Page 103 of A Game of Lies

‘Fifty.’

‘Seventy.’

‘Sixty,’ Miles said. ‘Final offer.’

They shook on it.

Henry should have known not to trust him.

At the end of the third day of filming, after Henry had, as arranged, accused Jason of bigamy, Henry flicked through the envelopes in the box of secrets, drawing out the final few seconds before handing Jason’s envelope to Roxy.

And then he saw it.

His own name.

He wanted to believe it was empty, a prop included to avoid suspicion, but through the envelope Henry could see the faint outline of printed letters. He battled to keep his composure, knowing the cameras were on him.

‘Jason is a bigamist,’ Roxy read.

Henry’s mind was turning somersaults. What was in that envelope?

On Sunday morning, Henry wriggled through the hole under the fence Ryan had made, which Dario had made a pathetic attempt to fill in. He jogged down towards Carreg Plas. He had laid his trail carefully, burying the key phrases he would need in nonsense about tea-towels, lost socks and spiders. He smiled at the thought of Miles listening to what would become his own murder soundtrack.

He crouched beneath the window to Miles’s studio and removed a shoelace from his trainer, before slipping Lucas’s stolen socks on to his hands to act as gloves, then knocking on the window. Inside, Miles looked round. Confusion turned quickly to alarm, and he practically leapt across the room to open the window.

‘What are you doing? You’ll be seen.’

‘I was careful.’ Henry climbed inside. ‘The others will think I’m collecting firewood. How’s it all going?’

‘Good.’ Miles looked a little wary – perhaps expecting Henry to have a go at him about the envelope – but, as Henry enthused about how ground-breakingExposurewas, Miles relaxed.

‘Come and see what we’re going to lead with tonight.’ He returned to the desk and pulled up a clip so Henry could look over his shoulder.

Henry wrapped the shoelace around both hands.

He took no pleasure in killing Miles. It was a necessary evil – self-defence, if you will – and then, with no time to lose, he set about building his alibi. He searched for his carefully performed voice clips and edited them together, before raising the pitch a notch, to match Miles’s voice, which was reedier than Henry’s. Miles had shown him how he liked to do this when women were arguing on screen, presenting them as hysterical and unreasonable. Ahead of the voice clip, Henry added an hour of silence followed by thirty minutes of general clips at a lower sound level – sufficient time so that by the time the ‘murder’ played, Henry would be installed in the confession pod.

He had worried the key might be hidden – that he would spend precious minutes searching for it. The longer the gap between Miles’s real murder and the staged one, the more likely it would be that a pathologist would query the time of death. But the key to the box of secrets was in Miles’s pocket, and was swiftly transferred to Henry’s.

Henry loaded the video clip on to the secondary system and pressedplay. He re-laced his trainer, then pulled on Miles’s fluorescent running jacket along with his beanie and sunglasses. Lucas’s socks were tucked away in his pocket now, and Henry covered his hand with his sleeve to open the door, his heart beating furiously as he turned to lock it behind him.

As he was pushing the key under the door, a woman called Miles’s name, and Henry felt a dart of fear. He didn’t look to see who it was, but sprinted out of the courtyard and on to the mountain.

The next few minutes were agony. Was the woman suspicious? Did she knock on Miles’s door? Henry imagined the alarm being raised, police swarming over the mountain. And where would Henry be? Alone on the hills, wearing Miles’s clothes, with no alibi.

But as Henry grew closer to theExposureenclosure, he heard no sirens. He took off Miles’s jacket and pushed it deep into a rabbit hole with the glasses, socks and hat. He squeezed back under the fence and patted down the earth to replicate the pathetic repair job Dario had done.

‘What have you been up to?’ Lucas said, when Henry mooched into camp.

‘Having a kip.’ Henry glanced at the cameras. ‘I can’t sleep properly in the tent, can you? Knowing we’re on TV, imagining what the voiceover guy’s saying about us.’

Lucas gave a hollow laugh. ‘I’ve slept in worse places.’

‘I went for a wander and sat back against that big oak – you know the one – and promptly nodded off. Must have been even more knackered than I thought. Do you fancy a coffee?’ Henry walked towards the fire, in case his racing pulse was somehow visible. He threw on a handful of kindling, hesitated, then gathered the remaining pile of sticks and added them all to the flames.

‘Tea for me, if you’re making!’ Ceri emerged from the women’s sleeping tent.

‘You’ve got the hearing of a bat,’ Henry said.

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