Force Of Habit v5 by Robert Bartlett Read Free Book Online

you let them walk.
    ‘This morning a man was released by the courts after a year on remand,’ he stared down at Judge Beech, ‘and by tea time the woman who had put him there had been found dead, violently assaulted and murdered. You are all doing just fine and dandy, oblivious to the shit you kick up and leave in your wakes. Try and think about the consequences of your actions for a change. Try and think about more than just yourselves.’
    He walked off to a deafening silence. Superintendent Ron Egan was waiting in the wings.
    ‘Is it your life’s goal to piss-off absolutely everybody on the planet?’
    North grinned.
    ‘And you finally found the soap then? Its amazing the lengths some people will go to for a medal, and I have to say that you do scrub up well. Now you only look half dead.’
    ‘You’re just jealous of my rugged good looks.’
    ‘Your face is grey.’
    ‘I’ll get some St Tropez.’
    ‘You’ve been gallivanting about in that weather when you know that the doctor says you need another month.’
    ‘Another month of light duties and I wont be fit for shit. How do people spend their days under artificial light with the air pumped in? It’s not natural. And its not helping any of us me pushing paper around a desk day-in, day-out. There’s only so much I can achieve backstage. How did you know, anyway?’
    He ignored the question. ‘And you’re no use to any of us if you have to be pensioned off. Rawlins was in prison when the woman was killed, wasn’t she?’
    North’s brow furrowed.
    ‘Don’t come the innocent. You believe Rawlins couldn’t have killed Denise Lumsden and yet you just as good as told the whole city that he did.’
    ‘I never said any such thing and I can’t help what they infer from what I did, now, can I?’ he smiled. ‘Who told you? James?’
    ‘DS Scanlan. He thought maybe you needed...’ North saw that he was deciding how to put a more diplomatic take on what Arnie had said, ‘some R and R.’
    ‘I can imagine. What else?’
    ‘He said that you looked like hell and smelled like the Bigg Market at chucking-up time. How did you get here by the way?’
    ‘Cab.’
    ‘You better not be driving under the influence. There’s those just waiting for an excuse, North. Any excuse will do.’
    ‘Cab.’
    Egan didn’t look convinced.
    ‘So you had people out in the pouring rain staking out a boozer for a man with the perfect alibi, who you had no proof was even in there, nor any real reason to believe that he was in there.’
    ‘ Had? You pulled them off?’
    North’s high plummeted.
    The Super held his palms up and shook his head. ‘ Have. I told Mason and James to stay put and sent them DS Scanlan as support for being such a little bitch. DC James is another member of your growing fan club, by the way.’
    ‘I’m the best education she’ll ever have.’
    ‘She thinks you should be thrown out on your ear and she isn’t alone. The Chief is beginning to think the Met are taking the piss loaning you out to us. You know how proud he is. He doesn’t take kindly to being laughed at.’
    ‘Good, isn’t it? By now I’ll be underestimated by all. Getting stabbed my first week was the best thing that could have happened to me.’
    ‘You’re crazy. Well, as you’ve managed to wangle your way onto the case you can tag along on it for now, but you best make headway fast. A death like this will be all over the media and the Chief will want media friendly people in front of them,’ he paused and went all serious again. ‘And we have bigger fish to fry.’
    North nodded.
    ‘Forensics are at the flat. So far they’ve found twenty-two grand, mainly in bundles of ten and twenty pound notes, rolled up in food bags and stuffed inside frozen chip bags. You think Rawlins is on his toes because he knows something?’
    North nodded, his thoughts on the cash. More questions piled up.
    ‘He could have gone into shock,’ said the Super. ‘By all accounts the scene is enough