Mitch’s press of the doorbell produced a swift response. A woman with curly red hair, freckled complexion, smoker’s lips and crow’s feet answered. She’d a jacket on, bag in hand, as if she’d just got in or was about to leave.
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Gloria Tandy?’ Mitch said.
‘Yes?’
‘DC Ian Mitchell and this is DC Rachel Bailey, Manchester Metropolitan Police. Is your husband in?’
Rachel caught the look, disappointment followed by resignation dulling her eyes. A slow blink. ‘No,’ she said.
‘When are you expecting him back?’
The woman took a breath, her nostrils flaring. ‘Don’t know.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Don’t know.’
A brick wall, thought Rachel. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Or any good for that matter.
‘We’re anxious to speak to him as soon as possible,’ Mitch said.
‘Course you are,’ she said sarcastically.
‘Perhaps you have a mobile phone number we can reach him on?’ Mitch was unruffled.
She moved abruptly, opened her bag and pulled out her phone, reeled off a number which Rachel entered into her own handset. The phone number which she had given them was not the same as the one that Neil Perry had used to call Greg Tandy. Tandy probably used a separate phone for anything illicit. Many criminals did, often throwaways, unregistered, dumped as soon as they’d served their purpose.
‘If your husband does come in before we manage to contact him, please ask him to get in touch.’ Mitch handed her his card; she took it without reading it.
‘You’re probably wondering what all this is about,’ Rachel said, because the woman hadn’t asked, hadn’t shown the slightest curiosity or made the usual gabby demands and defences that they heard so many times when talking to suspects’ families.
‘I’m not interested,’ she said bitterly. ‘Whatever it is, it’s between you and him.’ Not quite wifely solidarity.
There was a sound upstairs, footfall, and Rachel glanced quickly at Mitch.
‘Someone upstairs?’ Mitch said.
There was no shock or guilt in Mrs Tandy’s face as she said, ‘Our lad.’
Connor, Rachel remembered. The kid she had chased on Thursday, the gobby one with the bike. Knowing the kid was Tandy’s son made sense of his attitude when Rachel had first confronted him. The kid would’ve grown up with his father in and out of prison, mistrusting authority, with a bloody great chip on his shoulder about the police. Rachel was the law, the filth, the dibble, five-oh.
‘Perhaps we could see him?’ Mitch said.
Gloria Tandy waited a moment and Rachel could almost smell the resentment. She wasn’t obliged to comply. All these families knew their legal rights, forwards, backwards and upside down. But Mrs Tandy, rather than telling them to fuck off, cooperated, called, ‘Connor, come here a minute.’