Force Of Habit v5 (12 page)

‘Still he brings us shame,’ he looked towards a photograph on top of a fake teak Ferguson TV.

‘You and your wife?’ said North.

He nodded. ‘She died ten years ago. She was never the same woman I met after seeing her boy go the way he did. Her only child. Thank Our Lord for the small mercy that she was spared this.’

North heard a familiar tale of drugs and disintegration. A loving family broken. Hearts ripped apart. He'd sold his own stuff first, which explained the spartan room upstairs. North was reminded of Lumsden and Rawlins maisonette. Then he sold family items and stole their money, denying any knowledge. Lying constantly. When love failed they cracked down, trying the ‘cruel to be kind’ approach. Police visits became the norm as Terry Rawlins took to burgling their neighbours to get stuff to sell in order to feed his habit. He came and went, returning less and less, and always as a last resort. Always for money. Preying on his mothers love.

‘The last time he was here he gave us a load of cock and bull about a program he'd joined. He was getting clean and going to make a new start. All the time he was sweating and shaking. Every time a car went passed or a door slammed he nearly jumped out of his skin and he kept looking out the window every five seconds. His mother could only see what she wanted. What she'd hoped for. I turned him in. It turned them both against me, but I know I did the right thing. This is the last place he would come. He knows I would do the same again.’

‘Do you know where he might have gone? Anyone he could turn to?’

He shook his head. ‘They were all just like him. He lived in squats, took up with a prostitute twice his age. Last time he was here he'd been dealing to support his habit and someone had died. He'd been using anything at hand to cut the stuff so he could take more for himself. They found rat poison in the dead girls system. My only child was a murderer. My wife never believed it until the day she died, but he killed her too, just as if he had stuck a knife in her. A knife would have been kinder.’

North's immediate reaction was to ask if he was sure about the dead girl, but knew how ridiculous that would sound, and offensive, considering the effect Rawlins had had on the family. But there had been no mention of this in the records he had seen. Maybe it was the belief of a paranoid junkie. Maybe it was true and he’d got away with it. North would look into it once he had everything else cleared up but it was obvious to him that there was nothing here that could help him with that. North was satisfied that Rawlins was running scared. Alone. He’d show up before long. Somewhere. North brought things to a close.

Terry Rawlins was half way down the terraced street when North came out on to it. He was in such a state that it took him another twenty yards before he realised the bloke talking to him was his dad. He braked. Froze. He sat in the middle of the road in the stolen car and fear kept him there. North glanced up and down the street. If it wasn’t for the gas van he would be looking right at Rawlins. He saw nothing and said his goodbyes, turned towards his own car. Rawlins realised that the man would have to walk out into the road to get behind the wheel. He managed to creep into the kerb and nudge up to the gas van without crunching the gears or revving the engine. Thirty yards away North opened his car door and took another glance up the road. Rawlins kept his head down even though he had the van between them.

Who was that guy? Cop - or one of
them
? Did it make any difference? He didn't know anymore. He did know that he was fucked. Someone was here already. They were one step ahead of him. If it was the filth then the old man was probably helping them, just like he had before. Rawlins kept his head down in case they did a u-turn and came his way. At least he had had the good sense to change cars. The feds couldn’t be looking for this one yet, could they? He waited five minutes before coming up. The man had gone. Rawlins got out and knocked on his old man’s door.

‘What are you mixed up in now?

It was always his fucking fault. Anger pushed its way back up through the fear.

‘I haven't done nothing!’

‘You never do.’

‘Fuck you!’ Rawlins pushed his dad, who staggered backwards into the wall, went off balance, tripped and fell onto the hall floor. Rawlins walked over him. By the time he was back on his feet his son had already dumped the contents of several shelves and drawers on the floor. Rawlins senior went upstairs. The place was ransacked when he got back down. He held out his hand until Terry saw the notes and stopped ripping the place apart.

‘It's all I've got.’

‘Where's your bank card?’

He went back upstairs. Terry Rawlins followed. Took the card. Made his dad write the PIN down and threatened what would happen if it didn’t work. He then tore the bedrooms apart because he couldn’t believe his dad didn’t have a credit card. Everyone had a credit card. It didn't matter that he had never owned one. No bank had ever been that stupid even at their most reckless before going tits up - but everyone else had one. When he had torn into everything he could he went after his dad again. He was on the phone.

‘The police are coming,’ he held the phone towards him. ‘They are still on the line. They can hear you.’

‘What are you doing? They are going to kill me!’

The drugs had obviously made him crazy.

‘They can help you.’

His old man looked scared but he had no idea what scared was. Terry did. He decided to ditch the car. The old man would see him get in it and call it in.

He ran.

The wind cut into him. He was still damp after his night outside and it made him feel ice-cold again. He’d spent a few hours asleep in the car with the heater full blast, but it hadn’t totally dried him out. He should have got some clothes from Asda’s. He ran blind. Ran anywhere as long as it was away from his dad's. From the police. From
them
.

A bus came by and stopped up ahead next to a line of people. They started getting on. He joined them. Dropped a random bunch of shrapnel into the machine.

‘Toon.’

The driver said nothing as the ticket slid out.

Rawlins clambered upstairs. Felt the eyes of everyone on him all the way. He looked out the window and tried to forget them. Each time he looked around he saw people looking back at him an instant before their eyes moved away. He heard the driver's radio crackle and muffled communications with base. They were talking about him. He knew it. He took another glance around. They were all talking about him. He pressed the bell and went downstairs to the door. The bus kept going. It wasn't going to stop. The driver was taking him in!

Then it slowed. A pneumatic burst and the doors flapped open. He pushed through the couple getting on. He was back on the street. He walked off. Tried not to run. Tried not to look back. Couldn't. He took off.

After half a mile or so he was in pain. A stitch in his side. He slowed. Kept looking back. Kept expecting to see the feds any minute. To see them coming round the next corner, up ahead. Felt them sneaking up behind him. The people on the streets thinned the further he got from the main road but they were all still looking at him. Phones went to ears. Lips moved. Eyes watched. The net closed.

He ducked into a corner shop, starting at the bell triggered by the door. Everyone looked round. He slipped into the nearest aisle. He tried to look back out into the street but there was too much shit in the way, piled high in front of the window. He looked at some of it. Tried to act normal. He had to act normal. He felt like he was on the bad acid trip from hell. He probably looked it. It was single digits outside and sweat was pouring from him. His veins were jumping like wires exposed in a storm. He could really use a drink.

He ventured into the next aisle. Found beer but the real grog was behind the jump. He joined the queue. The queue gave him the once over and the woman in front squashed up, moving away from him. Newcomers left a gap behind. Most were picking up a morning paper and packet of tabs. When he was second in line he saw his own face staring back at him from the front of a paper. Massive letters screamed ‘Killer!’

‘Can I help?’

He didn't hear. It was repeated, louder. He kept staring at himself on the front page.

‘Sir!’

He wouldn't have registered that one at his best. No one ever called him that. He felt a nudge in his back and nearly pissed himself again. He turned to see a big guy in a luminous jacket.

‘It's not a library, hurry up; some of us have jobs to go too.’

Rawlins ordered vodka. Two bottles. And some tabs.

He dropped a few scrunched notes on the counter and turned away. The line parted like the red sea. All except luminous jacket who barred the way. Rawlins rounded him and made it to the door.

‘Hey!’ came a cry from behind.

Rawlins fought the door and finally won. Took off down the street.

‘He forgot his change,’ the shopkeeper said to the head of the queue. The head of the queue wasn't listening. She was staring at the front of morning paper.

***

It took a while for his icicle fingers to crack the seal. When they finally did he poured it in. It filled his mouth and burned. He could feel it nip his chin as it oozed from the corners of his mouth. It burned his throat on the way down and it burned his empty stomach as it settled there. It felt good. It felt even better as it melted into his system and glowed. Eased his body and mind. He poured some more in. Each time he felt better and better. A couple of old dears looked at him with disgust. Told him so. He told them where to go. They told him that they would have the police on to him. He staggered on.

He'd spent the morning in the car on a housing estate miles from Asda in amongst hundreds of other cars. He'd drunk himself to sleep with the supermarket vodka. Some kids had woken him, taking the piss on their way to school. He’d sat there for a while before heading for his dad's. He had no place else to go. No one else to turn to. Now there was no one left. Nowhere to go.

He made it to the top of Gateshead High Street where a couple of Community Support Officers were having a chat further down. They had fluorescent jackets like the big wanker in the shop and he didn't realise they were police until he was almost on top of them. Protected by half a litre of forty proof he kept on going, casually crossed the road and passed them on the other side.

He had staggered the length of the street when he stumbled across the TSB by accident and remembered the bank card. He fucked about for an age before the machine ate the card. It was all his dad's fault, the fucker, he had deliberately given him the wrong number, not the fact that he was blind drunk and might as well of been wearing boxing gloves to press the keypad. He didn't notice the people around him. The exchanged glances. The dawn of realisation on their faces. He pushed on through.

He had almost finished the first bottle of vodka when he reached Tesco's. A security guard watched him bouncing off walls and trolleys and barred the way. He escorted him back onto the street where he fell to the pavement, struggling as he was released. The guard was giving him a piece of his mind when a shout went up.

‘He's the bloke on the telly! The one you're looking for!’

The community coppers were on their way.

Rawlins scrambled to his feet and drunken momentum took him away down the hill. Horns blasted and the screech of brakes signalled his arrival at the bottom of the High Street where it converged with the town’s by-pass. A car swerved, narrowly missed him and he tumbled over the bonnet. Drivers hurled abuse. He kept moving. The road fed him down towards the river.

It was no use. He was done in. Pain sliced through his abdomen. He doubled up in pain. Threw up on his shoes. He dropped onto on all fours. He could hear them now. Their footfalls. Their shouts. He looked back. They were close. Coming fast. They were going to have him.

He crawled along the pavement but found the way barred before he could get back on his feet. Behind him the voices were becoming clearer. Closer. He grabbed hold of the metal and scrambled up it, his feet fighting for any hold they could find. He was oblivious as muscles he hadn't used in decades strained and his limbs banged and scraped the surface. Voices shouted up after him and he looked down to see the police only a couple of feet below, reaching for him. He clambered on into the sticky, black climb prevention paint. Once he was across it got easier. He kept going.

No one could get him now.

SEVENTEEN

Two tracks had thumped out before North found a car backing out, freeing up a space. He took the lift down to the main reception and got directions to pathology. Those examining tissue from the living would be able to direct him to the dead. Hospitals don’t exactly point the way to their mortuaries with arrowed signs in the corridors. Most patients and visitors have a harrowing enough experience as it is without being reminded of the worst possible outcome at every turn. They also have to make it difficult for the weirdoes.

North found his way into the hospitals bowels. He always attended autopsies, even if it was odds on to be a mere formality. As well as him being able to answer some of the forensic pathologist’s questions, they could lead to questions of his own. You just never knew. It also enabled him to get the results as quick as was possible. He entered a large lab that easily accommodated the additional people required at a forensic autopsy: the lab technician, forensic pathologist, forensic crime scene photographer and the police who had first been on the scene, in this case PCW Deacon and himself. PC Winter would also be in here before long, but would now be making his contribution to the enquiry from centre stage.

They all circled the cadaver that had been Denise Lumsden. The syringes had already been removed. Probably photographed, filmed, and carefully tagged, logged and bagged in situ. Not easy to zip away a body and cart it all the way across town keeping thirty-six hypodermic needles and their wounds intact.

Her body was laid out on a steel table, pretty much as it had been on her living room floor and North’s nose was pleased to find that, beyond the disinfectant, the rest of the current stockpile, refrigerated behind a wall of metal doors, was as fresh as Denise Lumsden. That would render the smell of the place no more unpleasant than the inside of a butchers shop once the evisceration got under way. When one of them was ripe it was a whole different matter. If the body being examined had been sat in front of the telly for a week, that was hard going on all of your senses.