Page 63 of A Game of Lies

Ffion selects the top listing – made at 9.52 – and the screen fills with a close-up of a fire.

‘He had loads of those,’ Caleb says. ‘Owen told me. The fire, the hot tub bubbling, an axe chopping wood … They were all done before the contestants arrived, to speed up the compilation process. He used them as cutaways from the main action.’

Ffion frowns. ‘I’m finding it hard to believe Miles would have let Ryan in when we’d identified him as a potential risk. There are no indications a struggle took place, so what … the two of them watched the feed for a bit then Ryan strangled Miles? It doesn’t make sense.’

Just then, Ffion hears her name. George pulls open the entrance to the CSI tent, and Ffion sees Huw striding towards them. He’s brandishing a tablet encased in tough rubber, and it’s clear from his expression that he has news.

‘It worked,’ he says, as he reaches the tent.

‘What worked?’ Leo says.

Swiftly, Ffion fills in Leo and George on the GPS software used by search-and-rescue teams, and her long-shot plan to lure Ryan in. The rain drums insistently on the tent, and she has to raise her voice to be heard.

‘What did you replace the message with?’ Leo asks.

‘Hi, this is Jessica.’ Huw reads from the tablet.‘I’m using a pay as you go so they can’t trace our messages. I love you. Are you okay? Meet me here as quickly as you can. I promise everything will be okay.Then the link.’

‘And he clicked on it?’ George says. ‘What will he have seen?’

‘A standard search-and-rescue message telling him to stay where he is, we now have his location.’ Huw gives a rueful shrug. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t change that bit.’

‘Great,’ Leo says tersely. ‘So now it’s obvious to Ryan we know he has Angharad’s phone.’

‘Don’t have a go at him.’ Ffion looks at Leo and then Huw, their disgruntled expressions remarkably similar. ‘It was my idea.’

‘Diolch, Ffi,’ Huw mutters. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

‘This is arrest strategy stuff,’ Leo says. ‘You should have run it by the SIO, or at least spoken to me as the senior officer present.’

‘The plan worked, didn’t it?’ Ffion holds her hand out for Huw’s tablet. ‘Where is he?’

Huw points. ‘That red dot is where the phone was when he clicked the link a few minutes ago.’

The screen shows a satellite view of Pen y Ddraig. Ffion sees the farmhouse with its distinctive courtyard of parallel stables, and the clearing further up the mountain, where theExposurecamp is.

In the centre, equidistant between Carreg Plas and the camp, is a bright red dot.

TWENTY-FOUR

SUNDAY | LEO

‘George, you’re coming with me.’ The surge of adrenaline Leo now feels overshadows the resentment sparked in him by that conspiratorial look between Ffion and Huw. Ffion’s right, the plan worked – that’s all that matters. ‘Tell Control we need two uniformed officers with taser capability. There should be some already looking for Ryan.’

Ffion moves a hand to her waist to check for cuffs, an instinctive gesture Leo knows is redundant. Ffion hates wearing a stab vest, and always leaves her kit and radio in the boot of her car.

‘You’re staying here,’ he says, before she gets any ideas.

‘I’m bloody not. The GPS tracker was my idea.’

‘You’ve been in the scene. Stay put and carry on going through the tapes, see if anything happened that might be connected.’

Ffion falls silent. It doesn’t need further explanation. Even a watertight case can fall apart if the defence find a chink in the evidential chain, and cross-contamination is an all-too-easy win. When they swab Ryan’s hands for traces of Miles’s DNA, there must be no possibility that it was transferred by an officer.

Within minutes, two uniformed officers are crossing the courtyard, bright yellow tasers in holsters at their sides. Leo has taken a photo of the map on Huw’s tablet, and five of them – Leo, George, Huw and the uniformed crew – start walking. Leo pulls up the collar on his jacket and wishes he’d brought a raincoat. Twenty minutes has elapsed since Ryan’s location was confirmed, and Leo prays he hasn’t gone far.

He hasn’t moved a muscle.

Precisely where the red dot was flashing on Huw’s tablet, they find Ryan cowering in the undergrowth. His hair is dirty and matted, his face gaunt and stressed. He looks up as the four police officers approach, but his eyes are unfocused. He appears not to notice the rain, which lashes against his face. Clasped in two trembling hands is Angharad’s fishing knife.

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