Back at the house, her windpipe tight from the run and the sweat now cold on her back, she found Mitch and the two others had forced an entry. Harder these days when everything was made from PVC and double glazing.
‘Check down here,’ Mitch said to the uniforms, ‘we’ll take upstairs.’
The stairs led up to a short landing, where the door straight ahead was most likely the bathroom. Rachel waited to one side while Mitch swung it open. Empty. Two steps took them up on to the main landing with three doors, back, middle and front. All closed. Mitch gestured to Rachel that he’d take the front ones. Keane lived alone as far as their intel went, an assumption that was reinforced when Mitch gave her the thumbs-up from his end of the corridor.
Rachel opened the door of the back bedroom on to a small space that smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. The single bed was rumpled, the ashtray on the floor at its side half full. Clothes, men’s clothes, were draped over the chair by the window to her right. An old-fashioned wooden wardrobe on the wall opposite was the only other furniture. Rachel walked round the bed to reach it. She was almost there when she heard the rustle of movement behind her, felt the change in the air as a man darted out from behind the bedroom door and ran.
Rachel yelled, ‘Stop! Police, stop,’ and flew after him, aware of Mitch in her wake.
He raced downstairs and had reached the front door when Rachel, halfway down, jumped the remaining distance. She felt the giddy sensation of flying and then the solid impact of the man as she landed on his back, smashing him into the door, banging her knees and shoulder.
‘Bloody hell!’ said one of the uniforms.
‘Lara Croft, innit,’ the other one added.
Rachel ignored the jarring pains and yanked the man around. Slick black hair, red cheeks, startled eyes. The bloke from the CCTV at Bobbins, the one meeting Neil Perry. Greg Tandy. Missing for days. He was twitching, poised to bolt. Rachel shoved him round again. ‘Hands behind your back. Now. Do it.’ She snapped the cuffs on, her hands shaking from the adrenaline.
After losing Stanley Keane, Rachel took great satisfaction in arresting Tandy on suspicion of firearms offences. And sending him to the police station with the uniforms.
Rachel and Mitch searched the house. They found a substantial quantity of illegal drugs, glassine bags containing white powder, various forms of cannabis and an array of brightly coloured pills.
‘Pick and mix,’ said Rachel.
In the back bedroom, on top of the wardrobe, they found something else even more interesting.
Rachel rang the boss. ‘We’re at Stanley Keane’s,’ she said. ‘Guess who’s been sleeping over?’
‘Goldilocks?’
‘Greg Tandy,’ said Rachel, ‘we just picked him up. Greg Tandy and a bag full of guns.’
Godzilla called Rachel in as soon as she got back. Janet was already there.
‘The gun we want, it’s not with the cache of arms, so it’s still missing,’ the boss said.
Rachel had a thought. ‘It could be at Tandy’s own place.’
‘We’ll look, I’ll apply for a warrant,’ the boss said. ‘Janet, can you step out a minute?’
Janet nodded, no argument.
Once she’d left, Her Maj said, ‘Searches at Shirelle Young’s turned up Class A and Class Bs as well as some unclassified, Paradise and meow meow or some version of. From what you told me earlier I think we can show that she was dealing. Same as the drugs you recovered from Stanley Keane’s house.’
‘He was supplying Shirelle,’ Rachel said, just like she’d guessed. ‘Shirelle gets the goods from Keane’s and goes off on her rounds. Maybe Victor and Lydia were one of her stops.’
‘Never mix business and pleasure,’ Gill said.
‘And all that stuff about not seeing Victor since January, that’s bollocks. She’s just trying to cover her tracks. Though she’s in the clear for the murders.’ Rachel thought for a moment. ‘Greg Tandy knows the Perry brothers, he sells them the gun, he also knows Stanley Keane – well enough to be staying there.’ She considered the connections.
‘Why did Tandy leave home?’ Godzilla said. ‘And when? Suspicious to do so when he’s out on licence, as is hoiking a case of firearms about. Find out.’
If Neil Perry reminded Rachel of a malevolent teddy bear, Greg Tandy made her think of a ventriloquist’s dummy. The large round eyes under the monobrow, the dark slicked-back hair, round cheeks splotched with colour, too many teeth in his mouth. He stank of fags, and he’d buggered up his lungs with it because he wheezed and whistled with each breath. Prison, one of the few public institutions where you could still smoke.
‘Mr Tandy, you have been arrested on suspicion of supplying a firearm and for possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.’ She read him the caution and then said, ‘Before we begin, do you understand the charge?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘On Tuesday the eighth of May you met Neil Perry at Bobbins public house, can you confirm that?’
‘No comment,’ he said.
‘You know Mr Perry?’
‘No comment.’
So that was how it was going to be.
‘Did you supply Neil Perry with a handgun?’
‘No comment.’
And so it went. He offered no comment to all Rachel’s questions. It didn’t matter whether she asked him about his move from the marital home, or the weapons, or his movements over the last few days. In between the repetitive replies was the hiss and squeak of his breath.
Rachel wondered how Mrs Tandy put up with the sound. Sean snored when he’d had a skinful, but a sharp elbow was enough to get him to roll over and pack it in. But this chronic noise, it’d drive you barmy. Mind you, Mrs Tandy had had the bed to herself for the past few years. Maybe she kicked him out for disturbing her sleep.
Rachel kept going. ‘I am now showing Mr Tandy a CCTV recording, exhibit number JS18. This is you on the tape, is that correct?’
‘No comment.’
‘And here you leave the bar with Mr Perry and go into the men’s toilets. Can you tell me why?’
‘No comment.’ All that he said. On and on, with his clownish face and his toothy mouth and the rattling breath.
20
‘I’ll not keep you long,’ Gill told the team together, ‘but I want to make sure you’ve all got your eyes on the ball. One slip, one cock-up and we risk losing all the hours you put in, all the work you’ve done. Perrys have been charged for the Kavanagh murder, they’re up in court in the morning, we ask for them to be remanded in custody and then we arrest them on new charges for Victor and Lydia and begin interviews.’
‘The only thing we don’t have from the confessions is the gun,’ Janet said.
‘Protecting their source on that,’ the boss said. ‘What about motive for the double murder, any thoughts?’
‘If Victor and Lydia were dealing,’ said Pete, ‘maybe they were taking liberties, hands in the till and Williams wanted to teach them a lesson.’
‘Bit extreme,’ Gill said, ‘a rap over the knuckles would be enough. You think he put out a contract on the couple? We haven’t found any intelligence that links the Perry brothers to Williams.’
‘What about switching it round?’ said Lee. ‘A robbery, the twins decide to help themselves but Victor and Lydia resist. Bang. Bang.’
‘They were sitting down, weren’t they?’ Rachel said. ‘Not like there’d been a struggle, or either of them made a run for it.’
‘If someone is pointing a gun, you’re not going to run, that’s an invitation to open fire,’ Kevin said.
‘True,’ Gill nodded to Kevin, ‘but also true there was no sign of a fight.’