Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries)

by Rosie Claverton

  He took a shortcut down one of the streets that held fancy hotels and few pedestrians—and felt a prickle on the back of his neck, the immediate sense of being followed. He slowed his pace, taking in the shadows and side streets around him. There were three of them, kids watching, keeping their distance. Waiting.

  Jason risked a look and swore under his breath. He knew these kids—and they ran with Damage. Stuart’s gang. He did not have time for this tonight. With a burst of speed, he aimed for the well-populated streets of the city centre, where the kids wouldn’t dare touch him under the nose of the cops and the crowd of students roaming the streets for some midweek drinks offers. He was only two minutes from St. Mary’s Street—there, he’d be safe from a scuffle and able to find the evidence they needed on Dan.

  He was so focussed on reaching his goal that he missed kid number four. The boy snagged his jacket, yanking him backwards, and then another ran in, slamming a fist into his gut. Jason got his fists up and cuffed one aside, but two had hold of his jacket and were trying to wrestle him into an alleyway. Jason would be damned if he gave up on the limelight. He twisted out of the jacket and tried to make a run for it.

  “You’re not fucking turning your back on me.” Damage seized his shoulder and pulled him round, smacking him across the jaw. Jason tasted blood but kept his feet, preparing to take down the little shit with a minimum of fuss.

  “Stop! Police!”

  Damage pushed him away and legged it, the rest of his little gang tearing after him.

  Two police officers came up behind him, an older copper clapping him on the shoulder. “You hurt, mate? Nice fat lip you’ve got there.”

  Jason touched his bleeding mouth and winced. “Yeah, ruined my good looks.” He bent down to retrieve his scuffed jacket.

  “We’ll get you inside to clean up and get a sympathetic pint on the house, eh? Nice story for a barmaid.”

  That was how he found himself in a back room at his target bar, nursing a pint of ale and having the DJ’s assistant fuss over him with a first aid kit. “Thanks, love,” he said. “Tell the manager I’m grateful, yeah?”

  “It’s Dan on tonight,” she said, and Jason tried to hide his predatory smile. “I’ll pass it on for you.”

  He flashed her his wounded-soldier grin. “If he’s got a minute, I’d like to see him, thank him proper. Tell him what great staff he’s got.”

  The girl blushed prettily, and if he didn’t have things to do, he’d happily encourage her sympathy and smiles. As it was, he was on the hunt for DNA and nothing could sway him tonight. She left him, promising to bring Dan back when she found him, and Jason drank down his lager. He needed something that would made Dan slip up, catch him in a lie.

  Jason didn’t have to wait long and Dan joined him ten minutes later. “Sorry about what happened, mate. Hey—do I know you?”

  Squinting up at him, Jason pretended to consider his face. “Yeah, yeah—didn’t I meet you here the other day? I was on a cleaning contract.” Dan’s face lost the confusion and he nodded slowly, the conversation out back returning to him.

  “I remember,” he said, with a slightly guarded smile. “We were...talking about Kate. Can’t believe she’s dead. And Laurie too. Fuck, it’s like someone’s out for our girls.”

  Jason took another drink, watching Dan closely. “But the other one—what’s her name? Melody, that’s it. She didn’t work here, did she?”

  Dan scratched his head, as if thinking. “Not now. Don’t think we’ve ever had a Melody—you’d remember a name like that, wouldn’t you? But the girls are getting scared. We’re trying to walk them home where we can, get their blokes to pick them up. It’s not safe for any girl in Cardiff right now.”

  Because of you, Jason thought, gritting his teeth against his anger. If he lost his temper with the bastard, he wouldn’t get what he came for. “I’m losing faith in the cops, mate. I don’t think the idiots have the first idea what they’re doing.”

  “You’ve changed your tune,” Dan said warily. “You thought they were well set up to catch the guy before.”

  “That’s before they found three girls dead, weren’t it? How hard can it be to find him? It’s not London or Manchester, is it?”

  “Maybe he’s just very good.”

  Jason felt his jaw tighten, his hand unwittingly curl into a fist. “Maybe,” he said, straining to keep his voice even.

  “Well, I need to be getting back.” Dan stood up to leave. “Nice to see you again, mate. Pop to the bar for a drink after.”

  Jason realised his quarry was getting away and he was no closer to getting a sample. He picked up his pint glass and stood, as if to shake Dan’s hand. Dan clapped his arm and Jason let the glass fall from his hand, shattering on the wooden floor. “Ah, mate, I’m so sorry. My hand’s still shaking, it is.”

  Dan pushed him gently back into the chair. “No worries. It’s to be expected, ain’t it? Let me get it.” He bent down to pick up the shards and, to Jason’s delight, cut himself on a piece of glass.

  “God, that looks nasty,” he said, removing his handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it into Dan’s hand. The man wrapped the cloth round his dripping finger, the blood absorbing into the white before Jason’s eager eyes. “You should get that looked at. You got a first aid kit?”

  Dan gestured to the green box on the wall and, with a delicate hand, Jason disinfected the wound and placed a plaster over it, leaving his handkerchief to one side and forcing himself not to look at it, hoping the glee didn’t show on his face.

  “Look, mate, I’ll wash that for you,” Dan said and moved to pick up the handkerchief.

  But Jason shrugged and picked it up, with an easy smile. “My mam always says it’ll wash. Don’t worry about it—my mistake, anyway.”

  “I’ll see you around,” Dan said and wandered over to the door, smiling at his new friend. Jason waved him off before carefully placing the handkerchief in one of his plastic bags and returning it to his pocket. “I know I’ll be seeing you, mate. Hopefully fucking soon.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Blood and Water

  When Jason held up the handkerchief stained with Dan Anderson’s blood, Bryn could’ve kissed him.

  “Looks like I was wrong about you, son,” he said and watched the boy grin back, looking to Amy for approval. But she was in one of her “genius recluse” moods today and barely grunted from the computer, flicking through what looked like a catalogue of high-tech machinery.

  Jason looked hurt by her disinterest and Bryn was surprised at how much he wanted to reassure the lad, tell him it was nothing personal. Amy wasn’t interested in anything unless it had committed a crime or had a keyboard.

  “The machine is the key,” she was saying, and Bryn thought that summed up her attitude to life pretty well. “If we find the source of the alarm, we find the woman in the hospital.”

  “But if we nail Dan for this, we don’t need her.” Jason had folded his arms across his chest and was staring intently over her shoulder at whatever was absorbing her attention on her monitor.

  “I want to know who she is. Voice analysis confirms that she isn’t any of the victims so far.”

  Bryn winced. He hated the way she had no regard for superstition, tempting Fate like that. She was too damn logical sometimes.

  “I’m running voice analysis on their known friends and associates but I’m not hopeful of a match.”

  Amy would make a good detective, Bryn thought—she always wanted answers, needed everything to fit in. Of course, she could barely talk to people and she didn’t leave the house, so that part of detecting went a bit awry. But between her and her errand boy, they made a pretty good copper.

  “How are you doing that?” Jason asked, interested despite himself. “You can’t go around recording all those voices, can you?”

  Amy sho
t him a bemused look, as if that method hadn’t even occurred to her. “Interrogating voicemail. The default recording is an irritating obstacle, but I have a telesales interface I use as a contingency.”

  Jason frowned. “So, let me get this straight: you pretend to be a telemarketer to get samples of people’s voices to analyse?”

  Amy cracked her knuckles. “It’s entirely automated but, essentially, yes.”

  The boy was having difficulty grasping this idea, Bryn noted with amusement.

  “But what if they actually want to buy what you’re selling? What do you do then?”

  Amy’s lips twitched. “I’ve never had that problem.”

  Bryn’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out, grimacing. Rob Pritchard. “Rob, what can I do you for?”

  “I have some preliminary information from Miss Fox’s autopsy.”

  Bryn set the phone on the edge of Amy’s desk and put it on loudspeaker. “Go on, Rob.”

  “C.O.D. was a massive subarachnoid haemorrhage, as predicted. He must’ve hit her pretty hard.”

  Owain was making notes on his phone. Bryn, not trusting that thing as far as he could throw it, flipped open his notebook.

  “But she put up a hell of a fight: bruising over both arms and knuckles, and she definitely scratched him—blood and epithelials under the nails.”

  “We have a reference for that,” Bryn said, nodding to Jason, who grinned like it was his birthday. “Owain will bring it over today.”

  “There’s also a muddy footprint in the bathroom,” Rob said, continuing as if he hadn’t heard. “Preliminary analysis suggests sediment and calcium carbonate, so I’d place it in the Valleys by a lake or reservoir. Potential dump site, maybe?”

  “I knew it had to be a lake,” Jason muttered, and Bryn grinned. Maybe he was more a three-quarter detective.

  “Am I on loudspeaker? Where are you, Hesketh? Are you in that girl’s house again?” Rob sounded scandalised at the idea that his findings were being broadcast for an audience. Owain rolled his eyes.

  “You’re just upset they like me more than you,” Amy said, typing Rob’s findings into a text file for future reference. Jason peered over her shoulder to read her notes, hand resting on her upper arm. Bryn had never casually touched Amy, thought she’d be the type to flinch and back away, but she seemed easy with Jason in a way he’d never seen before.

  “If you find the lake,” Rob said sulkily, “I can match it with eighty-five percent accuracy. We need a soil reference database.”

  “We need people to stop dumping things in lakes.” Why did criminals decide the Valleys were an ideal spot for their dodgy dealings? The underworld used them as a dumping ground for everything from stolen TVs to drug cookers. It was worse than the London gangs and the Thames. “Anything else, Rob?”

  “I’ll keep you informed. You, Hesketh—not her.” The line clicked off. Amy didn’t look like she’d lose any sleep over Rob’s refusal to play nice, and Bryn was glad he could see them on opposite sides of town. Imagining them working in the same building was the stuff of nightmares.

  “If I were going to dump a body,” Amy mused, a map of South Wales open on her monitor, “I would drive up this road here—” she gestured with the end of her pencil, “—until I got to this big lake.” She made a lazy circle around the lake in question: Llwyn-on Reservoir. Bryn frowned.

  “Bit obvious, isn’t it? Someone would see you. Maybe he’s into rambling and knows one of the smaller lakes, out of the way like.” Owain was obviously pleased with this theory. Over his shoulder, Bryn could see some kind of OS map on his phone screen.

  “He’s a fan of a punk pop band and active on their fan forum. How much of an outdoorsman can he be?” Amy shook her head. “He’s a nerd. Anyone who can hide their IP address from me is extremely computer literate, bordering on otaku. You don’t get that kinda knowledge prancing around in fields.”

  “It’s not far out of town either.” Jason peered at the map. “An hour, tops. At night, probably more like half an hour. The lanes are easier with your lights on.”

  “We’ll do a grid search,” Owain said, with the air of an intellectual amongst morons. “A systematic approach will ensure accurate results.”

  Amy turned her head towards Jason, who smiled. What were those two up to now? At least in the middle of the Valleys, Jason was unlikely to resort to impersonating a police officer. Bryn might have turned a blind eye once but if the boy made it a habit, he’d have to come down on him hard. Just because he liked the boy didn’t mean he’d forgotten his dubious past.

  Jason’s phone started blaring something that sounded like Queen; he looked at the number, ducked his head and hung up. Suspicious that. Jason hurriedly stuffed the phone back in his pocket and looked back at the map, as if it consumed his interest entirely, steadfastly ignoring the look Amy was sending him. The same suspicious look Bryn was sure had crossed his face moments before.

  “So, you’ve got the lakes, Owain, and I’ll get this handkerchief over to forensics.” Bryn fixed Jason in his sights. “Do you need something to keep you out of trouble?” he said lightly, amused at Jason’s “Who, me?” expression and Amy’s snort of laughter.

  A blush crept over Jason’s face. The boy had the pale Celtic skin that showed even the slightest hint of mortification—or rage.

  “I’m sure Amy will keep me busy,” he said cryptically, and the look of gratitude Amy gave him was beautiful, until she hastily looked away.

  Bryn nodded, accepting that while Amy worked for him, Jason decidedly worked for Amy, and the pair of them would do whatever they felt needed doing without wasting time telling him about it. As long as he didn’t have to rescue Jason from the cells, he was fine with that.

  “I’ll let you get on with it then,” he said and, taking the golden bloodied handkerchief with him, left his unorthodox detective to work.

  * * *

  What had started as a good idea was rapidly turning into a nightmare.

  Jason needed to keep in with Teresa. She was easy on the eye, could hold a decent conversation, and she kissed well even while drunk. These were all fine attributes in a woman, and Teresa was a woman worth holding on to.

  He also needed to go to this reservoir to collect evidence and soil samples for Amy, so that she could rub their findings in the face of Owain’s “systematic approach.” Therefore, genius Carr thought, why not combine the two and take Teresa down to the water?

  It had started well. He’d packed some food—crisps and chocolate and stuff—and another half-decent bottle of wine, with glasses and everything. He’d picked Teresa up at her new place after he left Amy’s, when the light was dimming but it was still reasonable to be outside and not freeze to death.

  Then, they’d got to the reservoir and, even by dusk, it was pretty stunning. The hills rose up around it and the clear waters spread before them with barely a ripple. The trees across the water were showing their autumn colours, except for the pines standing tall and silent, like sentinels. The grass was starting to crisp and crackle with an evening frost, but Jason spread an old tartan blanket over it only a few feet from the water’s edge. Apart from the road behind them, there were no signs of civilisation—they were alone with only the wine and each other for company.

  It was dead romantic and Jason was pretty chuffed with his choice of date. The wine went down well and Teresa even picked appreciatively at the box of chocolates.

  Which was when he surreptitiously tried to collect a sample of mud.

  “What are you doing?” She laughed as she caught him digging a spoon into the half-frozen mud between the glittering blades of grass.

  “Just messing around.” He carefully filled a plastic cup to the brim with sediment, moving a little closer to the reservoir to find some softer soil.

  “You’re like a child at
the beach,” she said, shaking her head so that her curls bounced around her chin. She was gorgeous and he liked her, and really, couldn’t all this soil and murder business wait a bit? He leaned forward and captured her lips with his, kissing across the picnic blanket.

  Jason raised his other hand to her cheek—and knocked over the bottle of wine. Teresa giggled and tried to rescue it, as wine flowed in a stream to join the mighty lake and the bottle rolled away down the bank. She chased it, her skirt flapping around her knees, and he leaned back and enjoyed the view.

  Teresa screamed.

  Instantly, he was on his feet, running after her down the bank. She was standing at the water’s edge, the wine bottle floating in the water. And reaching up as if to grasp it was a woman’s hand.

  Jason pulled Teresa back from the edge and stared. Beneath the surface of the water, the bloated face of Melody Frank stared up at the sky, the dying sun reflected in her eyes. Jason tried to pull Teresa close to comfort her, but she staggered away from him, terror on her face.

  “Y-you brought me here,” she said, backing away as he tried to follow her. “You found me on our street. All you wanted to t-talk about was Mel.”

  Jason held up his hands. “It’s not like that, Teresa.”

  But she was distraught, frightened, and she ran back to his car, tugging on the door handles, desperately battering the window.

  He walked up to her, trying to stay calm and look nonthreatening, but she tore off her shoe and held it like a weapon. “Stay back!”

  Jason did as she asked, watching as she fished out her phone and held it up, looking for reception while keeping her shoe raised in self-defence. “Teresa, I don’t want to hurt you.”