Force Of Habit v5 (18 page)

Just as North had begun to show signs of redemption in her eyes he had come up with this plan. True, she didn’t have to do it, North could have found another detective, or PCW, to do it, but James still felt that she had a lot of ground to make up and was going to take any chance to do so that came her way. She was regretting taking this one. North had better be right about this.

It looked a certainty that they had stumbled onto something big but she still wasn’t sure that he really knew what he was doing. Was there method in his madness? There was unconventional and then there was North. Last time he had gotten her involved she had ended up in the hospital. Now she was in jail, made-up like a cheap trick and acting as a drug smuggler. Who knew where this one would end up.

He had inked a number of fake prison tattoo's on her arms, declaring her love for Lee Boy and her hate for everything else. They were so vile. They disgusted her and she couldn’t wait to get them all off. What if they didn’t come off? She wouldn’t put it past him to have used indelible ink. She’d scrub herself raw if she had to. The realistic artwork also had her wondering what lay beneath North's own shirt sleeves. Was there anything there, from another time? Another life? Nothing would surprise her about that man.

A wand traversed her in silence then she was patted down, not too intimately. There was no dog today. There were no other visitors coming through just now either. James closed her locker and pocketed the key into the jacket. She wanted to zip it up tight to cover her body and had to force herself to leave it open. She felt naked. Vulnerable. She signed a visitors book and took a seat. She tried to focus on looking hard. Angry. She thought about North. He had better be so right about this.

The Deputy Governing Governor came and introduced himself. The hierarchy in here was worse than in the police force. The actual Governing Governor was dividing his time between North and an arse covering operation. The Chief had given him the good news last night and hadn’t needed to advise him that he best go get himself a pair of asbestos underpants.

Deputy Dawg led her to yet another locked door and they were buzzed through into another no man’s land. He had a pouch attached to his belt from which he removed a set of keys held by a chain. He opened the door on the other side of the small space and they went through and he locked it again. They were outside. She followed him across a yard. On the other side they stopped and went through the procedure again. You wouldn’t want to be desperate for a pee in this place. He indicated she go in first, his eyes taking a walk all over her as she passed. Inside the building he pointed the way and she moved off. He stayed put. She could feel his eyes burning into her backside all the way down the corridor.

The ubiquitous sounds of heavy doors clanging, keys and chains rattling and inmates shouting accompanied her along a stark corridor, even though she wasn't even on an actual wing. At the end she turned and entered a large, tired looking area the size of a small hall. Coke and crisp machines at one end, a raised platform in one corner at the other, a vantage point for a guard and a podium for the Governing Governor to address his staff at briefings. A load of tables and chairs in between, only a couple of them taken up by carefully selected prisoners and their visitors. A couple of other visitors were sat on their own, waiting for their nearest and dearest to be led in.

James sat at a table facing the door through which the prisoners were ushered in and continued to look around. There were a couple of other guards to the sides. James wondered if any of them were mixed up in it all. There had to be an officer or two taking cash, or being blackmailed, or threatened, to turn a blind eye, with the potential scale of things.

If North was right.

The door opened and Shontelle-Leigh Stafford swaggered into the hall like she owned the place. Maybe she did. She stopped, filling the door frame as she looked around the room. Her eyes found James’ staring back at her.

‘What are you looking at?’ she shouted at James. ‘Have I got a fucking telly on my head or what?’

The guards perked up.

James struggled to interpret the thick Geordie accent, but even if she had been deaf there was no mistaking the ugly expression on her ugly face.

‘Denise,’ was all James could think to say. She had no hope of imitating a Geordie accent but North had told her to do something about her posh.
Anything.
She’d had a go at cockney and he hadn’t exactly filled her with confidence. He said she sounded like a cross between Dick Van Dyke and Mary Poppins. She had persevered.

Stafford swaggered towards James, checking out the guards from the corners of her eyes.

‘I didn't recognise you,’ she was right in front of James now. ‘Has that bastard been beating you again?’

Her arms came up and around and James was pulled into Stafford who positioned herself so that she had her back to one guard and a table of visitors between them and the second. The third was behind them.

A strong hand held James’ neck, Stafford hugging her close, James unable to pull away even if she wanted to. Stafford had her right arm inside James’ jacket pushing a hand down her back, over her arse and back up again. Then she started to kiss her. James was unable to escape the clinch, her head held firm. The hand moved to James’ front, over her breasts and onto her exposed belly, all the time touching, feeling. James tensed as the woman’s fingers slipped inside her leggings and became almost paralysed as they pushed on inside her pants, through the brush - and then lingered - before finally pulling at the package secreted there. Stafford had given her a much more intimate search than the guard had, before deciding that it was safe to move in for the drugs.

A guard shouted them apart.

Stafford pulled away having crotched the gear inside herself and sat down. It had taken no more than fifteen seconds. Seconds that would remain with James for her lifetime - but seconds that had proved North to be right. She sat too.

‘The bastard doesn’t mess around does he? Lumsden’s still warm and here you are. And what the fuck happened to you?’ she indicated James face. ‘Don’t tell me you upset him already?’ She leaned in close and it took every effort for James not to flinch away from her. ‘Or did he get you to do Lumsden?’ she laughed.

‘I refused to come,’ said James.

Stafford laughed again. She was feeling better now someone had been in touch. Everything was back to normal. Same shit, different contact. She had been all worked up about nothing, thank fuck.

‘What about a new phone? How am I supposed to distribute this?’

James heart was racing.

They were in.

‘How the fuck should I know?’ James played her part.

‘I can see how you got to look so pretty. You better watch your mouth, girly, or I’ll make that handy work look like a make-over.’ James stared her out, her heart pounding in her ears. ‘What happened to Lumsden, anyway? Did Lumsden refuse to come anymore? Is that why he did her?’ James couldn’t help feel a buzz of excitement every time Stafford said ‘he’. She knew who ‘he’ was. ‘She was well shitting herself every time she came in here, fuck knows how she didn’t get caught. He must have put the right shitters up a few screws in here. Who are you, anyway?’

‘No one.’

‘Damn right you're no one. Look at your poor, slutty little arse. Another one of his crack whore addicts. But I need to know who you are, girl. What is your name?’

‘Michael Fucking Caine, bitch,’ said cockney James, surprising herself with the ferocity with which she said it. But they now had Stafford by the short and curlies and she was through playing games. She wanted to hit the shower and the mouthwash. ‘Let’s just ride this out and then go our separate ways,’ said James.

Stafford put her hardest look on.

‘My God you’re ugly,’ James added.

Stafford looked like she was going to explode.

‘Now, now.
He
will not take kindly to the pair of us and twenty-five grams of his finest getting nicked, now, will
he
?’

It did the trick. Whoever
he
was this brick shithouse was scared of him.

‘I’ll get you,’ said the shithouse.

‘My arse,’ James was getting into the swing of things. ‘Look at the state of you, you fat fuck. If you aren’t up for parole pretty soon its got to be odds on that you will have a heart attack and die before you get out of here, you fucking lard-arse, but I hope you do get out because I’m going to break every one of those fucking fingers that touched me. You couldn’t just frisk me and take the gear, you had to cop a feel of a real woman, one where you can tell where the chin ends and the tits start, you party sized sack of shit.’

Shontelle-Leigh Stafford stood. She had to remove herself from the situation before she properly fucked up. She strutted off carrying the cellophane wrap in her.

James had accomplished her part. She’d handed over twenty-five grams of talcum powder and made sure that Shontelle-Leigh Stafford was wound up so tight she couldn’t think straight.

TWENTY-THREE

Shontelle-Leigh’s relief had been short lived. She was taken directly from the visiting hall to be searched, escorted by two senior officers hand picked by the Governing Governor and who had been made very aware that they were being monitored every step of the way. Support was near at hand in case she kicked off. Not close enough to prevent one of the guards receiving a broken nose and the other to be taken down by a kick to the bollocks. She was aiming a kick at his head when the tazer fired.

They carted her down to the chair while they could, got her in it and set it to work before she fully recovered. It was a tasty piece of kit. State of the art. It scanned. It found. The rubber gloves went on.

‘An external investigation into the torture and murder of Denise Lumsden lead us to Jenny Gibson who lead us to you,’ North adopted a direct approach as he paced about her. He didn’t have time to dick about. He wanted information fast.

‘Who the fuck is Jenny Gibson?’ Stafford had to be scared but was still acting hard. Putting up a front.

‘Your visitor friend, Denise Lumsden’s replacement.’ North decided to pin a name to DC James character. ‘They’re greedy and found a replacement too quick. She was already an informant. She’s in there,’ he pointed at a random wall, ‘writing up her account of events.

‘You just received a bag of pure heroin from her that’s way too big for one woman’s personal use, even one as big as you. That’s another five to ten for you, and you won't be getting out half way through your current sentence anymore, so you can kiss another two years goodbye and start looking forward to twelve, minimum. Probably more as this has been a regular occurrence for the past year – we have the exact dates and times.’

North could see it all sinking in. He pressed on.

‘How old will you be then, Shontelle-Leigh. How old will your kids be?’

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘They will probably be in here with you by then, out there, all alone in the world, without your guiding hand to keep them on the straight and narrow,’ he smiled at her.

‘So you’re a comedian. Fuck you.’

‘You’re right, it will be doing them a favour keeping you banged up in here. They will be far better off without you out there, fucking up their lives as well as your own.’

‘Stop going on about my kids!’ she lost it. Leapt from the chair. North shoved her back in. Her feet were free but her wrists were cuffed. He moved behind her and pressed down on her shoulders, holding her there. The battered and bruised fucker was a lot stronger than he looked.

‘No one knows you are here. Everyone is in lockdown. As far as they are concerned you are still in seg. As of now nobody knows you are here. If you don’t start co-operating that’s going to change to your detriment.’

‘What the fuck are you on about?’

‘Talk to me about the drugs and we keep this between us. If you don’t, I get word out that you talked to me anyway. We both know where that will end up.’

‘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.’