When I Wasn't Watching (7 page)

Regardless of whether a more accessible register was a good idea or not, it was redundant in Terry Prince's case. He was only a murderer after all, not a sex offender. The fact that there had been, as far as anyone could tell, no sexual element to the killing meant there were no laws anywhere that required his whereabouts to be disclosed to any but a select few. As if beating a two-year-old to death was somehow not as shocking as long as there had been no 'noncing' involved.

A familiar, sickened rage swept through Matt and he marvelled at Lucy. How could she live with this, every day, and still be sane?

‘Maybe I will,' she was saying now, nodding her head decisively, ‘or maybe I'll set up a charity or something. My mother is always on at me to do something like that, she thinks it might give me a purpose, help with the grief or something. But,' her eyes glittered again, this time he thought with tears, ‘it doesn't change anything, does it?'

Without thinking Matt reached over the table for her hand, squeezing it in his. It felt tiny and delicate. Fragile, yes. Yet a jolt of electricity shot up his arm the instant he touched her that was anything but. When he spoke his tongue felt thick in his mouth.

‘It's always stayed with me, your son's case. I can't begin to know what you're going through but I've been angry too, ever since I heard. It's a travesty.'

It was a relief to finally say it, to admit how he was feeling, and although Lucy was the last person he should be talking to about it, she squeezed his hand back.

‘I heard that you attacked him you know. My friend knows a girl at the station.'

Matt winced. ‘I think “attack” was a bit strong.' It wasn't exactly his finest moment, it was something he was ashamed of in fact, even if on the other hand he wished he had given the boy exactly what he deserved.

Lucy smiled, but those expressive eyes of hers had gone cold and flat. The effect was unnerving.

‘I want to find him, inspector.'

Matt pulled his hand away, a sudden chill creeping up his arm. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to get into.

‘Lucy, I'm a police officer,' he reminded her, though his tone was gentle.

He didn't want to hear what she would do if she ever got her hands on him, didn't want to be privy to her confessions. People did that sometimes, he had realised over the years; they were either suspiciously unforthcoming with the police, reluctant to divulge even what they had had for breakfast, or they had a sudden need to pour their hearts out. This was a job for the Family Liaison Officer, not a murder detective, and yet something in him responded to her, wanted her to confide in him not so much as an officer of the law, but as a man.

He cleared his throat, searching for something to say to lighten the sudden, strange tension in the room when a surly Ricky came down the stairs, glaring at both his mother and Matt.

‘Did you bring me home to teach me a lesson or to hit on my mum?' he challenged Matt, puffing out his scrawny fifteen-year-old chest. Lucy got up quickly and went to him, laying a placating hand on his shoulder.

‘Ricky, this is the detective who handled your brother's disappearance.'

Ricky grinned at Matt, such a change in attitude that Matt blinked as Ricky bounded over to him and shook his hand.

‘You're the one who roughed Prince up in his cell, right?'

‘Er, I didn't quite “rough him up”.' Damn it, he was beginning to think that the whole city knew. But he returned Ricky's handshake anyway, glad to have finally got a smile out of the boy. The shoplifting seemed irrelevant now, but even so he put on his best authoritative voice, then winced at how damn old he sounded.

‘I trust I won't be seeing you again under these circumstances?'

Ricky just shrugged and then, at a furious glance from Lucy, shook his head with vehemence.

‘'Course not. Promise. Mum, can I go back out now?'

‘No. You can go back up to your room please. I'll come and talk to you when the inspector has gone.'

Ricky glared at her but obeyed, the thump of his trainers on the stairs leaving no ambivalence as to exactly how he felt about his confinement. Matt set his cup down again, knowing this was his cue to leave but not wanting to go. He turned to her before he walked out of her front door, his eyes lingering on her full mouth just for a moment, but long enough that she noticed and a corner of that mouth turned up wryly.

‘Thank you, I'm glad you were there. I'll have a word with him; it's really not like him at all.'

‘He's just a kid. Still, if you would like me to have a more thorough word with him, or if there's anything I can do…' he trailed off, feeling suddenly ridiculous. He had never been tongue-tied around a woman, but this was far from a usual situation. When Lucy disappeared behind the door he had to wonder if he had offended her, then she was back, pressing a piece of paper into his hand.

‘My phone number. In case you think of anything you can do.'

She was definitely flirting, there was no mistaking it. Matt smiled at her and pocketed the number before he walked back to his car, feeling unsettled again He looked back as he opened the driver's door, expecting her to still be watching, but the door was closed.

***

When he first saw the man watching him playing in the garden, he wanted to go and talk to him, because he looked so sad. Maybe he wanted to play, but was too shy to ask, just like when he had gone to nursery and wanted to play in the sandpit with the bigger boys. But Mummy had told him not to talk to strangers so he didn't, even though the man didn't look like the bad men Mummy worried about, the ones like the baddies on TV. This man just looked sad.

Perhaps it would be okay if he asked him his name, because if you knew someone's name then they weren't a stranger were they? But then the man had gone, and he decided he should ask Mummy first anyway, because she would know what to do. He would ask her at tea time.

Except, by the time he was ready for tea and saw that he had his favourite fish fingers, he had forgotten all about it.

Chapter Five
Saturday

The woman hoisted the heavy bag containing all the various forms she had to fill in onto her shoulder and smiled with no real conviction at the weary young man in front of her.

‘So that will be all for now…John,' she said in a bright tone, wondering what his real name was, because he didn't look like a John, and couldn't the powers that be think of a name a little more imaginative than that? ‘But if you need anything, let me know, you have my number. Otherwise, I'll see you next week.'

She was aware of sounding patronising, but it was a long day and she wanted to get home and get ready for her weekly bingo night with the girls. He just looked at her blankly, though she thought she saw a flash of impatience for just a moment. Well fine, she didn't want to be here either. She left ‘John' sitting alone at his new kitchen table in the house the government had paid for along with his new identity, and went home to get ready for bingo.

Later, after a few cocktails courtesy of a win on the next-to-last house, which was a modest sum but enough to pay for this week's night out, it didn't seem to matter much if she spoke more about her job as a Resettlement Officer than she should have. If she let slip that she had spent the day ‘settling' a mysterious young man into his new home under an assumed identity; if she let her friends jump to certain conclusions that were most likely true. People needed to know who was living among them, after all.

By the time she was on her fifth drink she had all but convinced herself that she had a civic duty to warn people if there happened to be a dangerous criminal in the area. It wasn't the sort of thing she was quite used to dealing with and the responsibility, she told herself in a fit of tequila-induced disapproval, should be on somebody with far broader shoulders than her own.

Ricky had looked up at the disused building, one of its boarded-up windows put through by Tyler and his mates, and nodded.

‘Yeah, it's perfect.'

Somewhere to hide when they wagged school, or playing truant as his mother would call it if she found out, and have a fag or even some of Tyler's brother's weed when they could sneak some. Ricky liked weed better than fags, it tasted better in his mouth and made him feel a bit light-headed and more relaxed, somehow. Fags just made him want to be sick.

‘We could bring girls here too. Bet there's some right fit birds in that posh school of yours.'

‘It's not posh,' Ricky had said automatically, then more or less contradicted himself with, ‘but you won't get any of them round this place.' Not with him and Tyler anyway. If they were sixth-form boys maybe. Tyler just shrugged, for once making no comment about Ricky and his ‘posh' classmates.

‘I'll bring these birds I know then. Get them stoned, get a blowjob.' Tyler used his hand and a tongue in his cheek to mime the action, and Ricky laughed, because he was expected to.

‘You ever had one?' Tyler asked, sly now, looking sideways at him.

‘Had what?'

‘A blowjob.'

Ricky had shrugged, nonchalantly.

‘Yeah course.'

He hadn't even kissed any girls, and couldn't imagine how you even went about asking them to do
that
to you.

That was how he had ended up here, lying on his coat sharing a spliff with a girl who was apparently the best friend of the other girl Tyler had invited, whose head was conspicuously bobbing up and down under Tyler's jacket as she did just
that.
Tyler looked at him from across the room through the smoke haze and winked as he pushed his hand down on the shape of the girl's head in his lap. Ricky tried to grin back, but inwardly winced. It seemed vaguely abusive, somehow, even though the girl was obviously more than up for it.

The girl's friend who was eagerly smoking Tyler's weed, a hand resting high on Ricky's thigh, turned to him and giggled, passing him the spliff, now ringed at the end with sticky pink lip gloss. He took a drag, closing his eyes for a moment and waiting for the familiar wave of peace, but it didn't come. He only felt irritated as the girl – Mandy, Molly? – snuggled up next to him. She smelled of fags and some fruity cheap perfume and, he realised, a touch of body odour. Or maybe that was him. Ricky tried to surreptitiously sniff his own armpits, ducking his head towards the girl, who instead took it as a sign and moved in for the kill, planting her sticky lips on his.

His first kiss. It was kind of gooey, but not unpleasant, and he felt a stirring in his trousers that intensified when she guided his hand to one of her small breasts. Irritation forgotten he kissed her harder, using his tongue clumsily, and was only jerked back to reality by the nasal tones of the other girl, appearing from underneath Tyler's jacket and wiping her mouth.

‘Oi, you're the brother of that kid that got killed aren't you?'

Ricky felt his erection shrivel and he sat up, shrugging off Mindy or whatever and glaring at the other girl.

‘Yeah, so what?' He sounded more aggressive than he had meant to and the girl next to him shrank back, but her friend only laughed and turned to Tyler.

‘Touchy isn't he?'

‘Leave him alone, man.' Tyler's voice was a contented drawl. He pushed the girl none too gently in Ricky's direction. ‘Go and give him some of what you just gave me, that'll chill him out.'

The girl made as if to comply, moving towards Ricky with what seemed to be a sly and yet also somewhat vacant look, and Ricky felt a moment's panic at the thought of her lunging at him, but her friend shoved her back.

‘He's with me; you always do this. He's not interested are you?' She fixed Ricky with a challenging stare.

He had had enough. He got up, passed the spliff back to Tyler and shrugged his coat on.

‘You goin'?'

‘Yeah.'

Tyler shrugged. ‘More for me then,' meaning, Ricky knew, the girls as much as the weed. He felt nauseous, looked around at the grimy room and suddenly wanted a shower. He walked off without saying goodbye to Mindy, making his way out onto the street and breathing in grateful gulps of cold air. As he started off towards home he heard heels clattering along behind him.

‘Wait!'

It was Mindy, hurrying up to him with a worried expression on her face.

‘I'm okay,' he said, sharp enough that she stopped a few yards away looking deflated. ‘I just want to go home, all right? I'm not in the mood.'

‘Is it true, what Shauna said?'

Ricky sighed, shuffling his feet and looking down at them, then back up at her.

‘Yeah.'

Taking his confession as a positive sign she stepped towards him, close enough so they were almost touching, looking up at him with an expression of hope. She was pretty, he thought, and would be more so if she didn't have that stupid stuff on her lips and fake eyelashes stuck awkwardly onto her eyes like deformed spiders with legs going every which way. She couldn't be any older than him.

‘I'm not like her you know. I mean, I wouldn't have done that.' She waved a hand in the area of his groin.

‘I know.' He thought about her moving his hand onto her tit, but decided not to mention it.

‘It must be hard.' She changed the subject abruptly, leaving him wondering at first what she meant and glancing down towards the very area he thought for a second she was referring to. Then she went on, ‘Knowing the killer's been let out. I saw your mum in the paper. Pretty, isn't she?'

‘I suppose.' He didn't want to talk about his mum, not now, and when the girl moved in for another kiss it was the memory of Lucy's face as she had berated him about the shoplifting incident yesterday that caused him to pull away.

‘It's not you,' he said quickly when the girl looked crushed, ‘it's just, I don't want to talk about that. I'm sick of hearing about it all, to be honest.' As he said the words he understood they were true, that he would be happy to never have to think about the release of his brother's killer and the implications of it ever again. ‘I'll see you again, yeah? Give me your number.'