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.