Binary Witness (The Amy Lane Mysteries) Read online

  “Mam! I’m home!” Jason dumped his holdall on the kitchen floor and flopped down at the kitchen table. He felt tired for the first time in weeks, the pleasant ache of a hard day’s work settling into his muscles.

  “What the hell are you wearing?”

  Jason looked up and scowled. Cerys stood in the doorway, giggling at him from behind her dyed-blond fringe and freakish false eyelashes. Bloody sisters—who’d have ’em?

  “That’s a lovely shirt that is, Jason,” his mam said, breezing her way in and filling the kettle. Cerys’s giggles erupted into sitcom laughter, an exaggerated state where the laugher holds their sides and requires the wall to prop them up. His longsuffering mother, the formidable Gwen Carr, wisely held her tongue.

  “Mam, it’s pink!” Cerys pointed out between spasms, and Jason directed his scowl at the table instead. It was definitely not pink. He wasn’t wearing a pink anything. Apart from the Cardiff Blues away shirt, but that was different.

  “It’s lilac, Cerys. Don’t be rude to your brother. He’s got himself a job, thank God, and this is what he has to wear.” Gwen set down his mug in front of him and handed one off to Cerys, before picking up her own. “Jason’s paying his own way now.”

  “He’s cleaning toilets and washing old ladies’ knickers.” Cerys curled one loop of peroxide hair around her finger. “Any mug could do it.”

  “Yeah, then why don’t you?” Jason said, aware this conversation was descending into petty sniping.

  Cerys sighed dramatically. “Nobody works these days, Jason. It’s a sign of the times. Something about the economy or some shit.”

  “Mind your tongue, bach.” Gwen leaned up against the kitchen counter, her cracked red hands curling around the mug. “So, how was your day? Did you meet some nice people? From around Roath Park, was it? Those houses are so lovely.”

  With a final roll of her eyes, Cerys left the kitchen, humming as she ran up the stairs.

  Jason watched her go and waited for the door to slam at the top of the stairs, before smiling up at his mam. “I liked it. Was good to do something.”

  Gwen smiled, the lines at the corner of her eyes and mouth deepening. “That’s my boy.” She sat down at the table with him and they sat in companionable silence, nursing their cups of tea.

  “Have you seen this terrible thing in the paper?” Gwen nudged the South Wales Echo across the table. “There’s a girl missing—she’s a student, she is. Only nineteen, bless her.”

  “She’s probably run off with the boyfriend. That’ll be Cerys next.” He raised his voice so that it carried up the stairs to his sister’s ears. A door slammed loudly and he grinned.

  Gwen frowned. “Now, don’t talk about your sister that way. She’s doing the best she can.”

  Jason snorted, earning A Look from his mother. “She’s doing what pleases her,” he said, with the newly acquired smugness of the employed. “You should be more firm with her.”

  Gwen grew silent, shifting her mug round and round between rough hands. “Well, that was always your father’s business, wasn’t it? I was never one for being firm, bach. Drink your tea, now, and I’ll see what I’ve got for dinner.”

  She left him at the table while she poked around the freezer.

  Would his father would be proud of him, the cleaner in pink? The working man. For the past year, Jason had been glad his dad wasn’t around to see the state he was in. But now he craved that approval and he was never going to get it, would never know for certain what his dad wanted for him. His mam didn’t talk about him often and Cerys was too young to remember. Jason had been ten years old when he’d passed away—bowel cancer. The GP kept telling him he should get tested, sending out letters, but Jason quietly tore them up when his mam wasn’t looking. He didn’t want to know how much he was his father’s son.

  Chapter Three: The Mothership

  Jason slammed the boot of his Nissan Micra and shouldered his bag. He adjusted his scratchy lilac T-shirt, garishly emblazoned with the company logo, and looked up at the house. It was one of a shabby pair of semi-detached houses, holding each other up like drunken sailors, paint peeling on the outside and gutters overflowing. There were two doors, side by side in the centre. The door on the left was boarded up, the windows shuttered with corrugated iron. The one on the right—12 Canberra Road—had a fancy buzzer box with only one button and a thin screen at the top. The corners of the door were plastered with cobwebs—maybe the remnants of Halloween? He pressed the button, unable to hear the tone through the door, and waited.

  Jason glanced down at the request again. The client lived in Australia and was hiring on behalf of her sister. Underneath, there were a list of warnings about the occupant refusing the previous two cleaners entry. This would be strike three. After half a minute and no sound of movement from inside, Jason pressed the buzzer again. Immediately, the box beeped and Jason jerked his hand away. A digital display scrolled a message: WHO ARE YOU??

  Jason was baffled as to why the door buzzer was writing to him. He leaned a little closer. “Er...I’m Jason Carr. From the Roath Cleaning Company. I’ve come to clean your house.”

  The box beeped again. I DONT WANT YOU GO AWAY.

  Jason scratched at his chin with his knuckle. “I don’t think I can do that, love. I’m paid to be here for the next two hours.” Another insistent beep: DONT CARE GET LOST.

  “Bloody hell—who still says ‘get lost’?” he muttered to himself and got down on his knees, pulling out his duster and starting work on those cobwebs. Halloween or not, it was now November and time they went.

  The box beeped again. Jason clambered to his feet and squinted at the screen: I SAID GO AWAY.

  Jason stared down the box. “Look, love, as I said, I’m paid to be here. If I can’t clean the inside, I’m gonna at least clean the door.”

  There was a long silence, before a low buzz came from the box and the door shifted open. Jason pushed it all the way with a satisfied smile and stepped over the threshold.

  To find another door.

  Slowly closing the front door behind him, Jason inspected this new barrier. Made of riveted reinforced metal, it looked like it could survive a nuclear holocaust. Abruptly, it jerked apart, revealing a small metal space: a lift.

  “Well, this is fucking bizarre.” Was he about to take a trip to Dexter’s Laboratory? He stepped inside and turned to face the door, looking for the buttons. Nothing. The metal was blank on both sides.

  The doors jerked shut. Jason wasn’t claustrophobic, but standing alone in a little metal box... He rubbed his sweaty palm on his jeans, struggling to keep breathing. The lift suddenly surged upwards and he steadied himself. Get it together, Carr.

  The lift stopped. Behind him, the wall slid away. Jason turned, clutching his bag with a white-knuckle grip, and stepped out.

  The air was stale, like the old attic at his nan’s house. Beneath his feet, the carpet was dusty and covered in what looked like wood chippings. The hallway opened out to the left to reveal the living room, with decent furniture gone bad, dirty and worn.

  “Hello?” Jason ventured farther into the flat and tried to get his heart rate down. And then he saw her.

  The first impression he had was of metal—three flatscreen monitors, surrounded by computer towers and metal boxes, two keyboards, and wires taped haphazardly to the marked grey walls. Before this shrine to technology, a young woman sat in a high-backed office chair, typing on one of the keyboards. She was slight, drowning in loose casual clothes that had seen better days. Her hair was long, thick with grease and tied in a rough ponytail, and her skin was sallow, as if she hadn’t seen the sun or a steak for several weeks. She was also steadfastly ignoring him.

  “So...um...where do you want me to start?” Jason said with as much cheer as he could muster. Her fingers never slowed on the keys, typing faster than he could
keep up with, adding to the random words strung together with symbols on her computer screen. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “Do what you like.” The voice was barely audible, a cracked whisper that only just reached him over the clacking keys. She sounded rusty, as if she only spoke twice a week, and he decided he was unlikely to get any further conversation out of her. No wonder her sister was in Australia.

  From hovering in the doorway to the living room, he could see the kitchen further back and decided that was as good a place as any to get going. He moved through the living area, stepping over old magazines and newspapers, curled and yellowing. The kitchen was a windowless room, smelling strongly of tomato. Every surface was covered in dirty plates, cups and glasses, with the dishwasher open and bulging. The kitchen bin had overflowed to three bags, one of which was threatening to spill. How could anybody live like this?

  It was a bit more than two hours’ work, but he was determined to make a dent in the chaos. Jason set the dishwasher going and cleared the counters with good ole suds and water. Next, he gathered up the rubbish and hesitated. He hadn’t seen any bins outside.

  “Chute in the hall,” whispered the woman, without a pause in her typing.

  Jason, resigned to only ever talking to the back of her head, approached the two metal boxes in the hall. One was labelled Mail and the other Trash, ink stencilled directly onto the metal. Opening the trash, Jason placed the bags in the chute—who had a rubbish chute in their flat? And where did the rubbish go? Out of sight, out of mind?

  Out of curiosity, he opened the mailbox. Inside were half a dozen letters and about two weeks’ worth of the South Wales Echo. All the front pages carried stories of that missing student, the most interesting thing to happen in Cardiff since the Dark Ages. Jason pulled them out and carried them through to his client. “Where should I put the mail?”

  The woman waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the sofa, continuing to type with the other, and Jason placed the letters on a small end table, removing a couple of mugs. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  The typing halted. The woman tilted her head to the side. “I think the milk’s gone off.” The typing resumed as if there had never been an interruption.

  Convinced this woman was a sandwich short of a picnic, Jason returned to the kitchen and checked the fridge for milk. What greeted him was a hideous laboratory of biological warfare. He shut the fridge and struggled not to gag. “How do you eat in here?”

  “Microwave. Takeaway,” she said, her voice growing in strength with use. She was English, he realised, or possibly American. The accent was difficult to pinpoint and he spent a few minutes attacking the fridge, wondering if she was Australian.

  Satisfied that the fridge wouldn’t be developing sentience any time soon, Jason glanced at the clock. An hour gone already, and he hadn’t even finished the kitchen. She didn’t need a cleaner once a week—she needed someone to work on this place every day for a month. He repeated this aloud in her general direction and again the typing stopped. “You want to come here every day?”

  She seemed surprised, but he couldn’t tell how she felt about it. He guessed she probably liked to be on her own with her code, but surely she didn’t want to live like this? His mam was going to have a fit when he told her the state of the place. “I think you need it.”

  She tapped one key three times, then paused again. “Okay then. I’ll email them.”

  And her hands starting flying away again, tap-tap-tap, and it seemed the conversation was over. But Jason was persistent and, if he was going to be here every day, he needed to know a little bit more. “I’m Jason, by the way.”

  “Yes, you said.” She was back in her rhythm now, a frenzied beat that reminded him of the bass at a nightclub or the primal roar of the Hakka. Maybe she was one of those reclusive web designers, churning out websites for big corporations. Though, if that were the case, why was she living in a flat like this? She should be in one of those glassy modern things down in the elegant and expensive Cardiff Bay.

  “I meant...I don’t know your name. Or anything about you.”

  He’d expected the typing to stop again, but it just raced on, incessant as the rain. “Amy Lane. I code. Mostly for fun, sometimes for profit. You should clean.”

  Despite the dismissal, Jason smiled. He was finally getting somewhere.

  Chapter Four: Show Me the Way to Go Home

  It was too bloody cold to be out, even if it was Friday night. And it was pissing it down, like always. Melody shivered and pulled her coat closer around her, heels splashing freezing dirty water up her calves. Brilliant.

  A car dashed past her and she turned her back, shrieking as water soaked through her thin coat, the top button hanging off and causing the thing to gape. Why hadn’t she bought a new coat yet? Why hadn’t she stayed in with Teresa and the boys? They would all be laughing at her drowned-rat look when she got home.

  Yeah, it had been a laugh, and the girls had got her pretty hammered on cocktails. Cocktails were lethal—you drank them down like juice and then they snuck up on you, the bastards. Even after only five—was it six?—she felt ready to totter off the pavement and sink ankle-deep into a proper Cardiff puddle.

  Too bad she had a thing due Monday, or she would’ve stayed out ’til gone three. It was final year and she had to knuckle down now or it would’ve all been a colossal waste of her dad’s money. Or so he kept telling her.

  Somehow she kept her feet and staggered down St. Mary’s Street, the heart of Cardiff’s nightlife, looking for something to soak up the alcohol sloshing in her stomach. Dark deserted shops stood flush against the glare of clubs and bars, boys out front for a fag catcalling as she passed and the street awash with debris from McDonald’s. In her drenched state, the smell from Chippie Lane was too great to resist. She dived down Catherine Street to pick up a box of steaming chips, drowning in cheese and gravy. Lush it was and she scoffed the lot in the shelter of the building overhang, gravy dribbling down her chin.

  Stumbling back onto St. Mary’s, she headed out in search of taxis. Nothing doing. It was obviously too early in the night, nowhere near closing for the nightclubs and past time for the pubs. She knew the rank was around here somewhere and, even if it wasn’t, she was mostly home now. She was sure Teresa told her there was a shortcut this way. It had reached the stage of downpour when she couldn’t get any wetter, and the rain was just refreshing the water that matted her long blond hair.

  Melody stopped. Where was she? Maybe she’d got turned around. She’d meant to head back towards the student wasteland of Cathays but this was looking more like it went to the Bay. She walked on a bit farther, wandering under a couple of bridges, until she came to a road running alongside a patch of withered autumn grass. This definitely wasn’t the restaurants and bars of the classy Bay either. There weren’t many buildings at all, in fact, but she thought she could see a couple of hotels in the distance. She’d ask them for directions, or maybe they’d call her a taxi. Few men could resist a girl shivering in their lobby, even if she looked like she was more water than woman. “A moisten bint.”

  But, as luck would have it, she heard a car come up behind her. She turned to stare into the headlights and stuck her arm out, waving frantically to flag down the longed-for taxi and trying not to totter backwards in her six-inchers. The car pulled into the pavement and she yanked open the back door, clambering in and sitting down with a sigh. She was shivering now but it was at least a bit warmer in the car, and it smelled of industrial cleaners and the peculiar scent of an air freshener pretending to be pine.

  “Where to?” he said, glancing up at the mirror. He clearly liked the look of her dress. She smiled politely at him and pulled her coat round her. She’d feel like a right tit if it was right round the corner. “The Colonies,” she said. “Australia Road.”

  “Right,” he said and pulled off. The do
ors locked.

  And Melody realised she couldn’t see a meter. Or a badge hanging up front. She couldn’t see the driver’s face. And she couldn’t get out.

  “Actually, maybe I’ll walk,” she said tentatively, hand going for the door handle.

  He ignored her, hands gripping the steering wheel.

  “I don’t think I have any cash.” Her heart started to race, her hands shaking as she clutched her handbag closer.

  “That’s okay,” he said.

  Melody screamed.

  Chapter Five: An Inspector Calls

  On his way to Amy’s, Jason stopped to pick up milk. A man needed a cup of tea to do a proper job. Clutching his groceries, he jogged up to the front door and punched the buzzer. The door opened instantly—crazy woman must have a camera on it—and he stepped back into that little metal box and the warzone at Number 12.

  Amy was huddled on the sofa in her dressing gown, a grubby off-white thing that had probably been pretty nice at one time. At first he thought she was asleep but she eventually looked up and to the side, not meeting his eyes. “Hello.”

  “Hi.” He felt knocked off balance by seeing her away from her computer. She didn’t look like a technological whiz now—she must be his age, maybe younger. Maybe as young as Cerys. Her skinny wrist poked out of her dressing gown, sporting a clunky wristwatch that looked like it could communicate with Mars. “I bought milk.”

  Her gaze tracked to the groceries in his hand and he saw that her eyes were green. No, maybe hazel—alive with little brown flecks, hundreds of them, beyond counting. She licked her dry, cracked lips and he realised he was staring.

  “I’ll make a cup of tea, eh?”

  She nodded imperceptibly and he went into the kitchen, set down the bread and biscuits on his clean countertop and placed the milk in the shining fridge. It was good to see she hadn’t destroyed the place since last week.

  “How do you take it?” he called through, already hunting through the cupboards for sugar. No such luck. He fished his sweetener out of his pocket.