Hard Return

by Rosie Claverton

  ‘Lucky,’ Jason echoed.

  ‘The uniforms we’re meeting will convey Jason on to where the official prison van is waiting, but only those guards know exactly where they’re going. I couldn’t get any information about the location out of anyone. I don’t think they know very much about this whole business.’

  ‘It’s dodgy as fuck,’ Catriona said. ‘It can’t be legal, can it? Experimenting on prisoners…’

  ‘We’ll need the GPS sooner than we thought then,’ Amy said.

  ‘We’re almost at the first meeting,’ Bryn said. ‘Time to start the show.’

  ‘Put these on,’ Catriona said, tossing a pair of cuffs to Jason.

  He caught them with one hand, handling them with reluctance, before silently requesting Amy’s help. He murmured guidance to her, but still that stilted formality and distance remained. She fumbled with them a couple of times, unable to focus, driven to distraction by trying to work out what was happening in his head.

  The cuffs slid into place as they approached the deserted seaside car park Bryn had chosen for the handover. A patrol car was already waiting, engine and lights off, but the area was pretty much deserted. Across the water, the Barrage tried to hold back the sea. Amy knew how it felt.

  As the car stopped, Catriona got out and opened the back door. Jason shuffled out, hood still up, and Catriona closed the door smartly behind him. Amy and Bryn watched in silence as she escorted him the few steps to the car, opened the back door, and guided him inside. Within a minute, she was back in the car, and the patrol car had already moved away.

  As planned, Cerys met them at a secluded caravan site. She wordlessly shouldered Jason’s backpack, as Amy clutched her own bag close, barely paying attention to her surroundings, consumed by an all-encompassing sense of dread.

  ‘We don’t know where they’re taking Jason,’ Bryn told Cerys. ‘It could be around here, it could be fifty miles away. Amy put a tracker on him.’

  ‘She’s got the monitor,’ Catriona added. ‘You just need to follow the map.’

  ‘Don’t engage anyone unless you have to. Find his location, and then get out before you’re seen.’ He turned to Amy. ‘Be careful.’

  Amy was so far beyond caring about ‘careful’ that she almost laughed in his face. ‘Careful’ was staying at home, eating pizza, and talking your assistant out of rescuing his best friend from the twisted military experiment he was caught up in. ‘Careful’ was paying attention to the details of your probation contract, the written and unwritten rules of Frieda’s employment offer, and doing exactly what you were told.

  ‘Careful’ was not climbing on the back of a motorcycle with a 20-year-old adrenaline junkie when you had just sent her only brother into certain danger.

  Amy passed Cerys the monitor, which she mounted on her bike where her phone usually sat. They turned it on and waited for the trace to appear on the map.

  ‘He’s not far,’ Cerys said, relieved. ‘That’s about fifteen minutes away – and still moving.’

  She got on the bike and motioned impatiently for Amy to join her.

  ‘Hold on,’ Cerys said, pulling down her visor.

  In her dreams, Amy had ridden on the back of a very different motorcycle with a very different Carr. Unlike Jason’s vintage Harley Davidson, this bike was petite and sleek and dark – yet still capable of breaking the speed limit before Amy had taken her first full breath. She clung on to Cerys and tried to lean with her instinctual movements, even though she felt like she would fall off at any moment. But she didn’t have enough fear left for this. It was all tied up with Jason.

  She finally let her thoughts and feelings about last night come to the fore. She had wanted him but the longing wasn’t enough. He had known exactly what he was doing and she had felt childish, awkward, for having to be guided. It was rushed and messy, and yet she wanted more. To start over, to repeat, to take all the time in the world in just the kissing alone.

  But she couldn’t. Because of Frieda and Lewis and Owain, and all these people who kept getting in between them. Who made her feel afraid of endings, instead of hopeful for beginnings. She hated all of them, but she hated Jason most of all. For doing the right thing, the selfless thing, and leaving her feeling both bereft and ashamed.

  The bike suddenly slowed and Cerys pulled over, tapping impatiently at the mounted tracking monitor.

  ‘Signal’s gone.’

  ‘We can wait.’

  ‘We fucking can’t.’

  Amy had almost forgotten that the legendary Carr impatience was magnified in Cerys.

  ‘Once he’s at his destination, he will stay there. We have time.’

  ‘Until they see he’s a fraud and shiv him.’

  Cerys’ fearful anger was unfortunately contagious and Amy found herself feeling both irritable and terrified within seconds. She felt too hot inside the helmet, but she resisted the urge to throw it off.

  ‘Fine,’ she said shortly. ‘We head for his last known location.’

  Cerys opened her mouth to protest but shut it again.

  ‘Fine,’ she echoed.

  They surged forward, perhaps even faster than before – or was that the adrenaline making her dizzy? She could not afford to panic now. She reached down to brush the strip of little blue pills nestled inside her jeans pocket. Just in case.

  ‘Hold the fuck on,’ Cerys yelled.

  Amy did as she was told, as they rounded a corner and came up to a large security gate. A sign said: DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE.

  This was the place. Amy was sure of it. Shit.

  Cerys started backing up. They were too close. Bryn had told them to keep their distance. They didn’t want to charge down the front door, draw attention—

  A swarm of black-clad figures emerged around them, seemingly formed from the darkness of the shadowy trees. They were barely visible, only the sheen of their guns giving them away.

  Amy felt the tension in Cerys’ body, recognised the coiling of a fight-or-flight spring, and placed her hand in the centre of her back.

  ‘Engine off!’ A voice barked out, coming from everywhere and nowhere. ‘Step away from the bike!’

  It seemed they were going in the front door after all.

  Chapter 11: Know Thy Enemy

  Jason had been inside the prison van for what seemed like forever before it finally halted.

  A wave of relief washed over him. He thought he’d be fine but being inside the van again had brought it all back. Hearing the sounds of men dying outside, knowing he was next, and barely able to run. Just like back then, he had to keep his head together. One wrong move could end him up in worse trouble than a midnight country stroll.

  The doors opened and he stepped out as fast as he could, eager to move, to take control and stop feeling so helpless. Three men were waiting for him, as Alby said they would be – all in shadow. Playing silly games.

  ‘We were…expecting someone different.’

  The voice was slightly posh and very English. Some kind of prison guard? No, wait – what had Alby called him? ‘The Governor.’

  ‘They brought my time forward,’ Jason said, not too fast, not too slow.

  ‘Food poisoning or something,’ his escort piped up.

  ‘You may go.’

  Jason caught sight of the transport guards’ rolling eyes, but their faces closed off as soon as they knew they’d been seen. They weren’t going to mock anyone openly, not tonight in the deep, dark wood.

  The two other men were looking at the central figure, expectantly. ‘Elites,’ Alby said. Was Jason due the newbie’s speech? Was this guy trying to intimidate him by making him wait?

  Jason resisted the urge to square off to him. His job was to keep his head down, find Lewis, and get out. Preferably without breaking heads. There was also the issue of the dead guy, but Lewis could tell them all about it onc
e they were gone.

  The Governor eventually spoke.

  ‘You obey the rules or you will be punished. Dreadlock will make sure you know them.’

  Something about this was wrong. The words sounded strange in the guy’s mouth, as if he wasn’t used to them, or as if Jason had expected him to say something else.

  The Governor turned and, for a split second, the light fell on his face.

  ‘You!’ Jason said, all caution gone. ‘Fuck me, it’s really you.’

  The Governor turned fully into the light but said nothing. What did you say to the man who had put you in jail for life?

  Jason realised the others were staring.

  ‘You’re a murderer,’ he said. ‘All those girls…’

  Kate. Melody. Laurie. And Carla.

  ‘You’re The Cardiff Ripper.’

  Amy traipsed through the woods, Cerys a few steps in front of her, flanked on either side by silent armed men. They had taken her backpack but neither of them had been searched. Amy was almost afraid of what Jason’s sister might be carrying.

  Cerys had tried to introduce herself, to show her badge, but she was silenced with a gun against her chest. These men weren’t interested in explanations. Amy had watched Cerys barely control her temper, her panic. It made her deeply afraid to see that Cerys was as helpless as she was.

  The sliver of moon had disappeared behind a cloud, and the woods were eerily quiet. Had the wildlife all fled before them or had there never been any? Had this bizarre experiment wiped them out somehow? Was Amy growing more hysterical with every step deeper into darkness?

  A mist was rising, coiling around her body like a sinister snake. With mounting horror, Amy watched the fog swallow Cerys whole, the guards’ torches useless within this shroud.

  It could’ve been ten minutes or it could’ve been a decade before Amy ran into the back of Cerys, almost sending them both to the ground.

  ‘Sorry!’

  Her voice was too loud, almost a shout. Idiot.

  ‘Don’t panic on me,’ Cerys hissed.

  A heavy hand fell on Amy’s shoulder, pushing her forward, until her foot nudged at a raised edge. Something whistled past her face, before landing with a soft thud – somewhere below her.

  ‘Climb down.’

  Trembling, Amy lowered her body into a crouch and reached out. The metal was burning with cold as she leaned forward, noticing the presence of dim lights like cats’ eyes on a midnight motorway. Leading her down a bare metal ladder into a hole in the ground.

  She couldn’t back down now. Jason was committed, probably already inside, and he needed her to be present. This hadn’t been what they’d planned for, but if she could somehow get this team to accept her, she could keep him safe.

  If she just climbed down into the bowels of the earth with a gun at her back.

  She climbed in. The light gave everything a red-tinted glow, like the mouth to Hell, and she wanted to close her eyes against it. She counted thirty-nine steps before her foot hit solid ground, then the second.

  Two men were waiting for her, in the same black uniforms, but the low lighting continued down the tunnel so she couldn’t see their faces. A coincidence, or a deliberate strategy?

  They were silent as they preceded her down the tunnel, their footsteps echoing in the close space. She suddenly looked behind her, but there was no one else there. No guards, no Cerys.

  ‘Where is—’

  ‘Your driver made her delivery, didn’t she?’

  The guards didn’t stop walking and Amy trotted to keep up. She noticed that one of them seemed to be holding her backpack in his hand. Was that the object that had been dropped past her face before she’d entered the manhole? Is that what he thought Cerys’ delivery was?

  Had they mistaken Amy for someone else? If they had, how long could she maintain the charade? With preparation and the separation of a computer screen, she could lie like a pro, but here, like this? She wasn’t sure she even knew how.

  The familiar sick feeling was rolling in her stomach and her lungs felt compressed, unable to coexist with her frantically-beating heart. She wanted to run, to get out. She had to get out.

  A vault door appeared before them, with no external markings. It opened outwards, towards them, and Amy was escorted inside.

  The corridor beyond was as gloomy as the tunnel, but it was definitely a corridor. Light flooded out of the room ahead and she found herself walking faster, eager to get out of the darkness and into a place where she could see.

  The room was bright with strip lighting and she squinted to see. A large screen took up one wall and was subdivided into nine CCTV streams, which rotated every thirty seconds. Six workers sat at two long desks, three on each side of a central aisle, all facing the screen. At the back of the room, in the centre, there was an empty desk with no chairs, much higher than the rest. It reminded her of the footage she had seen of NASA, but on a much smaller scale.

  ‘Sir, the technician is here,’ the guard said, then retreated into the darkness.

  A technician! Yes, that was the perfect cover. Perhaps she could bluff her way through this after all.

  ‘IN3, find her a bunk and a laptop. She’ll join us on the day shift.’

  Amy stopped and stared. In front of her was the man she had seen every weekday for an entire year. Owain Fucking Jenkins.

  How the hell could he be here? What the fuck did it mean that he was?

  Her brain, already running at full throttle, helpfully filled in the blanks. He was here because he was working for Frieda Haas, which meant the NCA were here. And Amy had run right back into their arms.

  Owain knew she wasn’t meant to be here, but it seemed he was going to pretend that she was. What game was he playing? When would she have a chance to find out?

  ‘Questions tomorrow, Agent Lane,’ Owain said, pre-empting her as he stood up from a terminal. ‘We have a new prisoner to check in, so we’ll be here all night.’

  He was looking at her as if she was a complete stranger. As if he hadn’t lived with her and the ‘new prisoner’ for over a year. But that was for the best, wasn’t it? He was treating her like any other NCA agent, not some mad dog that had escaped the leash.

  ‘Yes…’ He kept staring. ‘Sir…?’

  He looked away.

  ‘You may go.’

  Dismissed, Amy followed the guards towards a door on the other side of the control room. She glanced back once, to see Owain staring at the screen – and Jason staring back.

  Chapter 12: We’re All In This Together

  Walking into the compound felt like the start of a horror movie, the cheap kind that was filmed in some abandoned factory that was one loose screw away from falling in on the cameraman’s head.

  A drip from the ceiling fell beneath Jason’s collar and oozed its way down his back, as he followed the Governor and his goons down the barely-lit, narrow corridor. ‘The Governor’, that would take some getting used to. Martin Marldon had been Jason’s adviser at the job centre, just before Amy discovered he was the Cardiff Ripper. Back then, Martin had both held the power and been terrified of Jason. He wondered how it stood with them now.

  What did it mean that he was here? A place to reform armed robbers and petty thieves he could understand, but lifers? He was the first Welsh serial killer for decades. He was dangerous and unrepentant. Jason remembered Lewis and Alby’s blank criminal record. Is that what Martin’s looked like now?

  What the fuck were they doing here that made it worth releasing the Cardiff Ripper?

  The corridor suddenly opened out to a T-junction, corridors stretching away from them on either side, about fifteen feet in each direction. Ahead of them was an open door and the welcoming committee.

  The sparse room was fitted out like a particularly hard-up café, with cheap plastic tables surrounded by cheap plastic
chairs. At a glance, Jason counted eight people in the room, making them twelve in total. Twelve angry men.

  He picked out Lewis instantly, but forced himself to keep his gaze moving, landing on each man in turn, trying to meet his eyes. He was out of practice at this kind of thing – sizing up a man, showing his mettle, knowing his place in the scheme of things. He'd have to remember fast if he wanted to get to the bottom of this.

  ‘This new boy is Jason,’ the Governor said. ‘He’s picking up Mole’s duties – for now.’

  Jason watched the expressions of the men in the room. Some looked smug, so the duties must be pretty shit. Others looked uneasy, even frightened. If Alby was the last man voted out, then Mole must be the one who'd left in a body bag. He chanced another glance at Lewis, who subtly nodded. Jason could already feel their minds working together, travelling the same paths, ready to take on the world.

  ‘Stoker, fill him in on the rules. Then show him to the kitchen.’

  Again, some laughter, some uncomfortable. Was he being directed to both Mole’s regular hangout, and where he met his death?

  ‘We start at seven tomorrow.’

  The Governor left the room without fanfare, leaving an uneasy silence in his wake. Everything was coming at Jason too fast – too much new information, new connections, and so many fucking questions. He didn’t have time to think right now. He had to remember himself, the self he'd left behind in Swansea Prison.

  ‘Jason, is it?’

  One of the uniformed men ambled up to him, even bigger and broader than Jason. He wore a layer of short dark fuzz over his head and was maybe slightly younger than Jason, early twenties. The other elites were letting him take the lead, standing behind him – two black men and one white, all easily the tallest and broadest in the room. The Governor clearly had his ideas about strength.

  ‘It’s Jay Bird,’ he said, without really thinking.

  The man nodded, accepting it without question. ‘I’m Stoker. We’ll be going through your bag – standard, it is. Just like on the inside. Then I’ll take you down to the kitchen.’