Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2)

by Rosie Claverton

  Amy turned back to her computer and wiggled the mouse. It slowly came back to life at an agonising pace. She tapped the desk impatiently. “She must have a Pentium III processor. This is going to be hell.”

  Jason sloped off back to bed, sure she was lost to him for the next few hours. “Have you slept?”

  “Tonight,” she said absently, and Jason knew that probably meant she’d still be wrestling with the computer until the early hours of the morning.

  He knew he should tell her to take a break but the sight of Amy at her computer, solving the world’s problems—his problems—meant he was home, and he wasn’t willing to let that go just yet.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Are You Being Served?

  Jason woke in pitch darkness, Amy roughly shaking his shoulder and grinning down at him like a Cheshire cat.

  “The police,” she said, eyes gleaming with mania.

  “What about them?” Jason said groggily, too hot and too lethargic to figure out Amy’s riddles at stupid o’clock in the morning.

  “There was a request from Central Police Station to place you in general population.”

  Jason sat up, pushing aside the ache in his bones to listen. “Who?”

  “Doesn’t say. It was logged by the prison on Friday ninth at 14:32. It must’ve been a phone call and no doubt the prison guard who took the call could shed some light on it.”

  “But you can’t tell Bryn because you’re not meant to be investigating.”

  Amy’s eyes glinted with mischief. “Who said anything about telling Bryn? I’ll call them up myself.”

  She turned to do just that but Jason wrapped his hand around her arm, the warmth seeping through to soothe his calloused palm. “Check the time.”

  Amy glanced down at her clunky wristwatch. “Ah.”

  Jason read the watch upside down: 04:19. “Sleep now?”

  Amy looked at him disdainfully. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

  Jason winced. “Less of that, yeah? As a recent almost-corpse, I don’t think it’s all that funny.”

  Amy’s expression softened. “What was it like? Dying?”

  Jason pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders. “Dark. Don’t recommend it.”

  Suddenly, the name came back to him, the orchestrator of the entire plan. “Zook.”

  Amy tilted her head curiously. “Zook?”

  “The blokes who tried to strangle me mentioned it. And then I heard the men who busted open the van say it too. Maybe he’s a person or whatever—but it could be important, right?”

  “Definitely worth a look.” Amy typed it into her iPad. “Tea?”

  She made more tea and sat down on the edge of his bed, the soft whir of the computer the only sound. It felt close, intimate, being in her bedroom with only a few inches to separate them. It felt important that he was here and nowhere else.

  She looked pale and had that pensive, hungry look that meant she’d skipped a few meals. But her eyes were alert, that open, honest green he could wonder at forever, and her citrus scent was just as he remembered.

  Maybe it was true that prison changed a man’s appetites because Amy had never looked more beautiful to him, the steam from her mug curling around her cheek, her earlobe.

  “Do you have a fever?” Amy reached across and felt his forehead. Her hand was cool and dry, and he made a noncommittal noise.

  “You need paracetamol. And more antibiotics.”

  She stood up and went to look for more pills, and the moment was over. Maybe fever was enough to make a man fancy his best friend?

  He took his medicine and caught her wrist before she could escape. “Thank you. I don’t deserve you.”

  Amy laughed. “You must be ill.”

  She pulled away and returned to her work, and Jason knew he was finally losing his mind. He needed to clear his name and get a girlfriend before he did something unbelievably stupid.

  Like plant a kiss on his boss.

  * * *

  Amy waited until nine-thirty before heading back to her real flat and her phone line, a scrawled note warning Jason not to venture back into their house. Without AEON, she wouldn’t be able to mask the call’s origins effectively but it would require some deep digging by the cops to trace it back to her.

  She had showered and dressed, cold without her dressing gown—which was still warming Jason next door—before settling to work with a glass of milk. She’d already emailed Rob Pritchard’s right-hand woman, Indira, asking for an evidence summary from the prison van, tweaking the email headers to make it appear as if Owain had sent it. She was sure he wouldn’t mind.

  She dialled HMP Swansea before being interrupted by the door buzzer. What was it with everyone coming over in the mornings? Soon, she was going to institute visiting hours.

  She replaced the receiver and headed for the buzzer in the hall. “Yes?”

  “It’s Owain. Can I come up?”

  “Badge number please.”

  “Amy...”

  “All right, all right.”

  Amy buzzed Owain up. She didn’t have any particular reason to dislike him at the moment, except that he was a police officer and she currently hated them all.

  He emerged from the lift in jeans and a jumper with a laptop bag over his shoulder and a shopping bag in his other hand. This was a far cry from his usual sharp suits and it made him look younger, softer. Amy realised he could be her age or not much older.

  “Dress-down Friday?” Amy said sceptically. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Owain without a tie.

  “If your server’s half as dusty as Bryn made out...”

  Amy’s expression closed. Of course, he was here to violate the sanctity of her server. She glared at him.

  “Well, you’d better get on with it then.”

  Owain shook the grocery bag at her. “I brought milk, bread and biscuits. Shall I make the tea?”

  Amy started to nod, before freezing. The kettle wasn’t there—she’d moved it into her old bedroom for Jason. If Owain saw it wasn’t there, he would ask questions for which she didn’t have answers. She’d always been a terrible liar.

  “I’ll make it!” she said, snatching the grocery bag out of his hand.

  Owain looked at her strangely. “Look, I know you’re trying to cooperate with the investigation, but we know each other. I like to think we’re friends. You don’t have to act like you’re pleased I’m doing this. I don’t need you to wait on me.”

  Amy had nothing to say that. Her gaze drifted towards the space where AEON had sat for ten years, only straggling wires to mark her place in Amy’s life.

  “What are you doing with yourself? Without your computer?”

  Amy looked around the bare room. She had never needed anything except AEON.

  “Reading,” she lied. “The Hobbit is a great book.”

  “I could lend you my Kindle.” Owain withdrew the slim device from his laptop bag and offered it to her.

  But Amy shook her head. It was sweet of him but she had more important things to be doing. And as soon as she got rid of Owain, she could get on with them.

  He shrugged off his jumper and inclined his head towards the door. “Shall we?”

  Amy dumped the groceries on the coffee table and padded towards the lift at the back in her slippers. Owain had only been down here once before, supporting Amy as she showed the SOCOs the crime scene that had taken over her home.

  On the ground floor, she led him past Jason’s room to the sprawling server at the front of the house, ducking under the bright yellow-and-black police tape. Owain quickly replaced his jumper at the icy cool breeze from the server’s air-con unit, a sharp drop in temperature compared to the stifling heat of the rest of the house. It was only when Jason had started sleeping down here and com
plaining about the heat that Amy had realised exactly how badly her server had fallen into disrepair. But then she’d let a lot of things slide before Jason came into her life.

  She showed Owain how to cable his laptop into the server, reluctantly handed over another password, and then went to sulk in Jason’s room. She yanked her dog-eared copy of The Hobbit out of the box under Jason’s bed and started to read, sinking back onto Jason’s pillows. His scent still lingered on the material and, even though he was just on the other side of the wall, she missed being close to him. Those little moments when his arm would brush hers while they were watching a movie...

  Amy slammed the book shut. She needed a cup of tea. It would be rude not to make Owain one after he’d brought the milk.

  She came up behind him, forgetting whether he took sugar. “How do you find him?”

  Owain jumped. “Amy, you can’t be down here. If Sebastian knew you were looking over my shoulder, he would have you out of here in an instant.”

  Amy stilled. She would not panic, couldn’t give in to Rawlings’s threats. “Sugar?”

  “No, ta. Splash of milk will do.”

  Amy headed back to the lift, steeling herself. She could go straight up to Lizzie’s kitchen from here, get it over with, but Lizzie had sometimes locked the cupboard that contained the “back door” lift.

  Instead, Amy returned to her main flat and strode down the corridor, determined, to the main lift at the front. She hadn’t been inside it for months—years, even.

  She entered the lift and cleared her throat. “Top floor.”

  The lift shot up to the converted attic above and opened out onto Lizzie’s studio apartment. Today was obviously the day for stirring up old ghosts.

  Amy hurried through the cold silent space, the bright colours muted in the feeble light filtering through the curtains. She had only been up here a few times, never dared to venture into Lizzie’s Other Life—the one filled with parties, soft drugs and strange men. When the music filtered down through the ceiling, Amy had retreated to her little room on the ground floor and tried not to think about all the strangers in her sanctuary. And the harder she’d tried to push the thoughts away, the faster they returned, darker and stronger.

  When Amy texted her to beg for help in the middle of her panic, Lizzie called her selfish. Towards the end, Lizzie thought she was putting them on just to sabotage her evening of fun, clinging on to her with every fibre of her being.

  In the kitchen Amy rinsed out Lizzie’s lurid blue kettle and dusted it off with a tea towel from the drawer. Clutching it to her chest, she retreated back the way she had come, afraid of stirring up more memories.

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Who Knew

  Back in her safe space, Amy put away the biscuits and boiled the kettle. The ancient thing took ages to get started and Amy decided to make use of her time. She dialled the number for Swansea Prison and put it on speakerphone while she puttered around the kitchen.

  “HMP Swansea.”

  With her best telephone manner, Amy managed to get through to the junior manager in charge of things like cell allocation and the cleaning rotas for the toilets. As job descriptions went, it was as bizarre as Jason’s.

  “Hello, my name is DC Catriona Aitken and I’m part of the investigation into the Jason Carr case.”

  At his request, Amy read her badge number off the crumpled copy of the search warrant she held in her hand.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Mr. Carr was placed in general population. I would like to know who authorised that.”

  “Oh, I remember that. We had a call through from one of your boys, said he was too dangerous for VPU—where is it now?”

  A tinny orchestra blared out from the phone, as the kettle finally boiled and Amy poured the tea. She tipped the sugar over the spoon, estimating five or so teaspoons, before shoving it back in the cupboard. She looked longingly at her little blue pills, but slammed the door shut—she needed her wits about her with police sniffing around her home.

  The music abruptly stopped. “Right, here we are—”

  She heard the lift doors open at the end of the corridor.

  “Hang on a moment.”

  She dashed over to the phone, taking it off speaker and pressing the receiver to her ear as Owain came round the corner, laptop bag over his shoulder. Amy smiled at him, trying to act as if she wasn’t doing something highly illegal.

  He waved at her and jerked his thumb towards the kitchen. Amy nodded and he went in search of his brew.

  “Do you have a pen?”

  Amy hummed an affirmative and pulled her phone out of her pocket to make a note.

  “The officer was DS Owain Jenkins. Do you need the badge number?”

  Amy froze, clutching the phone to her ear.

  “Hello? Are you there, ma’am?”

  Amy hung up.

  Owain appeared in the doorway. “Who was that?”

  Amy could only stare at him. “You’re very good with computers.”

  Owain looked at her strangely. “I guess I’m all right...”

  “Why were you in Butetown?”

  He was taken aback, she could tell. Suddenly, there was something uncomfortable in the set of his shoulders. “How do you know about that? Are you spying on me?”

  “Answer me. Why were you in Butetown?”

  “That is none of your business.” He headed for the door.

  Amy had no idea how she was going to stop him, question him. Once he was in the lift, he was out of her grasp.

  The door buzzer went.

  She pushed past Owain and answered it. “Yes?”

  “Amy, it’s Bryn. There’s—”

  “Come up.”

  She pressed the button, standing warily between Owain and the lift. From his expression, Bryn’s visit was entirely unexpected.

  The doors opened and Amy turned, seeing Bryn with Catriona and a uniformed officer with a brown cocker spaniel. Amy recoiled from the dog, nearly bumping straight into Owain.

  “I tried to warn you,” Bryn said, but Amy wasn’t really listening.

  “Bryn, I need to talk to you,” she said urgently, glancing back at Owain.

  “We need to do this search first, Amy. If there are drugs on the premises—”

  “Drugs?” Amy thought of her cupboard full of prescription pills—except they weren’t exactly prescribed for her.

  “Class A drugs,” Bryn said. “It’s Jason’s room they want to search.”

  “We will search the whole premises,” Catriona corrected. “Mr. Carr has access to all the rooms, correct?”

  Amy nodded. She had no fear that Jason had drugs on the premises. The only thing he’d ever smoked here was tobacco. But would the dog have a good sniff around the bookcase in Jason’s bedroom?

  The dog was already straining against its leash and Amy pressed herself against the wall to let it past. The uniform followed the dog, who leapt up at Owain’s thigh.

  Owain laughed and fondled its ears. “Hey, boyo.”

  “Leave him alone, Owain,” Catriona told him. “The dog’s working.”

  Owain held up his hands, but the dog didn’t leave him alone. It dropped down and pawed at the carpet.

  “What’s it doing?” Amy whispered to Bryn.

  But Catriona and the uniform immediately closed in on Owain. The handler removed the dog and produced a white towel, but Catriona was looking at Owain in horror.

  “Turn out your pockets,” she said woodenly.

  Owain silently obeyed, turning out his wallet and keys. Catriona gestured for his laptop bag and he gave it to her.

  Immediately, the dog was distracted again, head-butting the bag.

  “Does this belong to Jason Carr?”

  “No,” Owa
in said, just as Amy was about to protest. “It’s mine.”

  Catriona set it on the floor and opened the main compartment, before checking all the pockets.

  And removed a small bag of white powder.

  There was a collective atmosphere of shock.

  “Any explanation?” Catriona said numbly.

  But Owain just shook his head, looking like his world was ending.

  Even though she had started to suspect him, this came as a blow. Amy had known Owain for years. He was one of the few people she let into her life—he even had his own door code!

  “Bryn,” she said, finally, the words quiet and reticent. “You have to check with the prison. Why Jason was in general population. The name on the request.”

  Beside her, Bryn was absolutely silent.

  Catriona looked to him for confirmation, but he said nothing. She took a deep breath. “Owain Jenkins, I am arresting you for possession of a class A substance. You do not have to say anything. But you may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Owain went quietly. And another one of Amy’s certainties shattered into pieces.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Troubled Water

  Bryn sat alone, watching the one-sided interrogation through the mirrored window.

  It didn’t make any sense. If he looked at the evidence, the die-cast facts, it seemed he had to either believe Amy hacked the van or Owain did. And, if he believed Jason’s account of the prison hanging, it seemed like someone wanted him disposed of—and when Amy asked him to check the prison records...

  This was worse than Jason’s arrest. Now he knew what Amy meant when she’d asked him how he’d feel. He felt like a hollow had been carved out in his chest. Beyond the glass, the external detective—from Bristol or Plymouth or some such place—continued his questions.

  “Your police-issue laptop contains what our IT experts believe are the tools required to hack the prison escort van. Do you know anything about that?”

  “No,” Owain said, the first word he’d spoken apart from his name and personals.