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  FORCE OF HABIT

  Robert Bartlett

  Force Of Habit

  Copyright © 2012 Robert Bartlett

  All rights reserved.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author.

  Contact: [email protected]

  For Sonya

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  ONE

  The weather was perfect. It had been pissing down all day. Only those with the most desperate needs would be forced out onto these streets. Those who were addicted to one of the very few commodities that couldn’t be gotten on credit and their last fix was fading fast. They needed cash right now and couldn’t afford to be choosy about how they got it.

  Adrenaline coursed through his veins, white knuckles pressing sweaty palms into cold, hard plastic as he steered his way through dark, narrow streets of boarded windows and graffiti tagged doors. Anticipation prickled his skin and quickened his breath but the light in his eyes dimmed when he turned a corner to see the backside of a pair of perfectly formed jeans clambering into a car parked up ahead. Most of these girls were too skinny on account of the drugs. The drugs gave them a bad appetite, bad figure, bad skin, bad teeth - the skanky fuckers - but this one, this one might even have passed for normal. She must be new to the game.

  As he drew closer a taller, older woman looked longingly, almost pleadingly, at him. He ignored her and looked into the other car. In back a bleach-blond that couldn’t have been more than seventeen was only feet away from him. Close enough to reach out and touch. She was wiggling that arse in between a couple of kids who didn’t look much older than she did, neither budging an inch, forcing her to squeeze in tight.

  The pair in front leered through intoxicated eyes. The rain drowned out their nervous laughter. They looked like kids using cash from the bank of mum and dad to expand their education beyond the university walls. His fingers blanched as they tightened up another notch on the wheel. Rage swelled in his skull. A minute earlier and that could have been...

  ‘Arseholes!’, he cried, slamming a fist against the wheel. ‘Fucking little arseholes!’

  Out on the pavement the older woman delved between the coins and condoms in her bag and noted the number as they drove off. She had tried to stop her, there was no telling how carried away four young men full of raging testosterone might get, but with the money they’d agreed there was no way she could have persuaded her not to go. They’d even offered to more than double it for a session with the pair of them, ‘you and your mum,’ they’d said, howling, the cheeky little sods, but she had told the girl she was strictly one-on-one. She hadn't seen the second car until it was too late and now she watched the tail lights of both disappear and she was alone again.

  He caught a final glimpse of the blond as the kids roared past him in a brand new mini.

  ‘Pieces of shit!’

  His clenched fists barely managed to steer him around the next corner. A moan started somewhere deep down inside him and grew. By the time he pulled over and stopped, engine running, still clutching the wheel, saliva was dribbling down his chin. He let out a yell that was deafening inside such a small space. His whole body started to judder. He reached over, popped the glove box and rummaged, blindly, until his fingers grasped a plastic container. It rattled as he wrestled with the lid, unable to manipulate the childproof top. He started smacking it against the dash until it broke and pills spilled out. He let out another yell, face crimson, the veins in his temples bulging. Out of breath he sucked in air, again and again. The fog began to lift. That’s it, breathe. Breathe. He had to remain in control. At least for a few minutes longer. In. Out. In.

  His groping fingers touched on a group of pills on the passenger seat and he pushed them into his mouth. He kept breathing, long, deep and hard. Focus returned to his vision and he stared at the pills on the floor. The urge for clarity returned and he fought the temptation to swallow those in his mouth. It would spoil everything, a blocker entering the maelstrom that was his blood stream, plummeting into his heart and pushing tranquillity up into his brain.

  He lowered the window and spat them out. The rain was cool on his face. He kept spitting until he was sure his mouth was clear then let the rain wash in. It was best when his system was clean. Everything was more clear then. More heightened. And he wanted to savour every moment. He had to relax. He had to maintain control. Control was everything. He had to hold it together just a little longer. The waiting was almost over. He just had to get her to the place.

  He focused on the image of the older woman he had seen. Every one of her forty odd years had been deposited onto her face with compound interest. That was partly why she was out here on a shit night like tonight, there were less punters, but even less competition. But mostly she was just desperate. He relied on it. He came out on nights like tonight to fulfil a desire that couldn’t be satiated any other way. To be out here now you had to have hit rock bottom. They had no one to turn to. No one to help them. Their lives were right royally fucked and chances were that they’d lost touch with or been abandoned by anyone who ever gave a shit.

  He began picking up the pills, slowly, one by one, until they were all back in the glove box next to the broken container. He sat there. Assessed his situation. He was calm. He was ready.

  When he rounded the block the vice clamped itself back onto his head - she was no longer there. His pulse bounced back up. He drove slowly, peering through the torrent into the darkness. She emerged from the shadows into his headlights, arms wrapped tightly around a long black coat that was her only defence against the elements. She looked like a widow at a funeral not somebody plying her body on a pavement.

  He slowed the car and she quickened to its side, like she was scared some other young thing might suddenly rush from the shadows and earn her money instead. She was pathetic. He lowered the window and her face pushed into the car. Her old, skanky face. If it wasn't so wet out there the polyfilla on it would crack. He’d soon wipe that false smile right off of it.

  She gave him the price of using that face but he couldn’t have fully masked his disgust because she opened the top of her coat where co-operative underwear thrust what bosom she had up into what she hoped was a tempting cleavage. The skin on her body was in stark contrast to her face. Smooth. Unblemished. He took it in, the excitement of what was finally to be unleashed flushing his face.

  She sensed h
er moment and stepped back letting the coat fall aside. The skirt was short and tight, her legs long and bare. His eyes came to rest between them. She gave him the price for that too and he nodded, sucking in the potpourri of cigarettes and cheap perfume she brought with her. He always made a bog standard arrangement up front, putting out some personality to put them at ease. They mustn’t suspect what was coming. Their fear had to be sudden and prolonged.

  He turned to the old trollop. His eyes shone as he gave her a reassuring smile and a fistful of notes that she quickly squirreled away. He eyed the cheap charm bracelet on her wrist. It would make a fitting souvenir. Back out on the rain lashed pavement there was no one to take any notice as the brake lights winked and the car disappeared round the corner.

  TWO

  North killed the engine and the thump of the Ramones was replaced by rain drumming into the chassis. Dead ahead a blurred column of white rose into the gloom, broken in those places where the lights had been smashed in the tower block stairwell despite their vandal proof casings. Drugs arrived at their final destinations in these stairwells, where small wraps were swapped for small notes. Some sold themselves in the same stairwells to pay for it. Now another one of them was dead.

  He threw the door shut, pushing the key fob as he walked through the rain, away from the block of flats towards a row of maisonettes. There was a limp to his gait as he passed walls tagged with graffiti, thinking that no matter what kind of shit you found yourself living in there was always those that couldn’t help but make things worse.

  The cold and rain suppressed the smell from rotting vats of communal garbage but he gagged stepping into the concrete stairwell as the odours of piss and disinfectant competed for his attention. Cigarette glows revealed a group of kids loitering in the tenement stairwell opposite. What looked like the runt of the litter cycled by.

  ‘The feds won't let no one in,’ said the runt.

  ‘I’m a fed.’

  ‘You don’t look like no fed,’ the runt looked him up and down. ‘You look like a bag of shite.’

  North turned away to hide his smile and came to a halt in front of a PCW who was keeping all at bay.

  ‘The kid is right,’ she said with a look like he was fouling up the stairwell even further. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, too, PCW Deacon.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I thought you were still on light duties?’ She took another look up and down. ‘You look like you should still be on light duties.’

  He was thin and pale, hadn't shaved in days and his thick, black hair was getting long and could do with a comb. He'd worn the same jeans and hooded fleece for the best part of a month.

  ‘I guess the brass have temporarily downgraded dead junkies into the light duties category. One minute I’m surfing for apartments on the Red Sea, the next ...’ he opened his arms to the surroundings. ‘Seems half the station has flu and the other half are wishing they had the flu they're so stretched so I've been sent to go through the motions on the OD.’

  ‘Something has gotten lost in translation,’ said Deacon.

  North had to stop himself from taking the stairs three at a time. He stepped out onto an open landing that accessed the second floor two-storey maisonettes on his left. A fluorescent yellow jacket pinpointed the one he wanted. He offered his badge and nodded to the PC standing at the door.

  ‘You look as rough as a bear’s arse, constable.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not seeing your own reflection in the window, sir?’

  ‘I'm going to get a complex,’ said North. The PC was visibly shaking. ‘Serious though, you should be tucked up in bed. Looks like you’re about to join our ever expanding sick list.’

  ‘Are you it?’ The PC peered back along the landing. ‘Where's the cavalry? Our shift finished nearly two hours ago. I'm going to catch my death out here.’

  ‘They've hauled everyone in for Operation Orange.’

  The PC snorted. ‘Like going out mob handed onto the estates for a few hours here and there for a week will reassure the public on all the gang trouble.’

  ‘You go swap with Deacon, get out of the rain for a bit.’ North looked the maisonette door over as he wrestled his fingers into a pair of white latex gloves. ‘How long since the paramedics left?’ he called after the PC.

  ‘Not long. About fifteen minutes.’

  North stepped inside.

  Blood.

  Lots of blood.

  It had been trodden into the carpet the length of the hall. He examined the inside of the door. There were no marks that couldn’t be remedied with a lick of one-coat. The lock was intact. No one had forced their way inside.

  An open door revealed the kitchen to his left. The stairs were on his right. The only other room downstairs was dead ahead at the other end of the trail of blood. She was on the floor. And something had definitely gotten lost in translation.

  ‘Jesus.’

  The body was a macabre pin-cushion. North counted thirty-six hypodermic syringes driven into the torso, arms and legs, barrels and plungers at all angles, some lodged in firm, others dangling, the needle points clinging just beneath the surface, pulling at the skin. Some lay on the floor, their tips broken off when they had been rammed into bone.

  She was naked, lying on her back, arms and legs spread apart. Most of her blood seemed to be on the outside. It was hard to tell her age as her severely battered face was cut, bruised, swollen and bloody. North squatted as close as he could to get a better look. Her nose looked broken. The hair, where it wasn’t matted in blood, was shoulder length, straight, dyed black, grey roots. Clumps of it were on the floor. Her legs also bore cuts and bruises. So did the arms. Both bore evidence of having been tied at some point. The torso was the same. There were several red welts that could have been made by scalds or burns.

  Bloody clothing was strewn about the place, some of it clearly having been ripped from her with some force. A piece of wood lay in the blood near the body. It looked like a chair leg. There were splashes and trails of blood on the walls and paintwork. North skirted the thick, sticky mass. On one side the saturated carpet had been pressed flat by the medics where they had checked for life to confirm what their eyes had already told them. If the killer had left footprints to the door the paramedics had covered them. They couldn’t have avoided it. North called forensics. They would be in here for days.

  He moved into the surroundings. The place was spartan. Cheap. A worn, leather sofa along the wall to his left, a pile of trash mags, a dining table in one corner and a TV in the other. There were no photos. No knick-knacks.

  A chair was pushed slightly back from the dining table, just like it would be if the occupant had got up to go answer the door. Another was lying on the floor, a leg missing, clean wood showing where a recent break had occurred. The table surface was cluttered. There was a bottle of vodka on the left next to a McDonald’s bag. The booze was generic, supermarket saver. Some of it was in a glass. Directly in front of the pushed back chair was a set of kitchen scales, a pair of scissors, paper and rolls of foil and cellophane. A number of small wraps had been prepped. The scales and table were covered in specks of what looked like cocaine but that would be like the off-license down the road stocking up on Moet instead of White Lightning. It just wouldn’t make sense.

  There were two open plastic containers. The kind you stuck leftovers in and stashed in your fridge. Both contained white powder. North dapped a pinky into the first and touched his tongue. It was some harmless concoction that was being mixed in with the active ingredient to increase profit margin on a product sold by weight. He tasted from the second container and couldn’t conceal his surprise. He hadn’t seen white heroin since the eighties. This place was being used to cut and pack drugs for sale to the end user. He opened the burger bag. It was filled with street ready wraps. North estimated a hundred.

  He went upstairs.

  Upstairs was as basic as down. There were no
goods of any value and her clothes were old. Primark. There was also male clothing but the only name on all the paperwork he found was Miss D Lumsden. Denise. It was all utility stuff, no driving license, no passport.

  She had a post office account with twenty-two pounds eleven pence in it, at the latest statement, the only transactions being regular monthly cash deposits that covered the outgoing rent and bills. The bulk of the drug money must be going elsewhere.

  He moved back downstairs into the hallway. There was a coat hanging from the banister. Searching the pockets revealed a handbag beneath it. It had a long strap so you could sling it across your front, leaving your hands free for drug couriering. Inside was the usual paraphernalia: pen, paper, tissues, keys, phone, and purse, and there wasn’t much more in the purse than there was in the post office.

  In the kitchen there was a pile of unused betting slips on the worktop. No vice had gone unexplored in here. Under the worktop an open black bin liner sat where a washing machine was meant to go. It contained a number of empty vodka and lemonade bottles, soup cans and fag packets. The diet of the addict.

  A Take That calendar was pinned to the back of the door. The current month was displayed beneath a glossy of Robbie. Two of the days had two times written in each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. There was a sequence of four crosses marked on consecutive days between these two days. He unhooked the calendar and leafed through. The same pattern went all the way back to January. Next month was blank. He took out his phone and dictated all he’d seen into an app. He was reciting information found in Denise Lumsden’s phone when the front door opened. PCW Deacon resembled a drowned rat.

  ‘Thanks a lot, North. If I catch cold out here -’

  ‘Relax, you can't catch cold just from being out in the rain. It's a virus. Chummy already has a virus so I had to get him to bugger off in case I caught it.’

  ‘You’re all heart. You rushed off before I could fill you in. I've been called out here a few times before, to this same flat. To domestics. The boyfriend used to get high or drunk on whatever he had gotten his hands on at the time and beat the crap out of her. Nothing remotely like this, though. I couldn’t even say for sure if that is her.’