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, except Carla, 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
