Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2)

by Rosie Claverton

  AEON beeped to say she had completed the jailbreak, and Amy installed her remote viewer in the bowels of the phone’s workings. Smartphones were a little outside her usual areas of expertise but, at the end of the day, it was all just code. A few hours of tutorials had been sufficient to learn the basics, her hacker’s instinct for the undetectable backdoor approach applying across devices and security systems.

  Amy disconnected the phone and handed it back to Cerys. “Keep it switched on in your pocket and wear the pin for court. I’ll be watching.”

  Cerys nodded and pocketed both pin and phone just as Owain emerged from the kitchen with a tray of tea.

  Amy gratefully took her mug and sipped immediately, her lips smarting as it burned.

  “Oh, Amy, could I get an update on the beach bodies? Sebastian’s asking.”

  It took Amy a moment to remember what he was talking about, the Colombians having been abandoned as soon as her assistant was caught up in the maelstrom. “I can, yeah.”

  She scraped together what evidence she had, her half-finished formal report and the less self-incriminating pieces of original research, and placed it on an encrypted stick with a fifty-character passcode on a strip of paper.

  Owain dutifully separated stick and paper before nodding his thanks. She would needle him about acting as Sebastian’s errand boy, but she missed her own errand boy too much.

  “We’ll fix this,” Owain said, as if reading her mind.

  Amy could only summon half a smile, wishing she could possess that kind of absolute faith.

  * * *

  Zook watched the media circus with the appreciation of a connoisseur. It was his weakness, really, the craving for acknowledgement. But this was satisfying in its way. Watching the cage closing...closing...until the rat was trapped.

  Now that little problem was dealt with—two birds with one stone, felled with bloody heads—he could return to the real work, the bigger picture.

  Stuart hadn’t contacted him. That in itself was disturbing. It meant that the boy was contemplating acting alone, and that would never do. Zook decided to pay him a visit, hit him at his nerve centre, prove that any independent thought was to be quashed.

  He walked up to the little terrace in a rundown street in Canton, sad little houses with doors and windows painted brightly to drive away the stench of poverty. He stood on the freshly swept doorstep and smoothed out his suit jacket. The lady deserved his respect.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Williams. Is Stuart about? I just want a quick word.”

  He was unexpected—good. The boy was curled up on the sofa under a blanket, elderly dog draped across his lap. His hands were curled around a steaming mug, the rich aroma of hot milk and chocolate carrying across the room. The flashing illumination of the muted television highlighted his scars, but that was the only sign of the tough man of the streets.

  “Mam, I said—”

  “I’m not your mother, boy.”

  Stuart jumped to his feet, hot chocolate sloshing onto the crocheted rug, the dog yelping as it lolloped off the sofa onto arthritic legs. He reached for his pocket, but he didn’t carry his knife in his pyjamas. It was nice to see weakness so displayed, the shedding of all protections just because he was at home with his mother. Still such a child.

  “You didn’t return my calls.”

  “I was grieving.”

  So that was the story here. Zook might have miscalculated—he hadn’t considered Stuart and the boy particularly close, just another boss and runner, but then again why had he brought the child to such a meeting? Perhaps grooming him for power?

  It was a small error. The ripples would not be felt far.

  “There is no time for grief. We have to plan our next move.” Zook took a seat in the broad armchair opposite the sofa, patting the knitting needles and half-finished scarf on the armrest.

  Stuart warily returned to the sofa, but he was on high alert now. Zook noted his eyes flicking around the room, momentarily landing on potential weapons, and his shoulders eased back.

  Zook had catalogued those objects when he’d walked in—and he knew he was faster. But he had no desire to shed blood on Mrs. Williams’s carpets.

  “We’ve got the...stuff.” Stuart’s voice was pitched low, almost drowned beneath the merry song of the radio coming from the kitchen and his mother’s humming. “We’re set now.”

  “And when it runs out, what then? The crossing from South America is at least a month, six weeks in high seas. How long will that white last?”

  Stuart did not seem perturbed. “I’ve got a cousin in Liverpool who can see us through ’til Christmas. Don’t worry about it, mate.”

  It was nice to see he had some forethought, even if it was a decidedly stupid idea. “Then we will be indebted to the Scousers and have nothing for the party season. We need a long-term investment.”

  But Stuart was not swayed. “I’ve tried my mate’s stuff—it’s good shit, eighty to ninety percent, at least. If we order from some dago bastard on the internet, who’s to say what we’ll get?”

  The human barrier to progress. These paranoid small-town boys were so inconvenient but, for now, he needed them. “Tracing the source of your cousin’s supplier shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Nah. We’re blood, Zook. I ain’t doing that.” Stuart was offended by the idea. Honour among thieves—how quaint.

  “I’m not suggesting we undercut him. We are not the Irish.”

  Stuart went to spit at the thought but then stopped, eyes sliding to the kitchen door. Respect for his elders.

  “I am not saying we should undercut him. Merely share his contacts.”

  Stuart still looked uncomfortable, but his protests were less vocal. “Don’t know if I like it...”

  Zook pounced. A friendly smile, a hand waved casually, speculatively. “Well, what if I make the first gesture? Approach him as a businessman.”

  No protest at all. Not a peep. Zook went in for the kill: “I can go alone, if you like. Nothing to do with you at all.”

  And like that, he was sold. Stuart slowly nodded and Zook said nothing further, didn’t display the victory burning through his veins.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Mrs. Williams stood in the door, her voice even and pleasant. The mother of a good boy, like so many delusional women.

  “He was just go—”

  “Milk, two sugars. You are very kind.”

  The lady smiled and returned to the kitchen. Zook made himself at home, got comfortable. Stuart would never relax in this room again.

  Zook needed a tough man, to lead. Not a mummy’s boy cuddled up to his dog. If Zook had to be the ghost at his back, so be it.

  You didn’t get to rule an empire without collecting a few ghosts.

  Chapter Thirteen: Bail Out

  Jason was due before the magistrate first thing on Friday morning.

  Friday was his day off. He usually went down the garage and spent a few hours under a motor, before having a couple of pints with Dylan in the afternoon. This week, he’d taken the bank holiday, so he should be with Amy, hoovering up the toast crumbs and trying to persuade her again that she needed a new carpet.

  But today there would be no motors, no pint, no crumbs and no Hoover. No Amy neither.

  His mam and Cerys would be there, maybe Bryn and Owain if they could wrangle it. There would be enough witnesses to his public shame.

  His mam hadn’t been allowed to see him, but had dropped a suit off at the station. It was one of his dad’s. In the very bottom of the inside pocket was a small scrap of paper. It said Be brave.

  Jason had showered and shaved, dressed in his suit, and checked his appearance in the cheap plastic mirror. The bruise-deep shadows under his eyes made him look hunted, desperate, but he didn’t look anywhere near as terr
ible as the mugshot splashed all over the papers.

  Karl had left half a dozen messages since yesterday, begging him to prepare a written statement. The court wouldn’t hear a plea from him, but if he had shown remorse at the police station, it would encourage further leniency when he appeared at Crown Court. It made cold, logical sense to Jason, even if everything in him rebelled against it.

  But he only had one option. One way to settle his conscience and give Elin Jones some closure. He wouldn’t be able to look his own mam in the eye, but he could do right by Auntie Elin. He’d taken one son from her, goaded him into that madcap scheme, and now her baby boy was dead.

  So he had asked for a piece of paper and started to write. But all he had was remorse—he regretted Damage’s death, but he could not confess his part in it. He could not give Elin answers.

  In the morning, he carefully folded up the piece of paper and tucked it into his jacket pocket with his mam’s note. He still had time. If he just handed it to the officer...

  But he didn’t. He didn’t give it to the transport guards, or the officer who met him under the hundreds of flashes of the press’s cameras.

  Then he saw Elin. Tears glistened on her cheeks and fury glinted in her eyes, and Jason knew what he had to do. He looked around in vain for Karl, but he couldn’t see the lawyer anywhere as he was escorted swiftly inside.

  He was kept waiting in a small room adjacent to the court, with two officers supposedly watching him but actually talking gloomily about Cardiff’s game against Chelsea on Sunday.

  But Jason was more interested in what was going on outside the door. He could hear Karl’s clipped, educated tones, increasing in volume with every protest, and a low, indecipherable mumble in opposition.

  The door suddenly opened. The police officers sprang to life, one reaching for his Taser. “Oi, you can’t—”

  Karl gestured wildly, like a man in the middle of a seizure. “Jason! Tell this man that I am your lawyer!”

  From behind the door frame, a small grey-haired gentleman shuffled out, arms full of papers and peering out from behind a pair of milk-bottle spectacles. “Mr. Carr, Miss Lane has sent me to represent you—Joseph Treves.”

  Jason turned back to Karl, wearing his first smile for two days. “That man is my lawyer.”

  Joseph stepped inside and closed the door on a still-ranting Karl. “Now, Mr. Carr, I hope you have not done anything stupid, such as giving these officers a confession, no?” He looked at the police officers. “No offence, gentlemen.”

  The folded piece of paper burned a hole in Jason’s pocket. “No.”

  “Excellent. Gentlemen, if I may have a moment with my client?”

  The officers hesitated.

  Joseph clicked his tongue. “There are no windows in this room. I am sure you will guard the door most admirably.”

  The officers exchanged glances and stepped out.

  Jason looked up at Joseph with a look of pure gratitude. “Did you speak to Amy? Is she all right?”

  “Miss Lane is keeping well. She assured me that you had no cause to worry and she has plenty of tea and biscuits.”

  Jason felt a weight lift off his shoulders that he hadn’t even realised he was carrying. “And...and she doesn’t...I mean, she doesn’t think that I—”

  “Miss Lane is convinced of your innocence. I would not be here if she wasn’t.”

  Jason closed his eyes. He had to confess, to someone he trusted. This man was his only connection to Amy and therefore the closest thing he had. “I...I wish I could be so sure.”

  Joseph frowned. “You don’t remember what happened?”

  “Nothing. There are hours missing. I could’ve—”

  “I think not, Mr. Carr. Swinging a punch at a man trying to arrest you is a different kettle to stabbing a young man, drugs be damned. And Amy said to tell you ‘Ewan is on the case.’ I trust you take her meaning?”

  Amy was performing her own investigation, gathering evidence with AEON’s almighty computing power at her fingertips. But she didn’t have her errand boy. How would she find the truth without her man on the street?

  “I hope she’s all right,” he muttered to himself.

  “I think we should concern ourselves more with your fate, yes?”

  Jason nodded and Joseph patted his shoulder like a kindly grandfather. “Tell me what happened that night. What you remember of it.”

  Jason had thought of nothing else since it happened, but the words were still slow to come. The night started off clear before the images retreated to the bottom of a dark, deep well, out of reach.

  “You’d never seen the knife before?”

  “Never.” Jason decided against telling him he’d owned one just like it when he was a teenager, though his had been black with little white skulls. Lewis had one that matched. They were both now sitting in some evidence locker, part of what was confiscated from them when they were arrested.

  Joseph made a note across the corner of one of his pages. “Good to know, good to know.”

  “Why?” Jason asked, curiosity pushing down the anxiety rolling in his stomach.

  “Your fingerprints are on the weapon, yes? If the knife was placed in your unconscious hand, the marks will be very different than if you had gripped it in anger. It is a small thing, but enough perhaps to plant the seed of doubt in the mind of a jury.”

  The door opened. “You ready?” the officer asked.

  Jason stood up, filled with a sense of dread once more. This was the moment that would send him back to prison, remanded to Swansea for weeks and months to await trial. Regardless of whether Amy got him out eventually, he would still have to go back. God, he would do anything to avoid it.

  From the moment he entered the courtroom, he was lost. He was aware of only flashes of moments—his mother looking on, wearing the suit she bought for his father’s funeral, the same one she wore to the hearing that condemned him for carjacking; his sister almost unrecognisable in a sober grey suit, plain makeup and a bright Welsh Dragon pin on her lapel; Elin Jones, hating him silently, clutching a white handkerchief; the court illustrator industriously sketching him, preserving the moment for the newspapers gathered outside.

  Jason managed to get out his name and address when instructed, but the rest of the formalities passed over him, his blood roaring in his ears all he could hear.

  Until Joseph spoke. “Sir, my client wishes to submit an application for bail to the Crown Court.”

  There was a shocked murmur in the courtroom. Jason was himself surprised, and turned to Joseph questioningly.

  “Are you really intending to waste the Court’s time with this, Mr. Treves?”

  Joseph did not rise to the insult. “I am intending to apply, Your Worship.”

  The judge raised his hand and began ticking things off on his fingers. “A previous record of violence for which he has served time in prison, a violent murder in the gang community, the use of a class A substance. What exactly are your grounds for application?”

  Joseph leaned against the stand, as if he was having an informal chat over the garden fence. “The ‘violence’ to which you refer occurred when Mr. Carr was arrested two years ago, after which he was granted bail—to no incident—and served six months in prison, with exemplary record. Since that time, my client has been gainfully employed and assisted the police in the apprehension of a serial killer. How soon we all forget.”

  “I believe he shot the man with an illegal handgun,” the judge said dryly.

  “I believe he was cleared of all charges.”

  The judge waved his hand. “Leaving aside his previous conviction, the circumstances of this case alone—”

  “Are circumstantial at best. And bail is outside your jurisdiction, sir.”

  Jason tried his best to hide his smirk. Am
y had outdone herself in finding Joseph.

  The judge bristled. “So noted. The defendant is remanded in custody pending a further bail hearing at Crown Court.”

  The feeling of jubilation evaporated. He was still going to be remanded. A few hours, a few days—it didn’t matter. That was plenty of time for the despair to set in.

  And for Lewis to find him.

  * * *

  Amy watched the court proceedings with an air of detachment and a red wine hangover.

  Joseph had already explained the likely outcome, but she was keen to catch even a glimpse of Jason. As it was, Cerys kept her eyes firmly on Jason the entire time and Amy was able to analyse every inch of him. He looked tired. And defeated. Amy’s heart broke for him. It was a pity she couldn’t hear him, but the camera’s short audio range wasn’t sufficient to capture any of the proceedings with accuracy. But it was important for Amy to see him, to know that he had hope. How could she fight for him if he had already given up?

  If she stayed in her spot beside AEON, she could pretend she wasn’t alone. Jason could be in his room or in the shower or putting away the laundry. She would just get on with work and wait for the call for tea that would never come.

  When the hearing was over, Amy went back to work, the twenty-four-hour news feed recording for later perusal. It would be dross, mostly, but she needed as much information as they were prepared to give.

  She checked her police station connection. Still undiscovered. It appeared that, despite their determination that Jason had concocted a fairy tale about big-name criminals in his interview, the police had tried to find the men mentioned. Rich Porter and Mickey Doyle could not be found, but Stuart Williams had given a statement.

  He had, in fact, been at the shop that evening and had seen Damage and Jason together. He said they looked “tense” but he had left shortly after. He had gone home to his girlfriend and stayed there until late in the afternoon, when he learned that Damage was dead.

  Amy trusted Stuart as far as she could throw him. She could not forget the pain Jason had suffered at his hands, the intimidation and the injury. Her research file on him had been stagnant for the five months he’d spent behind bars, but he’d returned to his old email addresses on his release. Amy had absent-mindedly picked over them for information, but Stuart had sounded genuinely upset about Damage’s death. He might have been involved in drugging Jason but it seemed unlikely that he would sacrifice his own minion to ensure Jason’s guilt.