Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries) (10 page)

Amy woke to AEON’s alarm, her face smushed against the keyboard, and three pages of
V
s in the middle of her notes.

The coffee hadn’t helped, her mouth parched, and a distinctive red wine headache at her temples. She dragged her dry carcass to the kitchen for water, paracetamol and a couple of diazepam. She needed to keep the edge at bay, just a little longer. Hangovers always brought the tremors back, the uncontrollable fear of life outside her front door.

She struggled now to remember her last trip outside. It would’ve been with Jason, a short drive to somewhere within the city, but the details escaped her, the date, the feeling. How had she ever had the confidence to step outside the door, voluntarily, with only her assistant at her side? How had she not collapsed in panic, stared at by everyone in the street, knowing her flaws so entirely?

Because Jason was her equilibrium. And she was feeling off-kilter because he was miles away and out of contact. The promised phone call had yet to materialise, adding to the churning in her gut. But she couldn’t wait for certainty, not with a murderer and thief on the loose.

Shoving down her anxiety, Amy shuffled back to AEON and checked out the source of the alarm. She found two new alerts – the museum staff’s basic profiles completed, and the school’s Instagram photos scanned for her elusive suspect.

She looked at the photos first – two matches only, both within the last week. Another blurry background shot, adding no new detail, and the other…

It was a perfect portrait. The girl sat cross-legged on the grass, her phone cradled in her hand. But she had looked up for one moment, some blur in the air catching her eye, and she had smiled. The picture was simply captioned ‘
prydferth
,’ which a quick Google search revealed to be
beautiful
in Welsh.

The photographer was anonymous, no distinguishing aspects to the profile. The other pictures were artistic but had no human subjects. He had a few followers, but none who went to the school, and Amy knew a loner when she saw one, recognised a kindred spirit. But obviously he knew the girl – and liked her. He would be able to identify her, or so Amy hoped.

But how to reach out to him? Amy connected his email address to several other social media accounts, including a dormant ask.fm account which only held a couple of questions about photography techniques.

She composed the message carefully, debating the use of Welsh – but online translators were dire and she didn’t have time to wait for the human touch. In the end, she kept it simple:

I saw the picture you took on instagram. I really liked it. Let’s meet after school tomorrow – prydferth.

While waiting for an answer, Amy looked over the museum profiles. A few speeding tickets, one outstanding parking fine and a couple of minor shoplifting offences. One count of domestic violence, but the archaeologist in question was on secondment to Rome.

Then Amy saw it, and a grin spread her lips, the dry skin at the corners cracking with the movement. Talia Yeltsova’s work visa had expired three years ago, and her last employer was registered as Oxford University in 1999. Putting her in the perfect place for the millennium heist.

Amy focussed her efforts on Talia, digging out her social and professional networks and setting AEON on a path to dig dirt. She needed much more than a coincidence for Bryn to work his magic, though the expired visa was leverage in itself. Without an assistant on the ground, however, Amy was reliant on the police to do her legwork.

Owain and Cerys had not returned, which she tried not to dwell on. Clearly, they had better things to do, even when a murder was involved, and she tried to rein in her anger, her envy. Her emotions were rumbling too close to the surface, though the pleasant buzz of the diazepam soothed her slighted feelings as well as her anxiety.

AEON beeped. It was too soon for Talia’s search, so Amy checked the ask.fm reply.

C u there x

Bryn’s attempt to find information on Frieda Haas was tedious and fruitless.

Talia had slipped out while he was talking to Noah, denying him the chance to interrogate her. The NCA would only confirm Frieda’s status as an agent, and he had no colleagues within their ranks to push for information. The rest of her career history was unknown to him and he had no way of checking it out on a Sunday afternoon.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true, was it? He had Amy, but he was strangely reluctant to share this new lead. How could he tell Amy that his latest suspect was running around with her assistant, while she had no way to reach him? The panic alone might kill her.

No, he’d have to do this the old-fashioned way. Frieda must be ex-police or ex-military for a job like this. Those organisations kept lists, detailed records of their employees. And there, at least, he had contacts in personnel, the kind who would answer his calls on the weekend and not ask too many questions.

Unfortunately, the Met and British armed forces both drew a blank. Checking out individual police forces would take time, and he didn’t have friends nationwide. Of course, if her service had been in Germany, his connections didn’t stretch that far.

He was about to admit defeat and call Amy when his phone rang. ‘Yeah?’

‘Bryn, I’ve got a Matthew Boateng down here for you. Says he’s NCA.’

‘Send him up.’

Bryn replaced the handset and tried to puzzle this one out. Why was the NCA sending in another agent? Had they discovered something awry with the first one?

One of the uniformed constables escorted the NCA agent into the detectives’ office, making a beeline for Bryn. The slim black man in his perfectly tailored suit, probably around Owain’s age, made a sharp contrast to the ageing tubby Welshman greeting him, mustard-stained jacket gaping open to reveal yesterday’s shirt.

‘Matthew Boateng, NCA – but please call me Matt.’

‘Bryn Hesketh. Just Bryn. We weren’t expecting you today.’
We weren’t expecting you at all.

‘The NCA prides itself on a fast response in these situations,’ Matthew said, all politic and polite. ‘What’s your progress?’

Bryn decided to test the water. ‘Frieda Haas not given you an update?’

Matt hesitated only a moment. ‘The last report I had was that she was interrogating a possible accomplice in North Wales. I’ll be handling things from here.’

Something about his response made Bryn uneasy, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He showed Matt to the murder board, such as it was, only the barest details outlined so far. That was mostly thanks to Indira, who had camped out in the lab all weekend and bullied the technicians into prioritising her samples. She was taking her role as senior pathologist very seriously, determined not to mess up, to find the truth at the heart of things. It was the same passion that drove Bryn, and he admired her for it.

When it ignited in Amy, it could power her for days, but he’d heard nothing from his hacker since he’d visited her that morning. He worried about Amy without her assistant to hold her up, but he couldn’t head this investigation and check on her every two minutes. Maybe he could enlist Owain and Cerys? Though he had no idea where they were either. It might be the detective sergeant’s day off, but it was usually all hands on deck during a murder investigation. And while Cerys technically wasn’t his to command, she had never managed to keep her nose out before. Too much like her brother, that one.

Matt made notes on his tablet as he silently reviewed the board, while Bryn checked his phone. Nothing from Jason. He was surprised he hadn’t heard from him and that he had to hear about a possible accomplice from the NCA man. Maybe Frieda was proving a bigger distraction than Bryn had first anticipated.

‘Are your cyber crime unit on this?’

Bryn managed not to laugh. ‘We don’t have one. Only an … outside consultant.’

Matt looked at him strangely. ‘Who’s not involved here, right?’

‘That was the NCA directive,’ Bryn said carefully.

‘Good. Don’t want to complicate things.’ Matt tapped one particular report. ‘What caused the security alarms to fail at the museum?’

‘They didn’t fail. The motion sensors and automatic police callout were turned off from the security office.’

Matt looked bemused. ‘By the killer?’

Bryn consulted his notebook, clutching it like a talisman to ward off harm from criminals and national agencies alike. ‘From what we gather, Paul regularly went up into the galleries at night – to get up close and personal with the art. He was a big fan.’

‘A routine? So our killer knew that he would be up in the galleries that night?’

‘Doesn’t narrow it down much. According to the other staff, pretty much everyone knew he was nuts for those pictures. They say he belonged to some online art societies, and I doubt he kept his special access privileges quiet.’

‘Do you think he was approached through one of those sites? Bribed?’

‘If he was bribed, why is he dead? Makes no sense to pay a man and then kill him.’

‘Change of heart?’ Matt waved his hand, theorising. ‘Couldn’t stand the damage to his beloved painting, interfered when he shouldn’t have?’

‘It didn’t look that way from the CCTV. He was surprised, shocked. If you knew someone was planning a break-in, wouldn’t you stay in the security office and turn a blind eye?’

‘Plausible deniability means he had to be elsewhere,’ Matt reasoned. ‘Maybe Paul Roberts was in on it all along, and then he was disposed of. What do we know about him?’

‘Nothing much,’ Bryn said, flicking back through the notebook. ‘Thirty-eight, white, Welsh. Lived alone, no significant relationships. Parents both deceased. Worked security at the museum for seven years, mostly night shifts.’

‘Searched his apartment?’

‘We didn’t prioritise it,’ Bryn said defensively.

Matt sighed. ‘Hopefully, we haven’t lost any evidence by dawdling. Let’s take a SOCO over and secure the scene.’

‘What’s there to secure?’

‘We need the deceased’s laptop, books, personal artwork. What was he into, what were his connections? I’ll ship the evidence up to London by courier and we should have something concrete by tomorrow evening. If he was acting as the mole, we’ll soon know about it.’

‘Frieda seemed pretty convinced this wasn’t an inside job,’ Bryn said. The NCA agents didn’t seem to even be on the same page.

‘Frieda was the first agent on the scene, but art theft isn’t her speciality. I’m leading this investigation now.’ The polite tone had been replaced with a no-nonsense dismissal.

‘I’ll find that SOCO,’ Bryn said neutrally, giving nothing away.

Frieda wasn’t just the first agent on the scene – she had been hanging around before the crime, but for what? And if art wasn’t her specialty, why had she been at the museum talking to an expert in oil painting conservation? Nothing these NCA officers did was making any sense.

But Bryn would just have to play along. If they thought him a biddable pet, all the better – when their guard was down, he would find out the truth of this game.

‘How could you be so stupid?’

Jason sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, waiting out the latest phase of Frieda’s rant. She had been harping on about his stupidity, carelessness, irresponsibility, recklessness and idiocy ever since he’d revealed his scheme to her in the pub. Nye had dropped them off at their hotel and made a quick exit, leaving Jason alone to face this harangue. The ice could melt pretty damn fast when she was pissed off, turning the chill fortress into an avalanche.

‘What gives you the right to decide how we pursue a suspect? What are you going to do in the middle of Wales with no backup?’

‘If you’re that concerned, you can follow me.’ With Amy, he’d learned to wait out the rants but it seemed Frieda actually wanted answers to her questions.

‘My bike is wrecked, remember? And how would I track you in the dark?’

‘GPS?’ Jason offered.

‘Oh, I left my mobile GPS tracker in my other pocket,’ Frieda said sarcastically.

‘Amy can do it,’ Jason offered.

He really should call her before she started phoning Bangor’s cops every two minutes or commandeering the city’s CCTV cameras to hunt him down.

Frieda’s anger died away suddenly. ‘Your boss Amy? She tracks you?’

‘Constantly.’

Though his phone was still at the station and whatever bugs she’d planted on him might be water-damaged. By tacit agreement, they didn’t talk about her surveillance of him – she did what she liked and he pretended it wasn’t happening. It was oddly comforting to know that she could rescue him at any time.

‘I’ll need to be in constant communication with her.’

‘Amy doesn’t play well with others.’

And if she discovered he’d given out her personal contact details, it would be over between them. Amy could forgive him many things but she took her privacy and security very seriously. Jason had seen the consequences when that line had been violated, and he had no desire to see a repeat.

‘What good does that do me then?’ Frieda’s rage returned, her cheeks flushed and her blonde hair in disarray.

She looked like a woman who’d run a marathon or just woken up from a long night of … Jason pushed those thoughts away. This was business, not his personal fantasy.

‘Amy will let you know if there’s a problem.’

Jason knew there was no chance she would do anything of the sort, but she’d tell Bryn and the local cops at whatever location he happened to be in.

‘How am I meant to protect you?’

Suddenly, Frieda was on her knees in front of him, kneeling up so her face was only a few inches from his. He wanted to get up, move away, but the tiredness and the beer kept him immobile. And maybe something else too.

‘I’m a big boy,’ he said, finally. ‘I can take care of myself.’

Her hand came up to his cheek and Jason tensed like he’d been struck. It was an unpleasant tension, sitting uneasy in his stomach. But why? Wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted?

‘If anything happened to you, how would I live with myself?’

She leaned in and kissed him, an insistent press of lips before her tongue sought to dance with his, her hand on his thigh.

For a moment, he kissed back – and then he pushed her away.

His eyes opened – when had they closed? – and he realised that those cool blue eyes were not what he wanted to see.

‘Why did you stop?’ she asked, a girlish begging that didn’t suit her.

‘Because we’re working here,’ he said, too quickly, a half-truth at best.

‘We haven’t stopped in hours. And after this, when will we see each other? I want you.’

She made to kiss him again, but he stood up this time, her hands falling away from him.

‘I don’t want you. Not like that.’

Frieda stood, indignant. ‘Why did you follow me here then?’

‘For the investigation,’ he said, though that was also a lie.

The ice mask was back now, as she stood, shouldering an air of dignity that seemed to say that she would kneel for no man.

‘You’d better sleep before you take on this fool’s errand. After tonight, you’re on your own.’

She slammed the door behind her, leaving him alone in the hotel room. One bed, just as he’d suspected. She had asked him here because she wanted to know if he was all talk, if the tiger bit in the dark. She’d thought he fancied her, wanted her, enough to follow her across the country.

And she was right. He had taken up her offer because she fascinated him, but he felt nothing for her. She was ice and fire, but nothing in between. How could he know a woman who flitted between masks like shrugging on a coat?

And that mattered to him now. He wanted it to mean something, and he wanted to look into eyes that cared for him, that knew him. He had worked out now what bothered him about seeing Frieda’s eyes after that kiss, and it wasn’t their unknowable blue depths.

It was because he’d wanted to see green.

Amy had nothing to do. The CCTV was catalogued, the schoolgirl was baited, AEON was scavenging information about Talia, and she was left alone with Minecraft.

But she couldn’t settle to building or browsing webcomics, her usual internet haunts a dull parade playing the same faux hysteria and tired jokes over and over. She wanted distraction, diversion, but her brain just consumed this internet junk food, articles and quizzes and fun remixes.

She was tired. She was lonely.

Amy had been used to being alone, perfectly content with her own company. But since Jason entered her life, she’d grown dependent on even the sparse smatterings of conversation throughout the day and the succession of tea mugs and biscuits that appeared silently at her elbow.

More than that, she missed his opinions, his questions. Explaining herself and her leaps of faith, of technology, and devouring the carefully observed breadcrumbs he collected for her. Without him, her world shrank back to a dull apartment with an internet connection. She felt strangely limited.

She absently flicked through the case files again, hoping her mind would seize on something and stop examining her inner struggles. But there was nothing to catch her attention – except the beautiful painting she’d saved absently during her search – the woman with the flame-red hair, Rossetti’s beautiful vision in colour.

With nothing else to do, she delved further. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, though possessing a pretentious name perfectly suited to well-educated artistic radicals, were masters of colour. Everything was vivid, untamed – where the Impressionists sought to capture in haste, the Brotherhood created studies in classical tragedy, decadence. Rossetti, brother to Christina, had dabbled in both painting and poetry – before dying in drugged misery.

Her ringing phone startled her from her contemplation and she answered without thinking. ‘You took your time.’

‘I had to follow a lead. I’m coming back to Cardiff tonight.’

Amy couldn’t help the joy that leapt into her chest, the thought of her world returned to order. ‘When?’

‘I’m leaving at midnight, or thereabouts. But I need you to follow me on the GPS.’

Amy brought up the tracker and checked the status of her bugs. The trackers in the Micra and the jacket had been left behind in Cardiff, the motorcycle helmet was out of range, and the phone was sitting in Bangor Police Station.

‘Are you with the police?’ she asked, cautiously.

She tried not to let on the extent of her hacking prowess in front of law enforcement unless she trusted them absolutely.

‘No, I’m at the hotel. My phone’s down there, drying out, but at least it’s not totally busted.’

‘Drying out?’

The alarm in her voice must’ve carried, because Jason answered immediately.

‘Accident with a puddle,’ he lied, the casual tone giving him away. She would get it out of him when he returned home, but the loss of his motorcycle helmet was telling.

‘Where is Frieda’s bike?’

‘Police station. Listen, the police caught up with these two blokes involved with trafficking up here – girls and other shit – and I thought you could, y’know, look into them.’

Amy called up her notes. ‘Names?’

‘Benjamin Stock, a lorry driver from Canton. And Jonah Fish – first bit’s a nickname, but doubt that will stop you.’

She could hear his smile, and she felt her face stretch unconsciously. Smiling for him.

‘Got it. Anything else?’

‘Not right now. I’ve got to get ready for this thing. See you tomorrow.’

‘Wait, what are you doing?’

But he was already gone, leaving Amy silently fuming at the end of the phone. He told her to follow him, which meant it was dangerous, but didn’t give her any information about the nature of what he was doing. She hadn’t been able to warn him about the lack of signal, the unreliability of her tracking through a mountain range and an area mostly populated with sheep. When the ovine population needed mobile phone masts, the apocalypse would truly be upon them.

She checked on AEON’s search, but Talia used social media in Russian and it would take time to translate, assimilate. She should get some sleep before her midnight vigil for Jason, but she was listless, too tired to sleep and too worn out to concentrate.

She turned instead to her new names, fresh meat, starting the long journey to knowing someone through what they chose to leave on the internet. And all the secrets they wouldn’t share.

If Jason used social media like a normal twenty-something, maybe she would know him better. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to a relationship that existed outside bits and pixels. But, for now, she was left with the mystery – and if there was one thing she loved, it was a mystery that needed solving.