Car Hacker

by Rosie Claverton

  Except it seemed Jason was quite determined to fly solo on this one. He hadn’t even texted to ask Amy to check the camera feeds in Canton, another clue that would’ve nudged him towards the dump site in Splott. He seemed in dire need of mental stimulation and did not want help, which stirred uncomfortable feelings in Amy’s gut. Had she stifled him so much these past few weeks that he was desperate to spread his wings? Or was this a longer yearning to prove himself capable without Bryn and Amy directing his every move?

  Without thinking too hard about it, Amy sent him a text, an innocent check-in that couldn’t possibly be misconstrued as demanding his whereabouts.

  found dylans car thief? @

  Innocent, nonchalant. Amy could play it cool when the situation required it.

  The reply came through after a few minutes, as the Micra started moving again on the GPS. It simply said:

  Not yet

  “Useless,” she muttered under her breath.

  The doorbell rang, as the camera feed from the buzzer box popped up on her third monitor. Gwen beamed into the camera, a large plastic box Tupperware box under one arm and a cake cradled with the other.

  “I’m here, love,” she said.

  Amy let her in and reluctantly closed down her GPS trackers. She had to explain the mess in the kitchen, and then she had to play nice with Jason’s mother—without letting on that she’d sent her son on a mysterious adventure into the dodgier parts of Grangetown. Gwen Carr was a very forgiving woman, but Amy suspected she wasn’t entirely happy that her son had swapped his life of crime for throwing himself into danger on behalf of the police and a mentally unstable hacker.

  The lift doors opened as Amy swung into the corridor to greet Gwen and her food offerings.

  “Amy, bach, what happened to your T-shirt?”

  She looked down and winced at the splash of egg yolk over the lovely ice-blonde hair of Elsa from Frozen, quite ruining the intimidating effect of the Iron Throne she was sat on.

  “I had an incident in the kitchen,” she said, guiltily.

  Gwen smiled the weary, amused smile of a mother who has known her children to do far worse, and took charge.

  “Let’s see what we can do, eh?”

  Chapter 5: Old Habits

  Riding shotgun was a new experience for Jason.

  He had always been the driver. He was the first to get his licence, and the only one to have regular use of his mam’s car. He had always been the one to start up cars by whatever means, and the one who raced them all around the outskirts of Cardiff to his friends’ delight.

  Since his time in jail, he hadn’t had all that many folks offering him lifts. While Dylan had cars at his disposal, the pair of them mostly sat around the garage tinkering, rather than driving them about. So his first time as a backseat driver was sitting next to his excitable younger sister with her provisional licence.

  “Slow the fuck down,” he bit out, fingers instinctively digging into the car seat.

  “You sound like our Nan,” Cerys grumbled, before applying the brake with more force than necessary.

  “Have you even passed your theory yet?”

  “Give us time, yeah? Things to do.”

  By “things”, she meant tending to Owain and, before that, cramming for her police tests. Jason just hoped her connection to him wouldn’t drag her down. It was difficult to swear you were beyond corruption when your brother couldn’t keep himself out of jail.

  This was the third potential dump site on their list and Jason’s patience was running thin. The other two had taken a surprisingly long time to search, Cerys catching sight of bits of metal all over the place that could be parts of the car, but never amounting to anything close to a clue. Jason doubted the thieves would’ve had time to strip it for parts yet. Besides, it was new enough that it would probably be worth more whole.

  Cerys parked up by an old wholesale appliance centre, long closed, scraping the edge of the tyres against the pavement.

  Jason winced and opened the door to look down, before shooting her a baleful look, which she ignored. He got out the car and immediately spotted their target. The nose of the blue Peugeot was sticking out from behind the appliance centre, a pile of sagging boxes hastily piled to cover the side with little success.

  Jason turned back to Cerys. “Stay here.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “I’m having an adventure.”

  “You’re waiting to become a cop. If I’m caught moving a car with dodgy parts, I might get community service. You could lose your whole career.”

  “Jay, really—”

  “Stay with the car. Anything happens, drive away.”

  Cerys laughed. “What the fuck’s gonna happen out here?”

  Jason frowned at her. “We’re taking a car from a criminal gang. They might object.”

  Cerys sobered, though he caught a spark of mischief in her eyes. “Right, right, got it.”

  Rolling his eyes at his sister, Jason shut the passenger door and jogged across the weed-strewn car park to the side of the appliance centre. He knocked in the rest of the smashed back window and liberated a piece of cardboard box to sweep the shards of glass off the back seat. He had no intention of crashing, but better to be safe than sorry.

  Jason saw that Dylan had managed to install the new stereo before they’d made off with it, a shiny black number at odds with the old car around it, boasting mp3-compatible, Bluetooth-enabled pretension.

  The key, however, wasn’t in the ignition. Jason opened the dash compartment and found nothing. He closed the back door and circled the car, crouching down to inspect the top of the wheels. He found the key fob balanced on the driver’s front tyre, not an uncommon place to hide a key if anyone might be driving it.

  Twenty-four years old and still breaking into cars. It wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be, but he hoped it was more a blip than a trend. He had vowed he would never return to jail after his time in Swansea and Usk, yet he’d already broken that resolution. Even if it wasn’t exactly his fault, he just couldn’t seem to stay away from trouble.

  He got in, adjusted the seat, and turned the key in the ignition. The car started first time and he hopped in, edging the car around the building and raising his hand to wave at his sister.

  Except someone was blocking his way. Several someones, forming a loose semi-circle around the front of the stolen Peugeot. Shit.

  The man at the front was grinning, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, and his three mates started to close in. Jason couldn’t drive in any direction without hitting one or more of them and the car definitely wasn’t worth that. He kept his eye on the leader, working out what his next move was, forgetting the empty window behind him.

  Before Jason could blink, the back door was open and a boy was leaping across the seat, knife an inch from his exposed neck.

  “Don’t move, scum. Open your door, nice and slow.”

  Jason didn’t want to get into how obeying both commands was an impossible task, but decided opening the door was his least worse option. The leader was still grinning down at him, like a foolish uncle who wanted you to laugh at his jokes while keeping his glass topped up with brandy.

  “What have we here? You come back for your prize, did ya? Thought you’d just use our turf for parking? Stupid fucker.”

  The others laughed—the awkward chorus of agreement necessary to stay alive with a man like that for a leader. Jason remembered how some of the boys used to do that for him and Lewis, wanting to keep in with the golden boys. He’d hated it then, and he hated it more now that he understood it was a substitute for fear.

  Jason made to get out of the car, but the leader flicked out his own knife.

  “Now, where do you think you’re going? You can’t just walk away from a sin like this. You gotta atone.”

  Jason sized them up. He could probably take the leader, if he avoided the knife, but he couldn’t outrun the other three. Especially if Cerys had done as she was told and driven off at t
he first sign of trouble.

  “Guess I’m coming with you then,” he said.

  The leader’s mad grin widened. “I guess you are.”

  Chapter 6: Does Your Mother Know?

  Amy sat at the kitchen table with her iPad and a cup of tea, watching Gwen Carr clean up the kitchen with ruthless efficiency. It wasn’t hard to see where the boy had inherited his sense of cleanliness and order.

  “I got chocolate orange for the cake,” Gwen said, continuing the light chatter she’d kept up since she entered the flat. “Jason used to love oranges when he was small. Does he still like them?”

  Amy was baffled for a moment that Gwen was asking her for Jason’s likes and dislikes, but then she did see a lot more of him than his mother did.

  “I think so,” she said, thinking back to the last time they’d shared a satsuma, during one of Jason’s phases of encouraging her fruit and vegetable intake. “He prefers bananas.”

  “Bananas make an awful cake,” Gwen said sagely, scrubbing the last of the egg from the floor. “Now, bach, you’re all right with roast lamb, aren’t you? I’ll do plenty of potatoes and veg if you don’t want much meat.”

  “Lamb is fine. Jason likes it.”

  Amy was happy to eat whatever as long as Jason was happy, willing to put in the effort to clear her plate to stop him and his mother fussing when they should focus on him.

  “We haven’t had many Sunday roasts lately,” Gwen said. “You’re always welcome, you know.”

  Amy’s stomach flipped and she forced a smile onto her face.

  “Not doing much at all with this leg.”

  The idea of going to Gwen’s for lunch was both warm and terrifying in equal measure. She craved to feel at home with Jason’s family, but leaving the house and spending time in an unsafe place…

  She slurped her scalding tea to drive down her anxiety, the tingling of her tongue breaking the escalating panic. When she felt less vulnerable—there was that word again. When would it stop haunting her? When would this panic finally leave her alone to live?

  Her phone beeped in her pocket and she pulled it out to see a text from Cerys.

  CALL NOW URGENT

  Amy dialled without pause, trying to keep smiling for Gwen even as her heart thumped hard in her chest.

  “I need a location on Jason,” Cerys said, and Amy’s stomach filled with lead.

  “Sending now,” she said, tapping on her iPad to send the GPS data to Cerys’s phone as a live stream link. “What happened?”

  “Some real carjackers got him in that stupid ‘stolen’ car.” Cerys was seething and panicking, which was the last place Amy wanted her if Jason was in trouble.

  Amy felt her own breathing quicken as she looked at the dots on her screen. The Micra and jacket were moving in different directions, at least two miles apart. Assuming Jason was with his jacket, he was headed to the edges of Cardiff, towards the Valleys. Not again…

  “Where are you?” she asked Cerys.

  “Grangetown. Picking up Bryn and then following ’em, but they’ve got a headstart.”

  Cerys’s reported location put her with the Micra, and Amy quickly added Bryn’s phone GPS to the map. Half a mile away, near Cardiff Central station.

  “Not much for speed limits either,” Amy said, seeing Jason’s dot moving faster and faster. “Keep me informed.”

  Amy hung up, to meet Gwen’s curious, slightly anxious gaze.

  “Who was that, bach?”

  “Cerys,” Amy said. “She’s going to pick up some wine for tonight.”

  Gwen’s eyes narrowed. “And what’s wine got to do with speed limits then?”

  “Just talking about Jason’s driving,” Amy said lamely.

  Gwen, who knew all about Jason’s illegal association with cars, merely smiled.

  “How do you like your potatoes?”

  “You know best,” Amy said, before gaining her feet and lifting the iPad.

  “Do you need a hand?” Gwen said, rushing to retrieve the iPad before it slipped and gathering Amy’s mug.

  “Thanks,” Amy said, genuinely warm despite the staccato panic of her heart. “I just need to rest my leg on the sofa.”

  Gwen nodded, eyes soft with concern. “Of course you do. Mind how you go now.”

  Settled on the sofa, with a table brought close for her tea, Amy finally talked Gwen back into the kitchen and brought up the GPS tracker again.

  The car was speeding along the M4, but the mobile signal was already patchy. Amy quickly connected to Jason’s phone, which by some miracle still had data connection. She activated the Bluetooth and searched for compatible devices, but Jason wasn’t wearing his headset. However, she found four other phones, Jason’s new FM transmitter, and a state-of-the-art stereo system. Bingo.

  The phones were like an open book into the lives of boys who thought they were hard men. Social media accounts, emails, texts, photographs—it was all there for the taking. Amy had enough blackmail material to safely negotiate Jason’s release, but how?

  She checked Cerys and Bryn’s location, but they couldn’t catch up with Jason’s car before the inevitable loss of signal. The car had just turned off the M4 and was heading north towards the Llwyn-on Reservoir, a dark place filled with bad memories and too many ghosts.

  Ghosts.

  Amy grinned, her mind seized by an idea. It would be audacious, but it might just work. The daylight and the supposed street-smarts of these men worked against her, but what else did she have to work with?

  She picked up the iPad, held it close to her lips, and hit record.

  Chapter 7: Highway to Hell

  As the packed car left the M4 motorway, Jason realised with a sinking feeling exactly where they were headed.

  He wasn’t proud of the incident, that ill-fated date beside the reservoir and the fallout with the police, and with Amy. He wanted to leave it behind, forget his stupidity and its consequences, but his past could never quite leave him alone. He hoped that was the last time Amy ever had cause to fire him.

  “I hear this is good place to leave a body,” the leader laughed.

  He was sat beside Jason in the passenger seat, his hyena chorus in the back. The one behind Jason’s seat had a knife against the head rest, the cool metal grazing Jason’s neck whenever he didn’t keep his head exactly straight. Jason held his hands stiffly at ten and two, an unnatural driving position for him, but one which reminded him to keep his head away from the knife.

  What a fucking birthday. He would ignore it in future and bury himself beneath the duvet, Amy-style. Better to live as a recluse than die in the Valleys over nothing at all. Maybe Amy had the right idea after all.

  One reprieve was that they didn’t seem to have clocked who he was. The quip about the bodies was aimed at a man with common knowledge of the Cardiff Ripper, not the man who had stumbled upon his victims. They also didn’t seem to connect him with the murder accusations from earlier in the year. Jason didn’t want them to panic and end him before he could turn the tables.

  He knew Cerys would’ve alerted Amy and Bryn as soon as she could, but the further they got out of town, the less likely it was that Amy could mount a rescue. She was a wizard in the city, but completely deprived of her tools in the countryside.

  They hadn’t said much since they’d left Cardiff, apart from the odd comment from the joker up front and the requisite laughter from his sidekicks. Jason was left with too much time to think, cursing his stupidity for going it alone, thinking he could take on a gang all by himself. Hadn’t he learned his lesson from his run-in with Stuart and Madhouse Mickey? He and Amy were far better as a team than apart. Jason made stupid decisions when left alone, and Amy forgot to eat.

  As they approached Llwyn-on Reservoir, the radio suddenly lit up, the small digital screen scrolling a welcome message over and over again and chirruping an annoying jangle of fake bells.

  “Did you do that?” the leader barked at Jason.

  Jason lifted his hands off th
e steering wheel to show the smooth plastic beneath.

  “Not me.”

  A low hiss of static started to build up in the car, as if the dash concealed a nest of snakes. The leader jabbed at the stereo, but it wouldn’t turn off, endlessly scrolling

  WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME

  and hissing over the jangle jangle jangle of the bells.

  Behind him, Jason heard a faint whisper, barely a tickle in his eardrum. The hyena behind him exploded with anger, moving his knife away from Jason’s neck.

  “Who said that? Who fucking dared to say that?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” the leader barked. “Nobody said nothing!”

  The hyena on the other side leapt up, practically standing in his seat.

  “Stop the car! Something’s here!”

  The leader rounded on his followers, leaning over the seat to glare his subordinates into submission.

  “There is nothing fucking here! What have you been smoking?”

  Jason heard another whisper to his left, beyond the leader’s bulk. He glanced over at where the sound had come from to see the man’s face pale as he turned to stare at the door.

  “I never…” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

  Jason seized his opportunity. He braked sharply, keeping his left foot clear of the clutch, and stalling the car as it screeched to a stop.

  “Did you see that?” he said, his voice filled with terror.

  “What? See what? There’s nothing to fucking see!” The leader started back to life, practically screaming now. “Start the fucking car before I gut you!”

  Jason made a show of fumbling with the key.

  “It won’t start!” he protested.

  The whispers were louder now, sounding in chorus, different words from each corner of the car, and now one starting up from the direction of the driver’s side door.

  “They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming.”

  Except Jason knew that voice, even whispered through a car speaker. It was a message for him, just for him—help is on its way.