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