When I Wasn't Watching

By Michelle Kelly

Every parent’s worst nightmare…

Eight years ago, Lucy and Ethan Randall’s little boy, Jack, was abducted and murdered by teenager Terry Prince. A moment’s distraction had ripped a family apart – and with the loss of their son came the collapse of the Randalls’ marriage. Tortured by memories, Lucy was left to battle her grief while raising her remaining son alone.

Now, Jack’s killer has walked free, giving him the second chance at life that little Jack never had. Lucy’s wounds newly opened, her world is turned upside down a second time when another child goes missing – and she can’t shake the suspicion that Prince has struck again.

When DI Matt Winston, the same officer who found Jack’s body, is assigned to the case, the echoes of Lucy’s past grow ever more insistent. Bound by their tragic shared experiences, Matt and Lucy grow closer – and become fixated on bringing the culprit to justice. But now history has repeated itself, answers seem even further out of reach. And for Lucy, it’s time to face her ghosts, and ask the most terrible question of all: can she ever really forgive herself?

For fans of Linda Green and Sue Fortin

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781472096432

Michelle Kelly

Michelle Kelly is a former English teacher living in the beautiful Amber Valley countryside in the heart of England with her own real-life hero and two rug rats and a rodent. She is a hopeless romantic with a passionate interest in history and so writing historical romances is a dream come true! Her first historical novel was written at the age of twelve, tied together with string, and still kept in her grandmother's dresser. She is also a published author of contemporary romance, poetry and memoir.

Book preview

Part One

It isn’t for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Chapter One

Tuesday

They told her over the phone.As if she, of all people, wasn’t important enough to warrant a face to face visit. For the next few minutes Lucy sat very, very still, staring at nothing in particular. Then she got up with exact movements, determined to be calm. She even made herself a cup of tea. Which she managed to drink half of before the rage came, hot and bubbling.

The cup smashed against the far wall, the liquid leaving stains that looked like mud across her delicately patterned wallpaper.

‘Bastards!’

Then she burst into tears.

When the phone had rung Lucy had expected it to be Susan from work. They had arranged a movie night on Saturday and she had been looking forward to it; even treating herself to a new pair of jeans. So she answered cheerfully enough, then frowned as a throat cleared on the other end of the line before asking, after a slight hesitation, for Mrs Randall. She paused before realising the voice was asking for her.

‘It’s Ms Wyatt now,’ she said firmly. There was after all a new Mrs Randall. ‘I got divorced five years ago.’

‘I do apologise.’ It was a male voice, quite official sounding and also, Lucy thought, nervous. As soon as she thought it a sense of dread twisted low in her belly.

‘But you were Mrs Lucy Randall? Jack Randall’s mother?’

Lucy felt as though her throat was full of sand as she spoke.

‘Yes, who is this?’She hoped to God it wasn’t the press. They had hung around enough in the days after Jack’s death and the weeks leading up to the trial, and then again when Ethan had left her. They had been sympathetic but still intrusive and she had always refused to comment, an instinctive need for privacy taking precedence over the urge to talk, to share and to rail against the injustices Fate had dealt her. But why on earth would it all be dragged up now?

Lucy realised she was gripping the phone so hard her knuckles were white, and she couldn’t process the words coming through.

Until she heard ‘Parole Board’ and her guts twisted further.

Ethan and herself had been asked to attend a meeting with them a few months before, but she had let Ethan deal with it. Afterwards, he had seemed pretty certain that the general consensus was that Terry Prince wasn’t getting out any time soon. But then Ethan always had the knack of hearing exactly what he wanted to hear and no more.

‘I’m sorry, can you repeat that please?’ Lucy said, her voice sounding far away. Inside she was screaming no no no, because she didn’t want to hear what she suddenly already knew.

‘Terry Prince is to be released on parole tomorrow. You and Mr Randall are of course being made privy to this information before it goes public.’

‘How considerate,’ she said with just a trace of sarcasm, her throat still feeling as if it had been sandpapered. ‘But why were we not made aware when the decision was made?’

She wondered if they had told Ethan yet, or if she was the first to know. The first to be told when it was too late to do anything about it.‘It was decided it was in the public interest…to avoid a media furore…’

Lucy gave a hollow laugh and sat down on the leather arm of the chair, the words floating over her and forming into sentences that made no sense. Public interest. Exactly who was this public? Not her, or her family. Not all the mothers who had read about Jack’s murder and clutched their own children that bit tighter, kept them that bit closer for a few weeks until the news stories had been replaced with something else and Jack’s murder had become yesterday’s drama.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,’ Lucy had said, her voice sharp and cutting into the speaker’s less than confident explanation, ‘how can he be released? He killed my son.’

She said the last dispassionately, a wave of calm settling over her. The body’s way of shielding itself from trauma. As a child, whenever she had felt threatened or scared, that same calmness would settle over her, just for long enough to get her through. Lucy’s mother always said she was strong, especially in the aftermath of Jack’s death when she hadn’t tried to kill herself or stay in bed for a year. When Ethan had left her for another woman and she had barely reacted. When her oldest son Ricky had his…problems.Lucy however knew that it wasn’t strength, more the ability to hide, but the day would come when there would be no more hiding and she would have to face it all head-on.

And then, she thought, she might finally break.

The voice continued. Talking about good behaviour, rehabilitation, how every care had been taken to ensure Terry Prince was fit for release. How he would have a new name; a new address away from Coventry. How he would be monitored and on licence for life; how the smallest misdemeanour would see him back inside. Lucy didn’t care about any of that. There was only one question, would only ever be one question now, instead of the ‘why?’ that had echoed in her mind all these years.

‘Where is he?’

Another throat clear.

‘That’s classified information I’m afraid, Mrs Ran…Wyatt. Ms Wyatt.’

Lucy put the phone down on him while he was offering her an appointment with a Family Liaison Officer ‘to discuss any concerns’. She held her breath for as long as she could, fully aware that the moment she inhaled, life would come rushing in, and everything would be once again irrevocably changed.

Chapter Two

Wednesday

Detective Inspector Matt Winston rolled over in bed, saw the back of his girlfriend’s head and sighed. She wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t sure exactly how he knew that; perhaps because she was too still, her breathing too controlled, or just because he could feel the animosity rolling off her like a stench. He sat up taking most of the covers with him, and she didn’t flinch. Definitely awake. Carla was a light sleeper and she would have turned and made that cute murmuring noise that she did when her rest was disturbed, following by a burrowing down beneath the pillows.

Matt got up, flinging the covers back over her and going into the adjoining bathroom for his usual morning routine. Shit, shower, shave. In less than ten minutes he was back in the bedroom and lifting his shirt and trousers from the hanger. Carla hadn’t moved. He began the countdown in his head, knowing she would speak before he left, and that she wouldn’t be able to hold her tongue all day.

Sure enough he was sitting on the end of the bed pulling on his shoes when her voice came, cold and clipped. Trying not to betray any trace of the hurt he knew she was feeling. Perhaps he should be more sympathetic, but as far as Matt was concerned her pain was self-inflicted. He had been straight with her, had promised nothing because he knew he couldn’t deliver, and she pulled this shit on him now? But at the same time he knew it had been coming, had seen the inevitable in her eyes, and knew he should have called time on the situation before it ever reached this stage. He pushed away the gnawing guilt. It was easier not to feel, and that was precisely the reason Carla was mad at him.

‘So,’ she said, her voice muffled by the pillow, ‘where do we go from here, Matt? Should I take my things today, is that what you want?’

Matt shook his head, feeling instantly like a bastard. She knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t say yes, just go, and in all honesty he didn’t want her to, or at least he wouldn’t have if she hadn’t started all this where are we going? crap. He didn’t see what was wrong with the way things were, or at least, he tried to tell himself that.

‘I never said I wanted that,’ he said, cursing himself for sounding defensive, ‘just as I have always made it clear I don’t want the whole marriage and babies thing. I told you when we got together.’

‘Three years ago, Matt!’ she snapped, sitting up in one fluid, angry movement. Even first thing in the morning and with her eyes puffy from crying, Carla was beautiful. Her jet-black hair – all natural – and piercing green eyes against flawless ivory skin gave her the look of an old-time Hollywood star. Any man with any sense would have a ring on her finger before she could escape. Unfortunately for her, Matt wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be, more that the barrier he had erected round himself where relationships were concerned was too high for even Carla to scale.

‘I meant it, Carla. Five years, ten years, it isn’t going to make any difference. That just isn’t what I want.’

‘You mean you just don’t want it with me.’ She narrowed her eyes at him like a cat. ‘Is there someone else? Is that it?’

‘Of course not.’ God forbid he would have to deal with this from two women. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk later, okay? I’ll come to your house, bring a Chinese.’

Carla glared at his pathetic attempt to placate her and as he stood up and reached for his jacket she sighed dramatically and lay back against the pillows, lifting her hands in a gesture of resignation.

‘Fine. Call me later.’

Matt leaned over to kiss her goodbye but she turned her face away, giving him a perfectly drawn profile, and his lips just brushed her hair. He straightened, murmured a goodbye and left the room and his apartment without his usual coffee, relieved the morning hadn’t brought the showdown with Carla that he had anticipated.

He had to let her go. It was only fair, but he also had to admit to himself that he would miss her. She was great company, witty, beautiful, great in bed and, with a flourishing journalistic career of her own, didn’t complain – too much – about his long hours. His girlfriends loved her and his male friends wanted her. She was a great girlfriend; but that was all he was ever going to want her to be. Not his wife and certainly not the mother of his children. It wasn’t her, but like most women she wouldn’t believe that and would start trying to change him. Then when that failed, to change herself, making herself into the sort of woman she thought he wanted, unable or unwilling to grasp that Matt didn’t have anything more to offer her.

He knew how this would play out if he let it continue, so the kindest thing for both of them would be to stop it in its tracks now. She deserved better.

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 had, of course. Murders, rapes, even the serial killer a few years ago who had preyed on prostitutes in Hillfields, Coventry’s once notorious red light district. When he had helped bring that particular guy in he had been hailed a local hero and even the Met had tried to snap him up. It had been just after, in fact, that Carla started pursuing him, and more than once he had wondered if his minor celebrity status hadn't been a big part of the attraction for her.

‘No one ever forgets their first murder,’ Dailey said softly, ‘especially a child’s. And it was such a high-profile case.’

‘Does the mother know?’

‘She will have been told, yes. I believe the father spoke at the parole hearing.’

Matt remembered the stricken face of Lucy Randall when he had to tell her that her baby was dead. Remembered the way the light had seemed to fade out of her eyes as if she was dying herself, right there in front of him. She had been attractive, he recalled, all caramel waves and big blue eyes. Not stunning like Carla but pretty, soft. Yet the grief had carved lines into her face before his eyes. He wondered what she looked like now; if she had had more children. He had a vague image of a skinny lad of about six or seven clinging to her legs, asking where his brother was.

‘Matt?’

Matt started, realised Dailey was peering at him with concern, and shrugged.

‘Look, I’m okay. I don’t understand why he hasn’t been left to rot, but that’s not our job is it? We just bring them in.’

Dailey looked at him for a little while longer, then nodded as if satisfied.

‘Okay, Matt. But if you need to talk…’

Matt got up before Dailey could finish, cutting him off.

‘Did you read the witness reports from Saturday? I’ve got a feeling they won’t hold weight with the CPS.’

Dailey blinked at the abrupt change of subject but went along with it, knowing it was pointless to push further. Matthew Winston was his best officer, but he could also be quick to fly off the handle and Dailey would know better than anyone how much the Randall boy’s murder had affected the younger man. Had been there when Matt had cradled the slight body in his arms. It had been a horrible case, not least because the perpetrator had been barely more than a child himself.

And would only be a young man now, capable of God knows what other atrocities.

‘Eight years.’ An edge of disgust showed through Dailey’s usual restraint. ‘What kind of justice is that?’

Matt inclined his head in agreement. Eight years for taking an innocent life. It wouldn’t be the first time Chief Superintendent Dailey had wondered if justice was now an old-fashioned concept. One that had no meaning any more. Although Matt was used to the old-school opinions of his superior, this time he was inclined to agree with him.

‘Call This Justice?’ screamed the tabloid headlines that confronted Matt when he popped out for a sandwich at lunchtime. He never used the canteen, he preferred to eat alone. He picked up a paper, then thought better of it and put it back on the stand. Reading the crass media attempts to inflame the outrage most of the country would already be feeling would do nothing to improve his mood or his appetite.

As he left the shop his phone rang and he hesitated, expecting it to be Carla and hoping it wasn’t. When he saw it was Scott, a Local CID colleague over at Willenhall, he pressed the answer key and lifted it to his ear.

‘Mate; I just saw the papers. What a load of bullshit. So I was thinking, fancy a pint later? I’ll meet you at the Stag about seven.’

Matt agreed and hung up before he remembered his promise to Carla about the Chinese. He would go and see her first, he decided, and cry off until tomorrow. As much as he could use some female comfort he doubted Carla would be in a very comforting mood after his dismissal of her this morning, and right now a pint with Scott sounded like manna from heaven. After the news he had just had, Matt was sure she would understand.

Of course, Matt was wrong. When he turned up on Carla’s door step earlier than expected she greeted him with a cool smile that turned into a scowl when she realised he wasn’t early but was, in fact, standing her up.

‘I don’t need this right now,’ he began, only to be interrupted. There was a note of hysteria in her voice that he knew meant she was about to launch into full-blown screeching if he didn’t calm her down.

‘You don’t need this? You? It’s all about you isn’t it; what you want, what you need. Do you ever think about me?’

He felt ready to snap and raised a hand as if to ward off her words. When he spoke his voice sounded surprisingly calm to his ears, even though his insides were tumbling.

‘Terry Prince was released on parole today.’

He expected her to look concerned, even perhaps apologise for giving him grief, but she only looked annoyed.

‘I am aware of that, thank you, Matt; I’ve