“Can I help you, Detectives?”
Sebastian held up a piece of paper to the camera.
“We have our warrant. Let us in, Miss Lane.”
Amy considered being awkward and making them post it to her through the letterbox, but they had to think her reluctantly cooperative, docile. She buzzed them up before syncing and locking down AEON, sneaking a quick look at her search results. The IT professionals spreadsheet was filling up nicely, but her hacker friends couldn’t identify anyone capable of that kind of work at that speed. One of them, however, seemed to recall a low-level tinkerer—called himself The Wizard, or some such rubbish—asking about satnav systems a few weeks back, and she was going to look for the original source.
“Miss Lane, we have a warrant to search these premises.”
Amy stared down Sebastian and the woman with bright red hair standing next to him. “Who’s this?”
“DC Catriona Aitken will be leading the search and seizure.” Sebastian handed her a piece of paper. “Your copy of the search warrant.”
Amy scanned their probable cause and the items they sought—electronic evidence of aiding and abetting a murderer. They were after AEON.
Amy had suspected this might be the case, but she had hoped against hope that they would leave her precious computer alone. Now that she and AEON were to be parted for the first time in ten years, she felt the beginnings of an anxiety attack bubbling up in her stomach, but she shoved it down. Jason was counting on her.
“Stand aside, Miss Lane.” Catriona was already diving for the power cable.
“Hey! Let me turn her off first.” Amy glared at the constable and pressed the power button. It was scarcely better than unplugging her at the wall but there was no way she was going to unlock the computer and let them see what she’d been working on.
Once AEON’s fan stopping spinning, Amy reluctantly stepped aside and let the officer work out how she was going to unplug the computer.
“Do you have a licence for this?”
Amy turned to see Sebastian hefting her katana. She’d thrown it carelessly on the coffee table after threatening her late-night “intruder” and had forgotten to return it to the bracket in the hallway.
“It’s a genuine hand-forged Japanese sword,” she said pointedly. “And therefore outside the scope of the Offensive Weapons Act.”
Sebastian reluctantly placed it back on the table and handed her his notebook. “I need your password.”
Amy balked at writing down such sensitive information. She had never given her password to anyone, not even Lizzie.
But Sebastian fixed her with a look. “Withholding a password is a crime, Miss Lane. Punishable by up to two years in prison.”
Reluctantly, Amy wrote down the string of fifty characters, reassuring herself that she could change it as soon as she got AEON back. Sebastian took the notepad back triumphantly, but she allowed herself a small smile as he looked at the random string of letters, numbers and symbols.
“How do you remember that?”
“I use my brain, Detective.”
He scowled at her and rejoined Catriona at the desk. Amy hugged herself and watched them trace the cables, unscrewing her connections and removing the hulking black box from beneath her central monitor.
“What happened to your hair?”
Bryn crossed from the doorway, reaching out to her, but she flinched away. He grimaced before pulling loose a cobweb from her hair.
“Oh, I was in the server,” she lied easily. “I don’t let Jason clean in there.”
This was partially true. He was allowed to dust with microfibre cloth and clean with low-pressure jets of air, but he was absolutely banned from using cleaning fluid or aerosols anywhere near the delicate systems.
“You have a server?” Sebastian had overheard her and now came over to loom at her. “We’ll need to remove that too.”
Amy laughed in his face. “Be my guest.”
Sebastian was taken aback by her reaction. “Is it here?”
Amy silently led the way to the concealed lift. As the wall opened up, Sebastian sucked air in through his teeth. “That’s a bit unnecessary, isn’t it?”
“A serial killer tried to strangle me in my home,” Amy said in a flat, detached tone. “It is perfectly necessary.”
The heat and noise of the server was, as always, overpowering and Amy enjoyed watching Sebastian’s and Catriona’s stunned reactions.
“How are we going to remove it?” Sebastian said, fixing her with a look.
But Amy merely shrugged, disinterested in how they planned to dismantle her pride and joy.
Sebastian held his temper remarkably well, the tinge of Welsh in his accent slightly more prominent when he was tired but otherwise there was no sign of anger on his face. “How did you get it in here?”
“Piece by piece. Over ten years.”
Catriona turned to Sebastian. “If we can’t remove it, we’ll have to seize the premises.”
Amy froze. “What does that mean?”
Bryn immediately intervened. “We can’t do that. Amy can’t leave this house.”
“What, does she run off Wi-Fi?” Catriona was laughing now, and Amy was reminded of a dozen bullies, chanting in a circle, taunting her for cowering in the corner of the too-vast playground.
“I am not leaving.” Her voice was iron, and it was only her anger that allowed her to keep her sanity.
“Miss Lane, we can arrest you and remove you to the police station for questioning.”
The panic was immediate and all-consuming. But Bryn took hold of her shoulders and quickly led her back towards the lift. “We are going to sit on the sofa and have a cup of tea,” he said firmly. “And then I will talk to them. Breathe.”
Amy took a breath, and then another. Bryn was a safe person for her, despite everything, and the panic faded away to a bearable anxiety twitching in her veins. He wouldn’t let them take her away.
As she sat on the sofa, blanket round her shoulders and tea in her hand, the doorbell buzzed again. Bryn looked blankly at her. “How do you open the door without AEON?”
“There’s a manual buzzer box in the hall.” It was crude at best, but it was only for those times when AEON was restarting or groaning under the weight of too many tasks.
Bryn went to answer it and then poked his head back through the doorway. “It’s Jason’s lawyer.”
Amy nodded and Bryn buzzed him up. Joseph came through the door like a man possessed, brandishing his briefcase before him.
“What is this nonsense?” he cried, glaring at Bryn. “Why are there policemen here?”
Wordlessly, Amy handed him a copy of the warrant and Joseph scowled.
“The law is impossible these days. What have you given them?”
Amy indicated where AEON was packed away and told him that the two other officers were downstairs. Joseph immediately marched away to find them.
“Have you retained him?” Bryn asked curiously.
“He was my lawyer first.”
“Why do you need a lawyer?”
Amy gave him half a smile. “Don’t ask questions when you won’t like the answer.”
Bryn wisely shut up and drank his tea. But after a few minutes of silence, his curiosity got the better of him. “If you did know where Jason’s hiding, would you tell me?”
This time, Amy just sank back into the sofa and looked at him pityingly. “If someone framed Owain for murder, tried to kill him in prison, and broke into the transport taking him to court, would you want him where they could try all that again?”
Bryn shifted awkwardly. “We can protect him.”
“You’ve done a remarkable job so far. How close does he have to come to death before you take this seriously?” As an afterthought, she
added, “He could be dying of exposure as we speak.”
At that point, Joseph emerged with the disappointed detectives. “We have reached an agreement that allows the police to exercise their warrant without resorting to any potential violations of your freedoms.”
Amy cocked her head, interested in what magic Joseph had worked. She had been right to put her faith in him.
“The police have cordoned off your server. You are not to go near it or attempt to access it electronically. A police officer will be sent to siphon off the data and you will permit him entry at any time.”
Suddenly, this seemed like a terrible idea. Why on earth had she trusted Joseph with this? He appeared to have completely lost his mind.
“You want me to let a stranger into my house.”
Joseph held up his hand. “Detective Inspector Rawlings and I have reached a compromise on that matter. There is an officer with the necessary capabilities and already well known to you. I speak of DS Jenkins.”
Amy smiled in relief, but Sebastian’s expression was dark and shadowed. “I still don’t like it,” Sebastian said. “Owain’s a good lad, but I don’t know if I can trust him to be objective in this.”
“Owain is beyond reproach,” Bryn said as he cleared away the mugs, steel in his words. “He’s the most by-the-book copper I know. Not like us old cynics, Bas.”
Sebastian relented and Catriona, despite the look of disgust on her face, took AEON’s box without further protest. Amy watched her beloved computer leaving and tried not to cry. AEON had been her constant companion for ten years, her best friend, the only thing on which she could rely.
Being parted from her was heartbreaking. But the cops went with her, Joseph trailing after them, and leaving her alone to think about Jason, her human companion. He was her priority now.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Tell Me a Story
When Jason stirred, the room was almost dark and the only sound was the clattering of keys from the corner. For a moment, he thought he was sprawled across their sofa as Amy worked on AEON, consumed by some mystery or another.
Then he coughed and pain sparked across his chest, and the memories tumbled into place, sharp and brutal in their acuteness. Waking up next to Damage’s body. The fight with Lewis. The hanging in the library. The sheep and the van. And that trek over hill and vale to get back to Amy’s spare attic.
“Here.”
Jason flinched as Amy appeared at his elbow, pressing four white tablets into his palm—two capsules and two ovals. He popped them in his mouth as she followed them with a mug of lukewarm tea, and he swallowed down his medicine.
It was only then he thought to ask what exactly she’d given him.
“Painkillers and antibiotics. You look terrible.”
“Complimentary as ever.”
She followed up with a large bag of crisps and a chocolate bar, which he wolfed down in between gulps of tea. She retreated to the distant corner, where the dust cover had been removed and Jason saw what looked like a smaller version of AEON, with fewer wires and only two monitors.
“You didn’t have to babysit me. If you want to use Ewan—” He used the pet name without thought, having never quite got his tongue around AEON.
“They took AEON.” Her voice was tight, strained.
“What? Took it for what?”
“Evidence.” Amy glanced back at him. “They thought I helped you escape.”
Jason felt a pang of sympathy, knowing how much that computer meant to her, how she could hardly bear to be parted from it to sleep or eat. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll get her back. When we clear our names, they’ll have to give her back.”
Jason got out of bed slowly, taking two blankets with him, and shuffled round to perch on the end of the bed so he could see what she was up to. “This is backup Ewan?”
“No, this is Ana. She was the computer before AEON. I haven’t touched her in ten years, which is why she’s running Debian 3.0, poor creature.”
Jason let the technobabble wash over him and concentrated on the bits he could understand. “So you lost all the stuff you were working on?”
Amy laughed, genuine mirth on her face. “I moved to complete cloud computing in 2011. They’re going to be in for a nasty shock when they open up AEON and find no hard drive inside.”
She looked tired but relaxed, as if the worst was over. Jason found that unbelievably reassuring.
“All your stuff is backed up somewhere?”
“Several somewheres. I’m not allowed to touch the server downstairs but I backed everything up on the Polish server I took over last year.”
“Are you going to order a new one?” Jason said, eyeing up the ancient dusty machine in the corner. Even to his eye, it looked a better bet for the scrapyard than high-tech hacking.
“AEON is a custom build—it would take days to perfect the setup.” Amy stroked her fingers down the side of the bulky monitor. “At least Ana has the basics in place. She just needs an update.”
She swung the office chair around, iPad in hand, as the computer behind her powered down. “While Ana gets a 2014 makeover, we can establish some basic facts to use as a launch point when she’s up and running again.”
Jason pointed to his chest. “Facts from me?”
Amy smiled, but her bottom lip trembled. “We’ve been apart for eight days. I’ve been drinking lots of coffee. How about you?”
Jason pulled the blanket closer. “Oh, nothing much to tell, really.”
They shared a small smile. Amy tapped something on the tablet. “Start from what happened in Swansea. I have your statement about Damage.”
Jason took a deep breath and slowly recalled everything he could remember from the moment he walked into prison until the morning he left for court, while Amy made a cup of tea with what looked like their kitchen kettle and the pain in his ribs slowly eased.
“Aren’t you writing this down?” he said, as he finished recalling the guard dressing him up for court.
“It’s being recorded and transcribed. It should even process your awful Cardiff vowels.”
“Hey! Nothing wrong with my accent, English,” Jason teased.
Amy brought him his tea and checked over the transcript. “Before you were moved to the Vulnerable Persons Unit, the doctor said that you should never have been in general population. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“How did you end up in there? It could’ve been a simple mistake but prisons have protocols, rules. Their cell allocation is undoubtedly run by an algorithm rather than a person. I will investigate.”
“What would be the point though? How was I any worse off in general population?”
Amy held up a hand. “You weren’t just in general population though. You were sharing a cell with a known associate. If Lewis and you hadn’t made up, it could’ve gone very differently.” She tapped the iPad. “I think that was the precursor to the hanging.”
“Well, what about those two blokes? That wasn’t random.”
“No, they’re friends of Stuart’s.”
Jason scowled. He was never going to shake off the spectre of Stuart Williams. “Figures. You reckon he was behind Damage’s killing?”
“As far as I can tell, the men who had Damage’s mobile are part of Madhouse Mickey’s gang. Tracing back their phone signals, I can place them in the shop during the window of opportunity, but there were about fifty or sixty people in that bloody shop over the course of the night.”
“Damage’s mobile? How’d you find that?” Jason was impressed, as always, by Amy’s skills in tracing lost objects.
“A little bit of luck and Facebook. Though the men who had it parked their van in your mate Dylan’s garage.”
“Dylan’s not involved in this,” Jason said immediately. “But..
.he doesn’t ask questions and he does very cheap parts.”
“I’m sure that’s why they chose him. I think it’s still there, so it can’t be the getaway vehicle for the prison transport job.”
“Do you know how they did it?” Jason was eager for this part of the solution. He’d always thought those things were bombproof.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Jason racked his brains. “I couldn’t hear much of what was going on, but I know the satnav took them on a detour. Then there were sheep.”
“Sheep?” Amy looked amused.
“The van was surrounded by sheep. The guards got out to shoo them off—that’s when they were attacked. And then the doors all unlocked.”
“The doors unlocked?” Amy’s eyes lit up. “That must’ve been done remotely.”
“I got out of the van. There was one guard lying on the ground and one over the bonnet. Two blokes in balaclavas had done for them. One of them was trying to grab something in the cab.”
“Did you see what it was?”
“Nah, I slammed his legs in the door and legged it.”
“Did they speak?”
“Nope. They were maybe about my height, wearing jackets and jeans. Nothing special about them at all.”
Amy had already jumped away from what he was saying and started talking to herself. “If only we had that black box. I need the forensic records from that crime scene, at least—something, anything to go on.”
Suddenly, something occurred to Jason. “What about the sheep?”
Amy looked at him strangely. “What about them?”
“Well, it’s bloody convenient, isn’t it? That there just happens to be a flock of sheep where they sent them.”
“In Wales, sheep outnumber people three to one.”
“Yeah, I know, but you have to rely on there being a farm that close to the M4 with sheep on it and a gate right next to the road.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That maybe they knew there was a farm there, right there. And maybe that’s because—”
“Because it’s owned by one of them. Or someone they know. It’s a long shot but we might as well look into it.”
Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2) Page 19