Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “A bigger man than me, for certain, but manual strangulation unto death cannot yet be excluded.” Rob beckoned Indira closer and the two of them rolled the corpse over; he was stiff and fixed, like a waxwork. “And look what we have here.”

  Sebastian and Jason bent down to look. The ruby-red mess at the back of the victim’s skull was embedded with sand and shale, a fine desert mist wafting in the water.

  “Someone whacked him? Good and hard, by the looks of it.” Sebastian was cool, detached. Jason figured he’d seen a lot of broken skulls in his time.

  “Or he fell. The surrounding rocks were all submerged, but I’m not ruling it out. Dissection of the lungs will prove the decider on drowning, but I am confident that this man died on the shore.”

  “Anything else, Pritchard?” Sebastian wore a deep frown now, and Jason could practically see the cogs turning in his head.

  “One more thing of note.” Rob lifted the bag containing the man’s right hand, which more resembled a claw, purple and distorted. “His fingers are broken.”

  “Torture?” Sebastian asked.

  “Unlikely. The breaks are post-mortem, and the MCP joints retain a sharp right angle in rigor.” Rob traced the plastic-coated knuckles with his probe. “My guess? He was holding something that they wanted, the body went into spasm, and they broke his fingers to prise it out.”

  “The money,” Jason interjected. “He dropped off the coke from his boat, the dealers double-crossed him—killed him—and then took the money too.”

  “Straight out of a gangster movie.” Sebastian smiled. “But right now it’s all pretty speculation. Take what you need, Jason, and then get back to your hacker. I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Jason fished out his sister’s camera, ignoring Rob’s irate mutterings, and took pictures of the man’s bloated face, the bruising on his neck, the broken hand...

  “He’s got a tattoo.” Jason peered down at his right hand and the blank ink lines peeking out from under his sleeve.

  Rob pushed him aside and carefully cut the sleeve of the jacket and the fleece underneath to reveal the grinning face of a demon. The scrollwork beneath it read: El Diablo.

  “This is well healed and faded,” Rob commented. “But a distinguishing mark all the same.”

  Jason took a picture, trying not to shudder at the creature’s evil eye on him. He wasn’t superstitious but the mark of the devil on a corpse gave him the creeps.

  “Is Inspector Rawlings there? I have to see him!”

  The voice outside the tent sounded desperate and would not be dissuaded by the patient but stern voice of the clipboard woman telling him he couldn’t cross the threshold.

  “Who wants to know?” Sebastian crossed the tent and drew back the inner curtain.

  A young uniformed officer, breathless with exertion, stood in the doorway. “Sir! There’s been another! Washed up at Saundersfoot.” He gulped and pointed through the flap at the body. “And he’s dressed just like him.”

  Chapter Six: A Long Way from Home

  It was twenty-three minutes past four when Jason finally arrived home.

  “Did you take the train?” Amy sniped at him, her hours of clock-watching frazzling her nerves. “Stop off for a kebab and an ice cream?”

  Jason dumped his bag on the sofa before handing off Cerys’s camera to her. “Actually, I was taking pictures of the second body. And kebab and ice cream is just wrong.”

  Amy was torn between horror and delight. “A second body?”

  “Same profile as the first—with exactly the same tattoo. Worth the wait?”

  Amy conceded that she could permit a little tardiness if Jason returned bearing such gifts. “I am appeased.”

  She transferred the pictures across as Jason headed for the kitchen—hopefully to put the kettle on. Cerys’s camera was half-decent but Amy might have to invest in a higher-resolution camera for Jason’s work. However, he was unlikely to remember it. She might just have to upgrade Cerys’s.

  Drowned bodies were gross, even to Amy’s hardened stomach, but she viewed each picture dispassionately. The second body was dressed in identical clothing to the first with similar complexion and, as Jason pointed out, the same tattoo on the right forearm.

  “Is this a gang symbol?” Amy set up a search on tattoo databases and Tumblr, tracing the outline of the image and transferring it to JPEG.

  “Gang culture isn’t an international telepathic network.” Jason plonked a mug of tea beside her with a chocolate digestive balanced on the rim. “And I wasn’t in a gang.”

  Amy looked at him sideways. “What would you call it then?”

  “Boys mucking about. Though Lewis and I did get matching tattoos.”

  Amy’s eyes flicked to his arms, but they were concealed by his jumper. “Which one?”

  Jason turned his back to her and hauled his jumper and T-shirt up over his left shoulder to reveal a snarling Welsh Dragon in black and red. Amy had actually seen that one before, catching a glimpse as Jason left the bathroom clad only in a towel. Not that she’d been looking.

  He returned his clothing to order and Amy’s heart rate settled. “Anyway. Like I said, it wasn’t a gang. Not like what the Canton boys do now. And we weren’t mixed up in drugs—well, we were, but only to snort or smoke ‘em.”

  Amy had always wanted to try marijuana. She’d once bought some seeds off the internet but the lack of sunlight in the flat and her inability to meet her own basic needs, let alone a plant’s, meant it died before it had really got going. She’d have to stick with benzos and caffeine.

  “So,” she said, “they come in on the same boat. Why does one end up at Tenby and the other...somewhere else?”

  “Saundersfoot. It’s along the coastline to the northeast.”

  Amy brought up a map of South Wales and Jason pointed to it, careful not to touch her precious monitor.

  “Could the tide have done it?” Amy was out of her depth in anything related to the outdoors and Google wasn’t yielding the answers she needed.

  “Pritchard said he was confident the cause of death for the second man was drowning, because of the white foam in his nose and throat. He was also bashed about a bit, cuts and bruises all over him, but Pritchard reckons that’s post-mortem.”

  Amy flicked to the appropriate picture and confirmed it with her own eyes. “From the sea?”

  Jason shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. But see, this is what doesn’t make sense to me. Why cross them at all? You can’t find a new coke supply just like that.”

  “Maybe he was unreliable. It could’ve been poor stuff.” Amy was reaching here—her drugs knowledge didn’t go much beyond the obtaining of illegal prescriptions. She had some new bedtime reading.

  But Jason had this odd look in his eye, as if he was suddenly seized with inspiration. Amy was terrified of that look. “What if...what if we find out who’s suddenly lacking in coke?”

  “They won’t be lacking in coke. They just took a load off the beach for free.”

  Jason wasn’t ready to let this go. “Yeah, but next month they will be. Or it’ll be different. They can test for that, can’t they? If we get samples of the stuff that’s currently out there, and then do it again in June—”

  “That’s a lot of supposition.” Amy intended to nip this in the bud early. “Are you proposing that you go around Cardiff buying cocaine? If it was even for Cardiff—what about, what’s that place called? Down the end there?”

  Jason tried to contain his laughter. “Are you talking about Swansea? I know it’s not much, but there’s no cause to forget it entirely.”

  Amy was undeterred by his amusement at her lack of local knowledge. “Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol. It could be bound for London. There are too many variables.”

  Jason’s
bottom lip jutted out. Great—he was sulking. “What do you reckon we should do then?”

  Amy steepled her fingers. It was a gesture that made her feel in control—and offered her thinking time. “I will run this tattoo through the CIA database. Cocaine isn’t imported from Spain. These men are most likely from South America. We will wait for Rob Pritchard’s autopsy results and the rest of the forensic evidence. Then we will formulate a plan.”

  Jason scowled. “There is a lot of waiting in this plan.”

  “Patience is a—”

  “Oh, give over!” Jason shoved at her shoulder. Amy squawked, her adrenaline spiking, but she tried to laugh it off, act natural. Jason thought she was getting better. She had to be better.

  Thankfully, he retreated towards the kitchen and she could get up, walking as quickly as she dared towards the bathroom. She shut the door, bolted it, pressed her back against it.

  “C-count to ten,” she mumbled to herself. “Deep b-breaths.”

  She breathed. And counted. I am safe. I am home. Jason is here.

  Slowly, the mounting pressure in her chest ebbed away, and she could breathe freely. She was better. She could keep her panic under control.

  Running the cold tap, she splashed water on her face and turned the mirror away. She didn’t want to see the fear, see what a simple nudge from Jason had done to her.

  “I am better,” she said, knowing it was a lie.

  * * *

  “Eddie’s dead? Fuck!” The trash can flew across the warehouse, spilling embers onto the sawdust.

  Zook watched dispassionately as Stuart Williams growled like a wild beast, huffing and snorting as he tried to pace off his anger. If he continued in this vein, Stuart would be more liability than asset. And Zook was having none of that. “So the news would suggest.”

  The BBC were calling it a tragic drowning, but they knew better.

  “He wasn’t meant to be making the run ’til next week. What the fuck was he doing up there? Fuuuuck.” A crate was the next victim of Stuart’s anger, a cloud of white dust blooming up into the air.

  “Clearly, someone made him a better offer.”

  Stuart fixed him with a glare, the dull white web of scars across his face outlined by the angry red of his cheeks. “Eddie would not turn on me.”

  “This is business. He would sell his own mother if it would turn a profit.”

  Stuart paced like a caged animal infuriated by the whip of his trainer, ready to perform. “There’s only one bloke I know who’s chasing coke in this town.”

  “You neglected to mention this earlier.”

  Stuart glanced over his shoulder, checking out how much ire this revelation had raised—but Zook was impassive. “I had it in hand.”

  “It seems you didn’t. Who is this miscreant?”

  “Michael Doyle.” Stuart spat on the floor in disgust. “Shit-pusher from Dublin.”

  “Cocaine?”

  “Nah, just smack. Has the market cornered on brown. Which is fine by me, yeah, because I don’t want to deal with no junkie scum.” Stuart drew himself up to his full height, trying desperately to look respectable. “Cocaine’s for a different class of people. Students, working folk. A proper clientele.”

  “And we have nothing to give them.”

  Stuart slammed his fist into the wall. An appalling lack of self-control. Zook had to be careful with this one. Manage him. One live wire in the powder keg and they all went up.

  “Of course,” he continued smoothly, “we have a window of opportunity here. Doyle may have the cocaine but he is lacking in consumers. We could negotiate—”

  “He killed Eddie!” Stuart was all rage, a loose cannon firing indiscriminately.

  Zook forced himself to keep calm and ride out the storm. “You’re talking like the man was your best friend instead of a business acquaintance. I came to you because I was assured you were interested in business, not petty gang feuds.”

  Stuart seethed, but he shut up. The boy could be taught.

  “Let’s see what Mr. Doyle has to say, shall we? And then we can proceed.”

  “And if we don’t like what we hear? What then?”

  Zook smiled. “Then we burn him.”

  Chapter Seven: The Devil’s in the Details

  Bryn didn’t like playing errand boy, but the thought of Sebastian Rawlings turning up at Amy’s flat unannounced did things to his blood pressure. She had to psyche herself up for Gwen and Cerys coming over, and a strange man in her domain was likely to provoke memories Bryn would rather keep buried.

  Besides, with the department down one detective, Owain had already been roped into helping Sebastian with his investigation. Bryn was delighted that DS Porter had been suspended but the timing could’ve been better. With his partner commandeered, Bryn had been left to catch up on paperwork, so a trip to Amy’s was a welcome break from his computer screen. And she might be able to fix that little glitch where the text starting writing over itself.

  The pair of dilapidated semi-detached houses matched the rest of the neglected street, the left-hand one boarded up ever since Bryn had first visited his pet hacker. But Jason had made a start on Amy’s building, giving the door a new coat of paint and keeping the steps cobweb-free.

  The door opened as he approached—Amy was clearly watching from on high, saving him the trouble of speaking into the little box guarding the door. The elevator took him straight up to a surprisingly tidy flat. Jason was on top of things, it seemed. Amy was the best Bryn had ever seen her and he had to grudgingly put it down to Jason’s influence.

  “Do you have a case for me?” Before the lift doors were even closed, Amy was trying to interrogate him. She had that wide-eyed Einstein look that meant she’d been up all night and drinking too much coffee.

  “I brought you two murders! What more do you want?”

  Amy wagged her finger at him. “Jason brought me murders. The last thing you brought me was that fishmonger robbery!”

  Bryn ignored her hysteria and headed into the living room, where a collection of coffee cups had gathered on every surface. “Where is Jason?” The unspoken question was how did he let you get into this state?

  “He had the day off. He isn’t back yet.” The tone of her voice told Bryn that he wasn’t going to push that—Amy often expressed annoyance that Jason had to go down the shops for milk. She collapsed into her office chair like a puppet with her strings cut.

  “So what’s wrong with these murders, then?” Bryn knew her morbid delight at murder inquiries and was surprised to find her bored already. “Lost your taste for it?”

  “They are Colombians,” she said, as if making a dire proclamation. “Eduardo Días and Alejandro Sánchez. Members of Cartel Diabolica. Cocaine, women, spirits—you name it, they smuggle it.”

  Bryn couldn’t help but be impressed. “You worked this out in two days?”

  Amy looked a little smug. “One. Then I played Skyrim.”

  Bryn flicked open his notebook. “Give me those names again.”

  Amy spelled them out, including the accents, and Bryn took it all down, before sending an update text to Roger Ebbings. The detective super had called him in the office that morning, complaining about their interference in the affairs of the Dyfed-Powys police and suggesting Cardiff didn’t need another two dead bodies to add to their already shocking crime figures. Bryn had politely referred to Sebastian and his swanky new title, wondering how the boss had even got wind of the two of them sniffing around this case. Man had eyes in the back of his head.

  “And how did you find this out exactly? International Missing Persons?” At least Amy didn’t have to worry about jurisdiction—everywhere was equally accessible from her supercomputer.

  “They’re not missing yet,” she said. “Their families are still lighting votives for
them.”

  “So, how...?”

  “Even drug gangs need a Facebook page.”

  “You are joking.”

  Amy brought up her browser window, paused on a video of some kids kicking a man while holding a semi-automatic. “How else do you share your happy-slapping videos?”

  “International drug smugglers just casually upload their crimes to the internet?”

  “It’s not quite like that. These are the younger runners—teenagers, mostly—and they post everywhere, indiscriminately. Some of their pictures, videos, have the older guys in the background. Once I had the tattoo, it was just a case of following the trail. Eduardo Días is a big deal in this organisation, and Alejandra Sánchez is his cousin. From what I can tell, they do runs to Europe every three months.”

  Three months was barely time to cross the ocean and back, and Bryn found himself feeling sorry for two dead drug smugglers and the people they’d left behind. “Enemies?”

  “Rivalries. But all in Colombia. I doubt anyone followed them across the Atlantic to drown them here.”

  “That would be a pretty impressive vendetta.”

  Bryn turned, surprised that Jason had snuck up on him like that. The boy dumped his backpack on the sofa and Bryn caught sight of a round purpling bruise skirting his collarbone. No prizes for guessing how the boy had been spending his downtime.

  Amy, thankfully, didn’t appear to have noticed. “What time do you call this?”

  “Lunch. Staying, Bryn?”

  Bryn shook his head. “Nah, I’ve got to report back to Bas Rawlings—Amy’s exhausted all our leads already.”

  Jason suddenly looked animated, excited. “I was thinking about that. If I went down into the old Docklands—”

  “We’ve already talked about this.” Amy’s voice held a mixture of exasperation and fear.

  “I haven’t run it past Bryn.” Jason was earnest, determined to make his case. “Suppose I infiltrate one of these gangs—”