Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries) (19 page)

Chapter Forty-One: Four Walls and a Light Bulb

Jason balanced on the edge of a gurney in A&E, contemplating his splinted arm with a sense of shame. He’d seen the pictures of the break, a neat black line through white bone. The A&E doctor had placed him in this contraption, wedged it under his armpit and secured it at his elbow, with more padding than a model’s bra.

His head was a mess, throbbing and aching. They’d put him through a CT scanner and told him nothing was bleeding or broken, but that he needed to stay in overnight for observations. When he’d insisted on leaving, they’d asked him who was at home and he’d told them he was going to his boss’s house. That was when they’d called for Bryn.

The detective shuffled in, looking like he’d aged twenty years and hadn’t slept for a week. “Shouldn’t you do what they say, son?” Bryn said anxiously, but Jason was already sliding off the trolley.

“Amy’s expecting me,” he said, taking a moment to get his feet under him. The splint made him unbalanced, awkward, and he’d lost his dominant hand. He must look bloody awful, because Bryn seemed genuinely concerned.

“Is Amy’s really the best place for you? What about your mam? She’ll be worried.”

Jason ran a hand over his stubbled head, dislodging flecks of dried blood. He didn’t want to look in the mirror. “What she doesn’t know...” he mumbled, shuffling his feet guiltily. They’d offered to call his next of kin, but he’d shaken his head, then stopped when that made him feel like he was about to retch up his stomach. No need to worry his family over this—his mother would just lock him up for a year. As long as he told her before it ended up on the morning news, he’d escape a bollocking. Probably.

Bryn hovered at his side as he made his way out of A&E, stopping only to sign the form that the sour-faced nurse handed him. The one that said he realised that the doctors wanted him to stay but screw them. She also directed her glare at Bryn, as if he were responsible for this foolishness, and Jason shot her a ghastly grin.

Over in the corner, he recognised Tom Davies, laid out on a gurney and muttering to himself.

Bryn followed his gaze and smiled. “Sleeping it off. God only knows what he’s taken or whether he knows anything useful.” He hesitated. “Stuart’s down the nick with his mates, denying everything.”

Jason felt his stomach turn, but put it down to his aching head. Not fear. “Did you find her?”

But he already knew the answer from the dejected slump in the detective’s shoulders, the heavy tread of his worn shoes. “Turned that dump upside down and nothing. The gangs unit is helping us turn over Tom and Stuart’s usual haunts but they’re not confident of finding more than a couple of bags of smack.”

They stepped out into the night, through the same door that the killer had used to escape with Carla only yesterday. Jason shivered on the threshold, as Bryn guided him towards where Owain was waiting with the car.

“You did all right,” Bryn said grudgingly. “Next time, wait for backup.”

“They ambushed me!” Jason said defensively. “I thought I could handle it.” He shrugged, grimacing when the motion aggravated his broken arm.

“We live and learn.” Bryn held the door for Jason as he slid slowly into the backseat. Jason was looking forward to lying down on the sofa and not moving for a while. Of course, he’d have to make his own tea, but that was a small price to pay to avoid his mam’s fussing and Cerys’s worried silence.

Jason jolted awake as the car stopped. When had he closed his eyes? Bryn opened the door and prised him out of the seat. Jason leaned on him more than he’d have liked and just about made it into the lift without his head exploding. When the doors opened, Amy was hovering in the corridor, staring at him as if she hadn’t seen him for days.

“You look like an extra in a zombie movie,” she said and retreated into the living room.

Bryn let go of his arm. “You all right from here, son?” Jason flashed him a terrible excuse for a smile, and Bryn clapped him on his good arm before retreating back into the lift.

Jason wobbled into the living room and saw the sofa surprisingly free of clutter. There was even a pillow, a red one that wasn’t from Amy’s bed. A cup of tea was steaming on the end table.

Amy hovered nervously beside the sofa, her fingers twisting around themselves, joints popping as they stretched. “You need to lie down.”

Jason gratefully sank onto the sofa and obediently lay down.

Amy, instead of returning to her computer, perched on the edge beside him, her fingers playing over the Velcro of the splint. “Does it hurt?”

“’Sfine.” Jason closed his eyes.

“It doesn’t look fine.”

He smiled. She couldn’t be anything but honest with him. The mug was pressed into his left hand and he held it clumsily, taking a scalding sip before keeping it close for warmth.

“Have you found anything?” he asked sleepily.

Amy explained about cross-referencing medical records with university employment registers. “It’s a shot in the dark. Maybe he didn’t meet her at the hospital and maybe he isn’t a university employee. Maybe he’s one or the other. Or neither.”

“Like shooting fish in a barrel.” His words were slurring together. Had they given him something in the hospital? He didn’t remember. “Except the barrel’s an ocean and there might not be a fish.”

“Something like that,” Amy said, and he heard the frown in her voice. “Go to sleep. I’ll wake you in an hour. Every hour.”

He groaned, but sleep pulled at him, dragging him under until there was nothing.

* * *

It was midnight when Bryn and Owain sat down with their suspect. Stuart Williams was a surly bastard, with a face on him like a bulldog and that terrible lightning scar bisecting his cheek. Like a hard man’s Harry Potter. But Bryn could see the edge of fear in his eyes, and that pleased him. The bastard had taken a pipe to a friend of his and Bryn didn’t let a thing like that slide.

“You know why you’re here, Mr. Williams?” Owain said and Bryn scowled. The kid before him was no “Mr. Williams”—he would’ve preferred “Oi scum.”

Stuart shot Owain a look, then kicked at the leg of the desk, exercising his right to remain silent.

“How do you know Tom Davies?” Bryn said, watching the boy shrug. “What about Carla Dirusso?”

Stuart looked up at that, glancing between them uneasily. Bryn realised that he hadn’t thought he was here for Carla—he’d thought he was in the shit for assaulting Jason, not for the kidnapping.

“She’s Tom’s missing girl,” he said, clearing his throat. “Get me some water, yeah?”

Bryn ignored him. “How well did you know Carla?”

Stuart sat up straighter, the seriousness of the situation sliding into place behind his eyes. He’d broken a guy’s arm and he could go down for that, but they were talking about serial murder and a missing girl. He would never see the light of day.

“I’ve seen her around,” he said vaguely. “She didn’t like Tom’s mates. Thought us beneath her.”

Bryn nodded. “So you killed her.”

The effect was instantaneous, Stuart’s face paling. “Carla’s dead?”

“You tell me, mate.” Bryn kept his voice even. There was dawning realisation on Stuart’s face—the shit was four feet high and rising.

“I don’t know nothing about those dead girls,” Stuart said, panic in his voice. “And Tom, he was with us all day. Off his face, he was.”

As loathe as Bryn was to admit it, Stuart looked like a floundering man spewing the truth. He needled him further: “Sure about that, Stuart? We don’t want to add perjury to GBH, do we?”

But Stuart nodded vigorously. “He was there all day. We were trying to keep him from chucking hisself out the window, see. High as a kite. My mates can tell you—I was with them all day.”

“We’ll look into that. Now, about Jason Carr...”

“I didn’t know he was with you,” Stuart said, wide-eyed. “Honest to God. I was just after his sister, right? And I thought he wanted a piece of Tom, told my old man that Tommy owed him money.”

Bryn chose to set Jason’s dodgier investigating methods to one side for the moment. “So you took a pipe to him.”

“He...he provoked me!” Stuart said.

Owain leaned back in his chair, as if bored.

Bryn laughed. “That’s what you’re working with? Oh boy, you do not want to start pointing fingers.”

“Look, I thought it was that guy Tom said about!” Stuart protested, holding out his hands to beg for understanding. “The one who was creeping around his place.”

Bryn and Owain exchanged looks. “What guy?” Bryn said slowly.

Stuart, seeing that he’d seized on information that was of value to them, regained some of his control. “What’s it worth—”

“Think very carefully,” Owain snarled, scaring the hell out of Stuart and stunning Bryn a bit. He hadn’t heard his mild-mannered partner get angry. “A young woman is missing. You’ve just broken a man’s arm. Do you want to play games, Mr. Williams?”

Stuart swallowed. “Tommy said he was just hanging around their place, before he left, like. Tom thought he was part of the gang that get him his stuff, yeah? We didn’t pay it any mind though, ’cause Tommy was jumpy all the time, with all the coke and shit.”

“Did you see this man?” Owain asked, but Stuart shook his head. Bryn ground his teeth. Damn.

“But Tommy did,” Stuart put in. “Said he got a good look at him under the streetlight one night. He thought he might’ve recognised him, too. From some gig they went to.”

Bryn and Owain stood up, heading immediately for the door.

“Hey, what about me?” Stuart called after them. “What do I get?”

Bryn turned and smiled. “Oh, twelve to fifteen years, I’d say. Jason sends his best.” He left a flabbergasted Stuart in his wake and pulled on his coat. “Let’s get back to the hospital.”

Chapter Forty-Two: A Clutch of Mother Hens

Jason was woken early by the doorbell and tried to bury his head further into the sofa. As promised, Amy had woken him every hour for eight hours, before finally letting him get some real sleep. Now there was someone at the door—why couldn’t Bryn just let himself in?

“Oh my, look at the state of you!”

Jason’s eyes flew open, sitting up in alarm and regretting it as the room started to spin. “Mam?” he croaked, as his mother enveloped him an awkward hug. Cerys was hovering by the living room doorway, pale beneath her hastily applied makeup, while he could hear Amy doing something in the kitchen. Amy never did anything in the kitchen, so she was clearly hiding. “How did you know I was here?”

Gwen shot him The Look. “Amy texted me. She knew I’d be worried when you didn’t come home—as I had every right to be! Look at you!”

“I’m fine, Mam. The doctor said it would be all fine in a couple of months.” He rubbed at the top of his shoulder, willing away the throbbing in his arm and his head.

“A couple of months!” she said, obviously horrified at this injury to her son. “What happened?”

“Cerys’s boyfriend hit me with a pipe.” The words were out before he’d thought them through, their sibling one-upmanship a silly game compared to what had gone down in Canton. Cerys immediately found her shoes fascinating, gnawing on one ragged fingernail. She hadn’t bitten her nails for years.

“Tea,” Amy said, placing three cups of passable tea on the table before returning to her computer with her own mug. Jason made a mental note that Amy was perfectly capable of making her own tea and to exploit this in case of future injury.

“Thank you, love,” Gwen said, taking her tea gratefully and sitting beside him on the sofa. “Why didn’t you come home?” she asked softly, a wounded note in her voice.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” he said honestly, omitting the part where he intended to help Amy with her investigations as soon as his head stopped aching.

“Well, we were worried, weren’t we, Cerys?” Gwen looked up at her daughter but Cerys couldn’t tear her eyes away from the floor, hadn’t even touched her tea.

“You aren’t responsible for him,” Jason said to her, and she looked up at him, face pale and blotchy. “He’s just a cu—no good for you. Anyway, he’s banged up now.”

“Did he kill those girls? Have you found that poor nurse?” Gwen looked to him anxiously for answers, but Jason just shrugged his good arm and looked to Amy.

“We’ll find out soon,” Amy said cryptically, but then the lift doors opened, admitting an exhausted but jubilant Bryn and Owain.

“We’ve got a look at the sonovabit—” Bryn stopped, as he realised that there were strangers in the living room. “Sorry, didn’t know you had...people over.”

“We were just going, weren’t we, Jason?” Gwen said, standing and smiling.

Jason looked up at her but didn’t move. “Mam, I’m...staying here for a bit.”

Gwen tried to control her expression, but he could see the sorrow and rejection in her eyes. “Oh. All right then,
bach
.”

He reached for her arm. “Just for a bit,” he said, not believing his own words. “I...well, I work here now. For Amy.”

Gwen looked to Amy, who was typing away on her keyboard, apparently oblivious to the rest of them. Gwen sighed quietly. “Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Call me after.”

He promised to call and she left with Cerys, who had recovered from her all-consuming guilt and was eyeing up Owain as if he were all her Christmases come at once. The young detective blushed under the attention, to Bryn’s amusement.

Once the door was closed, Bryn brought a piece of paper over to Amy, grinning. “We’ve got a sketch of him. Off Tommy Davies, now that’s he come back from the Realm of the Fairies.”

Jason levered himself up off the sofa and came to look over Amy’s shoulder. It wasn’t brilliant, a little uncertain in places and with a baseball cap pulled over the eyes. But it was the same jaw they’d seen on the CCTV, with nose and mouth clearly defined and straggling hair under the hat. Jason had a vague feeling of recognition, something familiar about the face, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“I’ll run it against the university employees,” Amy said, breaking his reverie.

“Students too,” Owain said. “Dr. Deaver thinks the murderer could be a mature student.”

“Who’s Dr. Deaver?” Jason asked.

Bryn huffed at the name. “The mighty London profiler. Though she is impressed with you, Amy. She thinks you’re pretty good at this.”

“I am good at this,” Amy said distractedly, already running the search. “Do you have anything else for me?”

Bryn held up a battered iPhone in a plastic bag, a new model with a purple glittery case. It looked like it had been caught in the rain and a string of weed was clinging to it. Amy regarded it with interest and took it off him.

“We pulled it out of the reservoir with Kate and Melody,” Owain said eagerly. “The techs said it was unsalvageable, but I thought you could probably do it.”

Jason smothered his grin at Owain’s obvious case of hero worship, aware that he himself thought Amy’s work was very like magic at times.

“It’s Melody’s.” Amy handed the bag to Jason. “Put some rice in with it and put the bag in the airing cupboard. Remind me about it tomorrow.”

Jason clutched it in his clumsy left hand and shuffled towards the kitchen.

“I can do it,” he heard Owain call, but Jason ignored him, getting out the rice he’d added to the weekly shop. Good food, rice. Simple, filling. Seemed a shame to waste it on a mobile phone, but it wasn’t expensive and if Amy thought it would work its voodoo magic on the tech, then it was worth it.

“How do you know it’s Melody’s?” Bryn asked.

Amy just shrugged. “Kate has a Samsung. And, given the state of Melody’s laptop, she would cover her phone in something that sparkles. It may not help us—the water in the reservoir is foul.”

“We drink that water,” Bryn said, as Jason bore the phone to its resting place amongst the towels and bed linen. “You drink that water, Amy. Every day.”

“Jason boils it. That is sufficient for my immune system.” She had that blog open again, but it hadn’t been updated since the day of Carla’s disappearance. “He doesn’t need to write to her anymore.”

Jason felt a shiver go down his spine. Of course not. He had her right where he wanted her—by his side.