And day and night yield one delight once more?: ‘Sudden Light’
Something weakly stirred in the recesses of her memory, an association between the titles and something important to the case. But what exactly it was escaped her tired, sluggish brain. Why couldn’t she think?
Amy looked at the poems again. The first poem was a comic tale for Valentine’s Day, about how much Rossetti missed his lover. The second was a sonnet inspired by a painting, as the full title explained – ’For A Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione (in the Louvre)’. The painting was still in the Louvre, though it had now been attributed to Giorgione’s collaborator and successor, Titian. Not that Amy could find any connection between artists and their particular case – neither artist had work currently displayed in the National Museum Cardiff.
The third poem was a short, four-line effort. Not Rossetti’s best work, in Amy’s uncultured opinion. The fourth was beautiful, however, a poem of adoration likely directed at his muse – Elizabeth Siddal. But what the hell did they mean? Why those four poems, and why those four lines?
To Amy’s mind, a cipher was unlikely. The lines were rendered as originally composed – to find four lines of poetry, even in Rossetti’s prolific body of work, that exactly matched the coded message Paul wished to send? It was not impossible, but it was vanishingly improbable. Therefore, the secret must be hidden in the broad brushstrokes. Something about the words or the poems as a whole must solve the puzzle.
The doorbell rang. Amy froze with a convulsive jerk, hardly daring to look at the monitor. Was Frieda back with a warrant? Had the killer come for her?
But it was Cerys’ face which stared back at her and Amy let her in, relief sinking deep into her stiff muscles. She needed a hot bath, a glass of wine, and for this hideous case to be over. Before she fucked it up. Again.
The elevator doors closed and Amy spun her chair to greet her. Cerys stood in the doorway to the living room, tense and dripping rainwater from her soaked uniform. Her blonde hair had flattened into a dark bronze mat, trickling water across her neck, though she didn’t flinch as it hit her skin.
She looked angry. And dangerous.
With a quiet horror that crept up her spine, Amy remembered that Cerys wasn’t a good girl, had run with drug dealers and hard men, had set fire to public property and revelled in it. Cerys wasn’t a good girl and she was angry with Amy.
‘Well?’ Cerys breathed, like a dragon prepared to flame and burn everything in sight. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’
Amy moved her mouth but no words came out.
Cerys’ laugh was cold as a tiled floor in winter.
‘You sent her into danger. You let her just walk right in and you don’t give a shit, do you?’ Cerys paced as she raged. ‘Is that what you do to my brother? Is that how his bones get broken and gangsters come after him and how Owain almost fucking died?’
Amy braced herself against the onslaught, hands gripping the arms of her chair. She had to keep breathing. Just keep breathing and it would go away.
But Cerys wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Do you have any idea of the consequences of what you do? The fucking terrible positions you put people in? No, you just sit here in your ivory bloody tower and let other people fall into shit.’
Amy wanted to remind Cerys that she too had been hurt, had faced danger with Jason, but it would only fan the flames. And Cerys was beyond reason.
‘That girl trusted you. I trusted you, because Jason said you were a genius and you knew what you were doing. You haven’t got a bloody clue, have you? You’re just stumbling around in the dark, while other people get hurt.’
Cerys raised herself to her full height, glaring down at Amy.
‘I’ve had enough. Owain is well shot of you, and so am I. You tell my brother – you tell him that if he wants to be part of this family, he’ll come home. Our mam’s had enough sleepless nights because of you.’
She left, leaving only embers and ashes in her wake, and Amy quietly shaking in her computer chair. She was losing what little control she had and, with an ultimatum like that on the table, how could she make Jason choose?
It was time for this to end.
Chapter 45
Hopeful and brave
Bryn found her at the hospital, hunched over in one of those garish plastic chairs that were made to torture. He’d spent too long in one when Owain was in surgery, and saw the weight of a similar burden on that young girl’s shoulders.
‘Miss? I’m Detective Inspector Bryn Hesketh – might I have a word?’
The girl looked up at him, startled, revealing the rust stains across the front of her V-neck pullover, stiffening her long, gaping sleeves.
‘Am I in trouble?’
Her thick native Welsh accent was coloured with panic, and Bryn hastily shook his head as he sat down beside her. ‘No, you’re not in trouble. What’s your name?’
‘Heddwen. Are you going to tell my parents I was here? They think I’m staying over at a friend’s.’
Bryn judged her age at about fifteen, sixteen, and decided to barrel on. ‘Not if you don’t want me to. Though I’m guessing you were meant to be in school today.’
Heddwen nodded. ‘We were meant to get back in time for Double Art. But I … I couldn’t leave her.’
She looked down the corridor, as if expecting her friend to walk through the doors at any moment.
‘Do you know anyone who might want to harm Leah?’
‘Corelia.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘She likes to be called Corelia. And I guess it’s about what we did for Ada.’
The name triggered something in the back of Bryn’s brain. Ada Lovelace – his hacker’s heroine, and her favourite alias. Still, he asked the child: ‘Who’s Ada?’
Heddwen shifted uncomfortably. ‘She’s working with Corelia on this geocaching thing.’ She glanced up to check she hadn’t lost him. ‘She paid for us to go to Belfast to find a clue there. In exchange, she’s going to tell us the Welsh geocache, when she solves it.’
‘How long have you been into geocaching?’ Bryn asked, careful to pronounce the word correctly to avoid alienating her.
‘Not long,’ she said, with a small smile. ‘Corelia loves it though. It was all she could talk about, this competition. She’d been trying to find the clue at the museum for weeks, she said. Every day she went up there but she couldn’t find it. She even asked one of the museum staff to give her this private tutorial so she could get behind-the-scenes access. But then that guard died and she couldn’t get in anymore.’
She fell silent, almost exhausted, as if she hadn’t spoken that many words together for a long time.
‘She was so excited,’ she added, finally. ‘We didn’t know it was dangerous. It was just a game.’
The early morning train rolled into Cardiff at the end of the Friday morning rush. Jason fought his way through the crowd of commuters, spilling someone’s expensive coffee as he barged through. Part of the tunnel between platforms was still cordoned off and Jason could see the dark stain on the floor to mark where Corelia had fallen.
Past the ticket barriers, he contemplated the buses for half a second before joining the taxi queue. He needed to get home and grab some shuteye before Amy lurched into another minefield.
He didn’t know what had gotten into her lately. He was usually the trouble magnet in this partnership, the risk-taker and the marauder. Amy was the sensible, cautious one, always ready with a warning tone and a hundred reasons for him to stay at home.
But now she was making deals with a blackmailer, thief and murderer, sending teenagers out on missions to Belfast and attracting the attention of the National Crime Agency. All his illusions about his anxious, risk-averse boss were being shattered by these revelations.
And damn it, if that didn’t make him love her
just that little bit more.
Jason stopped dead in the middle of the pavement. Love her? Where the hell had that come from?
No, that was wrong. She was his boss and his best friend and that was all. He liked her, of course he liked her. He maybe even like-liked her a little bit, because he was a man with eyes, but love?
Someone barged past him to take his place in the taxi queue, and Jason came back to earth. He was sleep-deprived, that was all. He needed to get home and get this bloody case over with before it ruined the last of his good sense.
The taxi ride passed in a blur as he fiddled with the strap on his backpack and tried not to think too hard. His bike – that was a safe topic. He needed to get his bike from Dylan’s. Except thinking about the bike meant thinking about Frieda, the conniving bitch, which led to thinking about the kiss in Bangor. Which returned his thoughts to Amy’s green eyes, flecked with a hundred thousand little bits of brown in just the right light.
Fucking hell, he was in trouble.
He stumbled out of the cab, tipped too much and made his way to the front door. He talked at the box, the voice software opening the door for him. He went up one level to Amy’s floor, planning to check in before he ran for his bed. He wanted to see her and he didn’t. He was furious with her and he felt something else for her, which left him feeling ropey as hell.
She was on the couch, wrapped up in her dressing gown, the ghostly pale skin of her arms exposed. Her head lolled against the arm of the sofa, neck extended to reveal more stark white flesh.
A vivid memory flashed into his mind, a crime scene photograph, and Amy’s confident assertion that the human neck couldn’t sustain such-and-such an angle and live.
Jason surged forward, hands flying to her neck to check for a pulse.
Amy yelped and smacked him in the face.
‘Fuck!’ The heel of her palm had caught his cheekbone, sending shooting pain into his eye socket.
‘What are you doing?’ Amy shrieked.
‘M’sorry, m’sorry – got the angle wrong.’
Amy froze, her entire body stiff as a board, before she pulled her dressing gown closer around her. ‘The angle for what?’
Jason waved towards her neck with one hand, clutching his cheek with the other. ‘Your neck! The angle of your neck.’
Amy self-consciously raised her hand to cover her neck. ‘What’s wrong with my neck?’
‘Nothing! I thought you were dead – you’re not dead, it’s all good.’
Amy’s hands went to her face, rubbing at her cheeks to colour them. ‘Shit, do I look that bad?’
Jason went into the kitchen to raid the freezer for peas. ‘You look fine, you look great. Your neck looked weird, for a second, because I’m tired. That’s it.’
Amy followed him, folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the counter. ‘You could have called my name before assuming I was dead.’
‘I panicked.’ Jason clapped the peas to his cheekbone, their presence in the freezer purely for such a purpose. Neither of them could stand peas, unless they were mushed puree beside a nice bit of cod and chips.
After a moment, he realised what was missing – or, rather, who. ‘Where’s Cerys?’
Amy folded her arms closer and said nothing.
Jason pushed. ‘Where is she?’
‘She came. She left.’
Jason could read between the lines. ‘You fought.’
‘Doesn’t matter. You need to sleep.’
‘Amy—’
‘Tonight we need to make our move.’
‘The museum?’
Despite his fatigue, his heart rate picked up and he felt a new surge of energy. The thrill of facing danger never really went away.
‘The museum. Tonight, we save “The Blue Lady”.’
Chapter 46
With a kiss
After the hospital, Bryn went home and woke his daughters by kissing them in their beds.
‘Silly old man,’ his eldest said, turning her back to him and snuggling under the duvet.
But he couldn’t shake the thought of that small, hunched-over girl at the hospital, waiting for her friend to wake up – if she would ever wake up. Two curious, adventurous girls who had got mixed up with Amy Lane.
He’d already seen the toll that association had taken on Owain, on Jason. He’d seen it in the mirror. The tense hospital nights, the broken bones. Of course, Amy had experienced her fair share of those wounds, but that was her choice. Where she led, they would follow.
Well, not Owain anymore. Owain was dancing to his own tune, one running at a jarring discord to Amy’s. How much of that decision had been based on his injuries, his scars, physical and mental? How much blame for losing his partner could he lay at Amy Lane’s door – and how much would he have to bear for himself?
He slept badly, a hundred nightmares of his daughters bleeding out in Central Station, sitting tense in a hospital waiting room. Of Owain and Jason, Cerys and Amy, dead and dying. Pain and loss, in myriad permutations and combinations, that all screamed to him failure.
He made his way to the office early. The super had delayed the announcement of his promotion until after this case was solved, but he had the keys to his new office. On a floor above everyone else, removed from the work and the buzz of the investigations. Was he happy that this feeling of directionless wandering, this lack of purpose, would replace the heartache and sleepless nights? Or would those never leave him now?
He had made his choice, regardless. Bryn couldn’t see the point of dithering over it. They had to get through this investigation, in whatever limited capacity they were allowed to participate, and then he was moving on. He wasn’t leaving anyone behind now, no one he was close to in the detectives’ paddock. His former colleagues had all left or met their fate.
He walked past the detectives’ office out of habit and was surprised to find the door open. Matt and Frieda were deep in conversation around the murder board, while Owain and Catriona sat to one side with a laptop. A few other NCA agents were milling around or completing paperwork. Bryn wasn’t sure any of them had gone to bed.
He attempted to slip past, but heard his name and returned to the doorway. Matt beckoned him forward and Bryn stepped into the alien place that had once been his domain, more hours lived in than his own home.
‘Deigning to let us paupers through the door?’ he said, unable to resist.
Matt didn’t rise to it. ‘The stabbing yesterday – you didn’t inform us it was relevant.’
Bryn had been hoping to keep that under wraps a little longer, do some real detective work before his last bow. Owain hunched further over his laptop and Bryn realised he was responsible for the leak, perhaps monitoring Indira’s lab reports for just such an eventuality. He knew he shouldn’t expect anything different now, but it still smarted.
‘I had reports of a possible connection last night,’ Bryn conceded. ‘I was waiting on the forensic evidence to be sure.’
‘The paint on the clothes is a match,’ Matt said. ‘Dr Bharani logged her findings this morning.’
‘Where do you think a schoolgirl got the money to buy two return flights to Belfast?’ Frieda said suddenly. ‘Unless she didn’t buy the tickets. Also note the plural – who was with this girl, this underage girl? Perhaps a case of grooming?’
Bryn didn’t like what they were implying one bit, but he also didn’t want to give away what he’d learned from Heddwen without a fight. This was still his investigation.
‘We’ll need to track down the source of the tickets.’
‘We’ve done it,’ Catriona said. ‘Disposable credit card, no registered address. It will take time to gain access to the airline’s IP address data.’
‘Of course, we don’t need any of that, do we?’ Frieda smiled, all ice and sharp edges. ‘We know exactly who’s responsib
le for this. So, why don’t we all just stop dancing around the issue?’
Bryn said nothing, his notebook burning a hole in his jacket pocket. The only admissible evidence that confirmed Amy’s involvement was in that notebook, Heddwen’s statement pretty damning as to her involvement. Bryn wasn’t exactly sure what charges could be brought against her for engineering that trip, but Frieda was angling for child abuse. She could definitely pick up counts of fraud and perhaps endangering the life of a minor, if they could make a case that she had foreseen the risks.
Given that she had knowingly collaborated with a thief and a murderer, it might not be all that difficult for the prosecution to make that leap and have the jury swallow it. Especially given that Amy’s character witnesses were an ex-con and coppers she’d fallen out with.
‘Amy Lane,’ Frieda said, finally, when it was obvious no one else would say it.
Bryn saw Owain flinch, but still said nothing.
Frieda continued, addressing her words directly to Bryn. ‘Amy Lane – or, as we now know her to be, Amy Loach. Born 15th September 1988 to Ralph and Marie Loach with one older sister Elizabeth, ordinarily resident in Brisbane, Australia.’
Bryn felt a heavy feeling of dread suspend over him. This wasn’t some light background research – Frieda Haas knew Amy’s life inside out, including the pieces she had kept buried from even those closest to her.
Frieda went on. ‘Attended a private primary school and then fell off the educational radar. Fell off the radar entirely, in fact, until Amy Lane appears at age 15. A completely new identity, one which gained five million pounds virtually overnight. Which, coincidentally, was exactly how much her parents lost when their bank account was raided by hackers.’
Shit. Bryn understood now why Frieda was telling them this, why she was sharing the details of what must be a high-security investigation at the NCA.
They were implicated, all of them. Aiding and abetting a bank robber, even if only through maintaining a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy when it came to Amy’s money. Bryn had assumed it was an inheritance – he just hadn’t realised she’d got it while her parents were still alive.
Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries) Page 24