Force Of Habit v5 (16 page)

‘Okay, mum.’

She might be loving a new life two and a half thousand miles away and they might never be together again but she still loved him. Something that had never occurred to him. He felt something he hadn’t felt in a while: hope. There
was
hope for him yet.

‘Hey, Sarah.’

‘Yes?’

‘If anyone ever tells you that you can't catch cold from being out in the pissing rain, that it is a virus, do me a favour and tell them to fuck-off, from me.’

He finished the veg. Left the beer.

TWENTY-ONE

‘You had me scared.’

She’d been about to put his door in.

He slothed away. She followed him inside the flat.

‘With all that's happened already you couldn't think to at least call the station?’

He turned around.

‘You're still scaring me,’ she said.

He was a sorry sight even by his standards. And he definitely wasn't with it.

‘I was sparko.’

On exhaustion, trauma, hospital meds, half a can of beer and a decent swig of night nurse. It had taken Deacon half an hour to raise him, ringing his phone then battering down his door.

‘And please,’ she averted her gaze, ‘put something on.’

He shuffled away again.

‘And maybe you should shower first.’

She was looking for coffee when the sounds of retching and puke dashing the pan reached her. She didn't wait to hear what might follow. She put the door on the latch and went back out. By the time North emerged with pieces of bloody paper dotted about a freshly shaven face she was back, an omelette and a steaming cup on the go. First she gave him a glass of something orange that fizzed at him.

‘Vitamins. Lots of them,’ said Deacon.

He used it to wash down a bunch of painkillers.

‘And you want to be careful with those, your liver doesn't need any more abuse.’

North focussed on keeping it all down.

‘I put everything in here,’ she opened a couple of doors. ‘These are cupboards. You fill them with food.’

North boked. Some of the fizzy stuff came back up into his mouth. It was still cold. He swallowed it back down.

‘The hospital is pissed at you just walking out like that.’

‘It's the current trend. Anyway, they couldn't give a rat’s arse, they need the bed. They make all the right noises, like is expected of them, is all.’

‘Here,’ she placed a laden plate and mug on the coffee table. ‘Sit.’

He sat. She didn't move until he had cleared the plate. Drank the coffee. It took some time.

‘You want anything else.’

‘No. Thank you, Deacon.’

‘My, oh, my, there is hope for you yet.’

He disappeared again. Finished dressing.

‘Let's go catch a killer or two.’

Killer? He didn't look like he could catch another cold the state he was in.

‘I'm driving,’ she said lifting his keys from the table. ‘Are you really going to wear that?’ she indicated the new hat.

‘Don’t tell me you’re a closet Mackem, Deacon?’

‘You’ve managed to get a bit of your old self back, you started dressing nice again and now that.’

‘Mason bought it for this,’ he pulled up the side. They’d shaved his hair away around the wound.

‘You’ve taken the dressing off,’ she shook her head. ‘Men. Come here.’

‘I can’t go into the station with my head all bandaged up, they’ll handcuff me back to that desk.’

‘And wearing that isn’t drawing attention to your head? With a suit?’

‘The whole toon is black and white at the minute with the cup game coming up. I could be showing solidarity.’

‘From a desk on the top floor.’

‘I could borrow one of Scanlan’s fedoras.’

‘Your head is too big.’ He didn’t think she was talking hat size. ‘And he dresses like shit.’

She spammed his hair as best she could to conceal the wound. There was plenty to work with. It felt good to both of them. She gave him his keys back when they were in her car and a mile down the road. He was still suffering too much to be arsed walking back to get his own car from there.

He told her to take the off-ramp into the Metro Centre.

‘You’re visiting the Asda Rawlins was in?’

‘Nope.’

The mall loomed. Maybe that bump on his head had done more damage than could be seen from the outside. She should have clued in when she saw the hat.

‘You have a sudden urge to shop?’

He told her to keep on, pointed her into the Marriott car park opposite. ‘Not retail therapy, Deacon, aqua therapy. I'm going for a swim.’

‘Psychotherapy is what you need and I don’t think you should be going swimming with those wounds.’

He got out.

‘And you don't have a cossy.’

‘I trust in Ted,’ he flashed a snazzy piece of boxer. ‘No one will notice the difference.’ He strode off.

Swimming?

She waited until he was inside then followed him, just in case he hadn’t gone nuts and was up to something.

***

North swam.

He'd always found it the best thing for bad hangovers so maybe it would help with whatever the hospital had pumped into his system. It was also good exercise and it gave him the time and environment in which to think and relax. He always signed up to a private club. The pools were smaller but public baths were too crowded for him these days, no matter what time of the day or night that you showed up. Private was pricier during the day and that kept the numbers down further. Deacon watched from the other side of a glass wall. Several old scars were clearly visible alongside the new on the powerful arms and shoulders that pulled him effortlessly through the water. Water that hid his tears.

His body was run down and his mind dulled by chemicals. He began to concentrate only on his movements as he glided from end to end, focussing on the rhythm. His breathing slipped into a regular pattern. His mind emptied. After several lengths he began to feel a sense of calm that he had not felt since he was last with her. With Sarah. She was right, he had neglected his old routines for too long. She was right about a lot of things. He racked the pace up a notch.

Then another.

And another.

***

‘You nearly sank that large woman towards the end there.’

‘Were you checking up on me? Or just peaking?’ he grinned. It felt good. It felt real. Deacon smiled back.

‘Making sure you didn't drown yourself, more like, the state you are in.’ But he looked different. She studied him, trying to see if he'd topped up with a little something. ‘What do they put in the water back there?’

‘There is a reason why they call them health spas, Deacon. Don’t worry, I’m not on anything stronger than cold medicine. I’ve taken the pledge,’ he held up an arm, oath style.

She took another, long look at him. It was like a bulb inside of him had been replaced with a much higher wattage. Maybe she should take him back to the hospital and get him checked out.

‘I'm still driving,’ she said.

He still felt like shit from this cold. He'd load up on Red Bull at the station. Pick up some Day Nurse. Blast each nostril with Sudafed. Deacon reversed out of the bay. She wondered what had put the spark back in him but didn’t feel comfortable asking. Being honest with herself she was conscious that maybe it wasn’t a ‘what’ but a ‘who’ that she wouldn’t want to hear about. Not that she could imagine North getting so personal but his reaction to the question would be enough for her to know.

‘These posh places, they lay on towels then? I take it you didn't nick somebody else’s?’

‘What do you take me for, Deacon? Of course they lay on towels,’ he chuckled. ‘Not pants though. I've had to go commando.’

She tried not to think of the noises she had heard coming from the bog in his flat that morning.

***

‘Kevin? Thanks for getting back to me.’

James listened to the officious prick wax lyrical. He was different today. He sounded like he might be trying to impress her. She remembered the things North had said the day before and couldn’t help thinking that maybe Kevin had had that wank and had been fantasising about what lay behind the dulcet tones on the other end of the line.

Someone walked over her grave.

‘Hey, no, that's cool. Anything is a great help, we're pretty stuck right now.’ She remembered what North had told her. What the heck. ‘You're my only hope,’ she went all Princess Leia on him.

She could almost hear his chest puffing up as he began to elaborate on his investigations that expanded way beyond the limited base information she had given him to work with. He lost her for a while as he spoke like he was curing cancer about ‘A’ and ‘B’ party numbers, circuits, switches and masts. He talked quickly, excited, proud. James had to get him to give her the Janet and John version. She perked up and grabbed a biro.

‘Kevin, you are a legend.’

Kevin already knew that. He often told those around him. Now he was a legend by appointment to Her Majesty's Constabulary. James felt sorry for his colleagues. He was going to be even more insufferable than he was already.

‘Fantastic. And you can email that to me?’

He went all officious again.

‘Okay, two emails: a password in the second -’

He corrected her.

‘Half a password in the second, the other half you are about to give me over the phone. Excellent.’

It was exhausting talking to him for even a few minutes. She couldn't keep this up for long but she had to admit that he sounded like the kind of guy you needed looking after your data if you didn't want to end up on the six o’clock news because it had been left on the four-thirty from Paddington.

‘Kevin, is it okay to contact you direct if -’

He interrupted her again. James hated being interrupted.

‘Great,’ only a few more seconds, she told herself. We might need his help again. ‘And if anything arises your end, please feel free to get in touch with me,’ she finally got to hang up.

‘You tease,’ said North.

James swivelled round.

‘I thought you were in the hospital?’

‘Touché. How would that look, me putting my feet up after you and Mason did runners? Was that laughing boy on the phone? Has he started stalking you already?’

‘Those doors that keep slamming in our faces,’ said James. ‘He might just have gone and stuck a foot in one for us.’

***

‘What have you got on the shooting?’ said North.

They were all in the small incident room.

‘We are following up a number of reports from MOPs who think they heard or saw the shooter at over a dozen different locations, we have people going door to door at all of them, we are collecting CCTV from the area, we have people checking footage from the TV channel and we are checking out all vantage points onto the bridge but we just don’t have the resources to get anywhere fast. Fully fit and all leave cancelled with everyone working double shifts we wouldn’t have the resources. We really need a break,’ said Mason. ‘The area covers a whole bunch more than a grassy knoll and a book depository and even now they still wonder about that outcome. Our shots could have come from any one of several hundred sources. We have started with the rooftops that line the river to the south and east of the bridge and then we will arc out from the river. We’re told that the types of rifles that fire such rounds mean that it could have been fired from half a mile away which includes blocks of flats up in Gateshead central and if the shot came from a window we are screwed if we don’t pick anything out of the footage or a witness report pays off. Look at all the glass out there, we can’t go inside every home, hotel room, office – you get the picture. The autopsy may help us narrow it some but let’s face it, even with a general direction and some indication of angle of trajectory we'll still be pissing up a rope in the wind on this one. It's obviously professional and even if we find the site I don't expect we'll skip onto some rooftop and find a gun, shell casings and a pile of fag butts lying next to a copy of the
Idiot's Guide to Sharpshooting
all nicely decorated in smudge free prints with a match just waiting in our database. The method of this murder is far removed from Denise Lumsden’s but somehow they are connected and we have to accept that we may never find the man who actually pulled the trigger. We have to focus on whoever ordered it. So let's see what we do have.’

‘James has been looking into Lumsden’s phone records and has uncovered what looks like a network of people operating in small groups, each with a group leader, and with one person in overall charge,’ said North.

‘You can tell all this just from her phone records?’

‘James hit it off with a man who can. He used the half dozen numbers in James’ phone, but the key was the number Rawlins dialled from the Pond House – a number also in Lumsden’s phone. That number belongs to whoever’s in charge – we are calling it the master – and it lead us to a bunch of others. James’ man was able to isolate phone numbers into groups by the calls they made and their calls covered a hefty chunk of urban area. All the numbers are dead and all were unregistered mobiles. Not one had ever communicated with a number we could get a handle on and they all went offline after a text from the master phone the night Denise Lumsden was found dead.’

‘What did it say?’ asked Mason.

‘The phone company do not keep records of any deleted text messages at this time,’ said North.

‘This all has to relate to the drugs,’ said James. ‘Why else would such a communication network exist? The ring-leader was communicating only with group leaders who, in turn, each communicated with a handful of dealers who are probably selling on to smaller fry, outside of their network, who are then selling to users. The higher up the chain, the more distance there is from the streets. They all probably have new phones already, and are up and running, business as usual, sans Lumsden.’

‘There are no other numbers to go on? No live ones?’ asked Mason.

James shook her head.

‘I still don’t understand how you can draw such conclusions from dead mobile phones with just one user name.’

James looked at North. He gave her the nod.