Cath Staincliffe - Ruthless

Janet got to her feet, walked over and stared unseeing at a noticeboard. Elise hadn’t hesitated when Janet heard Rachel needed her. ‘Go, Mum,’ she’d said, ‘go.’

But a thousand worries flew through Janet’s head: I should be here with you. Family first. I might be putting myself in harm’s way.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Elise said, sitting up straighter, ‘go on.’ Elise understood the friendship, how much it meant, how deep it went. Something Janet’s mother had never been able to fathom. Because Janet and Rachel were so very different. Rachel with her devil-may-care approach, her appalling choice in men (though maybe Sean was a turning point), her indifference to kids, her dysfunctional family; then Janet – daughter of teachers, hard-working, reliable, solid, settled. Until the Andy business. The one definitive thing she and Rachel had in common was the job, love of the job, commitment, compassion. You had to have that to survive in the syndicate.

Janet could not imagine work without Rachel, though in time if Rachel passed her sergeant’s exam the process of moving up and away would start.

So Janet had gone to Rachel. Ade would hate it, she could hear him now. ‘You’re a middle-aged woman, Janet, for Christ’s sake. The older you get, the less sense you seem to have. Did you think about anyone else? About your daughters?’

Gill wouldn’t be best pleased either. Janet’s stomach turned over at the thought of facing her.

She had called Gill from outside the safe house, reporting the sound of gunfire and the call from Rachel.

‘I’ll organize an armed response unit and a hostage negotiator,’ Gill said. ‘Do we know who is in there?’

‘Not sure,’ Janet had said, ‘once I get-’

‘No, Janet. You withdraw now to a safe distance. Stay well back. You don’t go anywhere near-’

Janet clenched her teeth. ‘Sorry? Gill, you’re breaking up. Can you repeat that? Gill… I can’t hear you, Gill?’ Then she had switched the phone off.

There was movement at the end of the waiting room and Rachel was there. Left arm and shoulder dressed and bandaged in a sort of sling, right forearm dressed. Blanket over her. Camisole soaked in blood.

A wave of relief coursed through Janet and she walked quickly over, smiling, a lump in her throat. ‘You,’ she said, hugging her, careful not to squeeze.

She felt Rachel stiffen. Never one for displays of affection. Then Rachel relaxed a fraction, pressed Janet’s shoulder briefly before she drew away.

‘What did they say?’ Janet asked.

‘Bullet nicked the bone in the top of my arm but went straight through. May or may not need surgery, depends on how it heals. Knife wound’s superficial, keep it clean, blah blah. No driving, no heavy lifting.’ She sighed. ‘That little gobshite.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘I can get a cab.’

‘Don’t talk daft,’ Janet said. ‘Besides the boss wants to see us. Her exact words were, “If Rachel Bailey is not laid out in a mortuary somewhere, I want her here – pronto.”’

Rachel pulled a face, looked down at her stained clothes and said, ‘Maybe we could call at mine on the way, clean up a bit?’

‘Where the fuck do I start?’ Godzilla said, eyes blazing, red nails flashing like she’d claw at them any moment. Rachel, sitting in the chair at Her Maj’s insistence. ‘You, Fairy Lightfoot, sit down before you fall.’ Janet perched next to her, half sitting on the storage cupboards; the boss, on the other side of her desk, on her feet, on the move.

She had listened while Rachel played the voice recording of the conversation in the safe house, Connor’s confession. Not made under caution but still bloody good groundwork for formal interviews.

Then Godzilla had wanted to know what happened afterwards. Taking turns, Janet and Rachel had described Connor’s flight, their pursuit, his recapture, giving the bare bones of the story, keeping it simple, sticking to the facts.

‘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.’

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.