Captcha Thief (Amy Lane Mysteries) (8 page)

Frieda was giving him the silent treatment.

Her beloved bike was under a tarp in the Bangor Police Station car park until she’d had a chance to look it over and decide on scrap or salvage. The way she was glaring at Jason, however, made him feel like she’d rather be making that decision about him.

Jason had turned down a trip to the local hospital, assuring their police escort that he was just a little scraped up and soggy, but he was grateful for access to the locker rooms and some dry clothes. He also raided their first aid box for bandages to cover the road rash on his leg, and the contents of his wallet were drying out on the radiator in their tiny kitchen.

He’d told Frieda that their new lorry-driving friend was willing to make a deal, but she’d ignored him until they got to the station, when she presented the idea as her own. Jason was beginning to realise how much of a cow she really was and regretted ever swinging a leg over her bike.

Wearing a mixture of odd gym clothes, Jason made his way to the briefing room, where Frieda was filling in the local officers on the purpose of their visit and the accident. She was still wearing her leathers, her cold eyes barely registering his entrance as she continued to hold court.

‘It seems our driver was in a hurry, but we have no idea why. The back of the lorry was entirely empty except for some pallets, a couple of crisp packets and a full bottle of what looks like apple juice.’

‘He was on his way back from Dublin,’ Jason chipped in. ‘Made his drop-off yesterday evening and caught the last ferry back.’

The lead uniformed officer turned to him. ‘And who might you be, son?’

‘He’s with me,’ Frieda said, with obvious distaste. ‘He’s … a consultant for the South Wales Police, and the driver made some comments to him while we were waiting for backup.’

The officer looked at him appraisingly. ‘Nye Thomas, Duty Sergeant. You think you can get him to talk some more?’

Jason shrugged one shoulder. ‘That was for free, but I reckon he’ll be after something in exchange for more. You’ve got nothing on him otherwise.’

‘Nothing? He destroyed my bike!’

‘Treacherous bit of road,’ Nye said. ‘And not a drop of alcohol in his veins. I don’t think we can hold him accountable for your bike, Miss Haas.’

Frieda looked between Nye and Jason as if she wasn’t sure who she wanted to eviscerate first. ‘I’ll talk to London.’

While the Icewoman made her phone call, Jason bummed a cigarette off one of the constables and went outside for a quick fag with him. Nothing like a dash of cold water and a near-death experience to send him running back to nicotine. The morning sun had burned off most of the mist and Jason was grateful for the warmth settling into his skin.

‘You’re up from Cardiff then?’ the PC asked, probably a year or two younger than Jason and still keen.

‘Checking out some leads,’ Jason said, like he knew what he was talking about and hadn’t just followed Frieda up here to get away from his boss.

‘It’s to do with that museum theft, isn’t it?’

‘Could be.’

‘We’ve been keeping an eye out, but truth is that our boys aren’t up to much about here. Snatching purses and growing weed, that’s about it. I don’t think any of them have got the brains to traffic a painting.’

‘We think it’s an international operation. Any strangers in town?’

The PC considered. ‘Usual tourists, but most of them have gone home now. If you wanted to sneak about, you wouldn’t come through Bangor, or stop off anywhere. People are right suspicious round here, unless you’re local. If you were smart, you’d drive up the A470 or take the A55 along the top of the country. Never see another soul.’

Jason nodded – that made a lot of sense. One painting would be easy enough to hide in a bag, and it wasn’t like North Wales was swarming with border control. You could stroll onto any ferry coming in or out and no one would be any the wiser.

He returned to the office, where Frieda was writing in a little black notebook, a firm do-not-cross perimeter in a five-foot circle around her. Jason had never been one for heeding warnings, though, and he stopped beside the desk she was leaning on.

‘What did they say?’

She didn’t look up. ‘I can question the suspect. If he gives me enough specifics, he can have immunity from prosecution. If not…’

Her tone was neutral, her cold mask firmly back in place. Jason thought he might prefer it that way. At least she was tolerating him and not calling for his head.

‘Can I watch?’

‘I thought you might be a voyeur.’

Her flirtation was careful, cool, and Jason wasn’t in the mood to play games.

‘I’ll be behind the screen then,’ he said, and made to walk away.

Frieda caught his arm, a firm warm grip on his bare skin. ‘Jason … I’m sorry. About before. Are you sure you’re all right? You should get the police medic to take a look at you.’

Her eyes were earnest, her voice pitched low so they weren’t overheard. Was this another game, or did she genuinely care about what happened to him?

‘I’m fine,’ he said, practising his own distance, the aloof voice he’d perfected during his time inside. ‘Let’s get on with it, yeah?’

She nodded, released his arm, and led the way out of the room as if nothing had passed between them. Nye joined them outside the interview room, gesturing at the ajar door of the observation room.

Jason had been in an interview room more times than he cared to remember, but never on the outside looking in. The one-way glass tinted the harshly lit room with a shadow, the miserable lorry driver leaning against the table edge.

Frieda and Nye entered the room together, Nye sitting opposite the driver but Frieda choosing to remain standing.

Nye set the old-fashioned tape recorder and laid out the preliminaries. Jason watched the man’s face carefully for a reaction, but he was a study in misery, downcast and defeated.

The lorry driver gave his name as Benjamin Stock, living in Canton, Cardiff – a couple of streets over from Dylan’s garage.

‘What were you transporting, Mr Stock?’ Frieda was straight to the point.

‘I thought … I thought this was about my driving.’

‘I think it’s about a lot more than that, isn’t it? Forensics are crawling all over your lorry and they’re making some very interesting discoveries.’

Jason had seen the lorry when he went for his smoke – it was cordoned off in the corner of the car park, right next to Frieda’s battered bike, with not a soul in sight. She was playing him.

‘Please – that bloke before, the one who went in the lake. He said you were after information. I can give you that.’

‘I think you’d better.’

But then Benjamin seemed to regain a semblance of control. ‘What’s … what’s in it for me, like? I mean, I’m happy to help you but if I … there are nasty people involved, see. I got a girlfriend, a kid.’

‘Tell us what we need to know, and we will take care of everything. You want witness protection? I can give you that – if you tell me everything. If not…’ She paused, leaving his imagination to fill in all the potential consequences.

Benjamin winced at the thought. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, but they don’t let on to all of us. I can take you to the spots, get you some other fellas who are involved.’

‘Let’s start at the beginning. To ensure we can rely on your information. What was your latest shipment?’

Benjamin swiped at his forehead, sweat erupting from every pore. ‘I picked … the shipment up in Port Talbot yesterday morning, drove up to Holyhead and went over just after lunch. Dropped … it off outside Dublin, then came back with an empty. I was heading back to Cardiff when I, uh, ran into you.’

‘I didn’t ask you for the route. What was in the shipment?’

Benjamin mumbled something that Jason didn’t pick up.

Frieda slammed her hand down on the table, startling him up and away from the surface. ‘For the microphone, Mr Stock. Do not waste my time.’

Benjamin hugged himself. ‘I don’t look at them. Someone else loads them up and I just drive.’

‘Loads up what?’

He closed his eyes, as if he didn’t want to see, to remember. ‘Girls. Working girls.’

Jason had never disdained a prostitute, had been in awe of the right hook of quite a few when he was running around Butetown. But herding girls up from their homes, promising them a new life and giving them only ugly, sordid work in back alleys … He thought of Cerys in that position, a more vulnerable Cerys from only a year or two ago, and he wanted to smack Benjamin and all the other bastards until they bled.

‘Trafficking,’ Frieda said, and Benjamin flinched. ‘Call it what it is, Mr Stock. Ignorance is not a defence.’

‘When I first took it up, I thought it was dodgy tellies. Not girls. I didn’t agree to that. But once you’re in…’ He gave half a shrug, like a man afraid to move more than an inch in case the monsters in the dark should see him, catch him.

‘I am offering you a way out.’ Frieda’s voice was softer, kinder, as she slid into the seat opposite him. A friend in the night. She was playing both good and bad cop.

Benjamin nodded quickly, as if he was acting before he could take it back. Nye narrated it for the tape, the first words he’d spoken since the date and time of the interview. He was letting the master do her work.

‘Do your lorries carry anything else, besides girls?’

‘I told you – I don’t look. But I’ve seen boxes a couple of times. The others … they’re local to Neath and to here. They do smaller jobs as well, white van stuff. I don’t know what they’re moving.’

Jason’s ears pricked up. A valuable painting wouldn’t be stuffed on the back of a lorry full of women, but it might be part of a smaller haul. Jason itched to know the details of those local drop-offs, but Frieda had to weave her spell in her own sweet time.

She might be an ice-cold bitch, but Jason liked the way she worked. And he wanted to see a lot more of her in action.

Teenagers were a hacking goldmine.

They were power users of social media, always connected and sharing everything about their lives 24/7. A young person couldn’t eat a meal without taking a picture on Instagram, couldn’t stop at a shop without checking in on Foursquare. They exchanged cats on Tumblr and collected clothes on Pinterest, all while browsing Twitter for the latest unfiltered news.

Which made investigating a teenager something like child’s play to Amy Lane.

The first step was identifying the school uniform. After trying and failing to focus in on the badge, she turned instead to the colour scheme. She found the culprit – a Welsh-speaking secondary school in Cardiff.

Schools rarely networked their pupils’ information in a readily accessible way, but the pupils themselves were expert in shouting that from the rooftops. She found several Facebook users who had added their school, as well as some groups and events connected to it. But Facebook was fading in popularity with teens. If she didn’t find what she needed there, she had several other social media avenues to explore. Teens were all too eager to vomit out information, to be known, a habit rarely broken in their twenties and thirties.

She estimated the girl’s age as somewhere between thirteen to sixteen to narrow her search. As Amy got older, it was getting harder and harder to distinguish ages. No wonder aged shop assistants were IDing up to twenty-five. Not that Amy had ever been ID’d, but she’d heard Lizzie and Jason whine about it enough to know the score.

Scanning the pictures, she narrowed down a type – white, shoulder-length dark hair, no glasses, around five foot. But she didn’t recognise their suspect, and AEON couldn’t muster up more than a fifty per cent match on facial recognition. Perhaps teenagers involved in high-risk art heists managed their privacy a little better than the average social media user.

Amy slipped down into the next layer, the bowels of Facebook’s machinations, but even the locked-down accounts didn’t yield a positive match. Next she turned to Instagram, hoping that the glut of photographs would widen her window into life at the school – and let her find her mark.

Of course, the uniform could be a ruse, getting in under the radar by appearing as an innocent schoolgirl. However, given the general suspicion around teenagers in society, the girl was more likely to be watched in that uniform than if she’d dressed older, more like a college or university student.

Instead of searching by school identifiers, Amy looked at the upload location for the photos, narrowing it down to the area immediately around the school. Even if the pupils weren’t allowed mobile phones in class, the teachers could never keep them locked down during break and lunch.

The pictures were mostly of food – what else? – and selfies, groups of friends, laughing and chatting. Some pupils were more artistic, playing with composition and filters, but replicating supposedly ‘unique’ experiments that Amy had seen repeated a hundred, a thousand times.

She found her by accident. Skimming through one user’s detailed account of the first day of term, Amy caught sight of a face in the background and stopped. She was out of focus, but she fitted the type exactly. Amy browsed photographs around that time and caught her turning towards the camera, a frown at the antics of the girls taking selfies, as if she was above all that.

The girl had her phone clamped to her ear. Amy itched to trace the outgoing call activity for the timestamp, but the school would be a hive of connectivity – the likelihood of locating that specific signal was miniscule. She tried to narrow down the make or model, but it was a rectangular smartphone in black, surrounded by hundreds like it.

Amy browsed the likes and shares for the photo series, making a note of the usernames that cropped up frequently. She checked out those accounts, but they seemed like hangers-on for this particular Instagram fanatic rather than huge content producers.

Rubbing her forehead, Amy blinked away the blurring of her vision and reached for the red wine bottle. Unfortunately, only the dregs remained, standing next to its empty twin. Perhaps it was time to return to the coffee.

She stumbled to the kitchen, legs made of jelly and the floor constantly moving away from her. She made a strong cup of filter coffee, digging out some chocolate digestives to accompany it. She needed fuel if she was to find this girl, and keep out the thoughts about what could’ve happened to her assistant.

The doorbell buzzed. Amy frowned, milk slopping from the carton in her hand onto the countertop as she instinctively turned to look towards the door. Who the hell would ring her doorbell in the middle of the night?

Amy looked at the clock on the microwave: 09:07. The night had sped by, but it was still bloody early for a Sunday. She set down the milk and crossed to AEON, flicking up the external camera feed. It was Bryn, reaching up to buzz again. Amy opened the door and waited for him to come up in the lift, her mind racing through a hundred possibilities of why he was there, every one of them terrible.

She called up the GPS locator – nothing. Where was Jason? She had a police officer at her door and her assistant was missing. She tried to breathe.

The lift doors opened and Amy leapt towards the corridor, but Bryn had already held up his hand. ‘He’s fine. He called to tell me because he couldn’t get through to you.’

Amy had disconnected the landline, to ensure Lizzie didn’t disrupt her work. She’d forgotten her mobile was still busted open on the coffee table.

‘He said he would call you when he was in a hotel.’

With that woman.
Amy scowled and went back to the kitchen to fetch her coffee. Bryn followed her, helping himself to a mug.

‘Anyway, I thought I’d better check in on you.’ He looked at her with his sharp detective’s eyes. ‘You haven’t gone to bed, have you?’

Amy retreated back to the living room, her sanctuary under AEON’s protective shadow. ‘I am not a child. I don’t need a nursemaid.’

‘You do have an assistant, though. Who isn’t here.’

‘Jason doesn’t own me. I go to bed when I please, I work when I please. You don’t ask questions when I deliver results.’

Bryn held up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m not nagging. I came to bring you some more titbits.’

‘Since last night?’

‘Last night?’ Bryn looked at her blankly.

‘Owain was here. Before he left with Cerys.’

Bryn’s confusion faded. ‘Oh, right. This is privileged stuff, you understand? Need-to-know.’

Amy wasn’t surprised that the right hand had no idea what the left was doing. But Bryn and Owain were close – it must be awkward not telling his team what was going on behind the scenes. Like Jason deciding to go to Bangor with a total stranger without discussing it with Amy first.

‘I’m listening.’ She pushed Jason away from her head and hoped the coffee would sober her brain enough to listen to Bryn. She was out of practice with red wine, and her body left her control easily, even if her mind stayed sharp enough to dig up evidence.

‘Before she left town, Frieda was convinced that this couldn’t be an inside job, but I’m not so sure. They seem the folks most likely to have means and opportunity.’

‘Why steal the swipe card if you already had access?’

‘What better way to deflect suspicion? In fact, start with her. Talia whatsit. Nothing says professional like breaking into your own car.’

Amy gestured at her computer. ‘I have my own angle here.’

Bryn crossed to take a closer look at the monitor. ‘Schoolgirls?’

Amy pointed to her suspect. ‘She was hanging around the museum, checking the frames and statues. Had a confrontation with an older man in the hall.’

‘Amy, this is a professional operation. They’re not hiring kids for this.’

She folded her arms. ‘Owain believes me.’

Bryn sighed. ‘Can we concentrate on the museum employees for now and look at this kid later?’

‘What if Frieda’s right?’ Amy said obstinately. ‘What if you’re wrong about this?’

Bryn’s mouth settled into a hard line. ‘Maybe I am. But I need you to look down those alleys for me. Frieda’s got a hundred NCA bods working for her back in London. I’ve got you.’

‘And what are you going to be doing?’

‘I’ll interview the museum staff, cross-reference my answers with what you find, press their weaknesses.’

‘Make sure you ask about secret passageways and hidden doors.’

Bryn looked at her incredulously. ‘Seriously?’

‘We have no evidence the painting left the museum. None. Either it’s still in there somewhere or there’s a secret door we don’t know about.’

‘Secret door or not, someone must’ve seen something unusual, at least.’

‘None so blind as those who will not see.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Amy looked at him pityingly. ‘If one of your colleagues was doing bad things under your nose, would you want to know? Or would you look away?’

Bryn’s jaw tightened. ‘You know the answer to that.’

Amy hesitated, before her months-old grievances came to the fore. The police force was rebuilding after a spectacular collapse, where officers had lost their jobs and others their lives. She knew Bryn was doing the best he could, but sometimes it didn’t seem like enough.

‘Will you help me?’ he asked, a note of pleading in his voice.

‘Only if you trust my instincts. I’m going to keep hunting down that schoolgirl.’

Bryn grinned. ‘I expected nothing less.’