Jason’s lips quirked. Part of him was reluctant to bring the memory of Amy up now, didn’t want any part of her associated with this place. But maybe it was her turn to keep him sane. “My boss has agoraphobia.”
“Your don don’t like the outdoors?”
Jason laughed at the idea of Amy being in the Mafia, head of a Sicilian cybernetic family. “She’s just a regular boss. Private investigator.”
The bloke looked at him like he’d just told him his boss was the last king of Scotland. “Then how did you get mixed up in this shit?”
Jason shrugged one shoulder, a habit he hadn’t quite shaken since breaking his arm at the hands of Stuart Williams. “Don’t ask me, mate. I haven’t the faintest fucking clue.”
The neo-Nazi bruiser huffed a laugh. “You’re all right, y’know. For a murdering bastard.” He held out his hand. “Graham.”
Jason shook it. “Jason. Not a murdering bastard, for the record.”
“Well, anyway. Ta, mate. Owe you one.”
“Anytime.”
* * *
From that point, Graham was Jason’s best friend. He gave him the milk from his breakfast pack, preferring to crunch on the cereal dry. He stared down any blokes who looked like they were coming near Jason during Association, the blessed time of pseudo-freedom, sweet respite from the same four walls of the cell.
Graham encouraged his new friend to sign up for every course going. “Chance to get out of the cell, innit?” It was Graham’s third time inside and he was planning to work on his master’s in English Literature.
He decided that Jason needed looking after and shepherded him around like a chook with her chick. It was clear, however, that Graham took Jason’s denials with a pinch of salt. “Sure, sure, your lawyer will get you bail, if he’s that good, but you should’ve thought about pleading guilty. I did and I got ten months off.”
“Didn’t do it,” Jason repeated, for the twentieth time as they tucked into lunch.
“That’s the spirit.”
As time dragged on, Jason realised that he had forgotten most of what prison was like. He remembered the beatings and the lessons, but the memories of hours and hours of interminable cell time had faded with exposure to the light of freedom. Already, the long day was weighing on him, used to running errands, cleaning, shopping, trying to cajole Amy into letting him do some DIY.
What was Amy doing? Was she sending Joseph all the evidence he needed to clear him? Or was she stuck in a rut, unable to find a solution and sinking beneath her blankets in defeat?
During the third Association period, Jason queued for the phone. He had to know what was happening on the outside, even if it would kill him to hear their voices and not see them, touch them. He was two people away from the phone when he finally decided who he would speak to, the clock ticking down the sparse minutes until they had to get back in their cells.
The line clicked. “You have reached Chalmers Legal, the people who know PPI.”
The computerised cut-glass English was unexpected. “Uh...hi. Amy?”
The line clicked again. “Jason! Are you all right?”
“What was—”
“I left the telemarketer interface hooked up. I was calling some drug dealers.”
Jason winced. “Amy, the calls are recorded.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s all for your case. Telemarketing isn’t illegal, even if my choice of clientele is less than stellar.”
She sounded positively chirpy, and Jason couldn’t help but smile as she talked. “Sounds like you’re managing fine without your sidekick.”
“I’m not.” Her voice was suddenly sober, almost sulky. “There’s a huge spider in the bath and I’m out of chocolate digestives.”
“Ask Owain to get you some.” Jason clutched the phone to his face, imagining he was arguing with her as he leaned over her shoulder. “You need to get the online shop done.”
“I will, I will. I won’t starve. You concentrate on staying alive and I will drink plenty of fluids.”
“This is the safest place for me.”
A bell rang to mark the end of Association. The bloke behind him growled and sloped off, muttering to himself. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you soon.”
“I’m watching over you. Don’t worry.”
The line went dead and Jason hung up the receiver. He headed back to his cell, debating the wisdom of eating his breakfast as a midnight snack, when a couple of guards blocked his path.
“Carr? You’re moving on.”
Jason tensed but tried to keep his shoulders down, look nonthreatening. “Moving on?”
“You’ve been regraded, son. Ain’t this just your lucky day?”
The other guard squared up to him, but Jason intended to come quietly. He was quickly ushered down a corridor, his meagre belongings in a bag slung over the guard’s shoulder. Jason was a bit put out that he didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to Graham, and he hoped his new cellmate looked kindly on his torments.
“What was I before?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
The guard was in no mood to humour him. “Shut up, nonce. They’ll be plenty of dick to suck where you’re going.”
As soon as they turned the corner, Jason recognised the place. He’d spent only four weeks on D-wing, but the memory was seared into his brain. He hadn’t been able to walk ten paces without fear of being jumped and having the shit kicked out of him. They haven’t decorated, his numb brain supplied, but it wasn’t funny. Nothing about this was funny.
Because Lewis was here and the last thing he needed was to rekindle that vendetta, with his former friend’s dead brother lying on a slab in Cardiff. Not to mention the lifers and lackeys who wanted his blood and never forgot a face. Jason was sure they had never forgiven him for escaping to Usk.
The light was fading through the slit windows as Jason was led up the stairs. The noise was intense, a background level of hollering that set Jason’s teeth on edge, and something sticky clung to his shoe as he was marched up into the gods, stuck like a lonely princess in the highest cell in the tallest tower.
“Meet your new friend, Jason.”
The tension he’d been carrying knotted into his shoulders, the face that greeted him far from welcome. “Alby?”
Albert Collins smiled, but there was no love in it, the axe of two years grinding against the stone. “Jay Bird. Fancy seeing you here. Lewis will be fucking delighted.”
“Stop gossiping, ladies.” The guard shoved Jason’s things into his hand and locked the cell behind him.
Leaving Jason alone with the boy he’d run with as a kid.
Alby had always played second fiddle to the Dynamic Duo of Jason and Lewis, but he was useful in a fight and he’d backed Jason up when he’d suggested robbing the gold exchange. They liked to fancy it was something like the Alamo but, in reality, it had been owned by an elderly Indian man whose eyesight was failing him and who, to this day, thought they were good, sweet boys.
He’d never stood a chance when the crew knocked him over, crashing to the floor and shattering his hip. He’d survived, but he’d never been the same. After he’d got out, Jason had hung around the shop, watching the man make slow, painful progress to work each day, flinching whenever a hooded youth came too near. They had done that to him. Jason might not have been there, but he was as much responsible as any of the others for that man’s fear.
“Lewis is gonna flay you.”
Jason wasn’t in the mood to talk back—he didn’t have the strength in him. Alby’s presence here brought it all back, and it was as if the past year had never been. Instead, he sat down on his bed and unpacked his things.
“He’s coming for you, Jay Bird.”
And Jason thought Let him come. He owed him at least an explanation. And if it was bl
ood he wanted...
It was time to settle the score.
Chapter Sixteen: For Whom the Bell Tolls
It started at midnight.
Jason woke to a rhythmic clanging noise, a slow, steady chime. He turned his head towards it—and found Alby staring at him, banging his spoon against the steel frame of the bed.
The sound spread. Suddenly, Jason was surrounded by the clanging of spoons on beds, like being trapped in the cathedral belfry as the clock struck twelve.
He felt uneasy. What did it mean? Was it just a herald for the new boy, or was it a signal of something more sinister?
There was shouting from below, hoarse-throated guards making their way upstairs. The sound went as quickly as it started, dying away to absolute silence. Jason held his breath, as flashlights swept up towards them. What the fuck was he afraid of? He’d done nothing wrong.
Alby threw his spoon across the cell.
It bounced off Jason’s bed frame and landed on the floor. Jason froze. If he moved for it, could he hide? Would they—
The flashlight swung into his face.
“Carr. Thought you might want to lie low. But then you do love having your face splashed about the papers.”
Jason tried to place the voice, but he couldn’t see beyond the light. “It weren’t—”
“Save it. Up.”
Jason stood immediately, standing at attention like a soldier, as the guards rifled through his bedclothes and meagre belongings.
“You’ll never get out now, boy.”
Jason did not react. He had no desire to be crushed beneath the heel of this particular screw, who didn’t give a shit what the prisoners did to each other as long as he was getting paid and they knew he could fuck with them at any time. Jason remembered him only as Garlic, the smell overpowering whenever he got in your face. He also remembered being bloody grateful to get away.
“Lost your tongue, smart mouth?”
He said nothing. That seemed to piss Garlic off more and the man lifted his hand to grab Jason’s jaw. Jason flinched, but he kept his arms at his side and remembered to breathe. Just like coaching Amy through a panic attack, this. Except it was him who needed to keep his cool and not let this bastard get to him. One little spoon-ringing offence wasn’t going to prejudice his trial, but smacking some twat of a guard round the chops probably would.
Garlic huffed and released him, obviously deciding that baiting him wasn’t fun anymore or simply that there were too many witnesses. “You’re on report, Carr. Adjudication will be when we can get the governor off her fat arse.”
Every time he’d had the shit kicked out of him inside, the threat of standing before the prison governor to beg forgiveness for his sins paled in comparison. Nobody quaked in their boots at adjudication and, at this rate, Jason would be battered like chip shop cod before he could see his prison reports affect the Crown Court bail hearing.
Jason remained standing as they left, ignoring the jeers from the surrounding cells and Alby’s self-satisfied smirk. He had always been a very small man, Jason thought, savouring the malicious flavour to his feelings. He would pay him back. Oh, little Alby Collins would wish he’d never been born.
As the lights faded, Jason sat on his bed and tucked himself under the blanket.
“See what I can do to you, Jay Bird,” Alby whispered gleefully.
“You hear the one about pride and a fall, Alby?”
Alby wanted desperately to be a hard man, but his voice wavered. “You gonna push me? Are you?”
“Don’t have to do nothing but wait.” Jason turned his back on Alby and closed his eyes. Waiting was all he had.
* * *
With the dawn came his offence report and Garlic’s attempt to convert “banging a spoon” into “intimidation and harassment.” Jason shrugged it off and ate his breakfast, boiling the kettle for tea and pointedly not making any for Alby. When it came to passive-aggressive behaviour, he had learned from the best. Amy could turn withholding a mug into a diplomatic incident.
At first Association, he called his mam and Cerys and told them he was all right. Gwen told him to be brave and reassured him that Bryn had been to see her, to make sure the house was secure and give her his personal phone number. Under any other circumstances, he would caution the detective against cosying up to his mother, but he was grateful that someone was looking out for her. If Mickey and Stuart decided to come after his family...
But no, they wouldn’t do that. It would draw attention to the setup. But Damage’s mates might have a go, and the last thing his mam needed was a brick through the window.
D-wing hadn’t changed much in two years. The paint might be a slightly different shade of cream, but it still stank of stale sweat and a lingering hint of marijuana in the air. It must drive the guards insane, smelling the tell-tale stench and not being able to find the stuff. They were probably growing it in the prison garden, between the mint and the azaleas.
Jason recognised a few familiar faces—lifers and gang runners from Cardiff—but he gave them a wide berth. He didn’t have any prison currency except the tobacco in his pockets, and he wasn’t here to make friends. He just needed to keep his head down until his court appearance.
He hung back at lunch, letting the pecking order settle itself in front of him and trying to quiet his grumbling stomach. He’d got used to Amy’s plentiful cupboards, stocked by him with everything they could desire, and now cardboard cereal and fake potato weren’t cutting it.
Jason craned his neck to see what was left—and saw him. It was like looking into a mirror. The same tall, broad physique, the gelled-up spikes of his youth replaced with a skinhead fuzz, and the dark brown eyes that pierced Jason to the core. The only distinguishing marks were the scars down his right arm from where it had been splintered in the crash, and the surgery it took to correct it. The marks of Jason’s abandonment.
Lewis got to his feet and stared him down. The canteen hushed, like the calm before a storm. Jason held his tray steady, making no move to shield himself or brandish it. He had to wait. He had to take his punishment like a man.
The guards were twitching at the sidelines, unsure of what was about to go down. Lewis suddenly surged forward, crossing the room in a few quick strides until he was nose to nose with Jason.
Jason didn’t flinch. “Hello, Lewis.”
“You should’ve fallen on your bloody knife before stepping foot in here.” The words were bitten out, his eyes shining. “You would be better off dead, Jay Bird.”
Jason was aware of raised voices, guards trying to push past the crowd of gawkers to reach them, but he kept his eyes fixed on Lewis. “I never did for him, Lewis.”
Lewis laughed, an ugly sound full of sharp edges, and spat on Jason’s trainers. He turned to walk away, and then swung his fist into Jason’s temple.
Jason came to on the canteen floor, tray resting across his hips, as a couple of guards tried to restrain Lewis and another three held back the jeering onlookers.
Jason met Lewis’s furious gaze as he bayed for his blood, and he wanted to cry for all the love lost between them. Damage’s frail little body between them.
He was hauled to his feet by Garlic, the stench better than a bag of smelling salts, and pushed out of the room. “That’s another report for you, boy. The warden is going to hang you out to dry.”
But Jason couldn’t care less about reports and wardens and court. First, he had to survive—and Lewis Jones was gunning for him.
Chapter Seventeen: Baby, You Can Drive My Car
The phones were unregistered.
This shouldn’t have surprised her—what kind of self-respecting gangster gave away his personal information to a phone network? Amy only reluctantly trusted her bank to keep that information, and her mobile phone operated only via an online relay. Theoretically,
it was traceable, but she’d attempted it herself and she could only narrow the source down to city and ISP. It would have to do.
What she could do was track them. It seemed the two men did nothing apart. They frequented the same cafés, the same houses, the same dodgy warehouses at the dead of night. They also did a lot of waiting around. They would drive to a car park at 2:00 a.m. and stay there for a couple of hours, before leaving again. Amy had attempted to find CCTV for that area, but there was a large black spot and they parked exactly in the middle of it. The Council needed to invest in subtler cameras.
Amy had thought about asking Jason to plant her own network of cameras around the city, but most of her current areas of concern were where she couldn’t keep a close enough eye on him. He might get the wrong idea and think she was stalking him.
It wasn’t that she had a desperate need to know his location at all times. It was just that he got himself into so much trouble. Case in point. If he had taken his phone to Splott that night, she would’ve known where he was and she would’ve had eyes on him. Until he went into that drug den, of course. But one call to the police would’ve put an end to his bravado and caught a handful of gangsters. Of course, he might have copped a drug charge—possession of a class A substance, a community service order—but Damage would be alive and Jason would be sitting, cowed, on her sofa as his mother scolded him.
Amy was seriously considering having him chipped.
Perusing a number of high-tech surveillance sites—Micro GPS Trackers: The Pros and Cons of Bugging Your Spouse—Amy was jolted back to the present by a ping from the surveillance. The Chuckle Brothers were on the move.
The three phones—the two blokes’ and Damage’s—left the little house in the nice part of town to the north of Cardiff. Drugs paid, obviously, more than enough for the exorbitant rent on that place. Amy had looked up the property records but the landlord had registered the property as unoccupied. They took a stolen 4x4 this time and stopped in Cathays to have a fry-up at Ramon’s, a greasy spoon beloved of locals and film companies alike. Slap-bang in the middle of studentville, the street was plastered in cameras and Amy got a good look at them, took another screencap. They were with a third man, shorter and slighter, but he kept his head ducked. The brains of the outfit?
Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2) Page 10
