Page 91 of A Game of Lies

‘Yes,’ George says.

‘Thought so.’ Izzy looks pleased with herself. ‘Ligature furrow crosses the anterior midline below the laryngeal prominence, level with the cricoid cartilage.’

Leo tunes out, as he might if he were sitting in a café abroad, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language. He didn’t see Ffion again yesterday after he’d left her on the hillside. He’d heard the Triumph backfire, and the angry spray of gravel as she spun out of the drive, and he’d responded to George’s quizzical look with what he hoped was an equally curious shrug. ‘I’m going to Bryndare,’ he’d told her. ‘I need to have a conversation with the DCI.’

‘I thought you wanted to talk to Owen?’

‘Put him on ice,’ Leo had said tightly. ‘New information has come to light.’

Two hours later, Izzy snaps off her gloves. ‘In the least unsurprising update of all time, I can confirm your man was strangled.’

‘With?’ George says.

‘A flat close-fibre cord. My best guess would be a shoelace, or something resembling a shoelace. No fibres, but we should be able to pattern-match it if you come up with the cord.’ She picks up a ring from a dish next to the sink and slips it on to the fourth finger of her left hand, briefly admiring the square-cut diamond.

‘Might he have injured his attacker in any way?’ Leo says. Miles’s nails have been scraped and carefully clipped into labelled bags.

‘There was tissue under two of the nails on his right hand,’ Izzy concedes. ‘But if you look here …’ She indicates two crescent-shaped wounds above the ligature mark, then brings her own hands up to her neck, tugging at an invisible cord. ‘I think we’ll find that’s his own skin. I suspect it happened so fast he didn’t have time to react.’

She gives them an overview of her findings from the internal examination, pointing out the disrupted blood vessels in the brain cortex consistent with strangulation. ‘No indicators for drug use, although we’ll send samples for toxicology, of course.’ Izzy looks at Miles, whose organs – carefully weighed and photographed – are now on a trolley beside him. ‘Do you have a suspect?’

‘Two,’ Leo says. ‘One’s under the care of a mental health team at the moment – we’ve not been able to question him yet. The other’s in the traps as we speak.’

Boccacci had asked Alun Whitaker to interview Dario. ‘Best to keep this one in-house,’ she said to Leo, disguising the slight behind a smooth smile. ‘Let me know how the post-mortem goes tomorrow.’ The subtext was clear: Leo was benched.

‘Are the suspects left- or right-handed?’ Izzy says.

‘Not a clue,’ Leo says. He’ll have to ring Boccacci again, he thinks, feeling a little sick at the prospect. Whitaker will be interviewing Dario now, first about the damage to the cameras, then about the murder. The security guard might even roll over. By the time Leo and George are done here, Whitaker could be charging him and taking all the glory.

‘Dario’s left-handed,’ George says. ‘He smudged the signature on his witness statement. I only noticed because I do the same.’ She waves her hand in the air. ‘Leftie.’

‘Then he’s not your murderer,’ Izzy says. ‘The abrasions from the ligature are deeper on the right side, the angle more intense.’ She mimes a strangling action, her victim’s neck level just above her waist. Leo pictures Miles at his editing desk. He’d been comfortable with his visitor. Relaxed enough to carry on working, perhaps with his guest looking over his shoulder. ‘Your dominant hand naturally pulls harder.’ Izzy tugs again.

Leo pictures the sudden panic on Miles’s face as he felt a tightening against his windpipe; the shoelace whipped around his neck too fast to get his fingers beneath it, clawing as it dug into his skin, fighting for breath …

Izzy has finished her mime, but, rather than let her imaginary shoelace drop, she rolls it up and places it on the stainless-steel gurney beside her. Leo and George exchange glances. Forensic pathologists, thinks Leo – not for the first time – are not entirely normal.

In the car on the way back to Carreg Plas, George calls Jessica. Leo listens as she asks after Ryan, fighting the urge to turn to her and mouthGet to the point!Eventually, she does.

‘Bit of an odd question, I know, but is Ryan right- or left-handed?’ There’s a pause. ‘Thanks. No, it’s not important. Okay, take care of yourself, alright? Bye.’

‘He’s left-handed, isn’t he?’ Leo says, once George has ended the call.

‘Yes. He can’t have strangled Miles.’ She glances at him. ‘I’m glad, aren’t you?’

‘That it wasn’t Ryan?’ Leo thinks. ‘I guess. But who the hell was it? It can’t have been Ryan or Dario because they’re left-handed. Lucas and Henry were on the live cameras at the time of the murder. Pam and Jason have been alibied, as have Caleb and Jessica, and Aliyah just wouldn’t have been strong enough …’ Leo rattles off the names, feeling increasing despair as each possibility evaporates. ‘Where do we go from here?’

‘We speak to Owen,’ George says. ‘Roxy said she realised something was going on when she heard Owen’s bedroom door bang, but maybe she was mistaken. He could have murdered Miles, climbed out of the window then run around to the front of the farmhouse. Maybe it wasn’t a bedroom door Roxy heard, but thefrontdoor.’

‘But the front door doesn’t open,’ Roxy says, when they put the theory to her. ‘That’s why we all come in through the kitchen.’ The three of them are upstairs at Carreg Plas, clustered on the landing by the door to Roxy’s room.

‘Could it have been the kitchen door?’ Leo tries, but it feels like a stretch.

Roxy shakes her head. ‘It was definitely up here – that’s why I heard it over the music. And when I opened my door I saw Owen haring down the stairs like something was on fire. I was literally seconds behind him.’

‘Thanks.’ Leo turns. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’ As he walks away, he hears Roxy drop her voice, whispering to George.

‘Does he think Owen killed Miles?’

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