Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries)

by Rosie Claverton

  Indira stood at the desk, in earnest conversation with the duty tech, but looked up at Bryn’s approach. ‘Just checking on our samples,’ she said. ‘The sand analysis is back – nothing like North Wales, as it turns out. Including the sample Jason brought back for us. The experts reckon it’s from some beach in Cornwall. Besides, we found it in many of our elimination samples throughout the museum – probably a random contaminant.’

  Another wild goose chase, with Frieda and Jason’s road trip offering nothing to their investigation – but bringing down a human trafficking and organ smuggling operation. Bryn couldn’t exactly say they didn’t get results.

  ‘There is one thing.’ Indira gestured towards the tech’s computer. ‘I’m not the first person to access these results. One request came from Owain and the other via your computer.’

  No prizes for guessing the identity of that particular data thief. ‘Best keep that to ourselves, eh?’

  Indira waved away his concern. ‘It’s Owain’s request that interests me. The remote connection was today, but these results had a rush put on them from on high – they were back last week, before Frieda Haas left for North Wales.’

  ‘So you’re saying Frieda knew the sand wasn’t a match before she left?’

  Was that what Frieda’s investigation was really about? Did Talia Yeltsova know something about the girls in lorries from Eastern Europe?

  ‘Sure looks that way,’ Indira said. ‘I can’t imagine why Owain would’ve kept it from her.’

  ‘There’s a lot of secrets Owain’s been keeping.’

  The edge of bitterness in his voice clearly took Indira by surprise.

  ‘How’s he finding his new job?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘You’ll have to ask him.’

  He left the lab, his mind churning like a vat of rancid butter. His feet carried him to the detectives’ office automatically but he stopped short of the door. The closed door.

  In all the years Bryn had worked in the department, he’d never known the door to be closed. It was always wedged back with a folded, yellowing piece of card that was replaced every year or so when it threatened to disintegrate.

  Bryn stepped forward and tried the handle – locked. What the hell was going on?

  He could hear something from behind the wood and he lifted his hand to knock smartly on the door. The sounds died away and, after a few moments, the door opened a fraction to reveal Matt Boateng and behind him a host of suited men Bryn didn’t recognise.

  ‘What’s this now?’

  ‘Change of plan,’ Matt said, unruffled by Bryn’s sharp tone. ‘The agency wants to make sure the investigation is watertight. We’ll be taking this one off your hands.’

  It sounded so generous when he put it like that, as if he was doing Bryn a great favour. Bryn squared his shoulders, bracing himself for a fight.

  ‘If there are any leaks,’ he said, ‘they’re not coming from us.’

  Matt’s smile was fixed, a slight narrowing of the eyes the only sign of his anger and disdain. ‘In a case of national and international interest, we are keen to avoid the appearance of impropriety. I’m sure you understand.’

  Bryn understood perfectly – he and his team were under scrutiny, and the NCA had poached their case, stolen their office and identified their scapegoats should they fail to retrieve the painting.

  ‘I’ll leave you to your scheming then,’ he said, the false cheer causing Matt’s eyes to narrow further.

  Bryn walked away, up the stairs towards the top floor, where the brass sat. If Owain was truly Matt’s man now, his secrets weren’t safe with his former partner. All that running to Amy, the unprecedented access he had given both her and Jason to evidence, police records and even crime scenes. All the time he’d looked the other way in exchange for a lead, using her as a confidential informant and never asking exactly how she came by her information yet knowing all the same.

  It was all coming back to haunt him now, his failing grasp on twenty-first century policing, his reliance on Amy when he could’ve been giving Owain opportunities to shine, to develop. Paying attention to his partner’s dreams instead of belittling his enthusiasm for every flashy out-of-towner who could show him newer, faster ways of working that Bryn could barely understand.

  Perhaps it was time to pass on the baton. Time to accept that what Bryn knew about detective work was slowly falling into obscurity.

  The light in the chief constable’s office was still on and the secretary buzzed him through without questions.

  ‘Seen the light, Bryn?’ he asked.

  Bryn smiled tightly, feeling every single one of his fifty-eight years.

  ‘Where do I sign?’

  Chapter 39

  A game of queens

  The last train for Glasgow left Cardiff Central just before five o’clock, the platforms awash with commuters who had bunked off early to enjoy some rare September sunshine.

  Jason felt out of place here, among the men and women in variations of grey. His leather jacket marked him as an outsider, his worn, grease-smudged jeans revealing that he didn’t earn half what they did. He carried a backpack, not a briefcase, and in the era of heightened terrorist alerts, it earned him a number of suspicious looks.

  He checked his phone – another missed call from Dylan, with a voicemail to call back. Jason texted instead, asking what was up and how much he owed him for the repairs. It had been too long since they’d caught up properly, and he hated feeling like he was just using his mate to tune up the bike.

  He felt bereft without his Bluetooth headset, his connection to Amy. Usually, when he was out and about, he was checking in with surveillance updates or just a bit of chat as he walked from place to place. But he’d put her to bed just before he left, to sleep off the last of her drug-induced haze.

  When she’d told him about the mix-up with the tablets, he’d felt disconnected from her in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d moved in. He hadn’t known she was running low on tablets, ordered more, popped a couple while he was out. He usually had a handle on her health, how she was ticking over, but he seemed to have lost his grasp.

  When he got back from Scotland, he’d get back on top of things. Maybe invest in a medicine cabinet or look into a doctor who did house calls. Dodgy medication off the internet was just asking for trouble, and he’d let her get away with it for far too long.

  The train pulled in and he glared away everyone who tried to beat him to the doors. The train would take him as far as Crewe, and then he had to make his connection for Scotland. He’d brought his new tablet for entertainment, though he hadn’t got much farther than adding a couple of games. Amy, however, had kitted it out with whatever she thought useful – including an uplink to her vast and highly illegal video library.

  He plugged in his headphones as the train pulled out of the station, snatching the last vacant seat after pointedly shoving at a teen’s designer shopping bags. Bruce Springsteen was the first song up, but he quickly skipped it. Too soon, the oppressive atmosphere of that old Land Rover invading his skin once more.

  He looked up, away, to escape the sensations of the past – and he saw her. Her pale blonde hair obscured most of her face, but he recognised the curve of her lips, her slender fingers curled around her tablet as she worked.

  Why hadn’t he heard from her since Bangor? Not even a check-in to ensure he’d made it home safely, though she’d probably accessed Matt’s reports. How had she gone from kissing him in that hotel room to ignoring his existence?

  And then there was her connection to Talia.

  He told himself that was the reason he left his seat, making his way down the carriage to speak to her. If he hadn’t been staring at her, unable to tear his eyes away, he would’ve missed the furtive look she sent his way from between her fine locks of hair. She knew he was there and she was hiding from him.

&
nbsp; ‘Hello, Frieda,’ he said.

  Her look of surprise was well-feigned, he had to admit, but her smile was as cool as ever. ‘Jason. On another little errand?’

  He didn’t rise to the snub. ‘Surprised to see you here. Where are you headed?’

  ‘I’m sure you understand that I can’t say,’ she said, flaunting her air of mystery, but the shine had worn off for him.

  ‘Give my best to Talia,’ he said, and quickly walked away, hoping he was heading for the on-board café or at least a toilet. Trying not to move too fast. Calm and cool, like a PI’s assistant should be.

  Had he done the right thing? Tipping their hand could blow up in his face, but he wanted to push her buttons. See if he could get the Snow Queen to melt – and, this time, it would be to his advantage.

  She caught up to him in the tea queue, the crisp scent of her perfume wafting over him. She didn’t touch him to get his attention, but then she didn’t have to.

  ‘What game are you playing?’ she murmured to him. To any casual observer, she wouldn’t have said a thing.

  ‘I could ask you the same.’

  ‘Are you determined to compromise this investigation? A man is dead.’

  ‘And you were hanging around the scene of the crime – before it took place.’

  He felt a huff of air against his ear. She was laughing at him.

  ‘You still don’t get it, do you? You think you have control of this situation, but you’re a child compared to me. My advice? Get out now. While you still can.’

  He whirled on her, infuriated, and grabbed her arm. ‘What the fuck—’

  She cried out, a girlish shriek that drew all eyes in the carriage. ‘Baby, no! You’re hurting me!’

  Jason dropped her arm as if she’d scalded him. ‘You bitch.’

  Her blue eyes filled with tears. ‘I just don’t know how to make you happy!’

  The server had stepped out from behind the counter. ‘Mate, you’re gonna have to get off at the next stop. You all right, girl?’

  Frieda sobbed into the man’s arm, leaving Jason quietly seething. She was a viper in the grass and her venom had infected him.

  He was escorted off the train at Newport, having not even made it out of Wales, and he was surprised when Frieda followed him off.

  ‘He’s just had a few too many,’ she was explaining to the guards. ‘I’ll get him home. Thank you for your help.’

  The train pulled away, his last chance to get to Glasgow that night, and he faced down Frieda on the platform. The platform staff stood at a distance, watching the pair warily, in case something was about to go down.

  ‘I did that for your own good,’ she said flatly. ‘You need to learn the rules before you screw this up for all of us.’

  ‘You got off the train.’ His mind tried to catch up with the situation, something elusive just out of his grasp.

  ‘Brilliant deduction, Watson.’

  ‘You weren’t going anywhere,’ he said, his brain filling in the gaps as the truth of it tumbled out of his mouth. ‘You were following me.’

  Frieda laughed, but it was hollow, as fake and farcical as the rest of her charade. ‘Your ego could fill this platform.’

  His phone buzzed in his pocket and he drew it out automatically, a new message from Dylan on the screen: Someone cut the fuel line.

  ‘You sabotaged my bike,’ Jason said, anger mounting now. ‘You wanted to meet me outside the museum – that’s how you already knew who I was. And then you wanted to catch me at Dylan’s, concocting that whole trip to North Wales. And that’s why you were pissed off when I got close to Jonah Fish – because I would be out of your clutches.’

  She didn’t deny a word of it, her mouth settling in an unhappy line.

  ‘What I don’t get is why,’ he said. ‘What the fuck do you want with me?’

  ‘Not quite clever enough,’ she said, at last. ‘I hope you work it out before I’m done, Jason. I’ve already warned you once – next time, you won’t be so lucky.’

  Chapter 40

  Licence to kill

  Amy struggled out of bed after a night of tossing and turning, plagued by the lurching, sick feeling of a tired brain trying to keep an exhausted body upright while running on fumes.

  She wanted to call time on this investigation, hard delete and never look back. But Jason had shamed her, reminding her of everything left undone, the evidence a casualty of the war between her curiosity and her weariness.

  Tea was the only thing her stomach would accept, and she sipped at it like an invalid in her dressing gown, staring at the exact centre of one blank monitor while her thoughts sloshed back and forth against the sides of her mind without purpose.

  The tea warmed her from the guts out and she idly clicked through comic strips, TV spoilers and BuzzFeed articles for an hour or two until her brain was capable of more than mindless consumption.

  She returned to the gap in information from the CCTV – the moments immediately after the murder and the period after nine o’clock the same morning, when the surveillance had switched to a new disc.

  Amy started with the murder. After the thief killed Paul, he exited through the gallery door, crossed the room with an assured purpose and went down the stairs at the back. He opened the door to the laboratories with the swipe card and entered the back rooms of the museum. As Jason had earlier observed, that was the limit of the museum’s CCTV footage. The thief then had time to plant the note on Talia’s desk and … what? Make his escape through the still undiscovered route below the museum?

  She loaded up the CCTV post nine o’clock while she checked her messages. None of the architectural experts had responded to her emails or voicemails. Her usual errand boy was in Scotland, which limited his usefulness. Her only other option was Cerys, and she doubted Jason’s sister would want to speak to her right now, let alone help her continue with the investigation. Bryn and Owain had made their position clear, and she only had three days to solve this before ‘The Blue Lady’ was ruined forever. She regretted sending Jason away but she needed him and Corelia to hurry back with their clues as soon as possible.

  No sooner had she thought of Corelia when the girl’s uniform leapt out at her from the CCTV image frozen on the screen. Outside the main entrance, just after nine o’clock, impatiently pacing in front of the police cordon. Amy knew the Welsh geocache had obsessed her, but why was she skipping school on a Friday morning? She’d used every evening to hunt for the prize, so why had she appeared on the morning of Paul Roberts’ murder?

  It was too much of a coincidence to ignore. Amy had dismissed the geocaching community out of hand after she’d identified them, but the content of the blackmail revealed the killer’s primary passion was geocaching, not theft and murder. Was it therefore inconceivable that the killer was a member of the Cardiff Geocaching Society?

  Amy had thought Corelia was too short for their thief, but her school shoes were completely flat. With a platform heel, she could fit the profile of the thief. The killer had demanded the Belfast clue, but had Amy’s gift of the forged sick note allowed that same killer to pick up the clue herself?

  Could a teenage girl really be their thief and murderer?

  Corelia stepped off the plane at Cardiff International Airport, slipped on her sunglasses and descended the stairs like an International Woman of Mystery.

  Heddwen followed in her shadow, like her personal Jeeves or Watson or whatever, her precious camera cradled close to her chest. She’d marvelled at every inch of Belfast, photographing motes of dust in front of statues and dirty street corners. And, when she had needed a model, Corelia had been happy to oblige.

  The maintenance of her alias had been a condition of Heddwen tagging along. Of course, Ada had been very specific about the fact that Corelia couldn’t travel alone and so Heddwen had been a logical choice, given her new-found status a
s Corelia’s minion.

  It was good to have an appreciative audience for her ideas and opinions, and the girl wasn’t entirely useless. She’d even worked out part of the clue on the Belfast geocache, but Corelia would’ve figured it out given a few more minutes. Still, useful.

  The kissing wasn’t bad either.

  The airport was near-deserted, the lull of midday, with a few businessmen drinking down their liquid lunches. When Amy had changed their flight to early morning, Corelia was hoping for an extended adventure in Northern Ireland, but her boss had been adamant she return as soon as possible. ‘I might have more work for you,’ she’d said, which gave Corelia a little thrill, like James Bond to Ada’s M.

  It had therefore been a race against time to solve the clue, only a few hours on Belfast Docks to work out the cache’s location and find the code. In the film version of this adventure, only a little editing would be needed to make it a taut, fast-paced thriller, instead of two girls standing around with a tourist map, staring at their phones and willing the feeble mobile signal to cough up directions.

  But solve it they had, and Corelia had smugly updated her UK Treasure Hunt profile with First Finder before sending Ada the answer. The perks of this job were endless, not least the day out of school with Heddwen because she was supposedly off sick with something like glandular fever.

  Of course, her dad knew nothing about it, and her stepmother had never noticed anything about her at all. Heddwen’s parents were a little more twitchy, so they thought she had stayed the night at Corelia’s before going to school. Her note had given her a doctor’s appointment in the morning, with the supposed doctor asking the school to respect her confidentiality in regards to her parents. Heddwen would hopefully make it back for afternoon lessons, to work on her GCSE Art project. As Corelia suspected she was the subject, she was keen to encourage this.