‘Could that be Keane?’ said Rachel. ‘Sending a warning to Tandy to keep his gob shut?’
‘It could be bloody Batman for all we know,’ Gill said, ‘but it tells us that if Tandy did the warehouse murders, he got rid of the gun between Friday night and Monday when we brought him in. We may never get that gun.’ In organized crime, weapons were passed from hand to hand, hired, sold, borrowed, hidden, looked after. The same weapon used by different people in the commission of diverse offences, as appeared to be the case now.
‘Maybe Tandy just went apeshit, lost the plot,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s out and back home but it’s the same shitty little life. His wife is on at him, she actually tells him to do one. So what’s it all for? He pulls a Terminator, picks on someone to hurt, someone who won’t stand a chance. Justifies it to himself ’cos he’s a racist dickhead.’
‘Why copy the Kavanagh killing?’ Gill said.
‘He’d been bigging it up,’ Rachel said. ‘That’s why Gloria chucked him out – well, partly. He gets the idea then.’
‘How did he know to go after the victims?’ Janet asked. ‘Victor and Lydia? He’s not a user.’
‘No,’ Gill agreed, ‘nothing on his medical.’
‘Stuff in the house, though,’ Kevin said, ‘Keane’s house.’
‘But not in the room Tandy was occupying.’ This from Lee.
‘His missus said he never touched drugs,’ said Rachel.
‘What if the twins told him about them? Could it be a challenge? We’ll do the wino, you do the black kids,’ Rachel said, ‘we can tell you where they’ll be.’
Gill sighed. ‘Greg Tandy is a career criminal, a gun man. I can’t see him entering some pact with a pair of lowlife scumbags like the Perry twins.’
‘If it was Tandy, he’d know to get rid of evidence,’ Rachel said, ‘so why hang on to the gloves then?’
‘Could Keane have been involved and then fitted Tandy up?’ Gill said.
No one answered.
‘Enough,’ Gill said. ‘Bring me something solid, quick as you like.’
They got bugger all from Tandy’s neighbours, apart from a lot of nosy questions about where the wife and boy had gone and rumours that Greg had shot at his own family. Given he was in custody at the time, that didn’t hold water. As for anyone seeing him any time on the Friday evening going to or from the warehouse, they drew a big fat blank.
Over in Werneth, where Stanley Keane lived, there were no fences at the front of the properties so it would be easy for the residents to see people coming and going. The neighbours to the left of Keane were out, no cars in the drive, no one home. At the other side, Janet and Rachel were greeted by a young woman in a yellow onesie, her eyes furred with fake lashes and her fingernails individually designed.