Page 70 of A Game of Lies

‘Miles told us you did hourly checks of the perimeter,’ Leo says.

Dario coughs. ‘I mean, apart from my checks, I haven’t moved from here.’

‘Would you have seen if any of the contestants had come in or out of camp?’ Leo asks.

Ffion hears the strange sound again. A tinny clink, like metal on metal. She walks towards the undergrowth.

‘The gate’s been locked all morning.’

‘What if they got under the fence, like Ryan did?’

‘I guess.’ Dario shrugs, but there’s a defensiveness to his expression. ‘I can’t be everywhere.’

Ffion has her eyes trained on the undergrowth. There’s definitely something in there. She catches a glimpse of blonde hair. Notsomething, she thinks –someone.She reaches into the bushes and grabs a handful of dungarees.

‘Ow, you’re hurting me!’ Zee’s bracelets jangle as she clutches her phone to her chest.

‘How long have you been there?’ Ffion demands.

‘Has someone really killed Miles? Do you know who it is?’ She lifts her phone. ‘Can I get an interview for my—’

‘No.’ Ffion claps a hand over the lens. ‘Put that away or I’ll find a reason to seize it.’ Ffion looks at Leo and sees that, like her, he’s assessing whether to include the YouTuber in their list of potential suspects. Like many of the others, she had opportunity, but did she have a motive?

‘Was it Roxy Wilde?’ Zee says. ‘She was absolutely raging over Miles the other day – I heard her slagging him off to the cameraman. Said he’d trashed her reputation.’ Zee’s eyes widen as a thought seizes her. ‘Or is it a contestant?’ She drops her voice and glances through the wire fence. ‘I was going to save this for Twitter, but now that there’s a police investigation I guess it’s my duty to tell you.’ She takes a loud and overly dramatic breath. ‘I saw Ceri talking to someone in the woods earlier today.’

‘Outside theExposurecamp?’ Ffion clarifies.

‘No, through the fence. I couldn’t see who she was talking to, but it was definitely a man.’ She places a hand on her heart. ‘Do you think it was Miles? Maybe they were having an affair!’

‘What time was this?’ Ffion says.

Zee screws up her nose. ‘Like … lunchtime? Some time between twelve and one?’

Not Miles, then, Ffion thinks. ‘What did he look like?’

‘It was an IC1 male.’ Zee stops, suddenly uncertain. ‘That’s white, isn’t it?’

‘You can just describe him normally.’

‘Oh, okay. Um, he was white. Quite old … like, thirties?’

‘Anything else?’

‘Sorry. I didn’t get a clear view of him.’ Zee switches her gaze towards Dario, who is walking into camp alongside Leo, to bring out theExposurecontestants. ‘I wouldn’t trust that Dario bloke,’ she says. ‘I’ve been timing his walks around the perimeter and some of them take way longer than others.’ She brightens. ‘Hey, would you like me on your incident room? I could do your social media updates.’

‘I’ll get back to you on that one,’ Ffion says.

The remaining three contestants are as incredulous as Dario was.

‘This is a joke, right?’ Lucas looks around for cameras. ‘Some kind of test, to see how we’ll react?’

‘Are you even real detectives?’ Henry says.

‘They’re real, alright.’ Ceri looks at Ffion. ‘Are you serious, mate?’

‘Deadly serious. Miles was killed at quarter to twelve this morning.’

‘Shit,’ Henry says.

---