Godzilla took a breath then spoke slowly. ‘If someone is running around with a knife, someone who has already shown a predilection for violence, you do not pursue them. You run the other way. You alert people to the danger. You minimize the risk. Mi-ni-mize. Three syllables. Do I need to carve it on your forehead?’
There was a long pause. Rachel broke the silence. ‘Connor Tandy?’
‘You’re going nowhere near him, lady. Too much history. Too involved. Get someone to transcribe that confession,’ she pointed at Rachel’s phone, ‘and sod off home. Janet, you prep for the interview. His mother will act as an appropriate adult. Solicitor is ready, with him now. But at his medical he declared he’s taken amphetamines so we can’t interview him until he’s clean. Doc reckons another couple of hours. Now go,’ she said.
‘You reckon Greg Tandy knew it was Connor?’ Rachel asked Janet.
Janet thought back to the interviews. The fleeting reaction to the physical evidence, that moment when he’d faltered. ‘I’m not sure, I think at first he thought he was being framed, thought it was a fit-up. But maybe he worked it out. Figured out who had access to his gloves. He was carrying the bag when the neighbour saw him on the Saturday but not on the Friday.’
‘Been to fetch it on the Saturday?’ Rachel said. ‘He left the family home on the Friday after the argument.’
‘You walk out,’ Janet said, ‘you don’t necessarily take everything with you.’
‘He’d take the guns, keep them close. Maybe some clothes.’ Rachel coughed and winced.
‘Should you be here?’
‘Don’t you start,’ Rachel said. ‘So you’ll ask Connor about the gloves and the accelerant?’
Janet nodded. ‘We have the twins and Greg Tandy meeting at the Bulldog Army malarkey on Sunday. Maybe they’ve heard he’s the go-to man for firearms. They get his number, rendezvous at Bobbins on the Tuesday and buy the gun.’
‘Not hired,’ Rachel said. ‘If they’d hired it, they’d have given Tandy it back but according to Connor they sold it to Victor in exchange for some gear.’
‘Which we found in their bedroom,’ Janet said. ‘So, the twins kill Richard Kavanagh and burn the Old Chapel. They go to the warehouse, sell the gun and get the drugs.’
‘On the Thursday!’ Rachel said. ‘Shirelle saw them leaving that day when she was on her way with new merchandise. She takes the money Victor and Lydia have made, stocks them up and calls at Keane’s on the Friday to give him the takings and get more drugs. Once the murder is made public, Greg Tandy’s cheering about it and his missus chucks him out but he won’t take Connor, in fact he slags him off and the stupid lad decides he’ll prove himself by committing a double murder.’