a long story,’ said James.

  ‘Who...?’ asked Dave looking at the others.

  ‘My alibi,’ said North.

  It took another few seconds and a look into North’s smiling eyes before he visibly relaxed. Grinned. Fear morphed into happy.

  ‘I just called the Super, he's on his way back from the wake.’

  Dave groaned. ‘That will mean the Chief, too.’ He led them all to an interrogation room and sorted out drinks and chocolate bars. North, James and Dave stood outside.

  ‘Didn't she have someone that could watch the kid?’