Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries)

by Rosie Claverton

  * * *

  Signal really was terrible. Jason stared at the blasted phone, now unable to find a single bar.

  “You’re better getting out into the main corridor, by a window.” The theatre nurse still looked pale. He’d been standing exactly where Jason had left him, staring into the pool of blood like it had hypnotised him.

  “Thanks. You stay here until the cops arrive. Don’t let anyone disturb this.” Jason remembered Rob Pritchard’s glare—he wasn’t going to take the blame for another mucked-up crime scene.

  The security guys had followed him up from the lower levels. One looked like he was going to throw up all over the evidence. The other was pointedly looking only at Jason, ignoring the chaos around him. “Cops want us down in the main entrance. You good to go?”

  As Jason marched out of theatres, flanked by security and still wearing the ill-fitting blue scrubs and marked white clogs, he tried to think like the killer. If you wanted to smuggle something out, how would you do it?

  While he wasn’t proud of it, he had some experience in this, days of shoplifting in the city centre and walking past the security guard, bold as brass. They weren’t expensive things, they weren’t really even things he wanted—it was just the thrill of it, holding something stolen in your hand.

  It was best if you could get a girl to go with you. Pregnant teenager didn’t even draw a stare these days, and if her bump kept getting bigger, no one really paid that much notice. Of course, you couldn’t talk to each other, or seem to be together at all. People were suspicious of teenagers in crowds, gang violence and all that, but if you wandered about on your own, they put you down as some loser not worth bothering with.

  Better still if you could nick some clothes out of your dad’s wardrobe and dress older. Nobody suspected you if you dressed like you mattered, like you had a job and money. They also handed over their alcohol and cigarettes without question—you were a guy in a jacket, and it would be insulting to ask for ID. As the tallest of all his friends, Jason had often been the one to pull this trick, though he’d borrowed Lewis’s dad’s suits. He wouldn’t disturb the suitcase where his mam kept Dad’s things.

  He took the steps two at a time, the security boys struggling to keep up, but Jason barely noticed them. So, what if you were trying to steal a person? The wheelchair was obvious—there were so many people in wheelchairs around here that nobody would look twice at you. Yet Carla was young and that would attract attention, pitying looks and curiosity—everyone would want to know how a young, pretty girl wound up in a chair. It was the gossiping nature of the human mind.

  Either the killer would have to make Carla look older or explain her need for the chair—a plaster cast, maybe, or a splint. Or he would have to make himself look respectable. A doctor? No—when was the last time a doctor pushed a wheelchair? A nurse then, or a porter?

  The corridor was starting to fill with people and Jason looked at his watch. It was coming up to six o’clock. Why so many people? Did they run evening clinics in this place? He turned to the security guys, who were now trying to coordinate the other men searching across the rambling hospital grounds.

  “It’s visiting time,” the guy said. “Gets busy around now, then they all go by eight.”

  Damn—that would make it easy for him to blend with the crowd. Jason started scanning the people around him, looking for wheelchairs and porters. He spotted one almost immediately, but they were coming up the corridor from the main entrance and the woman was clearly in her eighties, walking stick held close as her keen eyes looked out from beneath her elaborate blue rinse perm.

  Jason gritted his teeth, as the press of people became too great and he was forced to step aside into the Outpatients doorway. Scores of visitors filled the corridor and Jason realised that they’d missed their window of opportunity. The hospital was full of a new set of strangers, and when they left at eight, one more pair of strangers wouldn’t go amiss.

  He turned to the security guy at his side. “We need people on the main doors. We need to check everyone who goes out until all the visitors have left.”

  The man sucked in air through his teeth. “That’s a lot of people. We’re always going to miss some in a crowd like that.”

  “We can’t afford to.” If they missed him, Carla was as good as dead.

  * * *

  He pushed the wheelchair into the lift and pressed the button for floor 7. Others crowded into the little metal box and it groaned with the effort. By the time the automated voice had said “Doors closing” in English and Welsh, it was time for them to open again on the first floor, where the floor and the fact the doors were opening was again announced bilingually.

  When he reached the seventh floor, he had learned two phrases in Welsh and ground his back molars into dust. The wheelchair moved easily across the polished floor, his passenger weighing nothing at all, and headed onto ward C7.

  “Thank you, dear.” The elderly woman got unsteadily to her feet, getting her ornate stick under her hand, and offering him a sincere smile of gratitude. “It’s a great service you offer here. You should be so proud.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and she tottered off to visit her husband. He watched her go, wondering if he’d be married in fifty years’ time. Maybe to his freebird. That would be nice. But maybe she wasn’t the marrying type. That would be okay too. Anything to be with her.

  He wheeled the chair away from the nurses’ station, pausing only to liberate a hospital gown from the linen trolley, and headed back to the lift, which was thankfully waiting and empty. He took it down to the upper ground floor and trundled the wheelchair down the deserted corridor. He manoeuvred the chair through the door of a small women’s bathroom and parked it by the sinks. Then, entering the empty stall, he climbed on the toilet seat and over to the partition, to where his sleeping girlfriend was waiting for him.

  It was concerning that she hadn’t woken up yet, but she was still breathing, and her eyes moved ceaselessly behind her lids. “Sweet dreams, freebird,” he murmured, opening the stall door and hefting her over his shoulder to place her comfortably in the wheelchair. She stirred slightly and he was pleased to think she’d soon be laughing with him, commending him on his daring rescue of the princess from the concrete castle.

  He moved the old blanket that covered her modesty and put her arms through the hospital gown, careful to conceal her body from prying eyes. Then he replaced the blanket round her shoulders, arranging it to keep her warm. “It’s cold out,” he told her. “We don’t want you catching a chill, do we?”

  Finally, he took the carrier bag off the back of the wheelchair and removed the beautiful silk scarf he had chosen for her. He tied it around her head, hiding her short hair and the matted blood at the back of her skull. It was a look his mother had favoured, towards the end, when she spent more time in that little Velindre hospital than in their little home. When she’d moved to the hospice, she hadn’t taken her scarves with her, as if she’d given up. He’d barely been able to look at her.

  Making sure his love was ready for public view, he pushed her back out into the corridor and headed for the exit—and freedom.

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Exit Strategy

  Bryn stood with Owain and Jason outside the Heath’s automatic doors, eyes fixed on the emerging visitors. It was half-seven, and security informed them that most would wait until the last possible minute of visiting before leaving. That meant there would be a rush at eight, and that would be the most likely time for him to escape.

  Bryn had listened to Jason’s theory carefully, and agreed the boy was probably right. A porter pushing a wheelchair with a young woman, possibly disguised to look older—that would be least likely to arouse suspicion. Unfortunately, there were lots of porters and younger men pushing wheelchairs with women of the fractured, elderly or pregnant variety. Most wore heavy clothing and hats, but they chec
ked every wheelchair, looking for Carla’s distinctive green eyes and cropped black hair. It was harder to hide a pretty woman than an ugly one.

  But as it grew closer to eight o’clock, Bryn’s doubts started to get hold of him. As soon as the uniforms had arrived at six, he’d had them watching all the exits, armed with Carla’s picture and checking every car that left the grounds. They’d caught some flack off disgruntled staff and folks trying to get home to their kids, but Bryn refused to relent. With an incapacitated passenger, a car was the most likely means of escape.

  He noticed Jason getting antsy beside him, pacing with a cigarette in one hand and phone in the other. Despite the distraction, his eyes were still glued to the doors. “You’ve got the other exits? No, don’t bother with the cars—Bryn’s got that.” He stopped, barked a short laugh. “No, I’m not trying to be the boss, boss. I know who pays my wage.”

  Jason glanced up to see Bryn watching him and grinned, gesturing at the phone as if to say “Her indoors has got me on a tight leash.”

  Bryn smiled back. He hadn’t been surprised when Amy had called Jason back and hired him to be her assistant and hers alone. He had been surprised that they seemed to get on so well, that she deigned to talk to him on the phone. It had taken Bryn two attempts to get in the door, another three months before she’d look him in the eye. And here comes this cocky ex-con, charming his way into her life. Bryn would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he felt a tad envious of the boy, the ease with which he’d accomplished what it had taken Bryn months—years—of grind to achieve.

  “I’ve got to concentrate,” Jason said. “Yeah, I’ll keep you updated. You do the same. Later.” He hung up and returned his full attention to the door, as the crowd started to increase. Bryn could grudgingly admit that he was at least focussed—he wanted this bastard as badly as the rest of them.

  Bryn stepped forward immediately, as a wheelchair came towards them. “Excuse me, sir.”

  The elderly man looked up from where he’d been concentrating on pushing, out of breath. “Can I help you, son?”

  The woman in the wheelchair looked up at him, playing with her long red hair as she smiled with innocence younger than her years. Bryn smiled back. “Never mind, sir. Thank you.”

  He saw the suspicious looks sent his way, as Jason and Owain targeted the wheelchairs, the able-bodied folk around them wondering what kind of operation this was. Bryn didn’t envy the PR department’s job in the morning.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to care about the image over the job itself—that was why he’d never make super. Because a woman’s life depended on their work tonight, and he’d leave the chair-warmers to figure out the politics. “Excuse me,” he said, and got on with the work.

  * * *

  It seemed the police were smarter than he’d given them credit for. They had been in the hospital soon after he’d rescued his freebird, and now they fiercely guarded the main entrance. He’d seen them when he’d brought the old lady in from her taxi and now he saw the tailback of visitors into the main corridor, the word passing back through the crowd that there were detectives at the doors and policemen inspecting all the cars.

  He turned the chair around and headed back through the corridor. He remembered the route from when he’d last been in this place, when he’d first met his freebird. Smiling at the fond memory—of how she had comforted him so tenderly, how he’d known despite the pain that she was the one—he pushed the chair towards another door.

  From the hospital corridor, it was easy to walk into the back of the A&E department. The treatment area required a pass, but he pushed the wheelchair straight past it and into the crowd clustered around A&E’s reception. They were waiting for a nurse, a doctor, a taxi home, or just sobering up enough to tell someone exactly how they’d come to bang their head. A porter with a wheelchair went unnoticed.

  The smokers who lurked a step away from the doors concealed him with their haze and their bodies, and then he was pushing his freebird past the ambulance bay and out towards the pedestrian bridge across the A48. Ideally, he would’ve crossed the roaring dual carriageway, but his love was still too weak to climb the stairs of the bridge and he was glad now that he’d planned for her infirmity. Love made women so weak. It was a good job he was here for her.

  He’d parked by the dental school, all but deserted at this time of night, and he carefully lifted his girlfriend into the front passenger seat, making sure her seat belt was securely fastened. He took the wheelchair down to the nearby bike storage, where it wouldn’t be noticed until morning, and returned to the car. Wrapping his warm winter coat around him to cover his porter’s shirt, he drove to the least-used exit and was annoyed to find a small queue of cars and two police officers.

  Keep calm, he thought. They don’t know anything. They’re just guessing you might come this way. Destiny was with them, he was sure of it. He pulled up to where the police officers stood and wound down the window. “Has something happened?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” the officer said with forced cheerfulness, peering across him and frowning at the way his freebird lay so still. “Is she all right?”

  He looked across at her fondly, before turning back to the policeman. “The...um, chemotherapy wears her out. She’ll be all right when I get her home.”

  A look of sympathy flooded the young officer’s face and it took all his self-control not to smile in victory. “Best be on your way then,” the policeman said, and he drove out of the hospital and towards home, their new life together.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

  Her living room looked like the waiting room at the mortuary. Nobody had slept, and Jason had thrust strong filter coffee into everyone’s hands instead of their usual soothing tea.

  “How could we miss him?” Bryn growled, voice gravelly and despairing. Jason took his customary place behind Amy’s chair, as she continued scanning through the footage from all the exits. From the moment of Carla’s abduction to the following morning—when the uniforms had stopped checking cars and hospital security confirmed they’d clapped eyes on every room in the place—Amy had already looked through two hours of footage at ten different exits. They’d found an abandoned wheelchair by the entrance to the dental school and concluded that he must’ve left it behind as he made his escape. Forensics were all over it, but had already declared they were unlikely to get a print out of the mess of a hundred hands and winter gloves that had gripped the handles.

  “We were looking in the wrong place.” Amy ignored the wounded look Jason sent her way. It was only the truth—she wouldn’t lie to save him pain.

  “I think...” Owain began slowly. His brain seemed most affected by the lack of sleep. “We looked in the right place but the killer got wise to it. We caused a queue of people into the hospital—everyone was complaining about it. He might’ve seen that and tried his luck elsewhere.”

  It was a possibility, particularly as Amy’s searching had almost brought her up to eight o’clock. If he had chosen another exit at that point, it might well be that he’d been deterred by the information that the police were checking the exits. Then again, he’d managed to drive or carry her out of the hospital grounds without being seen. It was true that the fences around the hospital weren’t particularly well maintained, but a man carrying a woman over his shoulder should arouse someone’s suspicion.

  The hospital closed its more obvious doors earlier in the evening, so he had to know his way around to avoid the main entrance. Perhaps he worked at the hospital—Jason said that Carla was receiving threatening phone calls at work. If they were routed internally, they had no hope of tracing them, but if they came externally, switchboard should have a log, perhaps even a recording.

  “There we are,” Jason said quietly, as she cycled back to the main entrance feed. “We didn’t miss anyone, Amy.”

 
She believed he believed that, but she needed to see it for herself. Still, in deference to his pride, she set the main entrance feed to one side while she examined the others. He was paying just as much attention as she was, determined that his theory was correct, that the killer had planned to get Carla out at the end of visiting. She was just about to give up on the ever-changing crowd of smokers outside A&E and flick back to the concourse when she saw the wheelchair.

  “There—there!” Jason pointed over her shoulder as she froze the picture.

  It was difficult to make out faces at this angle, particularly with the cigarette smoke in the air, but the woman in the chair appeared unconscious. She had something on her head, a bandana maybe, and the man bending over the handles of her chair wore a porter’s uniform. He’d walked out of the hospital and they’d been looking in the opposite direction.

  “Fuck,” Jason said, echoing her thoughts perfectly, as Bryn and Owain joined them at the desk. They stared in silence at the image for a moment, and Amy felt the sharp knife of failure cut through her chest.

  “There should’ve been someone on those doors,” Bryn said, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “Where were the bastards?”

  But Owain grimaced. “We redeployed them to the back entrance. We didn’t have enough bodies to do both—Friday night.”

  “Fucking drunks.” Bryn pulled out his mobile and called through to the station. They were meant to be sleeping, taking a couple of hours to rest and recharge before rejoining their colleagues on the case, but they were too wired to sleep—and they’d come to her, looking for answers. She had none.

  “We need to look at Carla Dirusso,” Amy said abruptly, pulling up all the pages she’d found after they’d realised she was the woman on the phone. “He knows her, he’s obsessed with her. If we find out everything about her, we can find him.”