Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2)

by Rosie Claverton

  “That is a terrible idea.” The last thing Bryn needed was to explain to Sebastian how his hacker’s assistant had got mixed up in his drugs case. “There’s only so many times I can wave away an arrest record.”

  “But I could be useful! They would trust me.”

  “They would recognise you. Don’t be silly now, son.”

  Jason huffed off to the kitchen without another word.

  Amy played with the fraying edge of her computer chair. “He won’t listen to me,” she said quietly. “He never listens to me.”

  Bryn didn’t think that was entirely fair, as Jason’s job description was to run around at her beck and call and he exceeded that on a daily basis. But Amy didn’t seem like she was in the mood to play fair, and if her disapproval kept Jason away from the Docks, then it was all right by Bryn. “He’ll come round.”

  Amy shrugged like a sulky teenager, before getting up and heading for the corridor. “I need a shower.”

  Finding himself effectively dismissed while they carried out their passive-aggressive marital, Bryn shut his notebook. “See myself out then.”

  * * *

  Amy emerged from her shower feeling warm and pleasantly dopey. So she sought some caffeine to kick-start her brain for a treasure hunt. If Bryn wouldn’t bring her a case, she would go looking for one.

  Jason was cleaning the oven. Amy had learned swiftly that if Jason was cleaning the oven, elbow-deep in grease and melted cheese, he was incredibly pissed off. The first time had been the trashy tabloid article where some so-called journalist had scraped together every flimsy piece of “evidence” he could find and concluded that Jason was a dangerous criminal who police had pardoned to bring vigilante justice back to the streets. They’d quoted liberally from a number of anonymous sources—who refused to be named for their safety.

  When Owain had apologetically drawn their attention to it, Jason hadn’t said a word. He had just retreated to the kitchen and scoured the oven from top to bottom for two hours. Meanwhile, Amy had launched a DDoS attack, exploiting an old botnet from her blackhat days to flood the tabloid’s antiquated servers with corrupt code. The site had been down for over twenty-four hours, and the creaking old system had never fully recovered. It had been exceedingly satisfying.

  Now, however, she tiptoed around him, trying to hunt down the coffee jar. It wasn’t that she couldn’t make a hot drink—she had managed for five years, after all, with only the occasional visit from Bryn. It was just that Jason made an excellent cup of tea and had rearranged the kitchen to some system that only made sense to his brain.

  “You won’t find it.”

  Amy glanced down at him. He hadn’t even looked away from the oven.

  “Won’t find—?”

  “The coffee. Or tea. It’s time to come down.”

  Amy glared at his back. There was a patch of sweat forming in the centre of his T-shirt, slowly spreading. He should take it off, really.

  “I can make decisions about my caffeine intake. I am not a child.”

  “Yeah, but I have to live with you.”

  Amy retreated to the living room, muttering as she went. “You’re not exactly a bed of roses.”

  She sat down in front of AEON and started scanning forums for freelance work—cuckolded spouses out for revenge, damsels in distress, recovery from devastating hacks. She had a custom search that automatically filtered out all but the most interesting cases, but she was looking for anything to entertain her.

  Picking at a packet of chocolate digestives she had secreted under the desk, she picked up three simple surveillance jobs. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. She sat back and waited for dinner to appear.

  When nothing was forthcoming by six o’clock, she went to find Jason. He was closing the oven (three hours and nine minutes—a new record), and straightening out the crick in his spine. He turned and slipped past her.

  “Dinner?” She turned to follow him, hopeful.

  “I’m going down the garage. Be back late. Don’t wait up.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder again and headed for the lift.

  “But what if I—”

  The doors closed. The flat was silent except for the steady whir of the servers coming up through the floor and the buzz of AEON’s broken fan. Alone again with her tech.

  “—need you?”

  Chapter Eight: Chasing the Dragon

  Jason was done with being treated like a naughty child.

  What did Amy know anyway? She’d spent her life behind a computer. And Bryn? He’d gone soft in his old age, and he had never run the streets. How could he possibly know what it was like down there?

  The fact was that they were nowhere closer to answers by knowing the victims’ names, and Jason could find them vital clues before they vanished into the depths of the underworld.

  Which is why he was freezing his balls off in the dump that was Splott.

  He’d shaved his head close and dressed in a wife-beater and combat trousers, with some old hiking boots. The cold night air had turned his nose frozen and red, but his sniffle would lend credence to the image of a cokehead looking for a hit. Even the local tarts disdained him, half-heartedly asking him what he liked, before moving on to better game.

  If Keira could see him now... Jason grinned to himself at the thought of his bank holiday spent undercover, adding to his catalogue of the sounds she could make and the number of bruises and scratches decorating his skin. He remembered their first night just as vividly, discovering her while out with the lads. She’d pulled his pint, delicate wrist surprisingly strong on the pump, her grey eyes fixed on the glass with an intensity beyond what it deserved. Her Irish accent was immediately recognisable, but it was only after three more drinks that he’d found out she was from Belfast.

  His mates forgotten, he’d walked her home and had acted the perfect gentleman right up until she kissed him and hauled him over the threshold.

  It seemed a lifetime away and Jason remembered himself, remembered that he was meant to look like a junkie and not a man reminiscing about his lover and their dirty Monday.

  These streets were mostly houses and the odd late-night café that smelled of Amsterdam. Jason leaned up against a closed-down charity shop, obviously relocated to someplace with more cash, and smoked a roll-up. Giving up his pleasure would almost be worth the loss of Amy’s cutting remarks about the state of his lungs, but it was nights like these that tobacco was made for.

  Hanging around in the scrappy neighbourhoods of Canton and Butetown had brought him fuck-all, with the word in Canton that the coke was gone. He’d begged a gram off his informant and used Amy’s cash to pay for it. If she confiscated his cards, she would also sever her own supply of tea and biscuits.

  It was desperation that drove him to Splott—why else would anyone come here?—and he struck gold immediately. A group of loud, obnoxious party kids were heading in to pick up some white and had been directed to these streets by a helpful bloke on St. Mary’s Street. Jason wondered if that job paid better than the poor buggers who stood down the road from cafés holding sad painted placards advertising jacket potatoes and panini.

  He’d followed at a distance, listening to their carrying chatter, and tailed them to another boarded-up shop. But these boards were easily swung aside and the kids disappeared into the gloom, yet to emerge. Unless this was a charnel house the likes of which were found in a Saw movie, Jason was expecting them out any minute. The good dealers of the town weren’t in the business of making opium dens—these were sales counters, in and out, chop-chop now.

  Jason finished the last savoured drag of his cigarette and dropped the butt down a drain. He heard the kids before he saw them, their uncontrolled giggles carrying to his ears. They hadn’t waited for the club to try the supply and they were, if it was possible, even louder as they appeared. It was more
than flour and flea powder, at least.

  It was now or never. The shop might move tomorrow, down the road or across the city—this was his chance. In a split second, he’d made up his mind, rolling his shoulders away from the wall and swaggering his way to the little shop.

  The kid on the door tried to look innocent, but Jason had been a little shit like that ten years ago and he wasn’t falling for it.

  “Hear this is where you get the white.” Jason fixed the kid with a look, daring him to deny it, but the board swung aside and he was admitted.

  Jason’s first impression was that he had been dead wrong—this was an opium den. There were cushions and blankets and bodies stretched out in various states of intoxication. These folks were mellow, sedated, not buzzed out of their heads. One guy was reaching out to play with the tassels on a rug, while another was ineffectually pawing at the unconscious woman beside him.

  The drug of choice here was heroin, not coke. Maybe the dealers were diversifying.

  Jason waded through the bodies on the floor before arriving at what had once been the shop till. But there was no one manning the station, the cash register locked and only the faintest trace of powder on the wood.

  Behind the till counter hung a worn velvet curtain, and from behind it came the voices of men trying very hard not to have a disagreement. Jason made a pretence of rounding the counter to taste the remnants of the coke, his ears pricked up as he wished he’d thought to bring his bloody phone and its 101 different fancy functions.

  “The thing is, Stuart—may I call you Stuart?—the thing is that I have all the snow and you have shit-all, cupcake.”

  The voice spoke in a slow Irish drawl, affecting boredom. Jason had heard that tone from any number of gang boys or professional prisoners looking for a fight.

  “I have customers. You’ve got a few wanderers—at best.”

  And that voice he knew. Hearing it again set his teeth on edge, made his old wounds throb, and it took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to tear down that curtain and smack Stuart Williams across his scarred cheek.

  That cocky little brat had been the bane of his existence ever since Jason left prison. Stuart’s gang had dogged his steps, figuring Jason for a grass, and looking to kick in his head at every opportunity. Jason realised he had started massaging his right arm, the phantom pain a souvenir of his last run-in with Stuart bloody Williams. Stuart had done time for that—and he wasn’t the “forgive and forget” type.

  The bastard dating Jason’s little sister had just been the cherry on the fucking cake.

  The Irishman laughed, jolting Jason back to the present. “We’re not selling eggs and bread. The snow will last and last, and it will be a long, hard winter for you and your boys.”

  Jason expected to hear the crunch of bones beneath a fist, but there was nothing except heavy breathing. Either Stuart had learned some self-control or they’d decided to kiss and make up...

  “You need to give me a reason,” Stuart said, voice shaking with rage, “why my boys aren’t starting on yours for being thieving little shits!” The anger bled through and Jason tensed, his body instinctively preparing for a blow.

  “Come on, Stuart—have a seat, yeah? Drink your beer, take a line. We’re friends here, aren’t we? No one wants a war. This ain’t Detroit.”

  The sound of wood scraping across tile screeched through the curtain and Jason hid his wince in the tabletop, bending his nose to the wood. The cocaine itched his nose and he screwed up his face, desperate not to sneeze.

  “Now, this is how it is, see? Couple of my boys came across your crates on the beach and thought ‘My, my, what a waste.’ And here we are now, talking about thieving and the like. What I say is ‘finders, keepers.’”

  “And I say that if we are to be getting along, not having a war—like you say, Mickey—there needs to be some payment.”

  Jason thought that was about as likely as a flying side of bacon, but then he could barely negotiate his way to removing Amy from her computer long enough to have dinner. And Mickey, was it? Why was that familiar?

  The laughter from behind the curtain showed he wasn’t far wrong. One of the smackheads stirred, groping for Jason’s ankle, which he quickly moved out of reach. He didn’t need to be getting into a fight of his own.

  “Or,” Stuart persisted, “how about an exchange?”

  Mickey snorted. “What could you possibly offer us?”

  Suddenly, the curtain jerked aside. Jason curled in on himself, draping his body over the counter and hanging his head.

  “Oi, Damage! Get him in here!”

  Jason kept as still as possible, willing his body to go loose. Stuart couldn’t see his face—and neither could Damage Jones. Jason definitely didn’t want to start a fight with him tonight, the shadow of little Dai Jones’s brother Lewis hanging over them both. It killed Jason to remember how close he’d been to Lewis, how they’d been like brothers, united in their disdain for the world and everything in it except themselves and their boys. Now he had to accept Lewis’s hatred from his prison cell, and Damage’s vendetta against him on the outside, acting as his brother’s avenger.

  But Stuart could never resist an easy target. “Junkie scum.”

  The shove caught him in the ribs and Jason allowed himself to fall, boneless and clumsy. He did not yell, he did not flinch, just curled up and whimpered.

  Stuart’s laughter grated on him, but he kept still and quiet, listening. The muffled sounds of a gagged man screaming burned a trail across the room to the point just behind him, booted feet kicking Jason’s legs aside.

  With his change in position, he was farther from the curtain and any chance of hearing what was going on behind it. But he needn’t have worried—Mickey’s cry of delight was loud enough to wake the dead, and a couple of the zombies around him moaned at the racket.

  “You caught my little grass!”

  The gagged screams turned to terrified wailing, the sound of a man consumed by fear.

  “He’s yours for half the stash.”

  “Half seems a bit steep—”

  “Half is half, Mickey.” Stuart was in control now, his voice steady and sure, and Jason grudgingly admired his ability to turn the thing around. It was a smart move, bringing a hostage, smarter than Jason had believed Stuart capable of.

  “Done.”

  And like that, Stuart had won back his product and barely got his hands dirty.

  “You’re gonna be careful?” Stuart was half joking, half serious. Was he having second thoughts about delivering the grass? Jason recalled vividly how much Stuart hated men who turned—why the change of heart?

  “Don’t worry, cupcake. I know how to send a message to the coppers without leaving a mark.”

  Jason started to feel uneasy. If Bryn found out he’d let a police informant go to the wolves... And could he square it with his own conscience? He’d had Amy and the full force of the South Wales Police to save his hide from Stuart. Was he really going to leave this boy to get beat by Mickey and his lads?

  “Hello again, Richard.” A scream from behind the gag. “They caught you on the take, did they?”

  With dawning horror, Jason realised exactly who was behind the curtain with Stuart. And knew that he had as good as sent the man there.

  He couldn’t leave Rich Porter with Madhouse Mickey.

  “Fetch me my knife.”

  Jason ploughed through the curtain, the cloth tearing and masking his vision. He chucked it over the nearest body, made a grab for the man kneeling bound on the floor and tried to haul him up. But Rich was paralysed with fear, had no inkling he could be rescued, and was a dead weight against Jason’s insistent pull.

  And then they were on him.

  Mickey and Stuart had brought their muscle, half a dozen silent lackeys posturing bes
ide their bosses, so silent that Jason hadn’t even heard them breathe. He was subdued in seconds and brought down to kneel beside the defeated Rich.

  They had no chance of escape, no cavalry riding to their rescue. Amy wasn’t at the end of the phone, her metal sentinels attuned to his distress. Bryn and Owain weren’t waiting round the corner in their unmarked car, ready to back him up at his signal.

  He was on his own.

  “Jason Carr.” Stuart was gleeful, jubilant. “Come back for more so soon?”

  “You know this fucker?”

  Jason raised his head to get a good look at Mickey, sizing him up. He was shorter than Stuart, shorter than most men, and looked like a refugee from a different time. He wore a tartan waistcoat and a green jacket, like a Victorian dandy, and held a cane topped with a brass shamrock. If Jason wasn’t kneeling at his feet, he’d laugh at what a poor caricature he was.

  “He sent me down. Professional grass. Come to save his brother sneak, hasn’t he?”

  Mickey was furious, wore it in his shoulders and the grip on his cane, but his voice was deathly calm. “You were followed?”

  And Stuart’s eyes fell on Damage.

  The scrawny twenty-year-old shook his head vehemently. “We weren’t! I swear it!”

  “Shut it.”

  Damage fell silent and tried to look very small, insignificant. Jason was reminded of the little boy he had known, suffering his mam’s scolding for taking a chunk out of Lewis’s birthday cake.

  “First, we’ll deal with our sneaks,” Mickey drawled. “Then we’ll deal with your little problem.”

  Stuart said nothing, and Jason realised he wasn’t planning to defend Damage. This was the price of business—he’d have to take his discipline like a man, or damn them all. Jason couldn’t save Damage from Mickey’s justice any more than he could save his own skin.

  Jason wasn’t prepared for the hand around his throat, the crushing grip that squeezed at his neck like a vise. His eyes met those of a man with no soul, utterly blank black eyes staring back at him.