Force Of Habit v5 (21 page)

A ‘For Sale’ board had been planted in the verge. It had been tagged by the Choirboys.

‘Isn’t this a little off their turf?’ asked James.

North nodded. It was at least a mile from gang central.

They were expanding.

North and James kept to the trees. The gravel drive widened into a parking area. The white Luton was the only thing on it. To the right was one of those churches they built in the sixties and early seventies, solid brick holding the odd sliver of glass propping up an elaborate, angular roof. This one had been stripped bare. It was easy to get close with all the brickwork. North took a peak through a small window. The insides had been stripped bare too. Harris was at the far end of the nave smoking, sitting on the step that would have formed the alter. He lit another cigarette from the stub. North took a look at their surroundings.

It must have been a nice idea, back then, to build a church within the trees, a sanctuary from the urban surroundings, but most of the housing in this area had since been converted into businesses and the whole row directly opposite was now a training school. The church became isolated at night, hidden, the buildings around it empty. A prime target for metal thieves in a sellers market. North pulled his phone and got on the internet.

‘St Margaret Clitherow Church,’ he read out. ‘The Bishop and the Diocesan Trustees - whatever they are - permanently closed it after it was raided for copper on the roof nine times in two years and repair costs escalated to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’ North whistled. ‘That's worth getting out of bed and straying off your patch for.’

‘What can they be using the place for? They aren’t praying for forgiveness.’

‘They could have used the church as investment capital to upsize their operation. Selling the parts and using the cash to buy more drugs makes sound business sense. God only knows what they are using it for now. Look at the state of it.’

The floor was covered in buckets where they had been protecting it from water dropping from above when they still felt they had a chance of saving the place. The walls had been ripped apart, the wiring and copper pipes ripped out. He’d seen tidier demolition sites.

Harris’ phone went off and they watched him answer. He made a bit of a song and dance before heading for the door. North and James legged it.

‘You stay put just in case whoever he was waiting for shows up. I’m going to see what else he gets up to. He’s our only solid link and I want us to be on him like white on Lumsden’s heroin until something breaks.’

The van came out and went back onto Prince Consort Road, away from North, allowing him to slip back in behind it with a little traffic in between for cover. North followed it through Gateshead centre and down towards the estate where all this had begun. Deep into Choirboys turf.

The estate passed to their right. The left stretched away down to the river. They were heading for the International Stadium but turned off before they reached it. They weaved between large warehouses and waste ground, small industrial units and car lots, glass offices and grassy knolls. As they neared the river the buildings got smaller. They turned right onto South Shoe Road, moving away from the town centre, the bridges over the river behind them.

The van took another right and once again it disappeared into a group of trees. North pulled out his phone and launched the GPS map. Switched to satellite view. There was no street view option down there. The map showed this was the only way in and out, for a vehicle. He drove in.

The trees soon broke on his left, replaced by a high wall of concrete that ran for about fifty metres before the trees reappeared. The rear boundary of a business out on the main road. He went under a canopy and down a single track lane. These trees were lot bigger, more densely populated and covered a much larger area than those around the church. Whatever Harris was doing he didn’t like to be seen doing it. Traffic out on the road covered North’s engine noise.

He left the car in the cover of trees, before a bend, and walked the last hundred metres or so. When the Luton came into view Harris was getting out of the van carrying a couple of nice crisp brown burger bags, like he’d just bought lunch - only he hadn’t been anywhere that sold lunch. The bags had to be filled with that day’s takings. North watched him go inside. The building was older than a lot of the others he had passed. One of a few originals that hadn’t been felled by developers. It should have been, it was an ugly fucker. It had a big logo on it. Same logo that was on the van: ‘A Tonic For The Troops’. It was good cover for a drug operation.

He called James. All was quiet her end. He described his.

‘And its some distance away but I reckon that you could probably get a decent view of the Tyne Bridge from the first floor without being seen. There are plenty of trees covering this place.’

‘You think Rawlins could have been shot from there?’

‘It would be some marksmanship, military class, but I reckon so.’

‘From a military charity? This is all most peculiar.’

North smiled at her vernacular.

‘Maybe someone just stuck up a sign with the charity name. I’ll get it checked out.’

‘What now?’

‘We find out where Harris lives and get a tap and surveillance running. See what that throws up.’

‘What about the bookies?’

‘Those poor sods working there probably know even less than Stafford. It will be the same old ‘pressed men’ story.’

‘So, do we think there is a drugs war in the offing and Lumsden was the first victim?’

Everyone was hooked on a drugs war.

‘We have what we have, lets see where it goes. Anything else comes up in the meantime we follow that too.’

North didn’t want to leap to any conclusions. The tentacles were reaching into all aspects of society on this one. It was a well known charity. It had been the main benefactor at the awards do the other night. A charity founded and funded by Mr Newcastle himself, Eddie George.

***

‘There was a car out front of the charity building and it is registered to Harris and we now have his address. Deacon came out to the charity place and relieved me.’ She had been happy to. She had survived her inquisition with the brass and she would do anything she was so glad to still be a part of the team.

Mason nodded. ‘We need to keep on him. He’s our link up the chain.’ Finally something to tell the Chief – but not yet. The Chief would want to bring him in. If he didn’t talk they were back to square one.

‘There’s a garage on the main road where we can watch the entrance without attracting attention. There’s only the one way in and out by car. I’m going back to the church to get James.’

‘Your not going to stay on it?’ said Mason.

‘I don’t see the point as long as we stick on Harris.’

‘I don’t know, we are finally getting breaks, I think we should stick on that too – at least for a day or so. You never know,’ he shrugged. ‘I’ll take over from James.’

‘And it gets the Chief out of your hair for a bit,’ North smiled, ‘but he won't have it. Especially not with you in that state – and it’s freezing out there.’

‘No one is stopping me going back out there now there is some action to be had.’

‘A couple of days stuck in here and already you're regarding a stakeout as action?’

‘I don't know how you've coped being deskbound in here all those weeks. I'd have gone spare,’ Mason did some pantomime thinking. ‘Ah, I almost forgot, you did go spare.’

North smiled. ‘You’re more than welcome to pull rank if they let you go.’

‘No need to tell them just yet, just in case. We can tell them in the morning. Use any of night’s successes as leverage for me to keep at it.’

‘You won't be fit for shit after a day in here and a night out there in your condition. You'll come in here looking like I used to.’

‘What do you mean, used to?’

‘Serious, you don't want them starting on you too.’

‘You're forgetting, it's just you the Chief Super hates.’

‘This is true. I'll come with you, to get James and look the place over, and then I’ll come back and take over from you about two or three so you can catch some zeds and freshen up.’

‘So you are aware of the concept?’

‘Maybe I'll make it six, or seven. I managed to get the OK for an unmarked car and a PC on the night shift to watch Harris’ gaff once Deacon thinks he’s gone home for the duration. Anything happens he calls in. I’ve put in for a warrant to tap Harris’ landline but it probably won’t get us jack. He has to do something with all that money he collected today so our best chance is to be there when he does.’

‘Maybe they bank it through the charity. It would be great cover, the piles of money are banked as casual, anonymous cash donations, and they don’t even have to pay any tax.’

‘But wouldn’t getting it out again prove tricky? And what was he doing at the church? Maybe that’s where he hands it over but his contact didn’t show or cancelled or something.’

‘Maybe he stashed it out there and the contact will be along later. I’m going to watch the place, at least tonight and then tomorrow we can give the place a decent look-see and then we can stick to Harris, get a few cars on the road so we can keep rotating and reduce the risk of our being clocked.’

North nodded. ‘Okay, cool,’ it made sense. ‘I’ll be back in a sec, I just want to check out a few things while I’m here.’

North went back to his light duty desk in admin and skimmed the database for Dawn and Donna Ward. Neither had ever been arrested for dealing drugs but it was like seeing history repeating itself going from the mother’s record to her daughter’s. Both had multiple arrests for drug use and street prostitution. While Dawn had still been a young child she had been taken away from her mother and put into care on two occasions. The mother’s criminal record ended around the time her daughter had been sent down for murder.

Dawn Ward had killed her flatmate, and probable girlfriend, while under the influence of a ferocious cocktail of alcohol, crack cocaine and heroin. It looked like that’s what it had taken for the mother to finally clean up her act. Donna Ward’s address had been a maisonette not far from Lumsden’s. He telephoned the council and found a friendly ear. She still lived there.

‘Guv?’ North acknowledged the PC from the Pond House that morning. ‘We have a couple of possibles on the arson.’

‘What you got?’

‘We were asking around places within a half mile or so that would have been open around midnight and a punter at a pub overheard us talking to the landlord. He bumped into a couple of kids last night and one was wearing clothes that matched our eyewitness description.’

‘He’s leaving a pub at midnight and took in such detail of a couple of passing kids?’

‘They were a couple of cheeky fuckers who stopped him for a light, took the piss and nicked his lighter. We checked further along the road, in the direction they were heading, and a quarter mile away there is a Chinese take-away. They had shut up shop and were cleaning up out back but they have CCTV on account of past trouble and they let it run to disc twenty-four seven. Our two kids swaggered by just gone midnight, smoking like chimneys.’

He handed over a couple of pieces of A4 that had been through the printer. One of the kids was looking right in the shop window and was lit up clear as day.

‘The one furthest away is shielded by the other but this one is a Choirboy who goes by the moniker Blu. His real name is Darren Ward.’

‘Darren Ward?’ North didn’t believe what he was hearing.

‘Yeah, you know him?’

North took the rap sheet and scanned his personal info. Looked for the name of his parents. He only had one listed. A mother. Her name was Donna Michelle Ward. His address matched the one he already had up on the screen. He arranged for the PC to go collect James. Mason was going to have to go to church by himself.

TWENTY-FIVE

See Dan run.

Short stubby legs carrying a twelve-year-old body that had been obese since it was seven. Atop the twelve stone, five feet nothing figure, a close cropped, round purple head huffed and puffed, as the fear contained within drove him forward. His heart was pattering like a small animal and his lungs were fit to burst after years without physical exercise, skipping PE at school to avoid the bullies and name-callers and he had succeeded until today when Mr Fuck Face Bastard had gone and stuck his oar in. Mister Hepworth had been off sick and his stand-in had found a spare kit for him. It didn't matter that Mister Hepworth let him off, Mister Hepworth was too soft. And Danny didn't have a note.

The kit was several sizes too small for him and clung to the folds in his flesh. They picked teams and he was the last boy standing. He joined his side by default.

‘Oh sir, it’s not fair, if they put him in goal there's no way we could get a ball past him.’

‘And he leaves footprints in concrete. He'll trash the hall floor.’

And so it began.

He loitered along the sideline, trying to be where the ball was not. Whenever the teacher wasn't looking he was likely to get blasted. He soon had bright red marks up and down his arms and legs. Eventually they blew for half time when they all took on water and aimed mouthfuls at him. He'd had enough. As the second half kicked off he edged along the wall. It was last period of the week and they would all be headed home for the weekend in twenty minutes. That gave him plenty time to get changed and do a runner before they all came in. Hitting the showers with that lot was unthinkable. Even the teacher would have forgotten he’d done a runner by Monday. Danny slipped out the door. He didn't get far before someone raised the alarm and old Fuck Face was out after him. The stand-in teacher shouted at the others to carry on before shouting at Danny to get back in there.

Danny declined.

The teacher marched towards him and started physically pulling him back. Danny let his weight fall and nearly took the bastard down with him. Danny stayed down. The stand-in was getting mad now. Some of the other boys were watching, laughing and Stand-In yelled at them. He started to haul Danny to his feet but he was a dead weight and ended up dragging the boy along the corridor. Danny freaked. He started yelling and kicking and one caught Stand-In right in the nads. He fell to his knees clutching his ball sack. Danny never got to his feet so fast and was gone in a flash. Sod the changing rooms, he was straight out of there in his skimpy outfit.