Page 37 of A Game of Lies

‘Come on, then,’ she says. Zee has a flashback to being chivvied on to the hockey pitch on a freezing Monday morning. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got for me.’

Zee slows to a walk, transfixed by what she’s watching, holding her breath as Pam holds hers. Pam’s gripping the arms of the chair, knuckles white, chin raised, eyes wide in fear and determination. ‘Rats,’ she says to the camera. ‘You’re putting rats in, aren’t you?’

There’s a sudden noise – a mechanical whir – and Pam’s brow furrows as she listens. ‘I take it back,’ she says. ‘That doesn’t sound like a rat. So what is it, then, some kind of machine? A rack, to stretch me, maybe – I’ve always wanted to be a few inches taller, you know.’ Pam carries on talking, covering her nerves with nonsense, and Zee stares at the screen in horror, because she can see what Pam hasn’t yet realised.

The mechanical whir was a metal disk on the wall, spinning away from the hole it covered. Zee sees a flicker of movement, a hesitation of whiskers and then ahop!as a rat enters the confession pod. It sits up and looks around, and as though she can feel its presence Pam turns around. Her breathing quickens and she draws her feet closer to the chair.

‘One,’ she says. ‘I can handle one.’

Zee can hardly bear to watch, because it’s so obviously not going to be one rat, and even as she’s forming the thought there’s another twitch from the hole in the wall and then another and another, and now they pour from the pipe in a torrent of tails and feet and whiskers.

Pam’s scream echoes across the mountain a split second before it comes through Zee’s screen. Zee presses on. Any moment now, Pam’s going to crack, and Zee doesn’t want to miss a second of that walk of shame.

‘Two minutes and thirty seconds to go!’ Roxy’s clear voice cuts across the footage. ‘If you want this to stop, Pam, all you have to do is confess your secret.’

Pam’s crying now, her hands no longer gripping the chair but clawing at her body, pushing off the rats as they swarm up her legs. A huge brown one leaps from the wall on to Pam’s head and she screams again, and now Zee can’t watch because she’s clawing at her own head, certain she feels sharp feet in her hair.

‘I confess, I confess!’ Pam leaps out of the chair and steps towards the camera, her tear-stained face filling the screen. ‘I’ve been taking money from parents who want to get their kids into my school. Now let me out, please!’

Zee shoves her iPad in her bag and runs, adrenaline coursing through her veins. The rats are forgotten – a corrupt head teacher is social mediagold. And Pam looks so respectable!

‘Not so fast, young lady.’

Zee just manages to avoid colliding with fifteen stone of security guard.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Dario says.

‘To interview Pam Butler.’

‘Not without press accreditation you’re not.’

Zee flashes the same card she showed Caleb. Dario plucks it from her fingers. Slowly, keeping his dark eyes fixed on Zee, he pushes the card into his mouth. He works his jaws and Zee hears the saliva smacking against his lips.

‘You’re not right in the head,’ she says, uncomfortable under Dario’s stare.

His eyes still fixed on hers, he shoots the wet ball of card at her feet. ‘I’m giving you ten seconds to get back to your tent before I call Miles.’

Zee hesitates for a moment, before huffing her discontent and turning back towards the tent. She’sfairlycertain she can’t be arrested just for standing here, but she wouldn’t put anything past Miles, and who knows what Dario’s capable of? Okay, so Zee would prefer to be closer to the action, but being moved on by the cops would ruin everything. She’s styled herself as anExposureexpert with exclusive access.

Zee stops dead.

AnExposureexpert …

Excitement fizzes inside her. Miles and Dario aren’t going to let her anywhere near the farmhouse, which means the chances of another ‘official’ interview are slim. But what if she tried a different tack? She feels in her pocket for the business card theSunreporter gave her this morning.

Miles is trying to expose the contestants.

Maybe it’s time someone exposed Miles.

THIRTEEN

FRIDAY | FFION

Down by the lake, Ffion and Dave are sheltered from the wind that whips around the farmhouse, further up the mountain. The morning is warm and hazy, the sun casting sparkles across the surface of the water. Boats tack lazily from one shore to the other. In the shallows drifts a flat-bottomed boat, fishing rods resting on stands while the fisherman reclines, only his hat visible above the boat’s hull.

The scene would be idyllic, were it not for the police divers.

The lake can be as stubborn as the sea for keeping hold of its treasures. It lodges them under rocks, or within the wrecked carcasses of abandoned rowing boats. It spins them over and over, breaks them into pieces. It washes them up into inlets and crevices, on to coves too small and uninviting for boats or walkers. Lost shoes, dropped oars, shopping trolleys nicked on a whim and shoved in the lake. Bodies.

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