Force Of Habit v5 (11 page)

‘Not just a lucky charm, eh, Deacon?’

‘Don’t take the piss.’

‘I’m not.’ He wasn’t. ‘You could be right. All we can do is work with what we have and see what starts to materialise, but I don’t believe people like Rawlins just fetch up in the middle of stuff willy-nilly, as our Mr Smith would say. He might not know much but whoever he called does and that’s why I believe that they want Rawlins out of the picture. To break the connection. He’s our conduit to them.

‘And I have a problem with the way Denise Lumsden was killed, it just doesn’t sit right with me. If she was hit professionally they would have just killed her and stuck the needles in as their showpiece, they wouldn’t want to be hanging around any longer than they had too. The autopsy may prove me wrong, but it looked like someone had spent some time with her. It looked like a sadistic psychopath had been getting his jollies with her - but then why the syringes? And why all this other, subsequent shit? It’s a strange one.

‘James is looking into other possible cases around the country, old cases around here, that bear similarities to Lumsden’s. You never know. Right now we just don’t have enough information for any of this to make any sense and now we have gang members involved. Two Choirboys attacked me in there last night and we have a possibility that another two of them set light to the pub.’

‘It might have been the same two: pride, hatred and testosterone are a highly flammable mix. These kids are stabbing each other over a wrong look, the wrong girl, the wrong street - they’ve lost all sense of perspective. They could have torched the place just because you beat the crap out of them in front of everyone in it.’

‘The arson should at least help with the warrant for the pub’s phone records. How come we weren’t made aware of this already, anyway?’ He looked back at the burnt out pub. ‘The people we’re after have got better communication than this.’

‘The guys said they didn’t know it was related to our case. They were already out on duty when you gave everyone the brief. This kind of thing isn’t that uncommon. Last week Al - the PC with me at Lumsden’s yesterday - he and I had to break into a flat that was leaking water into the place below. We broke in, switched the water off, reported it all, then two hours later we get called back to the same block to a break in. It was the owner of the flat we had to force our way into.’

‘Didn't you leave a note or something? Wait, Al was supposed to do it, right?’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Right.’ he said. ‘All we have left now is Rawlins’ parents.’

‘Where's that?’

‘Down the Sunderland Road.’

‘Can we swing by Al’s on the way?’

He shot her a ‘what now?’ look.

‘He didn't turn up this morning and I just checked with the station and he still hasn't called in. The sarge is a decent bloke but he can’t cover for him much longer.’

‘Al’s beginning to sound like a liability, Deacon. He's probably laid up with man flu, sparko on brandy and night nurse judging by the state he was in yesterday.’

‘He'll get bollocked if he leaves it any longer. It's not like him.’

‘Are you and he...?’

‘Give over! I'm more like his mam.’

‘Try again.’

She dialled.

‘Still not answering his phone?’

She shook her head.

‘Where's he live?’

FIFTEEN

Al wasn't answering his door either.

‘Maybe he's taking the cure down the pub,’ said North, but he didn't need the look he received to know that something was amiss. If that was the case he would have called in, using his best sick voice, before setting off.

They pounded the door and had several more goes at the bell.

Nothing.

‘Call his mobile again.’

Deacon couldn't see the point. North pressed his ear to Al’s letterbox.

‘Ah, shit.’

They could both hear Al’s phone ringing inside. The call tripped to voicemail and the ringing stopped.

‘What are you waiting for?’ she said. ‘Get in there.’

The building was old and the door was wooden, paint flaking, single Yale lock, probably bolts inside, but Al might not have bothered using them, the state he was in.

‘Come on!’

‘I'm convalescing. This could set me back weeks.’

He prepared to go at the door but Deacon pushed him out of the way. She tutted and charged into the door, close to the jam. It held and she went back at it. Pain filled her shoulder, but she felt the door give slightly. She stepped back and slammed the sole of her boot into the lock. One more kick and it flew inward, smashing into the hall wall.

North went in.

PC Alan Winter was sitting in the middle of the sofa, his back to them. It looked like he could have fallen asleep in front of the telly, only the telly wasn't on. North went round the front. Al was in full uniform but his trousers had been pushed down and were bunched around his boots. A needle dangled from his left, inner thigh, just below a band of rubber tied around his leg. North checked for a pulse. He was stone cold to the touch.

‘He's dead.’

North’s eyes went from the body to the coffee table in front of it. Two small, white cellophane sausages sat on it. Deacon looked on, still processing what she was seeing.

‘He never had the flu at all,’ said North, ‘he had withdrawal symptoms and I fell for it like a mug.’

‘All heart, as ever,’ Deacon found her voice. ‘He was obviously far sicker than just having a cold, and we're cops not doctors, none of us noticed. I've partnered him on and off for months and never had a Scooby.’

Deacon pulled out her radio and started to call it in.

‘We can't just call this in,’ said North. ‘We have to let the Chief know first. Look at him, the press will have a field day if this gets out, a copper sat in full uniform, trousers round his ankles, drugs from a murder scene he was at the night before on the table in front of him, needle still sticking out of his dead, overdosed cop leg. There's half a dozen stories for them in there. If we call it in Chinese whispers will have this all over the station before we even get back there.’

She made an excuse and ended the transmission.

North licked his pinky and dabbed at the speckles of powder. Tasted it. Looked around for somewhere to spit. Deacon passed him a tissue.

‘Same gear as at Lumsden’s. White heroin. Pure. No one will have seen stuff like this on the street. Not ever. It would be cut with at least as much volume again before it found its way to even the most discerning customer. He didn't stand a chance, the idiot.’

‘Did it hurt?’

North wanted to tell her that he fucking well hoped so but managed to hold back. ‘Not as much as it's going to hurt the force. Even if it goes out as an OD without all the trimmings, the press, the politicians, the public, they'll have a field day with this. You better run through everything in your mind from the time you arrived on the scene yesterday until I got there. They'll be asking you a lot of questions back at the station.’

‘Has anyone ever been kicked back into uniform the same morning they first got out of it?’

‘That won’t happen.’ He wasn’t so sure, though.

‘But you reckon that he lifted it from the crime scene?’

‘He must have. I hope so.’

‘You hope so?’

‘Think about it. If he didn’t that means he got it somewhere else, the very same stuff and plenty of it, which means he is most probably a part of this or he knows who is.’

‘Shit.’

‘The fact that he’s sitting there dead kind of implies that he didn’t fully know what he had and jacked up as usual.’

‘Shit.’

‘Think about when you got to Lumsden’s. You went in, you saw the body, I guarantee you were transfixed. It was some sight. It would only have taken him a few seconds to pocket it if he had clocked it. An addict would have been on it and sneaking it away regardless of the nightmare scenario it was found in.’

‘Is this how it was being delivered to Lumsden and she was prepping it for market?’

North shrugged. When would the questions stop piling up and the answers start rolling in?

‘Each of those must be what, fifty grams?’ Deacon came in for a closer look. ‘That’s like five hundred wraps from each at a tenner a go. Add this to what we found at Lumsden’s and there must be fifteen to twenty grand worth. Do you think this could be a monthly shipment? That would be a quarter million a year. That money found at Lumsden’s could be her cumulative cut. But why wasn’t it delivered to Lumsden in a single packet? Are you sure he took this from Lumsden’s?’

North was searching Winters clothing.

Nothing.

He picked up a mobile lying next to the drugs and started pressing keys.

‘What are you doing?’

Her brain was tripping over itself trying to keep up with events.

‘Seeing if his phone has anything in common with Lumsden’s.’

‘He's not involved in this.’

North ignored her.

‘He can't be.’

‘Did you know he was an addict?’

‘Of course not.’ She realised his angle. ‘But being directly involved? That's a whole different issue – and like you said, he couldn’t have fully known what he had because it killed him.’

‘He called the station after I got there,’ he showed the screen displaying time and number. ‘He was whinging to me about being relieved. I bet he called in the full SP which lead to James and Mason getting called in. He kept it off the radio, the sneaky, whiney little bitch.

‘It was only a matter of time before that happened and you know it. And you're still on the case, aren't you? Did you find anything else?’

North shook his head. ‘He must have been busting to get back here and steam into his ill-gotten goodies.’ North took another look at him. ‘The fucker. It had to be opportunist. He was probably an addict who was used to buying street heroin, or maybe he was even being supplied to look the other way, or to provide information. Whatever it was, managing to hold down the job couldn't have been easy on that shit.’

‘I can't believe I didn't know. How can I not have known.’

‘Like I said, I was giving him sympathy for having flu. There was no way of knowing otherwise.’

‘But I was with him for so much time.’

‘Addicts are secretive, lying and conniving. He'd obviously managed to fit his habit into his routine. Probably thought he was in control of it but they never are. A shift runs over and his hit wears off and he's still on the streets way after it was time for a top-up. All the time he's got a big fat Brucey bonus pushed down his pants that's driving him crazy. By the time he finally gets to tear into it he decides to give it some large and its lights out, permanent.’

North examined the body. He'd been dead for some hours.

He called the Super first. He was with the Chief and he relayed the good news.

‘Could he be our man?’ asked the Super.

‘I don't think so. It looks like he just had a nasty habit, was used to consuming end product and the thought to check the purity mustn't have even occurred to him. He was probably hurting and twitching big time by the time he got back here with his goody bags. Looks like he ripped right in, his mind solely on taking the cure.’

‘A junkie cop’, North heard the Chief say in the background. He sounded like someone had just taken a dump in his coffee.

‘He must have been on it, on duty. This is going to be some shitstorm,’ said the Super. ‘There's no telling what he might have been up to, or what he had left himself open to from his dealer.’

It didn't bear thinking about. Suppliers blackmailing him to do God only knew what. They all agreed that Deacon would hold the fort, keep all prying eyes at bay until the Super sent in the cavalry while he and the Chief prepared an official release for the media. North would go in search of Rawlins.

‘He couldn’t have been murdered, could he?’ the Super clutched at straws.

‘Highly unlikely,’ said North.

They hung up.

‘Still think I’m your lucky charm?’

‘Without you we wouldn’t have found him and the gear for a while a longer.’

North was an enigma to her. He could be a right miserable git, yet his glass was always half full, never half empty.

‘I’ll appease any neighbours concerned about the racket you made getting in here and see you at the autopsy later,’ he said.

SIXTEEN

‘I waited up.’

Not what you usually hear when you knock at a door and announce that you're the police. Rarer at eleven a.m.. Maybe he was senile and had got his a.m. all mixed up with his p.m.. He had paisley pyjamas on. They'd been ironed. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

‘Don't worry,’ he responded to the quizzical look. ‘I haven't gone mad, though that boy tested us to the limits and will probably be the death of the both of us still. I work nights. Usually I'd be asleep by now but I always pick up the paper on the way home. I thought you might come.’

North made some sympathetic noises, out of politeness.

‘I wouldn't have slept anyway. Please,’ he gestured to him, ‘come in. You'll be wanting to look around. I'll put the kettle on.’

It was like this was routine for him. North made a beeline for the back door in case the old fella had been stalling. The small garden was well tended, even at this time of year. North couldn’t see any trail across the wet lawn or footprints in the earth where someone could have lobbed a fence. The drainer held the washed-up dishes from the last meal. Dishes for one. The place smelled of pledge and the carpets bore the tracks of the recently hoovered. Had he been trying to hide something? The old boy had even lowered the loft ladder for him. Was he trying to throw him by being over helpful?

The only evidence that Rawlins junior had ever been there was in the smaller of the two bedrooms. There wasn't much. A few yellowing posters of eighties icons. A child's scrapbook. Photos from family holidays. Spartan as it was it had the feeling of a shrine about it.

Rawlins senior was sat in the front room with a pot of tea and two cups. He did the honours and passed the biscuits. What was it with old people and tea?