Page 100 of A Game of Lies

‘Better not.’ Ffion looks down at Dave, from whose jaw dangles a thin but impressively long strand of drool.

Caleb is in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, a pillow crease bisecting one cheek. He yawns, treating Ffion to his molars. ‘Zee was looking for you.’

‘What did she want?’

‘She’s trying to find a good accountant, I think. I wasn’t really listening.’

‘What does she think I am, Google?’ Ffion shakes her head. ‘Look, I haven’t got time for this. Where did Miles keep his running kit?’

Caleb screws his eyes tight, opens them wide then blinks rapidly. He yawns again.

Ffion wants to shake him. ‘His running kit, Caleb. That yellow jacket he wore. His beanie.’

‘Um, in the studio.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. He slept in the house, but he was at the editing desk at, like, six each morning? And he literally didn’t come back in till after the show aired.’ Caleb’s expression hardens. ‘He just texted me when he wanted coffee, sandwiches, his arse wiping—’

‘What time did he run?’

‘Ten.’

‘Every morning?’ Ffion knows this from Miles’s smartwatch, but the pieces of the puzzle aren’t fitting together, and she can’t work out why.

‘Yeah. He’d shower when he got back. Sometimes he’d want a smoothie.’

Ten was when Ffion had seen Miles leave the studio and push the key under the mat. So … had the real Miles gone somewhere else, instead of for a run? Or had he still been in the studio and it was someone else she’d seen leaving? Was it some sort of a conspiracy gone wrong? None of it makes sense.

‘I need you to watch Dave,’ she says.

‘I’m allergic.’

‘Bullshit.’ Ffion presses the lead into his hand.

‘Seren wants to talk to you.’

‘I know. As soon as this case is over.’

‘It’s important. It’s about uni.’

Ffion locks eyes with Caleb. ‘She’s going to uni, mate. And if I find out you’ve persuaded her not to—’

‘I’d never do that!’

‘I’ve got to go.’ Ffion goes back to her car, ignoring Dave’s whimpering.

She leaves her car a hundred metres up the lane from Carreg Plas, and slopes around the outside of the building. She needs to see Miles’s studio, but Leo’s car is parked on the drive. If he and George are in the kitchen, Ffion can’t risk crossing the courtyard. Not when she’s been taken off the case.

Her plan was to come at the courtyard from the mountain side, but, as she runs lightly along the trees behind the stables, she sees that the window of number eight – Miles’s studio – is slightly ajar. If she climbs through the window, there’s even less chance of her being seen. She can lock the door and work undisturbed.

There’s movement inside stable number six – the room allocated to Ceri – and Ffion sprints past, then presses herself against the back of Miles’s studio until she’s certain she hasn’t been seen. She slips a hand through the window and pops the latch, opening it wide, then pulls herself on to the ledge and swings her legs inside.

Miles’s running shoes are still by the bed, but Ffion can’t see the distinctive yellow jacket worn by whoever it was she saw leaving the studio on Sunday morning, or the beanie and sunglasses Miles always ran in. She locks the door, then takes out the key and crouches down, checking part of her theory. The gap under the door is wide enough for the key to pass through easily. When Leo kicked the door in and Ffion saw the key on the floor, she assumed it had been knocked out of the lock, but that wasn’t the case. The door had been locked from theoutside. Whoever Ffion had seen presenting as Miles on Sunday morning hadn’t been putting the key under the mat for safekeeping, but pushing it under the door.

Ffion sits at the editing desk and turns on the computer. The files have been copied, but the original footage is still here. Something has been nagging her ever since she watched some of the raw film from the sixth day ofExposure. She’d dismissed it as irrelevant, but now everything has changed. If the person presenting as Miles was the murderer, was it possible Miles was already dead? The pathologist could only pinpoint the time of death to within a time frame of a couple of hours, and, since the murder was heard by police officers, that didn’t present a problem.

But what if Miles was already dead when the murderer put on the yellow jacket and fled the scene? If Ffion’s theory is correct, the alibi range they’ve been working with – of between 11.15 and 11.45 – is wrong. They’ll need to re-interview everyone who was in the courtyard or in the farmhouse. Jason, Pam, Aliyah, Roxy, Owen, Caleb. They’ll have to check where Ceri, Lucas and Henry were almost two hours earlier.

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