Page 108 of A Game of Lies

As Henry makes his way out of theExposureencampment, the detective’s shouts become more frantic. When she first rattled the door – pointless, given the weight of the log Henry had rolled across it – she had sounded more angry than scared, but now he hears a note of hysteria in her voice.

Good. The woman’s messed everything up.

When Henry had returned to camp after killing Miles, it had proved impossible to open the box of secrets. He had made coffee and given Ceri her tea, and all the time his mind had been racing. Could he drop his fleece over the box and swiftly turn the lock as he retrieved it? Repeat the manoeuvre a short while later, but, this time, remove his envelope?

No, it was too dangerous. He’d worked hard to make it look as though he was nowhere near the crime scene. He couldn’t now risk attracting suspicion by behaving oddly in camp, when the police were bound to look at the footage to establish where everyone was at the time of the murder.

So Henry had proceeded to phase two of his plan.

It was hard to keep track of time in your head; all the contestants had discovered that. Henry had finished his coffee and was forcing himself to concentrate on what Lucas and Ceri were talking about, all the time mentally calculating how many minutes had passed. He had walked casually to the compost toilet, then ducked into the confession pod, where the red blinking digits told him it was precisely 11.18 a.m. Henry had let out a long, steadying breath. It was almost time.

He was reluctant to stay by the campfire. He and the other contestants had watched from their bell tents on Friday as the damaged cameras were replaced, but what if the new ones had a different field of view? What if Henry’s meticulously executed alibi came to nothing, simply because a camera had been moved a few millimetres to the right? No, the only safe place was here in the confession pod, where the camera was fixed on the seat in front of it.

But first – Henry looked again at the clock – there was time to cast a little suspicion of his own. He returned to the others, still sitting where he’d left them, and glanced towards the fire. ‘Who’s on kindling duty?’ he said, knowing full well it was Ceri. They’d divided the chores three ways: Lucas cooked, Henry collected the heavier logs and Ceri filled a basket with tinder-dry twigs. No one had cleaned the loo since Pam had left.

‘Me. But I collected loads yesterday; it’ll last till tomorrow at least.’

‘There’s none there now,’ Henry said.

‘Oh, bloody hell, you two.’ Ceri continued grumbling as she grabbed the basket and headed into the woods, and Henry made his way back to the confession pod. There, he launched into a long and rambling overview of his life to date, and the way he planned to live it in the future. Every few seconds, he checked the time. At the precise moment Miles was being ‘murdered’, Henry was feigning a coughing fit in order to suppress a sudden urge to laugh. He’d done it. He’d committed the perfect murder.

Afterwards, Henry’s confidence had grown as hours went by without anyone arriving to slap him in cuffs. Even as the detectives took the three remaining contestants down the mountain, it was obvious they had all but been ruled out as suspects.

The only fly in the ointment had been not retrieving his envelope. In the forty-eight hours following the murder, the mountain had been swarming with police, and there had been no opportunity for Henry to return to camp. Now, of course, the box was gone – the key in his pocket completely useless. He had resolved to hold his nerve and hide in plain sight. He would be identified as Miles’s murderer at some point, but he has worked on enough investigative stories to know how slowly the police cogs turn. He gambled on it being days – maybe even weeks – before some IT geek happened upon the doctored sound clip. Longer still before anyone worked out what it meant. By that time, Henry planned to have melted away, assuming one of the many identities under which he works. In the meantime, he has been a model witness; helpful, compliant and unremarkable.

But he can’t stick around now. The other detectives will be looking for DC Morgan and, eventually, they’ll come up to the camp and they’ll find her.

Drowned.

Henry shivers. His phobia of water was one of the few truths he shared with his fellow contestants, caught off guard by Aliyah’s own fear, and by his own creeping sense of unease. Miles knew Henry had a weakness.

‘I was crabbing from the pier,’ he’d told Miles over dinner. They’d been talking about holidays – Miles’s grandparents had had a house in Abersoch – and Henry was explaining why he only ever vacations inland. ‘I leaned too far forward and …’ He made a dive motion with his hand, feeling – as he always did – the same clutch of terror in his stomach at the memory.

‘Great!’ Miles’s eyes lit up. ‘We can use that as your fear – it’ll add a bit of authenticity.’

Henry stared at him. ‘I’m not going in the confession pod, though; we don’t need—’

‘Relax – I’m just setting it up, that’s all. I can’t have the crew wondering why we’ve only prepped for six confessions, can I?’

A voice in Henry’s head had told him he should be careful; that Miles wasn’t to be trusted.

If only he’d listened to it.

Henry pauses outside theExposurecamp, deciding on his next move. He can’t take the same route back down, not when Carreg Plas could be swarming with cops. He heads up, towards the summit. He’ll go up a little further, then look for a path down on the eastern side of the mountain.

A few minutes later, Henry rounds a bend and sees a woman coming towards him. He looks for an escape route, but then he sees she has trekking poles and stout boots, a map tucked into the side of her rucksack. He carries on walking, his eyes fixed on the ground.

‘Lovely day for it,’ the woman says, as she draws near.

‘Sure is,’ Henry says, just as a faint scream drifts towards them.

‘Did you hear that?’ The woman stops walking. ‘I thought I heard someone screaming earlier, and now—’

‘They’re filming.’ Henry points, which has the added benefit of making the woman look towards camp, instead of at Henry’s face. ‘I saw a camera crew just now.’

‘Ah, that’s alright, then. Mind how you go – it’s a little loose on the final ascent.’

‘Thanks.’ Henry keeps walking, fighting the urge to look back to see if the woman’s looking at him, if she’s pulled out a mobile phone. As soon as he’s far enough away from her, he breaks into a jog.

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