‘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.’