Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2)

by Rosie Claverton

  “Sorry, sir. We only accept a new direct debit or standing order.”

  The bitch was infuriating. The train pulled into Newport and Rich massaged his forehead. He had to get this sorted quick before he lost signal in the Severn Tunnel on the way into Bristol. He rooted around in his wallet for the scrap of paper with the details of the other account on it. Once he’d got his bank sorted, he’d change it back, nice and easy.

  “How do you want it?” Rich smoothed the bit of paper out on his jeans, squinting at the last digit of the sort code where the ink had run. Was that a four or a seven?

  “Sort code first. That’s the six-digit—”

  “I know, I know.” Rich decided it was a four and read it out, slowly and carefully. The blonde bimbo—he’d decided she was blonde—asked for the thing again, so he read it out again, as if he was trying to teach the learning disabled.

  He went through the same arduous process with the account number, repeating the last two digits four times before the message got through to the Scottish lass of questionable intellect. All the time, the bloody tunnel was getting ever closer—he just needed his phone back. How hard could it be?

  “Right, that’s all done for you. You should be reconnected within twenty-four hours. Anything else I can help you with today?”

  If you didn’t laugh, you would cry. Rich curled his hand into a fist but resisted the urge to slam it into the seat in front and disturb the skinhead.

  “No. Thanks.”

  He hung up and sank into his seat, clutching his useless brick of a phone and wishing he was one of those intellectuals who read novels.

  * * *

  The skinhead, for his part, was enjoying his all-expenses-paid trip down the rail line. He’d meant to bill his employer for a cup of tea but he didn’t make it as far as the dining car before Bristol Temple Meads.

  At his destination, he tugged on his jacket, careful to look anywhere except at the man sitting behind him, and was the first one to the doors. He yanked down the window and swung open the door, shouldering past the crowd clamouring to get on the train and out of Bristol.

  Pushing through the crowds, he took the stairs and crossed to the next platform over. He had a couple of minutes to wait, so he fished his Bluetooth headset out of his pocket and slipped it over his ear to call the boss.

  And got on the train back to Cardiff Central.

  “Amy? Yeah, we’ve got him.”

  Chapter Two: Cash in Hand

  When Jason arrived home, Amy was laughing hysterically to herself while reviewing the CCTV footage of Rich Porter’s flight to Central Station. His hilarious flapping run played on all three monitors belonging to her home-made supercomputer AEON and she captured a set of stills for posterity. She ran it through once more for her assistant’s amusement.

  “You are a cruel woman. Remind me to stay on your good side.”

  Amy held out a hand for his intel. “You might not be on my good side at all, minion. Did you bring me a souvenir?”

  Jason handed over his notebook—soft brown leather, almost identical to one owned by her police contact, DI Bryn Hesketh. “I was in Bristol for four minutes. What could I possibly have got you?”

  “Cup of tea would be nice.” Amy input the sort code and account number of their target into her interface, downloading the recent transaction history in an instant. She had been refining her account interrogation—the banks were getting smarter and she had no intention of falling behind.

  Jason was crashing around the kitchen like a bear with a sore head, muttering to himself about damp denim. Amy would have to encourage him into the shower before he caught a cold. For a man brought up in Cardiff, he was strangely averse to the rain, though she was sure he’d spent years running down the sodden streets with his boys, before it had all come crashing down around him.

  He returned with two mugs of tea as she perused Rich’s recent transactions. Or, more accurately, the regular and substantial cash deposits. It wasn’t the concrete evidence trail she would’ve liked but if they could link a couple of the deposits to a matching sum coming out of Madhouse Mickey’s account...

  Jason hovered over her shoulder, his usual spot while he watched her tease truths from her computer. “You got what Bryn needed?”

  “I’ve got it.” She had enough, she was certain, and she deposited the files directly onto Bryn’s computer. There was nothing worse to Bryn Hesketh’s mind than a bent copper and he would use those files to raise suspicion in all the right places. Amy might be able to light the fire under the bastard, but it would take proper police procedure for him to burn for his crimes.

  “I thought I’d head over to Mam’s to pack up some things for tomorrow. You don’t mind, do you?” Jason was already moving away, heading for the elevator that led to his bedroom.

  “Of course not.” The words were automatic, ashes in her mouth, but she tried to put on a brave face.

  He was going down to the caravan in Tenby with his mum and sister for the long weekend and Amy was not sulking. Jason had his family and it was only natural that he should want to spend time with them. Of course, Gwen had invited her to join them, with a motherly affection alien to Amy. She had managed to politely decline before excusing herself to have her panic attack in private.

  The thought of the beach and the open ocean, the fields at her back...and all those people... It had taken two little blue tablets and an hour of deep breathing before she was able to emerge, by which time Gwen and Cerys had left and Jason had fallen into an after-dinner dose. Even now, she struggled to think about the caravan site in Pembrokeshire without breaking into a cold sweat.

  It was only three days. She’d been without her assistant for longer—Christmas, Easter, that time he’d got drunk and woken up in Portsmouth. His mate Dylan had paid for that prank dearly when Amy had arranged a surprise tax inspection of his garage in the dodgier part of Canton.

  It had been too easy to get used to having Jason around. Now it was hard to recall the years she had spent alone, sharing her space with AEON and no one else. Even before Lizzie left for Australia, her sister had her own life outside their apartment—school, a job, friends. Jason had insinuated himself into every corner of Amy’s world and when he retreated to pursue his own interests, apart from her, Amy felt the loss keenly. The loss of him, and the sad reality that she could never follow where he went.

  * * *

  It was almost midnight when Jason finally left the house and headed over to his mam’s in Butetown. He was glad to be back behind the wheel of his battered Nissan Micra, even though its rust spots were growing after spending winter parked on the street outside Amy’s.

  Whatever Jason had expected when he’d accepted Amy’s job offer to become her live-in assistant, this wasn’t it. She kept odd hours and expected Jason to do the same. She could spend entire days fuelled only by coffee and toast. Sometimes her black moods couldn’t even be shifted by Jason, cowering under the covers for twenty-four hours before finally emerging as something approaching human.

  And then, sometimes, she would order pizza and introduce him to some obscure sci-fi show she knew everything about, rambling on with all the animation she usually reserved for the pursuit of a mystery. When her bright green eyes reflected the dancing light of the television, Jason was lost in them and he could spend hours listening to her enthuse about starships and wormholes and bleak dystopias.

  Other days, he just had to get away. He had hammered out a schedule where he had one day per week that was all his own, and while it was subject to last-minute cancellations, he was able to snatch time to fix motors with his friend Dylan at the garage or eat his mam’s roast dinners.

  And there was Keira, his lover maybe, but definitely not his girlfriend. Between Amy’s brutal schedule and Keira’s bar shifts, they were lucky to catch each other twice a week—but then it wa
s about the loss of clothes, the meeting of skin, and a cigarette shared in the afterglow. Still, she’d noticed that they always ended up at hers, and Jason could see it was going to be a problem. If not with Keira, then maybe with a future girlfriend. How could he entertain a woman in Amy’s basement, or in the single bedroom at his mam’s house?

  That was assuming he ever plucked up the courage to tell the women in his life about Keira. His mother would probably take it in her stride, his sister would shrug it off, but Amy...

  As Jason emerged from the city centre and turned onto Bute Street, he saw a familiar blonde huddled against the wind, drowning in her pale blue hoodie. He pulled up to the curb and crawled alongside her for a couple of metres before she finally looked up—and smacked the window.

  “I thought you were some creep!” Cerys said, yanking open the door and getting into the passenger seat.

  Jason laughed and drove towards their mam’s house. “You’re late out.”

  “What, you playing Mam now?” Cerys shot back, sinking into the seat like a sulky child. Sometimes it was hard to remember she was nineteen, but she’d recently lost the ridiculous fringe that had covered her eyes and her piercings had morphed from large bright spikes to subtle silver bars and studs. It was almost like she was a grown-up.

  Jason glanced at the rear-view window. A dark car was following them, a few metres away. It looked like a new-ish BMW, far too fancy for a neighbourhood like this. Lost tourist?

  “You pissed anyone off lately?” Jason said, taking a sudden hard right.

  Cerys yelped and clung to the seat. “No! What the fuck?”

  Jason glanced back—nothing. “Just testing your reflexes.”

  Lights flared in the mirror and Cerys twisted in her seat. “Is that guy following us?”

  The car was back, creeping along behind them at exactly five metres’ distance.

  “Why would anyone follow us?” Since becoming Amy’s assistant, he’d managed to keep his nose clean—for the most part—and the folk who had a problem with him were more likely to punch him in the street than tail him in a car.

  Jason turned again, stuck on the slow circuit to his mother’s house. If the car wasn’t lost and didn’t belong to one of his former associates, who was following them in the dark?

  Had Rich Porter somehow found out about Jason’s snooping? Had Bryn already delivered the smackdown—and now he was out for revenge? Jason’s heart rate jumped, aware that his little sister was sitting in his car and vulnerable.

  He slammed his foot on the accelerator, speeding away down the street.

  The blare of a siren and pulsing blue light followed him. Well, shit.

  Jason pulled over, as Cerys rounded on him. “What did you do?”

  “Me?! What did you do?”

  “I’m not the one with the record!”

  The car pulled up behind him and the driver got out. Jason took a deep breath, practising his calm voice in his head. Sniping at coppers didn’t get you anywhere but a jail cell, especially when you’d already done time—and his face was known to every detective and beat bobby in South Wales.

  He reluctantly wound down the window and looked up at the officer brandishing his torch.

  “Gotcha.”

  “Owain!” Cerys exclaimed at DS Owain Jenkins, junior detective and Bryn Hesketh’s partner in fighting crime.

  Jason scowled at him. “What the hell are you doing here? Except scaring the shit out of us.”

  Owain swept his floppy fringe out of his eyes, amused at his little joke, and leaned up against Jason’s car. “Visiting my cousin.” Jason clearly wasn’t very good at hiding his surprise, because Owain’s blue eyes filled with mirth. “Didn’t realise I had a Bute boy for a cousin, did you?”

  It shouldn’t be a shock, not really, that Owain’s family came from the rough streets of the former Docklands. When it came down to it, most Welsh boys had grandfathers who were miners and fathers who worked in the trades. Owain might have embraced his life as a police officer, but he remembered where he came from.

  “Well, I don’t see your cousin here, now,” Cerys sniped.

  Jason glanced over at his sister, who was staring straight ahead with her arms folded. “Play nice, Cerys.”

  “No, she’s fine,” Owain said quickly, the cocky swagger falling away. “I’d better be getting on then.”

  “You want to come round for a brew?” Jason asked. “Mam’ll still be up.”

  “Er, no, no ta.” Owain backed away, waving awkwardly. “Enjoy your trip to Tenby.”

  It was only when Owain was safely back in his car and speeding away that Jason realised he’d never mentioned the caravan in Tenby. Though it was likely Amy had spread her dissatisfaction far and wide—she hated him being out of sight and out of range of Cardiff’s CCTV network.

  “Can we get home sometime this week?” Cerys snapped.

  “What’s gotten into you? He never meant any harm.”

  “Just drive.”

  Jason rolled his eyes and pulled out. He was swapping one stroppy woman for another. It was going to be a fun weekend.

  Chapter Three: A Dark and Stormy Night

  The wine-dark sea battered the sides of the little rowboat and Eduardo regretted not waiting another day.

  But his contact had insisted that the drop had to be made on time and it was with a heavy heart that he’d told his men—his friends—that they were braving the ocean tonight. To their credit, they did not complain, though some dark eyes held silent accusation. To lose even one man overboard would be a tragedy, but if the boards should separate... It did not bear thinking about.

  The packages were wrapped securely in tarpaulin and strapped down between the oarsmen. The men were barely distinguishable from each other in the foul-weather gear and Eduardo could hardly see them through the salt spray. He sat at the stern, his compass attached to his wrist, guiding them into shore.

  “Estribor!” he yelled above the roar of the ocean, and the oarsmen heaved the little boat around, fighting the waves that would drag them unto the rocks and dash them to pieces. Eduardo was helpless, a voice in the storm without his own oar to pull, praying to a god he didn’t believe in to take them safely to shore.

  Lightning split the sky above them, clouds from horizon to horizon, and Eduardo caught sight of a small huddle of figures on the deserted beach. It was only a few hundred yards to safety, but it could’ve been a million miles. His men were already tired from the pull from their ship, safely anchored a mile out, avoiding the Coastguard patrols. He had no idea how they would get back—but first he had to make land. One horror at a time.

  A sudden swell caught their boat and lifted them clear of the surface, hurtling through the air towards an outcropping of rock. The prow bounced off the nearest, and the oarsman on the opposite side screamed, his body thrown clear of the boat.

  One grasping hand flashed to the surface, and then he was gone. Eduardo’s instinct was to leap, to reach desperately for him, but he had to think about the men in the boat. A boat on the verge of foundering, all souls lost. So he did not scream or shout or cry to the heavens, even though everything in him wanted to express his grief. Instead, he stood and ran along the benches, quick and light, before crashing down into the berth his comrade had recently departed. He seized the oar from its lock and now he screamed, competing with the thunder, “Remen! Más rápido!”

  The effort tore at his shoulders, his arms, but it was fear that drove him now. If they could not make land, they would die in this storm. Their bodies would decorate the shore, and their legacy would float up out of the tarpaulin to damn them all.

  He glanced behind him, trying to make out where the cliffs ended and clear water began, when he caught the glimmer of a dark lantern cautiously spilling its light to guide them. Ave Maria, gratia plena...

>   The minutes passed in a blur, sweat and spray mingling on his cheeks, the ache and chill deep in his bones, but slowly, painfully, they gained the shore. Like an automaton, Eduardo lurched from the boat, boots sinking into the sand as they hauled the boat up the beach.

  His contact was waiting for him, his obvious muscle man at his side, and a third man Eduardo did not know. Michael Doyle’s weaselly face was lit by a cheap cigarette, somehow still burning despite the wind, but the other men were shadows. Eduardo had no energy left for fear. He wanted to sink to the shingle and shale and kiss the ground God had granted him, but this was business and his obeisance could wait.

  “You’re late.”

  Fire flared in him, stronger than his weariness and his good sense, and Eduardo launched himself at the rat of the man. His friends restrained him, wiser heads than his, as Mickey’s cigarette fell into the wet sand and was extinguished.

  “Do you know what your demands have cost us?” Eduardo screamed at him, his throat raw. “One of my men—my cousin—lost his life for your delivery. But no! You would not listen!”

  Mickey’s mouth twisted. “That is...unfortunate.”

  The third man stirred, looming out of the shadows. “Where is the body?” His voice was emotionless, as if he was asking about the weather, as all these British did. He was local to these shores, though, unlike Mickey and his Irish enforcer.

  “Lost!” Eduardo gestured at the sea that had claimed him, white with rage like the high foam on the water. “We cannot even take him to his mother to bury him!”

  Mickey looked to the third man. In the thin moonlight, Eduardo could see him shake his head.

  “The delivery.” Mickey gestured imperiously at the rowboat, tossing his head like an unbroken horse.

  The remainder of Eduardo’s crew heaved the waxed crates out of the boat and laid them at the feet of this man who fancied himself a European emperor. Eduardo longed for his knife, to gut the Irish cabronazo like a fish and decorate the sand with his entrails, watching the crabs gnaw at them. But he would not do this, not until the money was in his hand. His cousin, his blood brother, would not die for nothing. If Eduardo could not bring the rat’s head to his widow, he would at least be able to give her his share of the profits.