Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries) (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Birdcage

Her head hurt.

Carla moaned and turned her head away from the sunlight filtering through the blinds. Had it been tequila? Tom would be so angr—

She sat up, suddenly awake, a roll of nausea in her stomach. She’d been at work. That man...he’d hit her. Carla reached for the back of her head, wincing as she probed the lump there. Acceptable level of haematoma, didn’t seem to be a fracture. How long had she been out?

She wobbled to her feet and went to the window, her head hammering. Through the blinds, she could see up to the street—a converted basement then. It wasn’t too bright outside, maybe early morning? Evening? Had she been asleep for a whole day? She could’ve died from a concussion that bad.

She scratched at the back of her neck, where a label had started to itch. She was wearing a hospital gown and the scrub trousers she’d worn in theatre. How had he got her out of there? How had no one noticed? She clenched her fists, angry at the world for abandoning her, at Tom for not being at home to notice she was gone. Would anyone even realise she’d disappeared? She had three days off and her mam wouldn’t be too bothered if she didn’t call until after the weekend. She had no plans, no friends expecting her out—it could be Tuesday, Wednesday before anyone even thought to look for her. She had to escape.

She tried the door—locked, solid oak. She wasn’t getting through that. The window was also locked, barred on the outside. Not uncommon in the rougher parts of Cardiff, no one would even blink at it. The room itself was a mausoleum, thick with dust and the lingering scent of lavender. It was sparsely furnished, a bed with a knitted woollen coverlet and a few pictures of a woman and her young son, taken at least twenty years ago.

Carla picked up one of the pictures—was this woman one of his victims? Or had that smiling little boy grown up to be a cold-blooded killer?

There must be something to break down the door, she thought, opening drawers to find anything to help her. But they were full of an older woman’s clothes, her makeup and jewellery, now flaking and tarnished. Carla threaded her fingers through the cool links of a thick silver chain. Who was this woman? And why wasn’t she here? Was she dead? Had she slept in a dead woman’s bed?

She heard someone move upstairs and stilled. A door opened and closed, and then there were footsteps, louder, as if someone was coming down the stairs. Carla shoved the drawers closed and lay back on the bed, finding the still-warm dent her body had left behind. Could this be her chance to escape? Her head still pounded and she felt sick to her stomach. No, she’d have to wait until she was stronger, until she could take him.

The door opened and she struggled to keep her eyes closed, her breathing even. He didn’t approach her, just stayed where he was, his breaths coming faster. It took every fibre of control not to tremble, to whimper, to give herself away. After what seemed like hours, but could only have been seconds, the door closed again, the key scraping in the lock.

Carla opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling. She needed a plan.

* * *

By the time Jason escaped his mother’s insistent need to fuss and feed him, it was four o’clock and already getting dark. He walked into the centre, pulling his jacket around him as his breath came out in dense white clouds.

The frosted leaves turned the pavement into a death trap, but his old trainers gripped well enough to stop him making an arse of himself. Christmas shoppers were already flying away home, the city tense with the spectre of the missing girl. Gwen had begged him to stay, had already banned Cerys from leaving, but Jason insisted he’d be fine, that the man wasn’t out for him and he could handle himself.

He texted Amy as he walked, asking her to update him on Tom’s location. The bloke wasn’t likely to be in the same place as he was two hours before, especially if he was avoiding the cops.

They were assuming this was someone Carla didn’t know, but what if she knew about the forum posts because her boyfriend had uploaded them from the sofa beside her? They’d broken up about the same time as the murders started. Sure, there were the heavy breathing calls to her at work, but maybe he just wanted to spook her? And he was a theatre porter—he had the knowledge to get around the place, and the uniform.

Something didn’t sit right about it, though, and Jason wondered if there was something else going on with Tom Davies. Maybe he was into something he shouldn’t be and was worried at the police sniffing about his life. Maybe he just figured that the abduction of his ex-girlfriend would look bad on him, and he was right. Bryn had wanted to send down a couple of extra cops to Canton, but Jason had put him off. Cops were the fastest way to send the boy underground, with all his friends and family playing dumb about it.

Jason walked past the turn for Dylan’s garage. He always shut early on Saturday, but Jason still felt guilty that he hadn’t given his mate more time recently. But he’d understand—Dylan had three sisters. He’d get that Jason was trying to keep their streets safe for the girls.

Jason was just the man for this job and he was determined not to let Amy down. He’d been some use, sure, but he’d also blundered upon the bodies in the reservoir with a spectacular media backlash. And he’d focussed all their efforts on the hospital concourse, leaving the A&E entrance wide open for the killer to escape. He had to make amends.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he checked it.
lost him.
@
.
That was just great—defeated by Cardiff’s bloody awful phone signal. He was deep inside Canton, deep into Stuart Williams’s territory. He needed to find Tom and get out. This wasn’t the time for heroics, no matter how much he felt this was on him.

He approached the street where Tom had last been and found not a lot on it, except a couple of closed shops and a café. Making for the café, he stepped inside and immediately sussed out the kind of café it was—local, greasy and hostile. You didn’t order a skinny chai latte in a place like this. You didn’t stay long if you wanted to leave with your wallet still in your pocket.

The man behind the counter looked at him like he was scum, but with a trace of fear. Jason caught a glimpse of his reflection in the grease-stained window. He looked bloody awful, bruises blossoming and his old fat lip making him look more boxing champion than police lackey.

“We’re closing,” the man said.

“I won’t keep you. I’m looking for Tom Davies. Heard he came by earlier.” Jason watched the man carefully, saw from his eyes and the quick look at the two lads sitting at the back that he knew exactly who Tom Davies was and wasn’t going to give him up any time soon.

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Lot of people come through here.”

Jason doubted that was true, given the state of the tables and the stale welshcakes in the glass case, but he didn’t let on. “See, he said I’d see him today. Had something for me. It reflects badly on the boy’s mates if he can’t pay his way, doesn’t it?”

He glanced over at the lads in the corner, who looked scared shitless, much to Jason’s satisfaction. However, the man behind the counter held firm, clearly used to this kind of intimidation in his establishment. “We don’t know no Tom Davies.”

“I heard the police are looking for him,” Jason said casually, and noted the sharp inhale from a boy behind him. “You’d better hope I find him before they do.” Still nothing. Jason had to admire their loyalty, but he needed to find this boy. “I see how it is. I guess I’d better pay a call to Mrs. Davies then.”

He headed for the door. Had to look like he meant it, he thought, hoping the boy had a mother who gave a damn.

“Round the back of that arts place,” the man said, able to square his betrayal with his conscience now that Jason had invoked poor Mrs. Davies. “They all go there.”

Jason decided he was definitely out of touch if the kids were going to the arts centre, but nodded and left without another word. To thank the man would be callous and, despite what folk might say, he had no desire to hurt people.

He made his way down the street, planning his next move. He had to persuade Tom it was in his best interests to come with him to the nick—or, as a last resort, to Amy’s. There were too many reasons for the boy to be in hiding, but no one had been surprised that Tom owed a man like Jason money, so there was one obvious answer.

The arts centre was a nice modern building completely out of place in the back streets of Canton, but Jason found that a back alley was still a back alley. He peered into the gloom, wishing he’d thought to bring a blade. The best defence was offensive weapons, or something like that.

But it was empty, just old flyers and a couple of stray Coke cans. Jason tensed—bloody hell, he’d been duped. He had to get back to the café before the guy warned—

Jason saw a flicker at the end of the alley. With a crack of pain, the world went black.

* * *

Jason hadn’t called. Amy needed to instil in him the importance of checking in with one’s employer and why it was necessary for said employer’s sanity. Particularly when the blockheaded boy was on the hunt for a murder suspect in a dodgy part of town. She should’ve insisted Owain go with him, but judging by the fact Bryn wasn’t answering her texts, she guessed the police might be otherwise occupied.

She’d sent them her information on Carla as she’d found it, but it was mundane, bordering on tedious. Carla’s social life had tailed off, most likely due to her breakup and the harassing phone calls rather than a newly discovered passion for World of Warcraft. Though she had spent a lot of time on Candy Crush Saga, which couldn’t really be classed as a hobby.

Carla had nothing in common with the other girls. She’d graduated years ago, had no mutual friends, and had been to Koalas once eighteen months ago for a friend’s hen do. Bryn had relayed the profiler’s suspicion about the university and Amy admitted it had merit, but Carla had no connection to the place.

Of course, the others were chance victims—he happened to encounter them while he was looking for a type. Carla was his main obsession; he might have met her somewhere entirely different. Perhaps at the hospital?

Medical records were notoriously difficult to access, mainly because of the NHS’s reluctance to acknowledge the twenty-first century. However, their bookings system was networked, so, while the ins and outs of a patient’s diagnosis and treatment were hard to come by, a trip to the Sexual Health clinic was pretty telling.

Amy connected her server through the laptop of a senior professor who shunned the idea of hospital computers and, it seemed, personal firewalls. A lot of people had the wrong idea about hacking. Hacking wasn’t about having a skeleton key that opened all the locks. It was finding that small bathroom window round the back that nobody ever remembered to close.

Cross-referencing all admissions to trauma and orthopaedics in the past year with the university employment register was an epic, time-consuming task, but AEON merely beeped indignantly and got to work. The process would run quietly in the background, but Amy suspected it might not complete until the following day. Minutes mattered in this case—the chance of finding a missing person alive after forty-eight hours was slim-to-none, and when this man realised the woman he idolised didn’t love him? The repercussions were likely to be deadly.

Amy shivered, drawing her blanket closer to her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in her bed, washed her hair or eaten something that wasn’t toast or biscuit-based. But those thoughts just brought her back to Jason and she looked at her watch: 20:47. He’d last texted her at 16:12, asking for an updated location on Tom Davies, but the signal had vanished. Since then, she’d received nothing as his phone bobbed in and out of the murky signal haze that was central Cardiff.

Suddenly, her phone rang—it was Jason. She hooked him through her tracking system and picked up. “Where are you?” she said, cursing the anxious tremble in her voice.

There was a long pause. “I...I don’t know.” He sounded dazed, hurt.

Amy willed the tracker to work, as she clutched her phone to her ear. “What do you see?”

Another pause, but she could hear something—the rustle of cloth, Jason’s low groan. “Jason!” she said sharply. “What do you see?”

“He’s coming back,” he slurred and there was a harsh scraping sound that forced her to tear the phone away from her ear.

“Jason? Jason, what was that?” Sound filtered back in and she heard a voice that could be Jason’s, but quieter—farther away?
He pushed the phone away
, her numb brain supplied.
He’s keeping the connection open so you can find him.

She’d tell him, when he got home, that he didn’t need to take that kind of risk, that she’d already traced him within ten seconds to an area the size of a king-size bed. He was watching too many movies. He was putting his life in danger because of
CSI.

One voice got louder, louder, louder, until the line went dead with a crunch. Dead tech. Someone had found the phone.

Amy couldn’t breathe. The air was close and thick, her pulse pounding in her neck, her hands trembling on the keys. He was dead. He was dying. She was useless. She couldn’t help him.

But if she lost control now, if she vanished into this panic attack, he would definitely die. She would have failed him completely and utterly. She couldn’t let that happen. Black spots danced across her vision, but she fought to push them away, breathe deeper. She had to keep it together for another thirty seconds.

Amy used her emergency line and calmly, coolly told police control that her assistant had been kidnapped. And then, with the panic running wild in her veins, she waited.

Chapter Forty: Run, Baby, Run

The house was still and quiet. He thought it was peaceful, tranquil. It was time to check on his guest.

She had been sleeping for hours, too many hours, and he worried about her head. If she hadn’t woken up by morning, he’d have to take her back to the hospital, leave her with them and return for her when she was better. He didn’t think he’d hit her that hard. He’d been so nervous about their first proper date, had struck without thinking. He couldn’t bear to have hurt her when she didn’t deserve it.

He went down the stairs to his mother’s room, the only place that was worthy of his freebird until she was better, until her wedding day. It would probably be a small ceremony. Her family would likely disapprove, stay away. It was better that way. They could elope, go to Gretna Green—they didn’t need their permission.

The paper thought he’d stolen her, thought she was missing. Maybe it was for the best if they went far away, to France or Ireland. They were Catholic there but that would be okay. He would do anything if it meant he could be with her. He knew she felt the same.

He turned the key in the lock, fingers shaking with excitement. If she was awake, maybe they would share their first kiss. He’d dreamt of it, felt himself grow hard at the thought of it, the way she would taste. How soft she’d be under his hands, how she’d smile as he came inside her, how she’d want to be owned.

He pushed open the door—and she wasn’t there. Something heavy landed on his head and he fell, his freebird pushing past him and running up the stairs, away. Slowly, he got to his feet, clutching his bleeding head.

That bitch, that vile little slut. How dare she strike him! How ungrateful could she be? He’d saved her from that poor excuse for a man, that Neanderthal who was always drunk and pawed at her hips like a flasher in the street.

He stumbled up the stairs after her, could hear her shaking the front door, trying to pull it off its hinges. His mother had taught him never to leave the key in the front door—that was how thieves got to it. The best place for it was around your neck, and he’d always kept it there, just like she said.

As he approached the door, she was trying to smash through the glass with a plant pot. She rounded on him, brandishing the pot in his direction, but he just picked up the coat stand and cracked it over her jaw. She screamed, clutching her face and sinking to the floor, all the fight gone out of her. Discipline. Rules. That was the only way she would learn.

He knelt beside her and ran his fingers through her hair. She shook and tried to move away, but he held her close, running soothing hands over her arms. “I know you didn’t mean it, did you? But this is what happens, I’m afraid, when you don’t do what’s best for us. It’s all about us now, freebird.”

Her cries faded to soft whimpers and he picked her up reverently, carrying her back to her room. She needed to rest if they were going to go away. Far away.

* * *

“Fuck off, Stuart.”

Jason’s head was killing him. If Lewis could see him now, he would be laughing his arse off, telling him what a pansy he was for getting himself knocked out like a girl, held captive in a bloody junkie squat. As it was, Jason was struggling to focus on which Stuart Williams was the real one and keeping his mam’s roast pork in his stomach.

Stuart wasn’t alone. He’d brought a couple of his mates and, in the corner, the disgusting heap of what had been Tom Davies but now thought he was a Powerpuff Girl. The man was a million miles away from the Facebook picture Amy had handed him, the powerful rugby boy out for a good time. He was pale like sour milk, bright blue veins standing out on his hands and arms. His skin was taut across his bones, gaunt like he’d lost too much weight too quickly. But the twitching alone would’ve given him away, the way he scratched at his arms as if there was something crawling through them. Jason knew a cokehead when he saw one.

The defiant bastard in the café must’ve ratted Jason out, sent him to that alley and told the boys where to find him. Of course, Tom bloody Davies would be under the eye of Stuart. Of course they knew each other. That gave Stuart perfect access to Tom’s pretty girlfriend.
Shit.

Jason scowled up at Stuart, blinking away the trail of blood from above his eye. Scalp wounds bled a lot. He must look like an extra from a horror set.

“What do you want?” he ground out, eyes darting to the smashed remains of his phone. Amy was good—Amy had his position. She could probably still trace him with the phone’s innards spilled out, though hopefully her cavalry would arrive before his insides were also decorating the floor.

“I want your sister,” Stuart said and Jason gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to fly at the bastard. He stayed on the ground, kneeling, despite his humiliation. “She’s angry with me right now, but she’s a pretty good lay.”

Jason threw a clumsy punch, only to find his arms restrained and his lip stinging. When had they moved? He wasn’t paying close enough attention. Damn blood was in his eyes.

“Why’d you come sniffing around our boy Tom anyway?” Stuart said, as Tom pushed himself further into the corner, batting away unseen spirits who ventured too close to his nose. “What’s he ever done to you?”

“Kidnapped his girl, didn’t he?” Jason said with a grin, spitting blood on the floor. “The police are looking for him. Don’t you watch the news? Now they’ll be looking for you too.”

Stuart looked at him as if he were mad, before casting a nervous glance at Tom. One of the boys holding him wrenched Jason’s shoulder back, and Jason bit down on his cry of pain.

“He was with us yesterday, weren’t he?” the bloke said. “Tom don’t come down no more, see? Stays in his little party land all day and night.”

If Jason had been in full possession of his wits, he’d have realised that Tom wasn’t the killer the minute he laid eyes on him. The boy was whacked out, the kind of whacked out that requires days of dedication to the art. Jason and Lewis had once spent a weekend ripping through whatever money could buy—he didn’t remember much about it, but he knew his face had looked just like Tom Davies’s in the mirror Monday morning.

There was no way Tom could’ve been sober enough to smuggle Carla out of the hospital. Even if he’d had the brainpower to do it, he would’ve drawn too much attention with his twitching and conversations with the fae folk.

But Stuart would have access to his mate’s stuff, including his uniform. Including his girl? Jason wanted to beat the information out of the sonuvabitch, but he couldn’t even get up off the floor.

“So, you thought you’d come turn our boy Tom in to the coppers, did you? Knew you were a fucking snitch.” Stuart’s eyes glittered at the prospect of meting out punishment to a grass.

Shit, there wouldn’t be anything for Amy to find. His mam wouldn’t be able to identify his remains. And Cerys would probably bring this bastard as a date to his funeral.

“You don’t want to do this,” he managed, as the chatty bloke pinned him bodily to the floor. His partner pulled Jason’s right arm straight above his head and held him at the wrist.

Stuart sauntered into his field of view, grinning as he swung a length of piping up onto his shoulder. “Are you ready? No? Too fucking bad.”

He brought the pipe down on Jason’s arm with a sickening crack. Jason screamed, the agony of his arm coming apart followed by a wave of nausea that threatened to choke him.

“Listen, listen,” Tom said from the corner, voice full of childish wonder.

“There’s no time for your games, Tommy,” Stuart said, frustrated. “Leave us to do our work, yeah?”

“Nee-naw, nee-naw,” Tom sang to himself.

Stuart rounded on him, screeching: “Will you shut the fuck up?”

But Jason laughed, a slight edge of hysteria in his voice. “Can’t you hear it, Stuart?” he gasped, tears of pain and mirth in his eyes.

Stuart listened.

“Shit, let’s get out of here,” he said. His boys released Jason but there was already someone banging down the front door. Too late to run.

“Nee-naw,” Jason muttered, fading away to the sound of sirens.

* * *

Amy sat immobile on the sofa, staring at her phone, waiting for it to ring.

She’d thought she was dying. Everything was hot and heavy, like a smothering blanket. Blood rushed to her face and neck, and she felt her throat close. This was the end. Heart racing, air thinning—as Jason lay dying, so she would die, a sympathy death.

But it went away, by vague degrees it went away. She blinked away the sparkles and took a deep breath. Another. She was still alive. Jason was still dying.

Once she’d found something like control, her fingers flew over the keys, urging AEON to locate a security camera feed in the area. The nearest was two streets over and told her sweet FA. Frustrated, she slammed her fist down on the desk, before activating the trace on Bryn’s mobile. He was moving through the city, but nowhere near Canton. She sent him a text.
find jason. @

It buzzed back within a minute. Owain must be driving. It said simply
On way.

Amy’s heart pounded—was no one with him yet? Had no one got to him? People who smashed phones also smashed faces—the escalation of violence, the London Riots, the burning of books. Why wasn’t Bryn there yet? She sent
hurry. @

A reply:
Uniform on scene. Boy lives.

Amy sank back into her chair, dizzy from the exertion of her heart, the pounding of fear in her arteries. But there were many states between alive or dead. He could be in a coma, head in pieces like Humpty Dumpty, or bleeding internally. He could need surgery. He could need a nursing home. Or he might still make it to the crematorium before he turned twenty-four.

Her thoughts churned round and round her head, barely stopping for a moment. She imagined everything that could happen, a hundred horrible deaths, unable to unsee them. Her leg started to bounce, like it had when Lizzie first left her, an outward sign of her inner turmoil. How could he do this to her? How could he make her hurt so much?

She collapsed on the sofa then, and waited. Her phone stubbornly did not ring, as the minutes ticked by. Was Bryn afraid to tell her the truth? Was he afraid she would take all the pills she kept carefully hidden in the flat? The ones she took when the racing thoughts and pounding heart grew too much and she just had to sleep, if only for a few dreamless hours. She thought to take one now, but her hands were trembling so much, she didn’t think she could even unscrew the cap.

The phone burst to life and broke through her haze. She seized it, almost dropped it and finally answered. “Bryn?” she said desperately.

“He’s all right. Banged his head and the paramedics think he’s broken his arm, but he’s talking to us.”

The words washed over her, soothing like medicine, and she swallowed. “Okay.”

“Also, we’ve got Tom Davies.”

Of course they did. Of course Jason would’ve done as she asked, even if it meant splitting his head in two. She resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. Loyal to a fault.

Amy tore her thoughts away from Jason to remember the missing woman. “Carla?”

“Nothing.” Bryn’s frustration was evident despite the distance between them. “And Tom doesn’t look like he’s in any state to tell us. I’ve got the uniforms tearing the place apart.” Amy crossed and uncrossed her fingers. Let this all be for something, please. “And I’m not sure if it’s the concussion talking, but our boy reckons the guy who battered him could be involved. Stuart Williams.”

“He gave Jason a black eye,” Amy heard herself say. “Cerys’s boyfriend.” She could hear shouting and swearing in the background, the sounds of a disgruntled arrested perp.

“Who’s Cerys?”

Amy heard Bryn flicking through his notebook, and put him out of his misery. “Jason’s sister. Eighteen. Left school, no job. String of Facebook relationships. Out a lot. Doesn’t drive.”

There was silence at the other end of the phone. “Do you research all your assistants’ sisters so thoroughly?”

She heard a teasing note in his voice, and felt the tension in her shoulders start to ebb away. They had a suspect in custody. Bryn was joking. Jason was going to be okay.

“I want to talk to him,” she said and Bryn seemed to be wading through a crowd, as it took several noisy seconds before she heard Jason’s voice.

“Amy?” He sounded like he was in pain and half-asleep, but he definitely sounded alive.

“What happened?” she said, phone pressed against her ear.

“Pipe,” he bit out and she winced, cradling her own arm to her chest. “Gotta go to A&E. I’ll be back after.”

“All right,” she said. Bryn took the phone back, said something about the profiler, but she wasn’t really listening. “Keep me in the loop,” she said and hung up, curling up on her side, waiting for Jason to return.