Page 34 of A Game of Lies

‘So leave,’ Ffion says.

‘The secrets, though …’ Ceri shuts her eyes for a second. ‘Once mine’s out, I’ll be sacked. If I don’t stay in long enough to win the hundred grand, I need that participation fee.’

‘Sweetheart, don’t go sharing that sort of information.’ Pam nods towards the others. ‘Now they know your secret is something that’ll lose you your job.’

‘“They”?’ Aliyah says. ‘Like you wouldn’t expose Ceri if you had the chance!’

‘I wouldn’t,’ Pam says firmly. ‘Exposuremight be trying to destroy my life, but I’ll be damned if it’s going to destroy my morals.’

Henry snorts. ‘Laudable, I’m sure. Let’s see how strong that moral fibre is when you’re facing the confession pod. What is it in store for you? Rats, isn’t it?’

Pam flinches.

‘Expose one of us and you escape the confession pod,’ Henry says. ‘It’s survival of the fittest here, and you know it.’

Just then, Owen sweeps into the tent in a fury. ‘What are you doing in here?’ He glares at Leo. ‘Miles just radioed me – I told you the tents were strictly off limits.’

‘Mate,’ Ffion says, in a tone that’s far from matey, ‘you do know we’re the police, don’t you?’

‘I don’t give a f—’ Owen cuts himself off, presumably remembering that he does, in fact, give a fuck about being arrested for obstruction, public disorder or any of the other offences for which Leo and Ffion would be glad to arrest him if he carries on. ‘Um … your colleague wants you,’ he finishes meekly.

George has seized a number of palm-sized stones, several of which glint with fragments of glass. ‘I found this, too, trodden into the dirt by the edge of the camp.’ It’s a pocket knife, identical to those issued to each of the contestants at the start of the show. Engraved in the handle are the letters RF.

‘That’s Ryan’s,’ Owen says.

‘Cheers, Poirot,’ Ffion says, then turns pointedly to Leo. ‘If forensics find prints on these stones – which I think we can safely assume were used to smash the cameras – they can get comparisons from the items in Ryan’s overnight bag.’

‘I’ll see if there’s a dog free,’ Leo says. As they leave camp, he looks over his shoulder at the bell tent, from which Pam, Henry, Lucas, Ceri and Aliyah are emerging. Miles maintains the contestants will be relieved once their secrets are out, but Leo doubts it. All five look desperate.

When they arrive back at Carreg Plas, Huw is waiting for them in the courtyard.

He pre-empts Leo’s question. ‘Nothing, sorry. The drone picked up someone wild camping, but it was just a birdwatcher. One of your lot debriefed him.’ Huw looks between Leo and Ffion with something more than professional curiosity, and Leo wonders how much Ffion shares with her ex-husband. He can’t help but compare himself to Huw, who has the weathered complexion of a man who works outside, with fine lines around his eyes from blinking against the sun. Leo hits the weights as often as he can, but there’s a difference between biceps built in the gym and arms made strong from lugging bricks up ladders. He glances at Ffion. Does she still have feelings for Huw?

‘Sarge?’

Leo’s glad of the interruption to his thoughts. He looks around to see a uniformed officer walking towards them, accompanied by a woman in walking trousers. An Ordnance Survey map in a plastic wallet hangs around her neck and a metal water bottle clinks against the fastenings of her rucksack.

‘This lady’s seen our MisPer,’ the officer says.

The woman is taken aback at suddenly finding herself the centre of attention, as all eyes turn to her. She rallies well. ‘I walked up Pen y Ddraig this morning – I wanted to be at the summit for sunrise – and I left my car by the lake. When I got back – it must have been around eleven o’clock, I suppose – there was a man in the lake.’

‘Inthe lake?’ George says.

‘Up to his knees. I thought he was fishing at first. Then I realised he didn’t have a rod, and he was crying. He started walking deeper into the water, and I shouted at him to stop. I saidAre you alright?which was so stupid, because of course he wasn’t alright.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Well …’ The woman falters. ‘He started shouting back. It wasn’t particularly coherent, but it was rather aggressive, and I’m afraid I was frightened, so I went back to my car. I wasn’t sure whether to phone the police, then this nice chap drove past, so I flagged him down and he brought me up here.’

‘The description matches Ryan Francis,’ the officer says.

Leo hears a strangled cry. He turns to find Jessica Francis standing in the courtyard, and he curses himself for not taking the witness somewhere more private.

‘Ryan can’t swim,’ Jessica says. ‘If he was in the lake, he …’ She doesn’t finish.

She doesn’t need to.

‘Update the PolSA,’ Leo tells George. ‘We need to refocus the search area.’

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