‘Was she breathing though?’ Amina said dramatically, clutching Rabia’s arm.
‘Course she was, you div, or they’d have used the oxygen.’
‘Did you see anyone else?’ Rachel asked the girls. ‘Hear anyone? A car driving off?’ Had she been attacked where she was found or dumped in the alley afterwards?
They shook their heads.
‘Do you all know Shirelle?’ Rachel asked.
Everyone nodded.
‘She’s a local,’ Mels said.
And a drug pusher, Rachel thought. Did they all know that too?
‘Are you aware of anyone who wished her harm?’
No one spoke.
‘Any boyfriend, partner?’
Mels shook her head. ‘She used to come in with Victor,’ she said. ‘Not for a while though.’
There was a moment’s quiet – news of the double murder had been released late that afternoon. Another shock for the community.
‘Maybe she shot them, Victor and that,’ Amina said, a thrill dancing in her eyes, like it wasn’t real, unaffected by seeing the mess that someone had made of Shirelle’s face.
‘Don’t be thick,’ Rabia nudged her friend.
‘Do you know anything about that?’ Rachel said to Amina.
‘No.’
‘Who’d want to hurt Shirelle?’ Rachel said, looking around.
‘The EBA,’ Rabia said. ‘They’re stirring things up. People say we need to defend ourselves. This is our estate as well.’
‘That sort of talk just makes things worse,’ Mrs Muhammad said. ‘One lot of hotheads after another.’
‘No, Ma,’ Rabia said, ‘we need protection. You know what they say, take the town back for the British.’
‘You’re British,’ her mother said.
‘Try telling them that!’ Rabia said.
‘The police are here to protect you,’ Rachel said.
‘Oh, great. Like you did in the riots?’ The girl’s tone was sarcastic.
Eleven years ago, Rachel thought, Rabia would have been a little kid but she’d probably grown up hearing all about it.
‘You think it was a racist attack?’ Rachel said.
‘She’s mixed race, worst of both worlds,’ Amina chipped in.
Liam Kelly shrugged.
It was all speculation, bound to happen but she’d got nothing she could take back to the inquiry.
‘Anyone think of anything else, hear anything, call me,’ Rachel said.
‘Have you any more news about Rick – Richard?’ Liam Kelly said.
‘We have charged two men with his murder.’
‘The Perrys?’ Connor said.
Rachel inclined her head slightly but did not commit herself verbally. ‘It’ll be made public in the morning.’
After leaving them, Rachel rang in and reported the serious assault of a person of interest, then called the hospital and left her details so they could contact her once Shirelle was fit to be interviewed.
Sean had left her a voicemail message: We’re at the pub if you fancy a drink on the way home.
She did. A drink with her husband at the end of a long, long day.
Rachel walked round from the pub car park and in the main entrance to the Ladies where she gave her hair a quick brush-through and applied some lip gloss. She’d do. Sean probably wouldn’t notice. He thought she was gorgeous, told her so at regular intervals.
She went through to the bar and spotted him playing darts with a couple of the lads. She signalled to him to see if he wanted a drink. He shook his head, raised a full pint. Rachel bought herself a large red wine, had a sip then set it on a table near the lads and went out to the beer garden for a fag.
And found her mother.
‘What the f- are you doing here?’ Rachel said.
Sharon, wearing some sort of tiger-striped fake-fur jacket, was leaning back against the wall, fag in hand, and a drink on the table in front of her. She cut her eyes at Rachel.
‘Sean was coming for a drink, he invited me along.’
You invited yourself, more like.
Rachel didn’t know what to say, couldn’t bring herself to say what she really felt: Fuck off and leave me alone. When I said I’d meet you, I didn’t mean every other bloody night.
Instead she remembered telling her mother to wait for an invitation. Rachel needed the distance. Twenty years Sharon had been on the lam, she couldn’t just pick up the reins like it had never happened.
‘He ring you up, did he?’ Rachel couldn’t leave it. She struck her lighter, a tug of wind snuffed out the flame.
‘I rang him, as it happens, see how you all were. He said he was coming here.’
‘I’ve no cash,’ Rachel said, ‘if that’s what you’re angling for.’
‘How dare you,’ Sharon said, her face alive with outrage.
‘Just a few free drinks, was it?’
‘You little bitch.’
‘Listen, you… you can’t just waltz back in,’ Rachel said.
‘You think you’re better than me,’ Sharon said, ‘you think because you’ve got a job as a copper and a fancy flat and a few bob you can look down on me.’
‘It’s nothing to do with-’
Sharon interrupted, ‘How could you do it? Your own brother, flesh and blood. That gain you a step up the ladder, did it?’
What the fuck? ‘Who told you?’ Rachel said.
‘That doesn’t matter, what matters-’
‘Who told you?’ Rachel shouted. Sharon was not meant to know. She was a virtual stranger, this woman, and Rachel was certainly not ready to share something so personal, so important, with her. And Sharon hadn’t seen Alison, so…
‘Sean,’ Sharon said, ‘he thought I already knew. I should’ve known. My own daughter dobbing in my own son. Grassing up her little brother.’
Rachel’s cheeks were burning, her chest felt tight. Her hand was shaking as she pointed two fingers, ciggie between them, at Sharon. ‘He killed someone,’ Rachel said.
‘He was looking after you, by all accounts,’ she retorted.
‘By taking a life? By making it look like I put him up to it? I’d have been in there with him if Sean hadn’t found I’d an alibi.’ The taxi driver who had taken a very drunken Rachel home while Dominic was kicking seven shades of shit out of her ex-lover Nick Savage.
‘This fellow, he’d tried to have you killed, Sean says, this lawyer bloke.’
‘That doesn’t make it right,’ Rachel said.
‘Grassing on your family’s not right, neither. Not in my book.’
‘It’s got fuck all to do with you.’
‘I’m still your mother,’ Sharon said. ‘When it suits. Not for twenty years, you weren’t. You can’t be meddling like this.’
‘Meddling! You’re a selfish little shit, Rachel, you always were. And this, this really takes the biscuit.’ She threw her tab end down, snatched up her drink and went inside, heels smacking on the flagstones.
Rachel stared, head raised, blinking back tears. She wasn’t supposed to be here, not like this, not with these people. She’d spent years building a life as different as possible. She’d escaped Langley, escaped her family, and made her own way. But they’d all come crawling after her, zombies who wouldn’t stay buried, determined to drag her back to the fold. Her mother, Dominic, Sean, they wouldn’t let her go. Bloodsuckers. She didn’t want to be that Rachel Bailey, their Rachel Bailey. That wasn’t her any more.
It was hard to breathe, as though there was no air. She looked at the sky above. Only clouds there, sickly orange clouds and nothing else.
21
Gill was at her desk, trying to keep abreast of the multiple strands of the three murder inquiries and make sure her files were up to date, when her phone rang. The ringtone was loud in the empty office, the only background noise the whirr of the computer fan.
‘Gill Murray,’ she answered.
‘Mrs Murray, this is Secure XX, we’ve a call alert through from your security system. Would you like us to check it out?’
Shit! Gill was still embarrassed by the encounter with the local bobbies and would rather not have anyone else coming up to the house until she’d established what was going on. Probably a fox, anyway, setting off the alarm at the gate. She’d closed the gate after Dave’s recent antics and activated that zone. Sammy was at Orla’s tonight so it couldn’t be him.