Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries) (10 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two: Voulez Vous Couchez?

“Morning,” Jason said.

Amy grunted in his direction, as emo nu metal raged around her. It was too early for small talk and she had a hangover from cheap red wine.

“Have you eaten today?”

Amy shrugged, gripped by the fast-forwarded CCTV footage on her monitors as her stomach rolled nauseatingly. It was a few minutes before fresh coffee and toast landed by her elbow, and she devoured it like a zombie at a brains market.

However, Jason was still keen to attempt conversation. “I’ve got a clue to the headboard.”

A sharp jab at the keyboard stopped the footage on a gang of goth kids, as Amy licked her fingers clean of jam and tried to flick out tooth-lodged seeds with her tongue. “A clue?”

“My mate showed me this photo, ripped from a magazine, like. It’s from a hotel, but he doesn’t know which one...” Jason trailed off, sounding uncertain of himself.

Amy glanced up at him—he was standing awkwardly too, like he was consumed with self-doubt. Or he’d fallen off his damned uninsured motorbike.

“A hotel makes sense. Anything else?”

Jason massaged his temples, as if that would help the memory flow faster. “A nice hotel. One that business folk stay in. There was this...purple stripe at the bottom of the duvet cover.”

“Purple stripe.” Amy pulled up her browser, fingers flashing across the keys, a series of anonymous hotel rooms scrolling across the screen. “Not great branding...ah!”

The flickering halted, landing on a laughing couple frozen in their artificial mirth. Jason lunged for it. “That’s it!”

“Hmm...big chain. They’ve got six hotels in the Cardiff area alone.” Amy stabbed at the keys, and the printer ejected a sheet with six addresses. “Shouldn’t take more than an afternoon, less if you take the bike instead of the Micra.” She paused. “Oh, the bike doesn’t have tax. Never mind.”

Jason was silent for a long moment. “How do you know about my bike?”

Oh...shit.
Amy shrank inside her blanket and picked up her tea.
Well
,
there was just no explaining this
,
was there?
Fuckity-fuck—what a moron
,
Amy.

She didn’t want to be afraid of him, but that outburst with the window... She hadn’t had a panic attack like that for years. That was the price of letting an unknown quantity into the sanctuary of her home. Yet she hadn’t pushed him away. She hadn’t fired him, like she should’ve done, like any sane person would’ve done. But then she wasn’t quite sane, was she?

But Jason wasn’t angry. “You don’t have to tell me. Just—”

“Dylan ordered parts for a 1940s Harley-Davidson motorcycle totalling two hundred and forty pounds,” Amy said, the words tumbling forth. “You withdrew two hundred and forty pounds the next day. You pay tax for a white X-reg Nissan Micra but not for a motorbike. Neither your mother nor your sister drive. Therefore, it has to be your bike, but it’s not on the road. Well, it’s not meant to be.”

“I’m still fixing it up,” Jason said, and she saw that he was smiling, the last remnants of fear ebbing away. “Doesn’t matter. But that’s a little creepy, yeah? You can just ask me things instead of...finding them out. Through ninjas or whatever.”

“Google know everything about you,” she said, deadpan. “There’s a chip in your brain and it feeds information directly to the web. I’ve cracked their secret code. I am master of the internet.”

“Oh, good to know. Erase that bit where I remember my twenty-first, and try not to look at what’s at the bottom of my wardrobe.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” It was so easy to joke with him. Lame jokes that weren’t funny, but she was out of practice.

Jason just shook his head and picked up the list of addresses from the printer. “You want me to go here now?” he said, flapping the sheet.

“Later is fine.”

He nodded, jamming his thumb towards the back of the flat. “I’m going to fight monsters fungal and filthy in your bathroom.”

Amy lapsed back into silence, the work calling to her, and the images flickered to life again.

* * *

When Jason emerged from the bathroom an hour later, he felt like he needed a turn in the newly scrubbed shower. He padded barefoot into the living room, shoes in hand and jeans turned up to the knees. “There isn’t enough bleach in the world for your flat. But I have conquered it—I am master of the bathroom.”

When there was no response from the pile of blankets, he dumped his shoes and crept forward. Amy was asleep, slumped to the side in her chair, the CCTV images still flashing wildly on screen. Jason found the button to pause it and then looked back at her.

She looked uncomfortable, neck at an odd angle against the chair back, so he slipped an arm around her back and the other under her knees. The effort stretched the scabs across his shoulders, but he was a hard man, tough, like. She didn’t stir as he carried her down the corridor to her room and set her on her bed, spreading the blankets carefully over her.

She snuggled her face into the pillow, pulling the covers up over her shoulder, and Jason smiled, shutting the door quietly behind him and returning the room to darkness.

He lifted the list of hotels from the printer—best get going on this, before the evidence got swept under a cheap mass-produced rug. Picking the first hotel on the list, he looked up the route on his phone as he struggled to settle into the driver’s seat of the Micra. There was no way to get comfortable when your shoulders looked like you’d been scrammed by a sabre-tooth tiger.

On the drive over, Jason started to have doubts. He had absolutely no authority to march in there and demand the names of their guests or their CCTV footage. In fact, he had nothing except a criminal record and a smile. But he had been a blagger since he had learned to talk and so he pulled his leather jacket on over his uniform shirt, slung his bag over his shoulder and walked up to the front desk.

“Afternoon,” he said. “My friend’s already checked in. Lane, Amy Lane. Can you call her and let her know I’m here?”

The perky receptionist beamed at him. “Of course, sir. Who should I say is waiting?”

“Detective Bryn Hesketh,” he said, without missing a beat. “Tell her we need to get going right away—this case won’t solve itself.”

The woman looked him over again, perhaps a new appreciation growing in her eyes. “Detective? Are you...” She lowered her voice. “Is it about those missing girls?”

Jason looked to both sides and leaned forward conspiratorially. “Between you and me, love, it is. That’s why I’m here.”

The receptionist’s mouth formed a perfect O. “Here?” she squeaked.

“I know it’s shocking, but we think he may have brought one of the girls to a hotel.” He put on his best concerned face, stealing a look at the badge pinned to her impressive chest. “You weren’t working on the fourth, were you, Mandy?”

Her eyes were wide. “I was! Was that...when he did it?” She looked distressed and Jason was suddenly afraid she was going to start bawling. “But I was only here ’til nine. That’s when Mikey took over—it was likely after nine, right?”

“And is Mikey working today?”

“No, he’s off for a couple of days—his dad’s not well, see.” She looked troubled by this fact, but then her face brightened. “But we have the cameras. We keep the tapes for a whole month—it’ll be on there, won’t it?”

Jason smiled. “It will. How about you send them over to Central Police Station—mark it with my name, eh? Let me write it down so it gets right to me.” He wrote the detective’s name in his best cop scrawl on the hotel paper, followed by his own mobile number, and the girl snatched it up with a shy smile.
Nice one
,
Carr.

But then the frown was back. “Oh, Detective, I can’t find your friend’s name. In fact, we don’t have a room under that name at all.”

Jason cursed under his breath. “Damn it, must’ve missed her. Still, not a total loss, was it?” He beamed at her and she glowed. Still got it. “You’ll send over that tape, won’t you? We know he can’t have got far and this place is in the hot zone.”

Mandy nodded seriously and promised him that she would send them over right away, once the duty manager signed off on it, and then she’d call him as soon as it was done.

Jason thanked her sincerely, with another devastating smile, and walked out of the hotel. One down, five to go.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Closed Circuit

Bryn marched into the living room and shook a handful of packages in Jason’s direction. “Is this you? Because I don’t remember talking to any hotel managers about CCTV footage and yet here are all these gifts. Oh, and they’re addressed to me, with such notes as
lovely to meet you
and
drop by any time.
Explain to me how I met these people when I don’t even know where the damn hotels are!”

Amy looked at him curiously as Jason affected his most innocent smile. “They must’ve been confused when I said I worked with you.”

Bryn exploded. “You don’t work with me! You don’t even work for me! You work for her—” he jabbed a finger in Amy’s direction, “—and that entitles you to get hotels to send me videotapes and complimentary restaurant vouchers?”

So that was where Jason had gone yesterday. Amy had woken up in her bedroom, confused as to how she’d magically flown there, with a sparkling bathroom and a total lack of housekeeper. Cleaner. Whatever.

She defused the situation by shifting from the couch, taking the packages off Bryn and sitting at her computer terminal. She shook out the envelopes, providing a haul of four CDs and two actual videotapes. Disgusting. “I can still process these—just. Everyone should be on flash memory. There’s no excuse.”

Jason went to make a fresh pot of tea. Amy belatedly remembered that she still hadn’t bought sugar and wondered if she should just tell Jason to stock the cupboards. He seemed to know what he was doing.

When he returned, Amy had rigged up the ancient VCR and was already fast-forwarding through the first hotel’s footage. “This one is closest to her last-known location.” But the reception area was quiet, only two or three businessmen and one middle-aged couple between midnight and morning, and then it was on to the next hotel.

The second hotel was busier, but there were still no young women fitting Melody’s type. When the third and fourth hotels were also busts, Amy pouted to herself but kept working. Maybe the headboard was actually a common design supplied to hotels. Maybe they’d have to further widen the net, but they had made so many assumptions already.

It was the fifth hotel where they had their breakthrough. “I’ve got her,” Amy said quietly, and the three men crowded round the back of her chair. She froze the picture as a couple entered the lobby, backs to the camera over the main door. Melody’s clothes were now unmistakeable to them, the dress that barely reached past her short coat and her high stilettos, which dragged on the ground. She was unconscious, or already dead.

Her murderer was disturbingly normal. Average height, slightly lean, he wore a waterproof jacket, jeans and a baseball cap, all in dark colours. There was nothing remarkable about him. And they couldn’t see his face. Amy took a still, and pressed Play.

He paused a second in the lobby and then took them through the door to the right of the screen. Melody’s head lolled forward—and, for an instant, there was a glimpse of his face. Half his jaw and nose, a hint of a mouth, but it was there. Amy rewound and stopped the tape, and they all looked at the man who killed Kate Thomas and Melody Frank.

They were so close to him now.

* * *

He was on the national news.

He felt a slight thrill at the thought. Now she would have to notice. How could she help but see what he’d laid before her, when the whole country knew it?

But the report also worried him. They’d found the hotel he’d used for the girl, and there was a picture they’d blown up to show his face—it looked nothing like him. But it did mean he’d have to change his plan, go back to what worked before, away from prying eyes. He couldn’t afford to fail, to fail her.

He carefully checked his tools—the camera, charged and memory cleaned; the nitrile gloves, vivid in blue sterility; and his suitcase. It was old battered leather, his mother’s travelling trunk, but the bag of lavender from her dresser masked the smell of the girl who had slept in it for two days before her journey to the lake. Soon, it would carry another passenger.

Why didn’t she stop him? That was what he didn’t understand. She should’ve come to him by now, begged him to return to her. But she remained elusive and distant. He gave her plenty of opportunity—there was the forum, his blog, email. He’d made sure she knew how to reach him, had written them all out very carefully for her, placed the little folded note in her hand while
he
wasn’t looking. She’d smiled at him, and his entire world had exploded into colour in that dark, dingy room full of kids pretending they were too old for this place.

He shook his head, scattering the happy memories, and focussing on the future. If he didn’t make it count now, she would never come back to him. He had to make sure she really knew what she was missing. He would prove his love to her, drive her wild with jealousy, until she begged him to take her back.

He wrote:

My heart bleeds for you, but it still beats for you. When will you realise that this isn’t a game? You can stop me, freebird. Just say the word. You’re everything to me. I’m waiting for you, freebird, to run back to me and be free.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Don’t Wait Up

Gina was tired and ready for her bed. Her king-sized bed was squeezed into her room with hardly any space to get out of it either side, but was still the most amazing bed ever. She would sink into it, wrap the duvet around her shoulders and persuade Laurie to bring her a cup of camomile tea.

Twelve hours straight at the library was knackering. Still, the bloody essay was done and she could now return to the joyous chaos of the house. They had barely cleared up from the party last Friday night and there weren’t many ways to get week-old tomato juice out of the carpet.

She walked along the back of the Union, smelling the distinctive scent of marijuana floating in the air. Her first-year halls had stank of it, and she remembered that bloody awful day when she’d eaten the inviting chocolate cupcake at Hayley’s party and spent the rest of the night off her head. Messing with chocolate was sick and wrong.

As she passed under the bridge, a shiver went down her spine, the feeling of being watched settling between her shoulder blades. Gina looked around—nothing. The whole road was deserted, and she shook her head and walked on. This stupid serial killer was making her jumpy.

It wasn’t that she was bothered about being out alone at night, even with those two missing students—she lived a five-minute walk from uni and she wasn’t going to let a little thing like the dark put her off pulling a late one in the library.

The rain had tailed off into a misting drizzle, barely rain at all, but she quickened her steps. Almost home. The slightly haunted feeling hadn’t left her and the hedgerows menaced, every dark corner a hiding place, every shadow a man with a length of rope...

Her heart was loud in her ears and her breath caught in her throat. Fuck, she was better than this. She deserved to feel safe in her own town, damn it, and this wasn’t fair.
Bastard.

Gina fumbled for her key outside the front door, trying to find the right one under the flickering light of the one broken streetlamp on her road. Of course it would be outside their house. She would ring the Council on Monday, get it fixed. Do something to stop this feeling of dread lodged in her stomach.

Finally, she found the key and wiggled it in the lock, forcing the door open. They really needed to get that fixed and she added it to the list. She took off her knit cap and shook out her dark curls, setting down her messenger bag by the door.

She heard a noise coming from upstairs. It was a
scrape-scrape-scrape
sound, like wood against plaster. Laurie couldn’t be putting up shelves at this hour, so what was it? Gina shrugged off her coat and hung it off the banister, trying to place the sound—then froze. It was the headboard knocking against the wall.

“Laurie?” she called, and the noise stopped. Who the fuck was upstairs with her girlfriend?

Running footsteps sounded across the landing, and Gina started up the stairs as a man in black ran into their bathroom and slammed the door. Gina tried to shoulder it open but he’d bolted it. She heard the window swing out and the clatter as he jumped onto the shed roof and away into the garden.

The house was quiet. Gina turned, looking at their bedroom door, her heart starting to beat double-time in her chest. She thought: I can’t believe she’d cheat on me. She thought: Who was that man? She thought: I can’t hear her breathing.

The bedroom door was ajar and Gina walked in, as if in a dream. And there was Laurie, sprawled naked on their bed, open eyes fixed on the ceiling, and a trail of blood dripping down her leg.

And all Gina could think was: He was here. The Cardiff Ripper was in my house.