When I Wasn't Watching

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.

‘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.