When I Wasn't Watching (20 page)

In fact, Ben was starting to worry that there was something very wrong with the man. That perhaps he wasn't his friend after all.

Chapter Eleven
Wednesday Afternoon

Matt straightened his tie and took his seat behind the table next to Dailey and WPC Kaur. The FLO winked at Matt as he sat next to her, rolling her eyes and prompting a smile from him. Dailey cleared his throat, ready to begin, and as he read a brief statement Matt blinked against the flashes of cameras, spotting Carla at the back of the room, glaring directly at him, notebook gripped in her expensively manicured nails like a weapon. She looked good, he noted, with a new and obviously also expensive haircut. Life with Jacob must be agreeing with her.

Dailey finished his spiel and sat back, having done his part and directing questions towards Matt as the investigating officer. Throwing him to the wolves. A red-haired tabloid reporter was the first to pounce.

‘Are there any new leads on the whereabouts of Benjamin Armstrong?'

‘There has been a suspected sighting of Benjamin at around nine-thirty this morning, hand in hand with a white male, aged early to late twenties, wearing a baseball cap. The information was given anonymously and we're calling for the witness to come forward, and for anyone else who thinks they may have seen Benjamin with this unidentified person to come forward with the information. However sparse, any sighting at this stage could be crucial to the investigation.'

There was an excited murmur at that, the noise of frantic scribbling, more camera flashes. Matt felt a headache coming on.

‘Any more information on this mysterious companion? Do we know for certain it was Benjamin Armstrong he was with?' The redhead again, an eager light in her eyes. Matt shook his head, feeling as though he was admitting to a failure. A morning of searching, interviewing and reading through statements and this was all they had to offer – a young man in a baseball cap?

‘At this time that's the only information we have. Again, I must stress the importance of this anonymous witness – and anyone else with information – coming forward. However trivial it may seem.'

Another reporter, a young blond lad who looked as though he should be in school, went to speak but was interrupted by the redhead. She would have been attractive, Matt thought, if it wasn't for the almost fanatical gleam in her eyes.

‘I'll ask you what we're all thinking, inspector. Is there any chance the man in question could be Terry Prince?'

Matt glared at her, only for three different camera flashes to snap in his direction. Still, he had known the question was coming.

‘There is nothing at this stage in the investigation to connect Benjamin Armstrong with Terry Prince, or any other previous cases of child abduction.'

‘So we're talking about an abduction?' a voice from across the room jumped on his comment. Matt smiled tightly.

‘We're talking about a missing boy. No possibility will be ruled out, including abduction.'

‘Are you looking for a body?' The redhead again. He wondered how any other representative from the various media outlets ever managed to get a word in edgeways with this woman around. She was like a pitbull in a dress.

‘We're looking for Benjamin Armstrong. It is too early to speculate. The important thing, as I have stressed, is that anyone with possibly relevant information comes forwards. Every moment is crucial.'

There was a brief pause after his words, even the eager redhead grasping the seriousness of the situation. The clock was ticking for Benjamin Armstrong.

It didn't make her pause for long. Obviously sensing Matt's unwillingness to get led into the subject of Prince, she went in for the kill.

‘But don't you think it's a coincidence, inspector? That a known child killer gets released and a week later a child goes missing in exactly the same circumstances? Just a few miles away? And now we have a sighting of a possible suspect who could fit Terry Prince's description.'

Matt raised an eyebrow at her, waited a beat before answering. Let her look over-eager, as if she was trying to sensationalise the case. The other journos were staring at Matt, waiting for his answer, a collective hush settling over the room. Although he didn't look in her direction he was particularly aware of Carla's eyes on him.

‘I don't deal in coincidences, madam, I deal in facts. As I said, at this stage there is nothing to connect Benjamin Armstrong to Terry Prince, and speculation for the sake of a good news story could jeopardise our current investigation. Finding Benjamin is paramount.'

The reporter dipped her head, acknowledging the jibe, but didn't let go of her thread of questioning. Matt decided his pitbull comparison had been spot on.

‘But surely you can't afford to rule it out either?'

‘Nothing relevant will be ruled out.'

‘Then you admit it's a possibility? Has Terry Prince been questioned? Do you know his whereabouts? Surely the public have a right to know, inspector, if a dangerous criminal has been released only to strike again?'

Next to him Matt felt Dailey stiffen. Again there was an expectant hush, pens and voice recorders poised to record Matt's answer. Matt linked his fingers together on the desk in front of him, leaning forward slightly towards the eager faces in the room.

‘As of yet, no one has been taken in for questioning by West Midlands police, and as I have already stated, there is no reason to connect the murder of Jack Randall to the disappearance of Benjamin Armstrong. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.'

Another voice piped up then, cold and shrill, cutting across the buzz of the others.

‘Perhaps this subject is a little close to home for you, inspector?'

Carla. Making digs about Lucy, no doubt. Was she really going to go there, right now?

‘Carla. How are you?' he asked. Acknowledging the relationship between them and either reminding those in the room who knew, or implying it for those who didn't. To make jibes about himself and Lucy could only look like sour grapes on her part. She flushed and looked annoyed. The males in the room were staring at her with rapt attention.

‘Inspector,' she said with just a tinge of sarcasm, ‘I'm very well, thank you. But it concerns me that you seem so quick to dismiss any suspicion that Terry Prince could be involved, and yet isn't it true that you have just assigned a Search and Rescue team to search Baginton Woods – the very place where the body of Jack Randall was discovered?'

How the hell did she know that?
Really, Carla was wasted on a local paper.

She allowed herself a triumphant smirk in Matt's direction at the buzz that went through the room. Matt rubbed his chin, then dropped his hand quickly at the admission – a move that only Carla would recognise, and no doubt derive some satisfaction from – that her comment had unsettled him.

‘We're leaving no stone unturned when it comes to finding Benjamin; it's our top priority right now. Again, I must stress the importance that any potential witnesses come forward.'

Having deftly sidestepped Carla's revelation, Dailey called time on the press conference. Nevertheless, the damage was done. That juicy bit of information would be all over the evening papers.

It had become a habit with Lucy now to gloss over her time with Ethan and make flippant comments about his infidelity, and to dismiss her love for him as the youthful passion of a young woman, both naïve and grateful that a man like Ethan would want a girl like her. Yet if she looked back, before Jack, before she realised that she was never going to measure up to the image of the perfect wife that Ethan wanted her to be, then it was true that, without the bitterness of hindsight to spoil their memories, like a tea stain over a photograph, they had been in love. Madly, deeply in love.

Enough in love that Ethan had proposed to her against his overbearing mother's wishes, even under the threat of having the funds to finish his medical degree revoked. In love enough that they had managed to fool themselves that such an uneven pairing could actually work. The day of their wedding, which, for appearances' sake had been big and white and traditional, with flowers and table decorations chosen carefully by the unhappy mother-in-law, had been something out of a fairytale, or a chick-flick, the sort that always end with a starry-eyed bride and her handsome Mr Right. For a while, Ethan had fitted her image of Mr Right so perfectly that it had been unthinkable that things could ever go wrong.

It had taken five dates before she had admitted to him that she was a single parent, that the reason she still wouldn't stay the night wasn't out of any reluctance to give herself to him sexually but because she had a baby at home, and she had to get back before the time crept past her teenage babysitter's curfew. Lucy had imparted that bit of information with her eyes down and her body coiled tightly, to ward off the impact of his putting an end to their budding romance.

It was a blow that never came. Ethan had laid his hand over hers, looked into her eyes, given her that charming smile that only later did she come to distrust, and asked, as if it were the most obvious thing for him to say; ‘So when can I meet him?' That had sealed the deal for her – her heart belonged to Ethan, and had continued to do so until the loss of Jack broke it beyond all repair.

The affairs had started before Jack's death, but she had turned a blind eye with a dogged determination, still putting all her energy into being that perfect middle-class housewife. She had even taken classes – baking, embroidery, interior design, anything to break away from the teenage mother, council estate stigma. Had swapped listening to the rocky, grungy music she liked and embraced Ethan's love of soul and jazz instead. Hung and simpered prettily on his arm when he took her out with his medical school friends and later work colleagues, and tried not to wish she could hook up with her old friends and go to a downtown bar, drink cheap shots and fall into a taxi in the small hours. Her identity became slowly eroded and, though it shamed her to admit it, sometimes in the darkest corners of her soul she wished she didn't have Ricky as a constant reminder that she didn't quite measure up, could never fully fit the mould.

Jack had changed everything. A second chance at motherhood, and a way of bringing them all – Lucy, Ethan and Ricky and their parents – together as one cohesive family unit. She had been happy to leave any trace of the old Lucy behind, seeing a new self in the reflection of her baby's eyes. Finally, everything seemed to come together. The crippling fear that Ethan was going to abandon her for one of his dalliances left her. If there was any evidence of his affairs in those precious few years of Jack's life then he either became better at concealing it or the rose-tinted glasses of maternal bliss kept her from seeing it.

After Jack died, she had stopped caring. Any genuine passion she still had for Ethan had died along with their son. Over the years since he had left her she hadn't given him much thought, other than a low-level resentment that he had never made any effort to keep in touch with Ricky, who after all had viewed him as a father figure, had played football with him in the garden and gone fishing with him at weekends and generally saw his stepfather as a staple in his life. They had even seemed to grow closer for a while after Jack's death, pulling together in the face of Lucy's increasing emotional distance. Until Ethan's next affair had come along and this one had proven to be his last. He had upped and left her and Ricky as if it wasn't a decision that even required much thought.

Perhaps it hadn't. Perhaps, after Jack's death, that initial all-encompassing burning love they had felt for one another had also gasped out its last breath, leaving only a void between them. Ethan, for whom infidelity seemed to come as naturally as air, had simply turned to the only solace he had left.

He looked like he needed solace now, staring down at Lucy with a look in his eyes she could only describe as raw. Longing for comfort. Not what she was expecting after their confrontation in the car. At the memory of it she felt her palm burn, stinging with the memory of her slap. Did skin have its own memory? Lucy wondered idly. If she concentrated, would her body remember his touch? Then she thought of Matt in her bed last night and wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

‘I'm sorry about the other day,' she said at once, warding off any reprimand before it came, but Ethan shook his head.

‘Don't apologise. I was out of order, speaking to you like that. God knows, I can hardly blame you for seeking companionship at a time like this.'

Lucy nodded, shut the door behind him and then stood facing him, rather than moving to one side to allow him access to the house. As contrite as he seemed, his coming here seemed out of place somehow, and over the last week or so Lucy had learned not to expect that people would always speak or behave in the way you expected them to. Least of all herself.

‘So, are you still seeing him?'

‘I'm not sure I ever was. Not that it's really any of your business.'

Ethan looked uncomfortable. He had shaved today, and his clothes were once again immaculate, but the faint air of desperation that seemed to be clinging around him lately remained.

‘Why are you here Ethan?'

‘Have you been crying?' He ignored her question, leaning in to her and noticing the puffiness of her lids from her earlier bout of tears.

‘It upset me, the boy in the news.'

‘Do you think it's him? Prince?'

Lucy didn't speak, but bit her lip and nodded. Ethan sucked his breath in and briefly buried his head in his hands, then dragged them down over his face as if he could somehow remould his appearance. Make everything new. Finally, Lucy ushered him into the lounge. They sat on the same couch, their knees nearly touching.

‘We should have supported each other through this,' Ethan said, and she wondered if he was only talking about the last week or the last eight years. ‘I've let you down,' he went on, and Lucy looked at him in surprise. An admission of guilt, after all this time?