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He dropped her wrist and pushed past her. This time Carla let him go. Matt drove off in a blind fury which the congested traffic did nothing to ease. He realised he was heading not for home but for the station, naturally gravitating towards it even on his day off. Perhaps it was taking over his life, but Matt had to concede, with a desolate misery that dampened his anger, that he didn’t really have anything else in his life. Carla had been a foil, the prerequisite trophy girlfriend that showed he was successful without being married to his career. That even a hard-bitten murder detective could hold down a normal relationship, and with a beautiful woman no less.
It was all bollocks, he thought as he swung the car away from the station and headed who-knew-where. His whole life was becoming a bad joke; give him a few years and he would have a drink problem and a mangy cat. He drove without any particular destination for a while, reaching a suburb of town that felt familiar before pulling up outside a newsagents. He was thirsty and tired. A can of energy drink should do it; he might be headed for clichéville, but he wasn’t going to succumb just yet.
Ricky looked into the smug features of his friend and shrugged.
‘There’s cameras,’ he said by way of explanation, cutting his eyes towards the corner of the shop. The shopkeeper could be heard humming away to herself in the back. There were two types of shopkeepers, Ricky had found: those who instinctively distrusted teenagers and who followed them through the aisles like a hawk, with their eyes if not their actual bodies; and then those who trusted everyone in their local community. Who would steal from their friendly local newsagent, who always gave credit and slipped extra sweets in for the little ones?
Which of course was exactly why Tyler had dared him to steal something right now, right here. Ricky was becoming adept at pinching things; he was naturally quick and nimble-fingered, a talent he had previously employed in sports and craft classes but had now found a much more interesting use for. Just not here. This wasn’t the local supermarket or even the Asian shop, whose owners were definitely of the former variety of shopkeeper. This was Mrs McKellar. She knew his mum. The last thing Ricky needed, right now was his mum turning those worried and always slightly disappointed eyes on him and making him feel guilty.
He always felt guilty around her, although he was never sure quite what for. Being born maybe. Or just not being Jack. He wondered if Jack would have had nimble fingers too. No one would notice a sweet little kid pinching stuff, not with two surly-looking teenagers looking naturally suspicious in the next aisle.
Tyler gave him a none-too-gentle push in the arm, bringing him sharply back to reality.
‘Told you you wouldn’t do it,’ he sneered, sounding a lot younger than his fourteen years.
‘It’s not even worth it,’ Ricky said under his breath as Mrs McKellar’s humming got closer.
The door tinkled and a well-built man walked in, his eyes sweeping over them without interest as he headed to the fridge which held the soft drinks. Tyler raised his eyebrows at him. The guy was standing in the direct view of the aforementioned cameras. Not that they were even real; they were empty, put there by Mr McKellar as a deterrent, which his wife had pooh-poohed but then left up to keep him happy. Of course, Tyler didn’t know that.
He thrust the bottle of Budweiser towards him and Ricky took it, tucking it into the inner pockets of his hooded jacket with impressive speed. Maybe he could be a magician when he was older, one of those sleight-of hand-ones.
They left the shop, swaggering with an affected casualness, as Mrs McKellar emerged to serve the man. She waved at Ricky as he left and he nodded at her, his face flaming. Tyler sneered at him again as soon as they were outside.
‘Likes you doesn’t she? Maybe her husband ain’t giving her any.’
Ricky dug him half-heartedly in the arm. Tyler was a nuisance, but as he was the new kid in the area and going to a different school, Ricky had taken to hanging around with him more over the past few days. Ever since the story on Terry Prince’s release had broken. As of yet, Tyler didn’t know who Ricky was, though it wouldn’t be long before someone realised – especially with his mum in the papers – and brought it up and then it would be questions, questions, questions. Perhaps even taunts, though Ricky was confident he wasn’t the type of kid that got bullied. His quick, bony little hands were pretty useful for self-defence too.
They flashed out instinctively, balled into fists, when a heavy hand descended on his shoulder. He landed a punch into the stranger’s gut, which was firm and tensed as though the man was expecting it, and then found himself with his arm twisted up his back. Not really enough to hurt, but enough to render him helpless. The bottle of Bud rolled out from his jacket and smashed on the ground.
‘Forgot to pay for that, did we?’ the man said conversationally, letting Ricky’s arm free but keeping a grip on him.
‘What’s it to you?’ Tyler said even as he began to back away up the street. ‘You’re not a cop. You should mind your own business before you get hurt.’ Ricky winced at the lame threat.
The man cocked his head and smiled at Tyler, reaching into his jacket pocket with his free hand. Ricky felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. This wasn’t going to be good, he just knew it.
‘Nice threat; it might actually be effective if you weren’t obviously shitting yourself,’ the man continued in his relaxed voice, flipping open the card in his hand as he did so, ‘but unfortunately for you, I am a cop.’
That was enough for Tyler, who turned and ran, disappearing into the nearest alley. The man – cop – pushed Ricky towards a smart silver Mercedes, shoving him into the passenger seat and central locking the car as he walked round to the driver’s side, so that Ricky had no chance to run also. He slumped down into the seat as the man got in next to him.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked. His tone was sterner now, but Ricky was sure he could detect a note of amusement in it.
‘Wanker,’ he muttered under his breath. The man laughed.
‘Nice. Well, Wanker, we’ve got two choices. I can drag you down to town and have you arrested, thrown into a cell and cautioned, and your parents will have to be informed anyway, and my day off will be more ruined, or I can take you home and have a quiet word with your mum and dad and leave it at that.’
‘Haven’t got a dad,’ Ricky said with a snarl, thinking immediately of Ethan, which always made him angry.
Next to him Matt sighed at the kid’s words and rubbed his hand over his chin thoughtfully. He needed a shave. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t bothered with the boy, petty theft wasn’t his problem, but he had him in the car now and if he just let him go what kind of a deterrent was that? Looking at the kid he realised he looked familiar in a vague way; he also noticed the gleam of tears in his eyes that he was fighting to hold back.
‘Are you all right?’ Matt asked softly, praying the boy wasn’t going to unleash some awful tale of abuse and neglect. He was well dressed and it was a nice side of town but Matt from experience knew that meant nothing.
‘I don’t want to give my mum any more grief. She’s having a hard time.’
All the more reason her son needed to be kept from going off the rails, Matt thought. Not that he classed a bit of shoplifting as ‘going off the rails’, more a teenage rite of passage, but there was clearly more than that going on here. Looking at the boy he again had the nagging feeling he had seen him somewhere before.
‘Just give me your address, son, and we’ll get you home, okay?’
Ricky’s head snapped up, the glint of tears gone. Matt wondered if he had imagined them.
‘I’m not your son,’ he said in a raised voice, then slumped back, defeated, and mumbled his address. Matt shook his head as he pulled away. Another kid with an absent father and the world on his shoulders. He was probably headed for the police cells anyway, one way or the other.
They didn’t speak on the brief journey to Ricky’s house and the boy walked before him, his swagger replaced by a surly expression as Matt knocked the door, wondering what the mother would be like. A typical overworked single mother, no doubt. He prayed she wouldn’t be a woman like his own mother, so wrapped up in her grief or whatever issues she had that she didn’t know or care where her son was.
Matt remembered a time when, not long after his father’s death, he had stayed out past midnight, hours after his curfew. He was just eleven.
One of his mates had stolen their older brother’s cheap cider and even a bit of weed and a gang of them had sat in the field pretending that the cider wasn’t making them feel sick and attempting to roll a joint. After five aborted attempts a roll-up the size of a tampon was passed around, inducing various coughing fits and, in the case of one boy, the emptying of his stomach all over his brand new Rockport shoes. Matt had been the last to leave; it was a mild night and after his friends had gone he had lain back on the grass, watching the stars and wondering if his Dad was up there. Was anywhere, other than six feet underground, withering away.
He must have dozed off because when he had looked at his watch it was nearly midnight. His first thought was that his Dad would kill him, and he had run home at a crazy speed, bursting through the front door with an instant ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ springing to his lips.
His mother, curled up on the sofa in her dressing gown and staring dead-eyed at the TV, had simply looked over her shoulder and smiled weakly at him. As Matt trudged up to bed he realised she hadn’t even known he was still out, hadn’t even looked at the time or checked his room. She was still on the sofa in the exact spot she had been sitting in when he had gone back out after school. Although he should have been relieved he had escaped a grounding, Matt had only felt a gnawing sense of emptiness, a feeling of the ground shifting as he realised there was no one at home worrying about him any more. No one to keep him safe. Now, sitting next to this surly boy, he had to wonder what he would find when he took him back to his own mother.
The woman who opened the door was certainly not what he was expecting. He stared at her, recognition and then incredulity dawning as Ricky pushed his way inside and ran up the stairs.
‘What’s going on? Ricky?’ She turned back to Matt, a question in her eyes that gave way to recognition and then more confusion.
‘Inspector?’ It was evident from the tone of her voice that she had knew who he was.
‘Mrs Randall.’
They stared at each other for a few moments before Lucy shook her head as if to clear it, breaking eye contact. She still had those beautiful eyes, hypnotic as whirlpools, and now wide with concern.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I'm afraid I caught Ricky shoplifting.’ He cleared his throat, self-conscious under her gaze.
‘Shoplifting? Ricky?’ She frowned as though trying to process what he was telling her, then sighed and opened the door further, ushering him in.
With Ricky out of sight, no doubt hiding in his bedroom, Matt filled her in on what had happened at the shop, but at the last minute substituted a chocolate bar for the ill-fated bottle of Bud. Lucy looked as if she was at the end of her nerves, and once again Matt wished he had left well alone.
Not least because he was attracted to her. Even in this, the most inappropriate situation, he felt the pull of her, wanted to take her in his arms and soothe her. Then he remembered Jack, and immediately berated himself. There was no denying the jolt of electricity that had raced through him when she had opened the door and their eyes met. But it was laced through with the same protective instinct he had felt in the pub two days before.
‘How is everything?’ he asked. ‘I had no idea who Ricky was, but perhaps it makes sense that he would be acting out. It must be a distressing time for you all.’
‘I never got to thank you,’ she said, ‘for catching him.’ There was no need to ask which him she referred to.
‘And now they’re letting him out,’ he said with a flat voice. He didn’t deserve her thanks.
‘That’s not your fault.’ Her tone was soft, compassionate even, and Matt wondered how at a time like this she could find it in her to care about anyone else’s feelings.
‘I know you did all you could.’
She stepped forward, placing a hand on his arm, and a warm tingling ran through him that had nothing to do with comfort. Their eyes met again, and Matt swallowed hard. Then she swung away from him, an expression he couldn’t read on her face.
‘I should go,’ he said, making no move to go anywhere. 'I thought I could have a chat with Ricky, but under the circumstances…’
Lucy shook her head.
‘Stay, if you want to? I was just boiling the kettle.’
Matt caught a hint of vulnerability in the question, a need for adult companionship perhaps, and so he nodded, watching her move around the kitchen with unconscious grace. She truly was lovely, if fragile.Then he wondered why that word popped so immediately to mind. Fragile. It suited her slim, ethereal beauty, he supposed, and certainly she was slimmer and more ethereal-looking than the last time he had seen her, but then it had been eight years. Nearly a decade. But nothing in her tone or demeanour suggested she was at all frail; if anything she seemed to have coped admirably. It was his own preconceptions, his own knowledge of the horrors she had been through, that had made him attach that description to her. Just as most people no doubt looked at him and attached certain words, based on what they knew of him and his lifestyle choices. Words like jaded now, or once maybe hot-head. And what was it Carla had said? Egotistical.
He had to ask himself if it was egotistical to be looking at Lucy the way he was, with an uncomfortable mix of desire and admiration as much as sympathy. Perhaps he wanted to think of her as fragile so he could justify coming in and doing the whole alpha male thing.
Shaking his head clear of his thoughts his hands closed around the warm cup of coffee she placed in his hands.
‘Er, I take two sugars,’ he said, certain he hadn’t told her. Lucy smiled.
‘I remember.’
‘Good memory, ’ he said, impressed, then wished he hadn’t spoken as her blue eyes clouded over.
‘I remember everything from that time, inspector. Even the silliest of details. It’s as vivid as if it was yesterday.’ She visibly flinched, and he thought his assessment of her hadn’t been so far off the mark after all. How, as a parent, did you even begin to go about coping with something like that, and still get up and go about your business every day?
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You say sorry a lot.’
She smiled, motioning him towards a chair. He sat, suddenly tired. Rather than sitting at the table next to him she pressed her hands against the kitchen counter and sprang her weight up, perching on the edge with her legs dangling, a girlish movement that unfortunately put her very nice legs at eye level. He looked away, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. Rebounding from Carla perhaps? But even back when he was investigating the boy’s disappearance he had been aware of his attraction to this woman, however inappropriate the circumstances. It was a feeling that unnerved him then and continued to do so now, an attraction that went beyond the superficial and even the sexual. And those feelings were just as inappropriate now as they had been then, he reprimanded himself sharply. Matt drained his coffee quickly and made to stand.
‘I should be going.’
‘Did you see me in the paper?’ she cut in, and he looked properly at her. Her eyes were bright, but too bright, almost feverish. He pushed his cup towards her.
‘Make another of those perfect coffees, and you can tell me,’ he said, groaning to himself as his voice came out more flirtatious than intended. Lucy looked grateful, springing down from the side to grab his cup. She obviously wanted his company. Hell, right now with all she had to deal with she would probably welcome any company.
Lucy handed him a newspaper, and he started as he saw her on the front page, eyes blazing in anger. She looked more alive in the photo than he thought she ever had in real life, as if the camera captured the rage so obviously simmering in her and ignited it, lighting up her whole face. Matt sucked in his breath as he saw the headline.
Lucy slid into the chair opposite him.
‘I’m sorry if it stirs up trouble,’ she said, not sounding apologetic at all, ‘but I needed to speak out. You understand?’
Matt nodded, though as his eyes skimmed the article, he felt angry. Not at her, but at the press for turning one family’s pain into a media circus. For inciting the protesters who were still there now, waving their banners and calling for Terry Prince’s whereabouts to be made public. He was just glad it wasn’t Carla’s name on the article.
‘It won’t help,’ he said, pushing the paper back towards her, ‘but you might be able to organise something, a campaign perhaps.’ There were laws in America now that required the whereabouts of registered sex offenders to be made available to certain members of the public, but he didn’t think much of them. The exact names and addresses weren’t made public record, just the area, and what good was it knowing there was a paedophile in your midst if you didn’t know exactly who it was? That was only going to result in innocent people getting hurt.
Even here in Cov there had been a recent case of a local vigilante hunting sex offenders; more often than not his targets were innocent and the information the self-styled hero gave to the police turned out to be based on little but unfounded rumour. It was an incendiary subject.
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.
