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That was how Matt knew there was something wrong as soon as he walked into the station. The WPC manning the reception desk gave him a nervous look instead of her usual cheery greeting and sultry smile from underneath mascaraed lashes. Like most of the women he worked with, she made no secret of the fact that he would be welcome in her bed, a fact Matt always found embarrassing rather than alluring. This morning, though, she looked positively scared.
Dismissing her greeting as her having a bad day, Matt had to think again when he met the same look from everyone he passed on his way to the office and when he found Marla, the tight-lipped ancient secretary, placing a steaming mug of coffee on his desk he knew there was something wrong. Marla never did anything without being asked and even then, not without a look on her face that said plainly what she thought about being interrupted.
‘What’s wrong with everyone today?’ he said, a nasty foreboding beginning to gnaw at his gut when Marla’s blackbird eyes darted away from his.
‘I think Dailey wants you in his office, just as soon as you’ve got settled. Drink your coffee first,’ she added, as if it was a magic elixir that would somehow strengthen him for whatever was to come. Though he had to admit, she did make great coffee.
As she hurried out Matt hung his jacket on the door and sat behind his desk, rubbing his hand over his chin thoughtfully. No doubt Dailey wanted to talk to him about his current case – a stabbing in Coventry’s increasingly violent City Centre – but that didn’t explain the funny looks and Marla’s uncharacteristic concern. Or perhaps he was just being paranoid, arguing with Carla having wound him up more than he cared to admit.
But as soon as he walked into Dailey’s office, he knew something was seriously wrong. Chief Superintendent Dailey, considered a dead ringer for Winston Churchill and every bit as forthright, looked nervous and uncomfortable. Matt slid into the chair opposite him, eyebrows raised.
‘What’s up, boss?’
Matt had earned the informality. In ten years, so the general consensus went, it could be Matt sitting in Dailey’s chair.
Dailey didn’t mess around, but came straight out with a sentence that felt like a sucker punch to Matt’s chest.
‘Terry Prince will be released on parole today. New location, and new identity of course. It will hit the newsstands by this evening; I thought you would want to know first.’
Matt just stared at him. His brain seemed to have slowed down; he couldn’t quite process what Dailey was saying.
‘Parole? Already? Wasn’t he supposed to get life?’ Matt knew he should know better. Life rarely meant life, not even for child killers and certainly not for those who were underage at the time themselves. But even so, it was too soon. Terry Prince had been tried as an adult, in spite of protests from bleeding heart groups that seemed to forget the innocent-faced teenager was the perpetrator, not the victim.
‘He’s served eight years, Matt. He was eligible for parole. He has been impeccably behaved, apparently. Shown remorse for his actions.’
Matt knew Dailey was deliberately not revealing his own thoughts on the matter. Dailey was old school. Matt often thought the man had been born in the wrong place, that he should have been the Governor in an American state that still had the death penalty. Texas, maybe. But right now, Dailey was carefully choosing his words.
‘He’s shown remorse? Great. Another triumph for the British justice system then.’ Matt’s sarcastic tone betrayed nothing of the rage that he could feel curling round his intestines, squeezing his gut like a vice. He could control his temper now, he wasn’t the hot-headed detective of eight years ago, who had pinned Terry Prince up against the wall of his cell and threatened to kill him, police brutality be damned. Dailey had covered for him, citing reasonable force following a threat to Matt’s person, and it was never mentioned again. Or at least not to his face.
The Jack Randall case had been his first murder, his first chance to prove himself within the Investigations team, and the case that had made his career. He had always wanted to be a police officer in plain clothes, catching the bad guys. Making the world a better place. Except it was only when he had discovered Jack Randall’s body that he had realised just how bad the world could be.
He had almost been eager for his first murder, keen to prove himself, yet had always imagined his first body would be an adult. A crime of passion perhaps or a gangland execution. Not a child. A child whose big blue eyes, as evident in the picture that had been circulated when he went missing, would stare at him from the face of his mother in silent pleading. When Jack had turned up dead, his body broken and battered, hastily covered with bark and gravel in the middle of the Baginton Woods, Matt had dreaded having to look into those blue eyes and tell them their worst nightmare had come true. Jack Randall was never coming home.
Matt had been praised for his handling of the murder, for the calm efficiency he had displayed but not felt, and for bringing in the killer within twenty-four hours, but he could feel no pride in hauling in a frightened fourteen-year-old boy. Had prayed he was wrong in fact, in spite of the now overwhelming evidence, until Terry Prince had sneered at him when he went to close the cell door. Dropped the bewildered, scared adolescent act and looked Matt straight in the eyes. Matt had never forgotten those eyes; strangely opaque, and without expression.
‘Think you’re a hard man do you? Big bad copper, pushing little boys around?’ There had been no fear then, not even after he had done far more than push little Jack Randall around. Matt had put the fear back in his expression for real when he had slammed him up against the cell wall, still damp from the last occupant’s urine. But he hadn’t seen any remorse, and having looked into those flat and expressionless eyes, doubted now that he would see any eight years later.
‘Where have they put him?’ he asked, although he knew the answer he would get.
‘No idea. That’s why it’s called a secret location, Matt; it’s a secret.’
Matt snorted. Dailey could find out anything if he had a mind to. Prince’s details would no longer be available on the general PNC, or national computer, for any local constable to look up but there would be no shortage of people in on his ‘secret identity’ that would have cost the taxpayers around a quarter of a million pounds at the very least. If he knew Dailey, he would have made discreet enquiries already, if only to ensure that Prince would be as far away as possible from his jurisdiction.
‘This is why everyone is tip-toeing around me? It was eight years ago. I’ve dealt with worse since.’
He had, of course. Murders, rapes, even the serial killer a few years ago who had preyed on prostitutes in Hillfields, Coventry’s once notorious red light district. When he had helped bring that particular guy in he had been hailed a local hero and even the Met had tried to snap him up. It had been just after, in fact, that Carla started pursuing him, and more than once he had wondered if his minor celebrity status hadn't been a big part of the attraction for her.
‘No one ever forgets their first murder,’ Dailey said softly, ‘especially a child’s. And it was such a high-profile case.’
‘Does the mother know?’
‘She will have been told, yes. I believe the father spoke at the parole hearing.’
Matt remembered the stricken face of Lucy Randall when he had to tell her that her baby was dead. Remembered the way the light had seemed to fade out of her eyes as if she was dying herself, right there in front of him. She had been attractive, he recalled, all caramel waves and big blue eyes. Not stunning like Carla but pretty, soft. Yet the grief had carved lines into her face before his eyes. He wondered what she looked like now; if she had had more children. He had a vague image of a skinny lad of about six or seven clinging to her legs, asking where his brother was.
‘Matt?’
Matt started, realised Dailey was peering at him with concern, and shrugged.
‘Look, I’m okay. I don’t understand why he hasn’t been left to rot, but that’s not our job is it? We just bring them in.’
Dailey looked at him for a little while longer, then nodded as if satisfied.
‘Okay, Matt. But if you need to talk…’
Matt got up before Dailey could finish, cutting him off.
‘Did you read the witness reports from Saturday? I’ve got a feeling they won’t hold weight with the CPS.’
Dailey blinked at the abrupt change of subject but went along with it, knowing it was pointless to push further. Matthew Winston was his best officer, but he could also be quick to fly off the handle and Dailey would know better than anyone how much the Randall boy’s murder had affected the younger man. Had been there when Matt had cradled the slight body in his arms. It had been a horrible case, not least because the perpetrator had been barely more than a child himself.
And would only be a young man now, capable of God knows what other atrocities.
‘Eight years.’ An edge of disgust showed through Dailey’s usual restraint. ‘What kind of justice is that?’
Matt inclined his head in agreement. Eight years for taking an innocent life. It wouldn’t be the first time Chief Superintendent Dailey had wondered if justice was now an old-fashioned concept. One that had no meaning any more. Although Matt was used to the old-school opinions of his superior, this time he was inclined to agree with him.
‘Call This Justice?’ screamed the tabloid headlines that confronted Matt when he popped out for a sandwich at lunchtime. He never used the canteen, he preferred to eat alone. He picked up a paper, then thought better of it and put it back on the stand. Reading the crass media attempts to inflame the outrage most of the country would already be feeling would do nothing to improve his mood or his appetite.
As he left the shop his phone rang and he hesitated, expecting it to be Carla and hoping it wasn’t. When he saw it was Scott, a Local CID colleague over at Willenhall, he pressed the answer key and lifted it to his ear.
‘Mate; I just saw the papers. What a load of bullshit. So I was thinking, fancy a pint later? I’ll meet you at the Stag about seven.’
Matt agreed and hung up before he remembered his promise to Carla about the Chinese. He would go and see her first, he decided, and cry off until tomorrow. As much as he could use some female comfort he doubted Carla would be in a very comforting mood after his dismissal of her this morning, and right now a pint with Scott sounded like manna from heaven. After the news he had just had, Matt was sure she would understand.
Of course, Matt was wrong. When he turned up on Carla’s door step earlier than expected she greeted him with a cool smile that turned into a scowl when she realised he wasn’t early but was, in fact, standing her up.
‘I don’t need this right now,’ he began, only to be interrupted. There was a note of hysteria in her voice that he knew meant she was about to launch into full-blown screeching if he didn’t calm her down.
‘You don’t need this? You? It’s all about you isn’t it; what you want, what you need. Do you ever think about me?’
He felt ready to snap and raised a hand as if to ward off her words. When he spoke his voice sounded surprisingly calm to his ears, even though his insides were tumbling.
‘Terry Prince was released on parole today.’
He expected her to look concerned, even perhaps apologise for giving him grief, but she only looked annoyed.
‘I am aware of that, thank you, Matt; I’ve been run ragged today trying to put together some decent copy on it and get someone involved to talk to me before they talk to the tabloids. This is local news, it should be my story. So you’re not the only one who’s had a bad day. I wouldn’t have thought it would affect you lot down at the station anyway.’ She said you lot as if Matt and his colleagues were synonymous with a bad smell rather than the police force. Matt took a step back in the face of her disdain, feeling hurt.
‘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, exceptCarla, 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 (#ucdaf0003-401a-5a38-9dbb-5b55b86db713) 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 BirminghamPost, 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.
Ethan walked in and looked around his old home as if uncomfortable at being here again. He had only lived there a few months, had started his affair even before they had started making plans to move from their old home. Jack’s home.
