Page 83 of A Game of Lies

‘She reckons ten minutes or so before the murder. He wouldn’t have had time to get down the mountain.’

Leo nods slowly, mentally placing everyone at the scene like chess pieces on a board. Roxy Wilde and Owen Havard were in the farmhouse; Caleb Northcote and Jessica Francis were up the mountain. Henry Moore was in the confession pod and Lucas Taylor was tending the fire – both recorded on the live camera feed. ‘That still leaves Pam Butler, Jason Shenton, Aliyah Brown, Ryan Francis, Ceri Jones, Dario Kimber and Zee Hart without confirmed alibis,’ he says.

‘We can rule out Pam,’ George says. ‘The chair of the Board of Governors called back first thing this morning. He rang Pam from his mobile and he’s sent me a screenshot of the log – the call ran from 11.25 till 11.47.’

Leo looks at his list and draws a thick black line through Pam’s name. ‘How about Jason?’

‘His solicitor’s being a jobsworth.’ George rolls her eyes. ‘He’s demanding a data protection waiver before he even speaks to us, and banging on about legal privilege.’

‘Can’t Jason just give him permission to speak to us?’ Leo says.

‘He can, but he says the solicitor charges him a hundred quid every time he answers a call or an email, and he wants us to pay for it.’

‘Is he on another planet?’ Leo laughs. ‘I had a stationery order knocked back last week because I’d requested one pen more than the number of people in the office. Keep working on him.’

‘Is he broke?’ George says suddenly.

Leo shrugs. ‘He’s getting a ten-grand participation fee, so—’

‘But the contestants haven’t received that yet, right? So he’s broke, he’s got an expensive solicitor to pay for, and he knew there was a tin of money sitting around in the farmhouse …’ She leaves the suggestion hanging.

Leo thinks out loud. ‘He could have slipped in here when everyone’s attention was on Miles’s studio.’

She shakes her head. ‘I remember seeing him. I’d have noticed if he’d disappeared.’

Leo taps the lid of his pen against his teeth. The petty cash tin has been submitted for forensics, but CSI are – quite rightly – prioritising the samples they obtained from the murder scene. It could be another couple of days before they get a comparison with the elimination prints. He moves on, turning to the next item on his mental list. ‘What have the analysts turned up from the death threats made online?’

‘A lot of hot air, plus a couple of more worrying tweets that DCI Boccacci’s team are looking into,’ George says. ‘She’s particularly keen to establish if they came from people who applied for the TV show but didn’t get picked.’

‘I get that they might have been pissed off at the time, but not once they realised whatExposurewas all about, surely?’ In Leo’s inbox is a spreadsheet containing all applicants’ details, filtered by the analysts to highlight those with criminal records or warnings for violence. ‘I imagine the rejected applicants are overwhelmingly relieved not to have been chosen,’ he says. ‘I know I would be.’

The back door opens and Ffion heads straight for the coffee machine. There haven’t been any deliveries of pastries or trays of sandwiches since Miles died, and Leo supposes someone in the Cheshire office cancelled them. Detectives from Leo’s own team have interviewed the handful of staff who work there. They reported that Miles was generally liked, but that staff felt his projects had progressed from edgy to unpalatable. Everyone agreedExposurecrossed a line, but no one had walked out. No one had challenged Miles. No one wanted to lose their job in a recession.

‘No dog today?’ Leo keeps one eye on the door, half expecting a cannonball of wet fur to fly through it.

‘Huw’s looking after him.’ Ffion’s voice sounds strange and Leo wonders if that means they’re back together. He immediately reminds himself he doesn’t care.

‘That’s good of him.’

‘He owes me a favour,’ she says shortly. She turns around, coffee in hand and all business. ‘Dario Kimber’s looking good for the smashed cameras.’ She fills Leo and George in on intelligence she gleaned from Zee Hart yesterday.

‘Should we arrest him for murder, too?’ George says. ‘If he smashed the cameras, he must have been after the box of secrets. When he couldn’t get it open, getting the key from Miles would be the logical next step. Maybe he thought Miles wouldn’t be there, they had a confrontation and things got out of hand.’

‘We saw him,’ Ffion says suddenly. She looks at George. ‘When was it? Wednesday? The day Jessica Francis showed up. Miles was in the kitchen with us, and Dario let himself into Miles’s studio. Miles was raging.’

‘You think he was looking for the key?’ Leo says.

‘And yesterday, when we were by the entrance to the camp.’ Ffion looks at Leo. ‘Dario said Miles had gone for his run at thesame time as always. As though he’d been watching Miles and knew his movements.’

‘Okay.’ Leo nods. ‘Let me run it by the DCI. Did you get the box open?’

Ffion dumps her rucksack on the kitchen table and takes out a plastic exhibit bag holding the metal box from camp. The hinges have been forced open.

‘Have you looked inside?’ Leo says.

‘I thought you’d want to do that.’ Ffion tips the rest of her coffee into the sink and runs the tap.

George pulls on latex gloves and removes the box from the bag, laying it carefully on a sheet of paper before taking off the broken lid. She lifts out the pile of envelopes inside, each marked with a contestant’s name. Four of them are open. The envelopes each contain a printed card.

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