Ruthless (31 page)

‘I’ve an officer in there. I don’t know her status,’ said Gill, ‘and until I do I don’t want anyone wading in and putting her at increased risk.’

‘Understood, negotiation first of course,’ she said, ‘but we can get floor plans to your ARU.’

‘Yes, please do that,’ Gill said.

Rapid response protocol was kicking in. Roads being sealed off to isolate the area, residents in nearby buildings evacuated. Had Keane found the safe house? What was his aim? To silence the Tandys? Or was it Rachel he was going after?

Gill paced the room, phone in hand, poised to act as soon as there was word.

‘Walk,’ Rachel said, gesturing to the front door.

He glared at her, defiant. She felt nauseous, tried to swallow but her mouth was parched. Her hand tickled, she glanced down and saw the blood running along the creases in her palm. Love line. Life line.

‘Go on,’ she said, keeping her voice as firm as she could.

‘Or what? You going to shoot me?’ he taunted her.

‘If I have to.’

He didn’t move.

‘It’s over,’ she said. Her head was spinning. If she collapsed … if he got the gun … ‘Walk,’ she said.

He gave her another bitter look. She could see the rage, the tension, bunching the muscles of his face. Then he went ahead along the hallway to the front door.

‘There are officers outside,’ Rachel said, her voice still echoing in her head, her hearing distorted from the blast. ‘Some will be armed.’ He wouldn’t know she was bluffing, had no idea what was happening in the street. Yes, the cavalry might be on their way but the response wouldn’t be instantaneous. ‘No sudden movements. When we get outside you put your hands on your head, d’you understand?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Do you understand?’ she repeated.

‘Yes.’

She held the gun on him as he pulled back the bolts, the ones she had secured when she arrived, then he undid the latch.

He pulled back the door and the brightness of the light hurt her eyes. ‘Hands on head,’ she said.

Janet looked at them, surprise on her face at seeing Connor held at gunpoint. She balked when she saw the blood on Rachel.

‘Connor Tandy,’ Rachel said as they walked him to the car, the howl of sirens growing closer. ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Victor Tosin and Lydia Oluwaseyi. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned—’ she caught her breath, the pain in her arm was changing, a numb tingling like pins and needles replacing the sharp streaks of acute pain, ‘something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Janet opened the rear side door. Rachel still held the gun. ‘Got any ties?’ she said to Janet. They needed to cuff him.

‘In the boot, I’ll get you a bag for that too.’ Janet nodded at the gun. Her face was chalk white, Rachel could see the fear that edged her eyes though to anyone else Janet would appear perfectly calm.

‘Wait there,’ Rachel said to Connor, pushing the door closed. She felt her vision pitch and swim, tried to blink it away and concentrate.

Janet opened the car boot, Rachel moved so she could see her. ‘What the fuck was that?’ she hissed at Janet. She looked down at her blouse, the bloodstain growing. ‘Jesus, Janet?’

‘I didn’t know he was armed, you never said—’

‘I couldn’t say, he was pointing a gun at me.’

‘Are you all right?’ Janet said.

‘Apart from being shot, you mean?’

Janet’s face grew narrower, pinched. ‘“Migraine,” you said. Migraine means come and get me, migraine means I want to go home, I want a lift home now. “Like Taisie,” you said.’

‘If you’d used your imagination—’ Rachel said.

‘I came, didn’t I? I’m here. Look, I’m really sorry—’

A noise made Rachel spin round. Connor was climbing out of the car.

‘Oi,’ she said, ‘get your hands on your—’

He dived at her, the light glinting on a wide arced blade that he swung at Rachel, cutting through her sleeve, her right arm. And he legged it.

Janet shouted, ‘Throw the gun into the car!’ Then to Connor, ‘Stop! Stop now!’

He was halfway down the street.

Rachel ran.

Unable to move her left arm like a piston as she normally would, she found herself lurching to the side and almost stumbling into the walls and railings that fronted the Regency properties. She saw Connor dive into an alleyway. She could hear Janet behind her, the ring of her heels on the pavement and her voice shouting details of their location for the back-up.

The alley joined a wider passageway that ran behind the houses. Connor turned left. Seeing him increase the distance between them, Rachel willed herself on. Her head was thudding, the air in her lungs burned as though she was breathing fire, her eyesight kept blurring.

Wheelie bins, blue, brown and black, were dotted along the path in twos and threes. A cat skittered out of the way, as Connor belted along. Sirens were upon them.

Rachel looked ahead to the end where the alley met the road and saw vertical lines. She blinked and realized it was a gate. The alley was gated as a safety measure. Connor was trapped.

He hurled himself at the wrought iron and tried to get a purchase, to climb, but slithered down again and again.

Rachel was closer. Ten yards, five. A stitch crippling in her side. When she stopped running, just feet from him, he turned, the knife shiny and speckled red where it had sliced into her arm.

‘Drop the knife,’ she gasped.

He was panting, sweat on his skin, his face reddened with exertion.

Rachel saw Janet beyond the gates, she must’ve gone round the other way. The sirens were too loud for Connor to hear her approach.

‘Drop the knife,’ Rachel said.

‘You want it? Come and get it.’

Rachel’s breath caught, she felt the world tilt. She bent slightly, putting her right hand, the one she could still feel though sticky with blood from the cut, on her right knee for support.

Janet reached the far side of the gate. ‘Connor,’ she shouted behind him. He twisted round and she squirted his eyes with CS gas.

Connor screamed and dropped the knife, raised his hands and rubbed at his eyes.

‘Put your hands through the gate,’ Janet yelled.

‘My eyes,’ he squealed, ‘I can’t see! My fucking eyes.’

‘Hands. Now. Put your hands through the gate,’ Janet repeated.

He did as she said, tears streaming down his face, coughing and swinging his head as if he could dislodge the blindness caused by the chemical.

Janet snapped the plastic cuffs on, effectively tying him to the bars.

Rachel saw the vans pull up on the roadside near Janet. The men piling out. The sirens cut out with one last ‘whoop’ and she heard shouting, glimpsed Mrs Tandy dropping her shopping bags, yelling, and one of the men restraining her.

Rachel moved to lean against the wall, head spinning in time to the blue flashing lights, filling with bubbles, so dizzy, and her knees dissolving. Everything falling away.

31

Janet waited for Rachel in A&E. If she never had to see the inside of a hospital again it’d be too soon. They should have given her a uniform by now, or a mop and bucket. First there’d been her own near-death experience, belly sliced open requiring multiple surgeries, then once she was up and running, her mother had collapsed at home, thankfully having enough time and wit to call Janet for help. After the emergency appendectomy Dorothy had needed a hysterectomy. Then there had been Olivia. And now Rachel.

Janet clung to the fact that Rachel had been upright and able to go after Connor. Surely it couldn’t have been anything major if she could run like that? But what if the bullet had nicked a lung, or some minor debris had worked its way round to her heart or brain?

Janet got to her feet, walked over and stared unseeing at a noticeboard. Elise hadn’t hesitated when Janet heard Rachel needed her. ‘Go, Mum,’ she’d said, ‘go.’

But a thousand worries flew through Janet’s head:
I should be here with you. Family first. I might be putting myself in harm’s way.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Elise said, sitting up straighter, ‘go on.’ Elise understood the friendship, how much it meant, how deep it went. Something Janet’s mother had never been able to fathom. Because Janet and Rachel were so very different. Rachel with her devil-may-care approach, her appalling choice in men (though maybe Sean was a turning point), her indifference to kids, her dysfunctional family; then Janet – daughter of teachers, hard-working, reliable, solid, settled. Until the Andy business. The one definitive thing she and Rachel had in common was the job, love of the job, commitment, compassion. You had to have that to survive in the syndicate.

Janet could not imagine work without Rachel, though in time if Rachel passed her sergeant’s exam the process of moving up and away would start.

So Janet had gone to Rachel. Ade would hate it, she could hear him now. ‘You’re a middle-aged woman, Janet, for Christ’s sake. The older you get, the less sense you seem to have. Did you think about anyone else? About your daughters?’

Gill wouldn’t be best pleased either. Janet’s stomach turned over at the thought of facing her.

She had called Gill from outside the safe house, reporting the sound of gunfire and the call from Rachel.

‘I’ll organize an armed response unit and a hostage negotiator,’ Gill said. ‘Do we know who is in there?’

‘Not sure,’ Janet had said, ‘once I get—’

‘No, Janet. You withdraw now to a safe distance. Stay well back. You don’t go anywhere near—’

Janet clenched her teeth. ‘Sorry? Gill, you’re breaking up. Can you repeat that? Gill … I can’t hear you, Gill?’ Then she had switched the phone off.

There was movement at the end of the waiting room and Rachel was there. Left arm and shoulder dressed and bandaged in a sort of sling, right forearm dressed. Blanket over her. Camisole soaked in blood.

A wave of relief coursed through Janet and she walked quickly over, smiling, a lump in her throat. ‘You,’ she said, hugging her, careful not to squeeze.

She felt Rachel stiffen. Never one for displays of affection. Then Rachel relaxed a fraction, pressed Janet’s shoulder briefly before she drew away.

‘What did they say?’ Janet asked.

‘Bullet nicked the bone in the top of my arm but went straight through. May or may not need surgery, depends on how it heals. Knife wound’s superficial, keep it clean, blah blah. No driving, no heavy lifting.’ She sighed. ‘That little gobshite.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘I can get a cab.’

‘Don’t talk daft,’ Janet said. ‘Besides the boss wants to see us. Her exact words were, “If Rachel Bailey is not laid out in a mortuary somewhere, I want her here – pronto.”’

Rachel pulled a face, looked down at her stained clothes and said, ‘Maybe we could call at mine on the way, clean up a bit?’

‘Where the fuck do I start?’ Godzilla said, eyes blazing, red nails flashing like she’d claw at them any moment. Rachel, sitting in the chair at Her Maj’s insistence. ‘You, Fairy Lightfoot, sit down before you fall.’ Janet perched next to her, half sitting on the storage cupboards; the boss, on the other side of her desk, on her feet, on the move.

She had listened while Rachel played the voice recording of the conversation in the safe house, Connor’s confession. Not made under caution but still bloody good groundwork for formal interviews.

Then Godzilla had wanted to know what happened afterwards. Taking turns, Janet and Rachel had described Connor’s flight, their pursuit, his recapture, giving the bare bones of the story, keeping it simple, sticking to the facts.

‘Do I start with the fact that you,’ she dipped her head at Janet, ‘ignored my express instructions and went riding off like a bloody knight on a white charger?’

‘The phone—’ Janet began.

‘Don’t lie,’ Godzilla pointed a finger at her, ‘do not lie to me.’

Rachel swallowed. Janet never got a bollocking like this; well, hardly ever. Because Janet did as she was told, agreed with the boss’s strategy. Janet thought things through. She didn’t go off half-cocked.

‘Has it occurred to you,’ the boss went on, ‘that without your little intervention we might be facing a very different outcome. That if left to the experts, those officers expressly trained in hostage situations and armed response, we might have secured an arrest without an officer being shot and stabbed?’

‘We got a confession,’ Rachel said, ‘we—’

‘Am I talking to you?’ Godzilla roared. ‘Be quiet.’

Rachel’s cheeks burned.
Bitch
. She could feel the wound in her right forearm, the supposedly superficial one, throbbing in spite of the painkillers they’d given her.

‘The armed response unit didn’t reach the scene until at least ten minutes after I did,’ Janet said, sounding furious. ‘He could’ve shot and killed Rachel by then. He could have got out and run amok.’

‘We’ll never know, will we?’ The boss wheeled round and then back, placed her palms together. ‘And perhaps if you hadn’t piled in like a fucking rhinoceros he wouldn’t have freaked and shot her anyway. Did you think of that?’

Janet said nothing.

‘Protocol is there for a reason, because it works.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Janet said, a cold fury in her reply.

‘As for you,’ Godzilla glared at Rachel, ‘you’re injured, first you are shot and then you are knifed and then you go barrelling after an armed man. Have you got a fucking death wish? Had you got your body vest on? No. Taser? No. Baton? No.’

Anger flickering through her, Rachel said, ‘I just wanted to stop him.’

‘Just? There is no “just” about it. You didn’t think, Rachel.’

‘I got him,’ she said, ‘we got him.’

‘You could have been seriously hurt. More seriously. You and Janet both. I could have been going round to your husband …’

Rachel blinked, still surprised that she had a husband.

‘… to Janet’s family. If I wanted to run a training exercise in how not to deal with a violent offender, I could use this, you know.’ She walked across the width of her office and back. ‘You should know better,’ she said to Janet. ‘I thought you did. And you,’ her eyes bored into Rachel’s, ‘give me strength. When are you going to learn? I don’t want to be burying you with your bloody badge on the coffin and the police pipe band playing, but every time there’s a situation like this you turn into some suicidal nutjob.’