When a burst of static came over the airwaves followed by a call-out to patrols in Manorclough with reports of shots fired in Manton Road, she felt the shock jolt through her. Tandy’s street!
Rachel took the next left, flooring the accelerator as soon as she was round the corner. This road had ramps but she didn’t slow down as the car bucked and banged over them. Protocol for incidents involving firearms was to isolate the area and wait for the armed response unit. But she was so close. There might be something she could do to help.
She flew along Shuttling Way and then turned on to Derby Fold Lane, past the ruined warehouse and over the bridge then sharp left into Manton Road.
As she jumped out she could hear sirens not far away and she saw several people gathered outside the house, among them Connor Tandy and his mother Gloria. The air smelled of cordite. The front downstairs window was smashed, glass glittered on the pavement, the front door was wrecked with bullet holes. The lights were on in the house, the curtains, closed but shredded, billowing out of the broken window, the TV still burbling away.
Rachel pushed through the crowd to reach Gloria and Connor. They looked terrified, standing shivering. Gloria had a cigarette in one hand; when she raised it, her hand shook uncontrollably.
‘What happened?’ Rachel asked.
‘They shot at us!’ Connor’s words were jerky.
‘Who, did you see anyone?’
He shook his head, his mother copying him. ‘I was upstairs,’ Gloria said, ‘getting changed. Connor was-’ she choked, ‘he was in there.’ Tears glinted in her eyes as she nodded to the front room.
‘You’re not hurt?’ Rachel looked at the boy’s face, his hands. The cut on his cheek from when he’d fallen off his bike was almost healed.
‘No.’ He shook his head, frowning, and pressed his hands to his ears. That many shots a few feet away from him, he’d be half deafened. It was a miracle he hadn’t been hit. Had the gunman aimed to kill or just frighten and silence those inside?
‘You can’t go back in,’ said Rachel.
‘But our stuff?’ Gloria said.
‘We need to recover the bullets, they might help us work out who did this. Can you think of anyone who would?’
Surely, if the woman knew, she’d tell Rachel now, having come so close to losing her boy.
‘I don’t know,’ she said and seemed genuinely bewildered. ‘Who the fuck would do this? What’s he ever done,’ she pointed her fag at Connor, ‘or me?’
Or did the culprits think Greg Tandy was still in residence?
‘We’re going to get you moved,’ Rachel said.
‘What?’ Gloria scowled.