Page 93 of A Game of Lies

He will not give up Helena Barnsby.

Lucas loves her, he realises, as something slithers through the dark towards him. And he thinks she loves him. A snake passes over his left foot; another climbs up the back of the chair and coils itself around his neck. Lucas fights the urge to scream. He thinks of Helena, and how – when he finishes this horrendous ordeal – he will ask her to leave her husband (organists are hard to come by, but such is the strength of Lucas’s feelings for Helena). And somehow, he will make his peace with God.

While he’s asking forgiveness for his part in the Barnsby adultery, Lucas can also ask forgiveness for grievous bodily harm. He hasn’t actually committed GBH yet, but he intends to. Because when Lucas leaves theExposurecamp, he’s going to find Miles and kick the shit out of him.

THIRTY-FIVE

TUESDAY | FFION

Ffion is on her way to Carreg Plas when DI Malik calls. There’s no hands-free system in the Triumph, so she puts her phone on to speaker and balances it on the dashboard, from where it immediately slides into the footwell. ‘Oh, fuck,’ Ffion says.

‘Ffion?’

‘Sorry, boss. Morning.’

‘Are you driving?’ Malik’s tiny voice comes from somewhere beneath the passenger seat.

‘Yes,’ Ffion shouts back. ‘But I’m hands-free.’

‘Pull over.’

Ffion tucks the Triumph close into the hedge and cuts the engine. ‘Okay, I’m all yours.’

‘You’re off theExposurejob.’

‘What? Why?’ Ffion says, although she knows why. Ceri’s envelope. How could she have been so stupid? Huw owes her – big time.

‘I should have trusted my gut from the start,’ Malik says. ‘You’re too close to this case, Ffion – it’s a conflict of interests.’

No prizes for guessing who’s been talking to Malik, Ffion thinks. What an absolute shit Leo is. He could at least have given her the heads-up that he planned to drop her in it.

‘I suppose I’ll be getting a call from Professional Standards?’ She says it airily, as though she doesn’t care, but she wonders how much trouble she’s in. Interfering with an investigation could land her with a criminal charge, never mind the internal disciplinary.

A sheep trotting down the middle of the road stops and stares at Ffion. She glowers at it. Even the bloody sheep looks judgemental.

‘I think we can probably keep this one in-house,’ Malik says, after a pause. Ffion lets out a breath. ‘I’ve told DCI Boccacci I need you back on CID. I’m letting her keep Alun instead.’

‘What’s she done to deserve that?’ Ffion says automatically, but her heart’s not in it. Alun will be unbearable now. She’s surprised he’s not rung her on some pretext, just so he can rub it in her face, but perhaps he’s still bruised from not getting a cough from Dario Kimber last night.

Ffion had listened to the interview recording this morning.

‘I thought I’d be able to lever the box off with my knife,’ Dario said, after he’d confessed to smashing the camp cameras. ‘But it wouldn’t budge. Then someone called out from one of the tents and I made myself scarce. I was only trying to help Aliyah,’ he added. His embarrassment was clear. The bloke had fallen for a woman half his age; kidded himself she was into him. The question was: did he kill for her, too?

‘Absolutely not.’ Dario didn’t miss a beat when Alun put that very question to him. ‘Miles was an arsehole, but I didn’t kill him.’

‘You stole confidential papers from his office,’ Alun said.

Dario didn’t deny it. ‘I didn’t have time to read them, I just grabbed them from the drawer in Miles’s desk and shoved them in my pocket. I thought they might have the secrets in them, but they were useless.’

Miles’s Cheshire-based production team had confirmed the burnt documents were health and safety forms, signed by each contestant before filming started.

The sheep continues down the road. Ffion presses her forehead against the steering wheel. She can understand why Leo’s pissed off with her, and okay, he’s a DS now, but reporting her to the DI? How dare he?

Ffion lets the anger inside her build. Encourages it. It’s easier to be angry than heartbroken.

‘Work from home today,’ Malik says. ‘Stay out of harm’s way. Catch up on paperwork. And while you’re doing it …’ He breaks off, and Ffion hears his hesitation.

‘Yes?’

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