‘Cool,’ Connor smiled.
Gloria rolled her eyes. ‘How long for?’
‘I don’t know. We need to identify the threat. If you do speak to anyone on the phone do not reveal your whereabouts.’
Rachel sat outside in her car and rang in. Godzilla answered.
‘Rachel. Everyone all right?’
‘Yes, boss, settled in for the night.’
‘Good. We’ve recovered several bullets from the scene.’
‘Any witnesses?’ Rachel said.
‘None. All too busy tucked up watching the soaps.’
‘I’ve got the clothes to log in,’ Rachel said. ‘Boss, I didn’t get to talk to the neighbours about Tandy’s recent movements.’
‘Briefing tomorrow, we’ll look at that then.’
Another inch, Rachel thought, a different angle of entry and they would have had another fatality on their hands, a scrappy, mouthy fourteen-year-old, shot watching TV.
Rachel had been brooding about Sean blabbing to her mother for twenty-four hours. It all came to a head as soon as she got in. He started wittering on about tomorrow’s football and where to watch it, like nothing was wrong. Even Sean must have noticed the god-awful atmosphere last night and her mother’s sudden departure from the pub.
‘How could you tell Sharon about Dom, about me turning him in?’ Rachel said. ‘That was private.’
‘But she’s your mam,’ Sean said, ‘Dom’s too.’
‘In name only. You had no right!’
‘Rachel, please, calm down.’
‘Don’t tell me to calm down.’
‘I thought she knew, knew he was in prison, I thought you’d have told her.’
‘That I fucking put him there? And now she’s playing the bloody martyr, the saint. Blood is thicker than water. You look out for your own. Fucking hypocrite.’
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but at least it’s out in the open.’
He really did not get it. He thought shoving people back together again meant they’d all play happy families. He did not see the Baileys were more your Jeremy Kyle-style family. Fractured and fucking hopeless. She should never have married him. The thought was like a knife, swift, lancing through her. Oh God. She felt awful, disloyal, and cruel. Don’t be daft, she told herself, give it time.
‘You know what she’s like,’ she was saying, ‘a bloody disaster.’
‘She’s not all bad,’ he said.
‘I can’t be doing with her, Sean, every time I turn round she’s here, wanting things, talking-’ She didn’t know how to make him see it.
‘She’s missed a lot,’ he said.
‘And whose fault is that?’
‘But it’s water under the bridge, isn’t it? Think of the future.’
She didn’t want to. ‘I need to take it more slowly,’ she said, ‘small doses, you know?’
‘OK.’ He sounded reluctant.