RACHEL GRABBED HER coat and checked the time.
‘You off?’ Janet was surrounded by reams of paper, still working out Sean’s next interview, when he’d be under arrest.
‘Speedy Cabs,’ Rachel said.
‘The case of the disappearing shopping,’ Janet said drily. ‘It’d be handy to have that sorted to include in this’, she gestured to the papers. ‘The more I’ve got pinned down, the less his wiggle room. I’m going round in circles now, though.’
‘Come with us, if you like,’ Rachel offered. She hadn’t expected Janet to agree, but she did.
It was dark again and wet, heavy rain that drummed on the roof of the car and streamed down the windscreen.
Rachel parked by the arches and dashed across the cobbles. It was a different dispatcher, an old bloke with a beard you could knit Brillo pads from. He said Kasim had just done a run to Ashton and should be returning soon.
She ran back to sit with Janet in the car. ‘If he took Lisa to flog the shopping on the way home, it’d have to be somewhere nearby,’ Rachel said.
‘Shifting all the time, though, isn’t it? Stuff changing hands, one week it’s so-and-so that’s the man to see, next week it’s the next-door neighbour, or the lad round the corner,’ Janet said.
‘Say she flogs the stuff, makes some money, scores – maybe that’s what Sean took, along with the phone?’ Rachel said. ‘He wouldn’t want to tell us that, would he; he’d be worried about being done for possession.’ Up to seven years imprisonment and an unlimited fine.
‘He should be worried about being done for murder,’ Janet said.
Maybe, as Andy said, the gear was at Sean’s gaff, along with the knife and bloodstained clothing, and Sean had been playing for time.
‘I asked at Ryelands,’ Janet said. ‘They didn’t know Sean.’
Rachel wondered whether to say anything about Martin Dalbeattie being responsible for both girls, but at that moment a cab, its sign illuminated, headlights capturing the rain, drove along the cobbles. As the car came to a halt beneath the street light, Rachel recognized Kasim. ‘There he is.’ She turned to open the door.
‘Ask him to come over here,’ Janet said, then groaned. ‘This weather!’
Rachel stepped out of their car at the same time as Kasim got out of his. She saw him glance her way, then his face altered, an expression of alarm as he realized who she was. He ducked back into the cab and gunned the engine.
Rachel leapt into the car and turned the ignition. Repeating his car reg out loud.
