Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries)

by Rosie Claverton

  “Busy day?” Teresa said, taking social refuge in idle chitchat.

  “Sunday lunch with my mam and sister. Nothing much.”

  “So you’re a local boy then,” Teresa said knowingly.

  Jason tensed, suddenly feeling defensive. He hated the way out-of-towners did that, looked down on you for sticking with your roots and your family. Sure, people could go away to uni or move to other parts, but there was nothing wrong with staying in town or coming home again. It didn’t make you dependent or fragile—it just made sense to him.

  “Born and raised” was what he said, plastering on a smile. “My dad was from Liverpool.”

  Teresa made an interested noise and Jason plastered on a polite smile, regretting coming to this thing at all. These weren’t his people, not really, and he had been stupid to think this was a good place to be just because a pretty girl had made him a cup of tea.

  “I don’t go home much,” Teresa said. “My parents live in Oxford, but I’ve never been a homebird. When my brother goes to uni next year, they’ll be lost.”

  Now it was Jason’s turn to nod appropriately, but he was saved from death by small talk when the doorbell rang. John buzzed the guest up and soon the tiny flat was filled with a gang of boys and girls, bearing party food and drinks. He lost Teresa in the crowd but made his way to the food, where a young woman was carefully arranging cupcakes with white icing and silver baubles on top.

  “They’re pretty. Did you make them?”

  The girl turned and shyly held one out to him. “No. I mean, yes, I did, but at work. We get to take home the leftovers.”

  “You work at a bakery?” Jason took the proffered cake, wondering why that sounded familiar. Was there something in the case about a bakery?

  “Just a small one in town. I...uh...I worked with Mel there.”

  Of course, Teresa had mentioned Melody had been out with folk from the bakery. Maybe this girl, even... “It must be sad, not seeing her there.”

  “It was funny, ’cause she’d only been there a few weeks, but we hit it off, y’know? I’d come round and we’d chat and have coffee. That’s how I got to know Teresa and the boys.”

  Just then, Jason’s phone buzzed and he fished it out of his jeans pocket. A text from Amy: “woman @ uhw id down 2 7. easy. @” He frowned at it, trying to make sense of the numbers. What did “2 7” mean?

  “Sorry about that.” But when he looked up, the girl was gone, having ditched him for more attentive company. Jason hid his scowl. How was he meant to investigate if the woman he was gathering intel for kept distracting him via text? The life of a modern detective was difficult. Sherlock Holmes never had to deal with this shit.

  He sipped the red vinegar in his glass and scanned the room for people to talk with. These kids looked like they were sixteen—he wasn’t that old, was he? A few excited yells from the direction of the TV drew his attention, and Jason decided to play to his strengths and head for the games console.

  After watching a couple of average performances, he stepped up and angled for the plastic axe. John gave it up to him with a shrug and Jason secured the strap over his shoulder. “You played before?” Ryan asked him.

  “A few times.”

  Three minutes later, with a new high score on “Iron Man,” Jason was kicking back in the kitchen, celebratory beer in hand.

  “You’ve got to show me how to do that,” Ryan said eagerly, and Jason told him confidently it was all about rhythm when really it was more about hours in your mate’s garage between motors.

  The boys weren’t so keen to talk about Melody and it was several minutes of conversation about their courses and Dylan’s garage before John brought up Teresa’s move. “She said she wanted to get away,” he said, without complaint or anger. “I get it, I do—that house is too full of Mel. I don’t know if we’ll stay long.”

  “I don’t think we’ll get anyone to live there, to be honest. The landlord’s thinking about selling the place but he won’t get much for it. Even though she didn’t...” Ryan trailed off, realising just what he was about to say. “It’s not the same as that Kate girl,” he said instead and everyone knew what he meant. There may not have been a dead body in the house, but it still held the curse.

  “I wish we knew where she was,” John said feelingly. “She didn’t like to be cold. I hope she isn’t somewhere cold.”

  It didn’t make sense, and yet Jason felt that it did, that there had been a great deal of affection between them and they cared about her resting place. He felt like an intruder at a wake.

  “How long had you lived together?” he asked.

  Ryan started counting on his fingers. “It was September last, so...fourteen months? But she’d been in halls with Teresa before that, and we lived in the flat below, so we’d known her over two years really.”

  “Were you two...?” Jason left the implication hanging, and John laughed it off.

  “Melody wouldn’t give him the time of day. Besides, she wasn’t one to be tied down. A free spirit, our Mel.”

  “What are you three talking about?” Teresa said, coming back for more wine. “You’re having a good time, right?”

  “The best, Terry.” John raised his beer. “Your man Jason’s an ace at Guitar Hero.”

  This time, she didn’t deny he was “her man” and Jason thought that might mean something, though he wasn’t entirely sure what. “I’m not that good,” he deflected modestly, and suffered a minute of Ryan’s enthusiastic praise.

  Eventually, Teresa saved him. “Come on, Jason, I’ll give you the tour.”

  Jason caught Ryan and John’s exchanged looks as Teresa dragged him off—the girl’s friends obviously had more clue what she was up to than he did.

  “So, you’ve seen the living room-kitchen combo. The bathroom is tiny. In fact, there’s not even a bath, so that makes it a shower room, right?” She opened the door to said cupboard-like room, then shut it again. “At the end of the corridor, there’s a storage closet and then this is my room.”

  She led him by the hand into her bedroom. The walls were white, the carpet cream, but she’d hung pictures on the walls, prints of water lilies by that famous artist bloke and a poster of a cat hanging off a tree branch. When she closed the door behind them, Jason realised he’d been extremely stupid and, when she kissed him, everything fell into place.

  She was drunk but enthusiastic, and he let her kiss him for a minute before pulling away. “Won’t your friends notice you’re gone?”

  Teresa waved off his objections. “They won’t mind. It’s busy in there—they won’t even notice.”

  It seemed a reasonable argument to him and, in the face of overwhelming logic and a woman pulling him towards her bed, Jason found himself powerless to resist.

  Chapter Twenty: Despair Has Its Own Calms

  The alarm went off on his phone at half-seven, like always, but this morning, there was a soft moan next to him and Jason realised he wasn’t in his own bed.

  He silenced the alarm and got up, politely but firmly removing Teresa’s searching fingers from his arm and heading for the shower. After a quick rinse, he shoved on yesterday’s clothes and, arm caught once more by the delightfully naked and still mostly drunk Teresa, gave her a quick parting kiss before legging it down the stairs and out into the crisp Monday morning.

  He had to get home and get dressed for work before heading out to Amy’s. If he walked quickly, he might even have time to grab a bacon butty. He was glad he’d opted for low-key, so that his walk of shame that morning wasn’t particularly obvious. He’d had a good time and, if this morning’s limpet-like clinging was anything to go by, Teresa would quite like to see him again. Unfortunately, he hadn’t found out much about Melody—dead housemates didn’t make for great pillow talk.

  Of course, his mother was already up when he got h
ome. Gwen shot him a reproachful look as he tried to creep through the kitchen door. “And what kind of one o’clock is this, hmm? Were you drunk last night?”

  “No!” Sure, he’d had a couple and he’d got his wine and beer the wrong way round, but other than that, it had been a pretty clear night. Crystal clear—he remembered every detail: the silver bauble cupcakes, his top score on Guitar Hero, the scent of ripe berries on Teresa’s hair as she kissed his neck...

  “Oh, I see,” Gwen said, with a mother’s intuition. “Did you have a nice time? Was your hostess very...welcoming?”

  Jason shuddered. There were some things you just did not discuss with your mam, and one-night stands were one of them. “She’s a nice girl. I’m gonna be late.”

  She waved him off, and he hurried upstairs to change and get round to Amy’s for nine. He’d meant to pick up some fruit before going round there, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. Amy wouldn’t die of her vitamin deficiency in twenty-four hours.

  Ten minutes later, he was out the door and in the car, but was soon bogged down in city centre rush hour traffic. Drumming his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel, Jason debated texting ahead to let Amy know he would be late, but he wasn’t handy enough with the phone to subtly text while looking like he was paying full attention to the road for any passing cop.

  It was twenty past nine before he finally got to Amy’s, running up to the front door to find it opening before him. She’d been waiting for him—damn. “Sorry I’m late,” he called through, as he headed into the living room. “I was—”

  “Stuck in traffic. Yes, I know.” Amy was up and dressed, sitting at her computer in a baggy black T-shirt with a vintage Iron Man in silver. “You didn’t reply to my text.”

  “How did you know about the traffic?” He hadn’t replied to her text, true, but then he hadn’t really understood what it meant. However, in Amy’s world, not replying to a text was probably like refusing to answer her calls or putting her through to voicemail.

  “I told you—centre’s crawling with cameras. When you didn’t come at nine, I went looking for you.” Her words were sharp, reproachful. Jason winced. “As I told you last night, I’ve narrowed the woman at the hospital down to seven possibles. If she’s an employee and a Crash and Yearn fan. Too many ifs. Can’t be helped.”

  Suddenly, the text made sense—7 was the number of women, 2 was just text-speak. He couldn’t be expected to decipher that with wine in hand. “What are you going to do now?”

  “You should go looking for her.”

  Jason bristled at the way she ordered him around like she was his military commander. He was meant to be the cleaner, not her personal slave. Besides, this was Bryn and Owain’s job, and they got paid a hell of a lot more than him. “Get Bryn to do it.” He collected the stray mugs that told him she’d been subsisting on coffee all weekend. “I’ve got work to do making this place habitable.”

  “I’m paying you. Why won’t you just do what I want? You’re late and now you want to get out of a job—”

  “You’re not paying me. Your sister is. And she’s paying me to clean your flat. You can’t just order me to fetch and carry for you. That’s not what I’m here for.”

  “You didn’t complain before. Why are you now so stubborn? Did you find something better to do?”

  “If you want to find this woman so badly, why don’t you find her yourself?” Jason was deliberately baiting her now. His head was starting to ache and he was not in the mood to fight with Amy about what he did and didn’t want to do for her. This case had taken over his life already. He’d spent most of his weekend trying to find out stuff for her, and now she was acting like he was slacking off just because he was a bit late? He’d been staying late every day to help her out, and this was the thanks he got? Typical bloody woman.

  “Maybe I don’t want to.” Amy turned back to her keyboard with a huff.

  Jason stalked over to her and turned her chair around, hesitating at the flicker of fear in her eyes. “I get it—you don’t want to go outside. What’s so scary about outside, Amy? Would a little sunlight kill you? You’re not a bloody vampire.”

  With that, he threw open the curtains, allowing the light to stream into the room through the grubby windowpane. Amy shielded her eyes as if it burned her, whimpering softly at the onslaught of sunlight. “Don’t, please, just...put them back...”

  Ignoring her pleas, Jason found a key on the windowsill and thrust it into the rusted window lock. “Something wrong with fresh air? Do you good. Sun and fresh air and outside.”

  “No, don’t open it!” she cried out, grabbing for his sleeve. “I don’t want it—”

  Jason wrenched open the window and a cold gust of air swept into the stuffy room, the bite of encroaching winter in its ice. He turned back to Amy to find her shuddering in her chair, curled in on herself and gasping for breath. “Amy...?”

  Her breathing showed no sign of slowing, as she huddled in her ball of terror like a startled hedgehog. Jason quickly slammed the window and drew the curtains, returning the room to its usual state. But she did not calm, tension radiating from every fibre of her being.

  Jason knelt in front of her, unsure of what to do, his own heart hammering at his impotence. “Tell me what you need. Amy, you have to tell me how to help you.”

  “Not going out, not going out, not going out.” The litany that passed her lips was like a prayer, fervent and unanswered. Her breathing quickened further and she clutched her chest as though she was having a heart attack.

  Jason grabbed hold of her shoulders. “Amy! Snap out of it!”

  Amy cried out, shaking now, tears spilling over.

  Jason was terrified and started rubbing her shoulders rhythmically. “It’s okay, it’s okay—you don’t have to go. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re going to be all right.”

  She reached out, clutching at his T-shirt, and Jason wrapped his arms around her, soothingly rubbing her back and drawing her close to him. He bent close to listen to her feverish ramblings, but could only pick up fragments: “...hurts...please...don’t let me die...”

  “You’re not going to die. I’m right here. Breathe.”

  She was clinging to him as if he were a life buoy, her only hope of survival, and he wasn’t sure how long he held her, as her cries subsided and her breathing slowly returned to normal.

  “Are you okay?” he said, unwilling to release her until he knew she was going to be all right.

  “I’m not going out.” Her words were muffled against his shoulder, and he ran a gentle hand over her hair.

  “You’re not going out,” he agreed, shaken to his core by what had just happened. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “Will you stay?” She looked straight at him with pleading, red-rimmed eyes.

  “For as long as I can,” he promised, and that seemed to be enough.

  Chapter Twenty-One: If I Had a Hammer

  Jason was cleaning the skirting boards, a task that Amy wholly failed to grasp the relevance of, when the doorbell rang. Bryn and Owain’s faces flickered up on the monitor and Amy buzzed them up. She hadn’t moved from her position on the sofa, where Jason had found her that morning, but she could work just as effectively from her iPad.

  If she ignored yesterday’s events, it was as if they never happened. The whole day had been a write-off, as she’d retreated to her bedroom and Jason had let her go. He was apologetic today, even brought doughnuts for breakfast, and a tiny part of Amy was glad he was contrite. She’d thought she was going to die. There was no way to rationalise that sense of dread.

  Full of raspberry jam and tea, she was curled up in her dressing gown when Bryn and Owain entered the room. “Please tell me you have something,” Bryn said. Not good.

  “I sent you the names
...” she started, but Bryn waved that off.

  “Dead end. None of the girls know anything.”

  Amy set her shoulders at that, indignant. “That’s impossible. I cross-referenced all the available data—”

  “They don’t know anything, Amy,” Bryn repeated and Amy subsided. “What else have you got?”

  Amy gestured helplessly at AEON. “Nothing. I’ve got nothing. The CCTV footage of Melody goes dark before she disappears, I’m no closer to finding the alarm in the hospital—and now you’re telling me it might not even matter.” A black cloud was already settling over her. It wasn’t worth getting up today for more of this shit.

  “Then we’ll have to look at everything again,” Jason suddenly piped up, and Amy looked towards him.

  “Everything?” she echoed.

  “Fresh eyes, adding what we know now to our looking.”

  Bryn snorted, but Owain was nodding along. “It’s probably past time for a review, Amy. I could give you two a hand—”

  “We have witness statements to type up,” Bryn said, deflating Owain’s enthusiasm. “Not that they’ll do any bloody good. You’ll call me, when you have something? Bloody papers are baying outside the door every day and night, and Mr. Frank has got hold of my mobile number.”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Jason said cheerfully, and Bryn glowered at him on his way out.

  Amy wondered what had gotten in to Jason today. He was surprisingly chipper. Maybe he’d seen that girl again. The one whose house he’d snuck out of when he should’ve been heading to hers.

  With Bryn and Owain gone, Amy set about doing exactly what Jason suggested—starting at the very beginning. And that meant the forum photographs. While her cleaner popped out for a cigarette—filthy habit, she must stop that—she began combing over the images, trying to spot any clues she might have missed before.

  “You will die of lung cancer,” she declared, as the lift spat Jason out in cloud of foul cigarette smoke.