Force Of Habit v5 (31 page)

‘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?’

‘The kid is my alibi. He saw Harris get killed.’

‘Jesus, that poor kid,’ Dave looked through the glass pane. ‘Or is he fessing up to save his own skin?’

‘No, he seems to be a good kid. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, fortunately for me.’

He had been skulking around his brothers haunts, trying to find him to tell him about their mother. Aunty Chris had left him and his sister to go back to the hospital. Chelsea had done a runner and Danny went looking for Darren at places he’d followed him to in the past. North felt a bit better knowing that it was probably Danny Ward that he’d seen moving in the trees by the charity building and he hadn’t been jumping at shadows. The kid had gotten inside and had been hiding, shitting himself as he watched the fights and North leaving – and then witnessing what happened next. That’s how Aunty Chris knew that North had been set up. Danny Ward had gotten the hell out of there as soon as he was able and fessed up faster than a sinner at the pearly gates. Blu had finally shown up at Aunty Chris’ that morning but had done a pirouette on seeing James and had it on his toes. James had stuck with Danny and Aunty Chris. Blu’s day would come.

‘Where's the father?’

‘As far as I can make out he never had one - and that's not his mother. His mother is lying in the hospital on life support.

‘Jesus.’

‘And that isn't even the half of it.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Why isn't that man in a cell?’ The Chief announced his arrival. ‘Arrest that man, Sergeant!’

Heads came round corners and popped out of doors. North gave it ten minutes before everyone on duty, inside the station and out, knew he was here.

‘Make a show of it and put me in the room next door,’ said North. Dave escorted him in and they exchanged words. James barred the way to the Chief.

‘Well done, James. Where did you find him?’

‘Sir, we have a witness to the Jed Harris murder in this room.’

He looked at the wall. Pointed at it.

‘In here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Chief couldn’t give a rat’s arse. He had witnesses queuing round the block to testify on the Jed Harris murder but he humoured her, smiled, she had brought him the main prize. She had brought him North.

‘Excellent work, James.’

‘It was mainly DI North, sir. The witness can testify that it was not DI North who killed Harris.

The smile fell away. Cruel eyes focussed on James.

‘What is going on here?’ The anger returned. ‘We already have witnesses who said he did and his blood and prints are all over the murder weapon.’

‘He was framed.’

A cackle came from behind James. They all looked at North standing in the doorway.

‘Killed with a pool cue,’ he said. ‘Framed.’

The veins in the chiefs neck bulged as his jaw tightened.

‘Poor taste, huh?’ said North.

He went back into the room and took a seat. He felt like stretching back, hands behind his head, feet up on the table but that would be pushing it too far, too soon. He'd get ample opportunity to rub the Chief’s nose in it. The Chief and the Super came in. The Super sat opposite North but the Chief remained standing.

‘I have an independent witness, not a gang member, who saw Awayday Harris killed and he can testify that it wasn't me.’

‘The woman?’

‘The kid,’ he looked from the Super to the Chief. ‘The woman killed Denise Lumsden.’

Take that!

The Chief had to take a moment to digest this change in events. He had been about to hang North out to dry and now here he was saying that not only had he brought in an alibi but a murderer too.

‘So you are saying that we have solved the Lumsden case?’

We.

The cheeky fucker. The Chief’s head was already back in front of the cameras. It was the only time he could keep it out of his arse for more than five minutes.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the kid can prove you didn't kill Harris, contrary to the other dozen witnesses?’

The sarcy fucker.

‘Yes, sir, and this kid isn’t a gang banger, he’s a good kid. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ He filled him in.

‘So he can prove that you beat up a number of gang members?’

‘They let me - I was stitched up, Guv.’

Talk about a dog with a bone. You clear your name, bring in a murderer and all he can think about is nailing your balls to something - anything.

‘Why have you got the kid sitting in there with a murderer?’

He still wasn't buying it one hundred percent.

‘Long story.’

He filled them in on the Ward family and Shannon Evans and Aunty Chris. He omitted to mention how he had coerced Aunty Chris into talking. Fortunately Aunty Chris hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell the kid yet, so they didn’t have to have a ‘she’s not dead’ conversation with him. The one with Aunty Chris could wait until they had everything on tape and the transcript typed up and signed.

‘The Lumsden murder wasn’t about drugs, it was about revenge. This has all been about Mason.’

The Chief took another moment.

‘DCI Mason?’

North nodded.

‘Donna Ward believed that Matt Mason committed murder over ten years ago and framed her daughter for it. Donna and Christine Reynolds, the woman in the next room, planned to carry out an identical murder and pin it on him to get him sent down exactly as he should have been ten years previously.’

The chief reddened.

‘This is preposterous!’

‘Dawn Ward took her own life, inside Dipton prison, two years ago. She was in there for the murder of a young woman, Shannon Evans. She had been sexually abused, severely beaten and tortured.’

‘Just like Denise Lumsden,’ said the Super, helping North out.

‘Exactly like Denise Lumsden,’ said North. ‘And guess who the first person on the scene was, back then?’

‘It's preposterous. Everything has taken its toll on you North. You're chasing your tail on the word of junky whores and hoodlums who would say anything to save their skins and you to save yours.’

North raised his voice. ‘The pair of them needed a victim to pin on Mason and they held Denise Lumsden partly responsible for Dawn Ward's ills in prison. Donna Ward didn't stop to think that maybe Lumsden was just as much a victim in all this as her daughter was and I don't think it would have mattered if she had. Donna Ward put herself on the street as bait and was picked up by Mason whose intention was to take her some place where she could suffer and scream for his pleasure without any chance of help or survival. He used the old church out in Bensham - ironically, the same one he died in, in agony. Poetic justice, or what?

‘Donna Ward had been waiting for her moment for two years, ever since her daughter’s death. She went out prepared. She was carrying a tazer. She was going to let Mason carry on for as long as she could, to get anything she could: break off a piece of nail to embed under Denise Lumsden’s skin, get his semen into or onto her, scratch him up and take the blood and put it beneath Lumsden's nails - because while she was doing that her girlfriend was across town butchering Denise Lumsden exactly as Shannon Evans had been butchered all those years ago. Only Mason didn't stay tazered like he was supposed to and Lumsden had to run for her life and ended up fighting for it in the Royal Victoria Infirmary. The best laid plans of vice and men and all that.’

‘This is outrageous! You are accusing a dead man, a man who can no longer defend himself. He has a wife and kids whose lives have been shattered and are suffering right now - I was just at his fucking funeral for Christ’s sake and you want to go casting vile aspersions. He was a good cop, just look at his record. Look at the turn out at his funeral.’

North couldn't argue there. Mason might have been up to no good but he had maintained a pretty decent performance record and people had liked him, he had been a popular colleague, but even if you ignored the accusations of Christine Reynolds he still had an industrial spec safe buried in concrete under his living room floor that was chocka with ill-gotten that could link him not only to the drugs but possibly to a number of murders. Of course North couldn’t tell the Chief that just yet but he felt that he had enough to get a warrant to go find Mason’s stash legally.

‘Denise Lumsden, Dawn Ward and Terry Rawlins were part of the Lumsden cell. Mason was the master phone. He was trafficking drugs and I will prove it. We may be able to prove he attacked Donna Ward when the lab results are in, DC James already has forensics going over what we got from Donna Ward. Any DNA we recover will be matched to Mason's.’

‘Contamination could have occurred if he visited her in the hospital as part of the investigation,’ said the Chief.

‘That's true,’ conceded North. ‘But forensics had been and gone before she was ever linked to the Lumsden case - the problem is, so had Mason. I checked with the hospital, he was there and had left his mobile number to be contacted at any sign of change in her, for better or worse, the night she was taken in. He had no reason to be there. There is no doubt in my mind that his actions put her there, he followed her there and that he was checking on her chances of survival and was ready to kill her at the slightest sign of recovery.