When I Wasn't Watching (3 page)

‘It was my first murder case, Carla. Remember?' For God's sake, he had told her about it all before, back when they had been in the first flush of their relationship and would spend the night in each other's arms, talking and fooling around until dawn. She should know it meant more to him than just another case, just another story, but no, all it was to her was an opportunity for her to further her career, even get her out of the local
Telegraph
and into the tabloids. It hit Matt that he had never before realised just how self-absorbed Carla was. Or at least, he had turned a blind eye to it, if only because it meant she didn't try to probe too deeply into his own failings and the insecurities he had grown adept at suppressing.

As if she had heard his thoughts and decided to live up to them, Carla crossed her arms and looked at him with the disgust evident on her face.

‘That's your reason for standing me up? Or is it an excuse? Honestly.' She shook her head as if Matt was beneath her contempt, and there was no trace of irony in her next words: ‘You get far too over-involved with your work. What about me? Us?'

Matt gritted his teeth. If she said ‘what about me?' one more time he was going to seriously lose his temper. Instead he stepped back and looked at her evenly.

‘You're right,' he said, ‘I am far too involved. But not with work.'

He turned on his heel and walked off, leaving her spitting highly unladylike insults at him. As his anger died down however he felt guilty for jibing her. That pint was looking more and more tempting.

It was waiting for him when he walked into the Stag, along with a grinning Scott. Scott had a permanent grin, like the Cheshire Cat. It made women swoon and criminals squirm, and managed to elicit a weak smile from a still conflicted Matt.

There were more than a few lingering glances aimed his way as he approached the bar and Matt wondered if he was being paranoid, until the bartender waved a copy of the same tabloid he had spotted earlier at him.

‘Travesty,' he said bleakly. Matt nodded non-commitally before sliding onto the bar stool next to Scott's and taking a long, slow swig of his waiting beer, looking around at the familiar and not-so-familiar faces.

The Stag and Pony was a regular haunt for the Coventry police force, plain-clothes at any rate. Uniforms were more likely to be found in the Green Giant down the road. Matt wasn't much for bars, but Scott was in here so often even his wife joked she should send his laundry over.

‘Okay?' his friend was asking now, his trademark grin in place but his eyes worried. Matt sighed.

‘Everyone's asking me that today,'
well, except
Carla,
he thought ruefully, ‘and yeah, of course I'm okay. It's not like there's anything I can do, is there.' A statement, not a question. Scott took a long drink of his own and obviously decided to change the subject, having done the required probing. Everyone who worked murder cases had their own particular nemesis, the one that haunted them, and he knew his friend's had been Jack Randall. But he also knew that, as with most cops, those hauntings went unspoken and for the most part unseen.

‘How's the delectable Carla?' he asked instead, only to see Matt's face darken further.

‘Pissed off with me, as usual. Asked me about moving in together last night.'

‘I take it you said no? Maybe you should take the plunge, mate. It worked for me and Suzy.'

‘Neither of you are ever home,' Matt pointed out. Scott's wife had a successful interior design business and when she wasn't working was either shopping or going on holidays with her friends. In ten years of friendship Matt thought he could count the times he had seen the couple in the same room together on one hand.

‘That's why it works.' Scott's grin widened. ‘But I'm guessing Carla's not that type of woman. She's after getting you under the thumb.'

Matt nodded, although he personally thought Carla wanted more from him precisely because he wasn't ready to give it. She was so used to men falling all over her that he often thought the whole attraction for her was the novelty that Matt didn't. God knew most men would gnaw off their own right arm for a woman like Carla, and not for the first time he wondered if there was something wrong with him. He wasn't a player; even in his youth when he had possessed less self-control and been horny from the minute he woke up to the minute he went to bed, even then he had been selective. And he had to admit Carla was right about the over-involved part. Some of the things he had seen; it would be impossible to face if he hadn't learned to close a part of himself off. Learned to not care.

Or perhaps Carla was just all wrong for him. Matt felt a sudden surge of hurt again at the memory of her dismissive attitude towards his news and complete disregard for anyone's feelings but her own. Unbidden, the image of Lucy Randall swam into his mind, of those ocean-blue eyes turning stormy with grief. The hope extinguishing as he told her he wasn't bringing her boy back home.

When he looked down at the bar and saw her face he did a double take, wondering if he was seeing things, then realised Scott had opened the newspaper – not the
Telegraph
, thank God, that the bartender had been waving around; he had had enough of Carla for one day –. On page two was a picture of Jack's mother emerging from her house, one hand up towards the cameras to shield herself. From what he could remember she had never spoken to the press apart from that first day, when she had made a heartfelt public appeal to anyone who held information to come forward. Once the body had been discovered she had never spoken another word, refusing all interviews.

Matt looked more closely at the picture. He couldn't see her eyes and her mouth was set in a pinched line, but he could see she was still attractive. Thinner and of course older, but with a maturity that suited her. She would be in her early thirties now, just a few years younger than himself. He was almost a decade older than Carla.

‘The mother must be devastated.'

Matt nodded, opening his mouth to say something, then closing it abruptly when Scott added, ‘Great legs though. I remember, she was a sexy piece wasn't she?'

Annoyed, Matt glared at him, Scott's words seeming inappropriate to him even though he had been appraising her picture himself. Knowing what the woman had been through, remembering the broken body of her son, he felt almost protective, closing the paper as if to cover her image from Scott's admiring eyes. He downed his pint in one long swig, slammed it onto the counter and got up from the stool.

‘You going already?'

‘Yeah. I ought to go and sort things with Carla.'

Scott winked at him, unaware of his friend's annoyance, and slapped his back in a cheerful goodbye. Matt left, knowing he was going nowhere near Carla's but home to bed. The day's news had affected him more than he wanted to try and fathom, and he wanted his own company, clean sheets and the peaceful oblivion of sleep.

It was a while coming, and the last thing he saw before it finally claimed him was the pitiful body of Jack Randall and the blue eyes of his mother, fading to grey as she listened to Matt tell her that he had failed to save her son.

***

He loved his new swing in the garden, and the little trampoline that meant he could bounce really high, although Mummy had to lift him onto it because it was too high for him. He loved Mummy; she smelled like apples and like the sheets she put on his bed. He had a new bed now, a proper one without rails on the sides, although sometimes that meant he woke up and thought that Teddy was hiding, then found him fallen on the floor. But he liked his new bed because it made him feel like a big boy.

Mummy told him he was her big boy, but sometimes she called him her baby too, even though he had a big bed and wore proper pants now like Daddy, except at night times. And she let him play on the swing by himself sometimes when she was cleaning in the kitchen, because she could see him through the window. He knew that he had to stay where Mummy could see him.

There were bad people in the world, he knew that from the TV. They looked like monsters.

Chapter Three
Thursday

City Councillor Hagard peered out of the ornate windows of the City Hall and immediately wished he hadn't. The thick walls and heavy-paned windows drowned out the noise of the protesters quite effectively, and had he not looked, he could have simply imagined they weren't there. Rows of people with home-made banners and placards, faces screwed up with varying degrees of outrage, betrayal and even excitement. Did they not have jobs to go to, or homes to run? Precisely what they expected him or anyone else at City Council to do about the situation he didn't know.

He hadn't made the decision to release Terry Prince from prison, and had been as in the dark about it as anyone else. In all honesty, he didn't particularly care. With rising crime and youth unemployment, housing shortages and a recent influx of immigrants raising the usual complaints, he had more important things to deal with. Not to mention his wife putting him on a low-fat, no-alcohol diet that was fraying the edges of his temper.

Hagard came away from the window and sat down at his polished oak desk just as something heavy and soft hit the window with a muffled thump, and he heard an accompanying cheer from outside. Sighing, he lifted the phone receiver and dialled Little Park Street, the Central police station that was just over the way, a few blocks behind the angry faces and gaudy banners. Pressing the correct extension numbers, he got directly through to Dailey, who listened to his complaints and then said dismissively, ‘What do you want me to do? There's a bunch of them outside here too. I can't arrest them all. Freedom of speech and all that.'

‘But you're the police,' Hagard protested, in vain as he heard the phone being replaced and the buzz of the line telling him their brief conversation was over. Hagard got up, heaving his considerable bulk from behind his desk and walking purposefully out of his office and down the main stairs to the plush reception. From outside the revolving doors he could see the banners, distorted in the glass. The secretary looked up at him and then down again as if somehow responsible for the insults they could now hear through the entrance. Hagard had heard quite enough. He walked through the doors, waiting impatiently for them to revolve.

A sharp gust of wind blew at him as if it too was protesting, causing him to blink. He opened his eyes to something being waved in his face and for a moment thought it was a placard; then realised it was a microphone. A skinny redhead simpered before him, a steely look in her eyes at odds with the pretty smile.

‘How do you feel about the news that Terry Prince has been released, Councillor? Are your sympathies with the citizens of Coventry, and with the Randall family?'

Now what kind of loaded question was that? Hagard glared at the reporter, certain he had seen her before and noting the crow's feet around those rather cold eyes. Yes, he was certain she had been here the first time around, pushing another microphone in his face, when the little boy had been murdered. It had been easier to express sympathy then of course, whereas anything he said now could be ill-advised. If he remembered rightly this woman wasn't even from the local
Telegraph
or news station, or even the
Birmingham
Post
, but a national tabloid. That was all the city needed.

Glaring again at the woman he turned on his heel and pushed his way back through the revolving doors. He was going straight to the over-priced staff eatery for a steak, chips, and fried onions, diet be damned.

Outside the red-headed reporter merely shrugged and tucked away her microphone into her handbag, jerking her head at the photographer who stood ever ready behind her. She had already got plenty of copy from members of the crowd but had thought to try her luck with Hagard when she spotted him lumbering through the doors looking ready to have a fit. His dismissal of her wasn't a problem; she had her eyes on far more interesting prey.

Lucy peered through the nets, her stomach sinking. This was all she needed. Behind her Ricky grumbled to himself as he threw books into his bag, already late for school. Lucy had insisted on driving him, having sat him down to talk to him about the news. She knew how children – perhaps teenagers in particular – could be and could only imagine the stares and questions that Ricky would face today at school.

She was worried enough about him as it was; had caught the whiff of cigarette smoke and perhaps worse on his breath more than once in recent weeks. Typical boy behaviour, her own mother had shrugged, but not for the first time Lucy felt the lack of a father figure in her eldest son's life. In spite of nearly a decade of bringing him up and letting Ricky call him ‘Dad' Ethan had barely bothered with him since he had left. When Ricky had been having his ‘issues', as they had referred to them after Jack's death, Ethan had offered the boy no support at all.Now as she saw her ex-husband striding up her drive she bit her lip just in time to stop herself saying ‘Your father's here'. Instead she dropped the net and took a deep breath before the door knocked.

‘It's Ethan.'

‘What does he want?' Ricky asked, his face folded with distaste. Lucy opened the door, not even bothering to check her reflection in the little mirror by the coat stand. In the last couple of years she had started to take a pride in her appearance again, but this morning she had woken with that heavy, lethargic feeling she remembered so well from the first years after Jack's death. It had taken all of her willpower to drag herself out of bed and get dressed, even the fabric of her clothes feeling heavy on her skin.

‘Ethan.'

‘Lucy.'

They stared at each other for a moment, Lucy taking in his slightly rumpled appearance, his suit looking less than ironed and his jaw unshaven. It wasn't like him, his appearance was usually immaculate. In a flash of compassion, Lucy realised he must be feeling as wretched as she did and opened the door, stepping back to let him in.