He was so preoccupied on his way to the Central station that he ran a red light and cursed himself. Having started his career as – very briefly – a traffic cop, he was anal about his driving. He concentrated on the road for the rest of the way and by the time he arrived, parking his shiny Mercedes in his own designated spot, all thoughts of Carla had dissipated.
Coventry’s Central Station was situated between the courts on one side, the Job Centre across the road on the other and the City Council building at the top of the street, near to a string of boozers. Matt had often heard a colleague joke that on a Friday afternoon the local low-life didn’t have far to walk from the Job Centre to pick up the giro to the pubs to the station where they were likely to end up, and then on to the courts the next morning.
Matt personally thought that with the country in the grip of a crippling recession they were all a short walk away from the Job Centre, but knew better than to say so to some of his more staunchly Conservative co-workers.
Although the Central station was the hub of the Coventry police force Matt was Local CID, technically affiliated to the whole of the Coventry and Warwickshire division of the West Midlands Police Force rather than just Coventry City itself – or ‘Cov’ as it was affectionately known to the locals. He frequently spent just as much time over at the Willenhall station on the outskirts of the city, and if he was honest he preferred it over there. The uniformed officers at Central were wary of him; at least the male ones.
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