When I Wasn't Watching (28 page)

‘Why didn't you bring them through the back? You knew the Armstrongs were here. And where's the woman from Children's Legal?'

He turned on his heel before the man could reply and stalked off, knowing he would feel guilty later. Right now, all he wanted was a really strong coffee.

Margaret Prince knelt at the cross on front of her, her Bible in her lap, feeling no sense of communion but only a dull ache. A void where any sense of redemption should be. She had long ago given up on trying to pray for the soul of her son; the words stuck in her throat. In spite of her statement to the two detectives who had visited her earlier – her only visitors for months – she knew that somehow her son's failings were her own fault.
What's bred in the blood comes out in the bone
… She believed that, on a fundamental level that she knew meant she would never be able to wash her hands clean of his sins. So she should be able to forgive him, but she could not. Something else she had failed at.

When the phone rang she knew instinctively that it was him. Just as when he had been a small child she had known what he was thinking, what he needed, before he had to articulate it. Perhaps she had loved him too much. Smothered him and turned something in his brain. Should have never married his stepfather, a cruel man who had mentally terrorised them both.

Or perhaps he was just born evil. She had been sick throughout her pregnancy, a constant nausea that didn't abate until she gave birth. Had even caught herself wishing she had never conceived him, or in the early days when the sickness was so bad that she was vomiting black bile and had to be hospitalised, she had wished for a miscarriage. Not prayed, of course, because you didn't ask God for things like that. Maybe she had ill-wished him, or maybe the sickness had been a sign that her son was flawed from conception. Although she had fallen in love with the squalling baby, covered in blood and rooting for her breast the instant they had handed him to her, perhaps the cruel truth was that she had given birth to a monster.

When she finally answered the phone his voice seemed wrong. He didn't sound like a monster, more like a frightened young man.

‘Mum? Please don't put the phone down.'

She didn't answer, but neither did she hang up. She could hear his breathing, shallow and panicked. Couldn't stop herself from asking, ‘What is it?'

‘I'm being moved again. I wasn't supposed to come to Coventry. They might put me back in prison.' He sounded as though he might cry. Margaret felt a touch of contempt for his self-pity, then said, ‘The police were here.'

‘I know. They think I took a boy.'

‘Did you?' It killed something inside her, to have to ask him that.

‘No. But people think I did. Mum, a man was burned to death, because someone thought it was me.'

Margaret said a silent prayer for the unknown man, swallowing down the anger she felt alongside it, anger at her son who snivelled down the phone, frightened for himself when yet another person had died because of him and his actions.

‘I can't forgive you,' she said, not knowing she spoke aloud until she heard the words. Heard Terry's sharp intake of breath. There was a long silence, during which she willed herself to replace the receiver, then he spoke.

‘I know, Mum. I won't bother you again. I love you.'

The line went dead. Margaret sat and stared at her phone before replacing it. Felt the answer on the tip of her tongue, felt the words echoing in her brain. But she didn't say them, not even to an empty receiver. Would never say them again.

She went back to her Bible, which for the first time in her life offered not one word of comfort or refuge.

Lucy ached to comfort her son, who in the harsh glare of the interview room lights looked very pale and fragile.

He went through the events of the day without too much prompting from Matt or the female officer, who Lucy had instinctively warmed to. His voice seemed too quiet in the stark room. The lawyer that had been sent to represent him hadn't said a great deal and was, to her mind, a complete waste of time. He didn't look much older than Ricky himself.

‘So, when you took him you fully intended to return him home soon?' Matt asked. He hadn't looked at Lucy once during the interview, had been almost unbearably professional since she had arrived, making her feel she had imagined making love with him just a few hours before. But his carefully worded question pulled her up sharp. He was coaching Ricky, she realised, letting him know what to say. As far as he was in a position to, giving her son an out.

She looked at Matt under her lids, feeling strangely in awe of him now that she was witnessing him in his own domain. As gentle as he was being with Ricky, there was a still an aura about him that she suspected had led many a suspect over the years to think twice about crossing him. A kind of easy confidence in his surroundings, coupled with an edge of something that was almost like arrogance, but not quite.

Lucy's attention was diverted back to Ricky as the boy nodded, than gave a muffled ‘yes' at Matt's insistence that he speak for the tape. He was fighting very hard not to cry. Mr Armstrong's accusations had obviously unsettled him, which to Lucy's reckoning was perhaps a good thing. Although she would be the first to attack anyone else who lambasted her son for his actions, she was on one level furious at him for doing something so stupid. For putting that other poor woman through what she had gone through in those awful first hours after Jack's disappearance.

On a deeper level, she just felt terribly sad.

‘You said you had seen Benjamin before, in passing. You spoke to him,' Matt stated.

‘He's been through all this,' Lucy protested. Matt gave a sharp look for her to be quiet, but Lucy wondered if she had misjudged his intentions, because now Ricky just looked confused and weary and that meant he was liable to say something ill-advised. She laid a hand on his knee, grateful when neither police officer nor detective asked her to remove it. Ricky gave her a grateful look and, when he spoke, his voice was stronger.

‘Yes. I used to see him playing in the back garden on the way to Tyler's or my nan's. He was friendly.'

Matt nodded.

‘The morning you took him, did you plan it?' Lucy squeezed Ricky's knee again, in warning, glaring at Matt, who gave her a calm, level look. He seemed to be trying to trip him up now, or perhaps, a voice in her head whispered, making very sure that Ricky knew what
not
to say or imply.

‘No,' Ricky said, uncertainly at first, looking at Matt almost for reassurance. The detective gave him the barest of nods, an encouragement to continue.

‘No,' he said in a stronger voice, ‘I was on my way to Tyler's, because I wanted to talk to him about something important.'

‘Weren't you supposed to be grounded?'

Ricky looked sullen. ‘Yes.'

‘But you went away?'

‘It was important.'

‘Important like asking Tyler why he was stealing your girlfriend?'

Ricky looked shocked, his face pale, and Lucy looked from one to the other, feeling a sudden rage for the girl she had never met who had been the first to break her son's heart.

‘Yes.' Ricky looked as though he was about to cry again.

‘But you didn't go to Tyler's, you took Ben instead. Why was that?'

‘I did go! I knocked the door and he didn't answer.'

‘At what time?'

Ricky shrugged.

‘I dunno. About eight. I wanted to get him before school.'

So he hadn't been in the house when Danielle had called up to him. That her mother could be so careless with his wellbeing both shocked and angered Lucy, until she remembered her words. That Ricky wouldn't have been there at all if it wasn't for Lucy herself. She wondered what her son thought about the relationship between her and Matt now, then doubted Ricky was even considering it right now, with his future now hanging precariously in the balance.

‘So you saw Benjamin on your way back?'

‘Yes. He came over to talk to me, and I just thought it would be nice to take him to the park. I know I shouldn't have. I'm sorry.'

Ricky looked genuinely contrite, but even so his simple admission was too much for Lucy.

‘So why did you?' she burst out. Matt stopped the tape.

‘Ms Wyatt,' he said, the name sounding over-formal on lips that had recently been exploring her body, ‘I must ask you not to interrupt.'

‘Sorry,' she mumbled, not feeling sorry at all. She just wanted to go home, to take her son and go. Matt restarted the tape and echoed her own question, the one Ricky had no real answer for.

‘I don't know. I was upset. I just didn't think; about his mum missing him or anything. Besides, I wanted to make sure he was all right.'

Matt frowned at that.

‘Why wouldn't he be?'

Ricky stared at the table silently until Matt opened his mouth to repeat the question and Ricky answered before he could finish it.

‘I've been past there before and heard them arguing, the parents. Once it sounded like he hit her. Jack was just sitting there on the swing not doing anything, but you could tell he was upset.'

There was a silence in the room then as though its inhabitants had collectively paused for breath. Matt said slowly, his voice loud, as if he wanted to make sure the eventual listeners to this tape would get his point loud and clear.

‘You mean Ben don't you, Ricky? Jack was your little brother, the one who died.'

Ricky started crying then and Lucy turned to face Matt, furious, half rising out of her chair to launch a tirade, but something in his eyes stopped her. He gave her another of those slight frowns, an almost imperceptible wrinkling of the muscles around his eyes and she understood what he was telling her.
I know what I'm doing, Lucy.
Or at least, she hoped she did.

‘I meant Ben.' Ricky was wiping his eyes.

‘Did you get them mixed up?'

Ricky's words came out in a rush then. ‘I don't know. Maybe. I was just worried about him and he looked like Jack and I should have looked after Jack and I didn't…' He stopped in mid-sentence, choking on tears again and Lucy looked at her son with wide eyes, tears threatening to spill onto her own cheeks. All this time she had felt the guilt over her son's death, had let it cripple her, and she had never stopped to consider that her son might be sharing the same burden. How could he? He had been seven when Jack died.

‘It wasn't your fault,' she said then, not caring about the tape. Ricky looked at her through watery eyes, the blue of them very bright against the tears. How had she never before noticed how like Jack's his eyes were?

‘I wouldn't play with him. That's why he went in the garden.'

Lucy just stared. How long had he been carrying this around with him? Why had she never realised how badly Jack's death had affected everyone around her other than herself? For a moment she thought about Ethan.

Matt cleared his throat just as the lawyer from Children's Services finally spoke.

‘Perhaps we should take a break, my client is obviously distressed.'

Matt nodded, spoke the time into the tape and turned it off. The FLO got up and offered Lucy and Ricky a drink, her tone sympathetic. Matt also got up, motioning for Lucy to step outside.

Once in the corridor, standing alone with him again, she felt awkward, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.

‘Did you need to do that? Hasn't he been through enough?'

Matt raised an eyebrow at her.

‘As much as he put Ben's parents through? Look,' he went on, looking quickly around as if to ensure they couldn't be overheard, ‘I'm trying to do the best I can to make sure Ricky is treated as leniently as possible, okay? That means making sure he comes across as nothing more than a frightened boy who is a bit messed up about recent events and means no harm. Do you understand? Because Mr Armstrong might not be the only one who wonders if there was something more behind it.'

‘Do you?' she accused, knowing that if he gave the wrong answer, she would never be able to be intimate – even friendly – with him again.

‘No. I think Ricky is exactly as I said – a messed-up boy. But he's also a teenage boy with a bad attitude and you don't want that to come across on tape. With any luck, if you can put up with Children's Services being on your back for a while and ensure Ricky takes all the support he's offered, he'll get no more than a slap on the wrist.'

Lucy nodded, but wrapped her arms tighter around herself.

‘Thank you.'

‘I'm just doing my job.'

‘No you're not. You don't have to help him. You're doing this for me, even though deep down you must be furious at him for putting everybody through this.' She kept her tone neutral, but she knew something had changed between them again. A barrier removed, perhaps, as opposed to yet another being erected.

‘Honestly?' He gave her a tired, but genuine smile. ‘I'd like to be angry at him, it was so bloody stupid, but the boy's been found.'

‘Do you think he was telling the truth about the parents?'

Matt deflected her question.

‘Don't you?' There was something in his face that made her think he already knew something. Lucy thought about the brief glimpse she had caught of the Armstrong family. The sheer aggression on the father's face, compared to the beaten-down look on the woman's. Natural enough, she supposed, given all that had happened, but even so she got the impression that neither parent had been acting out of character.

‘Of course I believe him. Will it help?'

‘That he thought the boy was in danger? Possibly. But then why didn't he report it? Lucy, he mentioned Jack earlier to me, in the car.'

‘Yes?'

Matt was about to answer, to tell her something, she sensed, that she might not want to hear, when the FLO came back down the corridor, a tray of drinks in hand. She smiled at Lucy kindly. Amazing really how nicely she was being treated, like the mother of a victim rather than a culprit. Perhaps that was how they still saw her, eight years later.