Page 92 of A Game of Lies

‘We’re just trying to build a picture of exactly what happened that day, that’s all.’

‘He was desperate to take over as producer, you know,’ Roxy is saying.

Leo has tuned out. He’s looking further down the landing, through the open door into the room Miles slept in. ‘Owen wasn’t in his bedroom,’ Leo says. He walks towards the open door. George follows him.

‘I’m telling you,’ Roxy said, a note of frustration in her voice. ‘I saw him at the top of the stairs.’

In Miles’s bedroom, Leo takes in the window overlooking the courtyard, and the chest of drawers where the petty cash tin was kept.

‘Oh, of course!’ George says. ‘He was in here.’

THIRTY-FOUR

LUCAS | DAY FIVE OFEXPOSURE

The Reverend Lucas Taylor has been talking to God a lot. This isn’t unusual – it does rather come with the job – but if praying had league tables, the last few days would have put Lucas in the premiership.

Is he technically having an affair? This is what Lucas has been asking himself (not God – you can’t ask the Almighty questions like that). Lucas is a single man, and the Church doesn’t require him to remain so, so really, Lucas hasn’t been having an affair, has he?

But he has been having sex. And Helena Barnsby, the woman to whom Lucas has been making love in the vestry every Wednesday evening, is already married. To Lucas’s organist.

‘Shall we see who plays the organ best?’ Helena said, as she got on her knees and lifted Lucas’s surplice. Lucas groans at the memory (and not in the way he did at the time). Of course it’s an affair. God doesn’t deal in semantics. The question is, what will He do about it? And what will the Bishop say?

Lucas rifles through his rucksack. Someone has taken his socks. Normally, Lucas would send up a prayer for whichever poor unfortunate found themselves in need of socks, but these are not normal times and his five fellow contestants are no less fortunate than he is. Right now, if Lucas were to find the person who stole his socks, he would rip them off their feet and shove them up their—

Lucas breathes out. It’s frightening how quickly the old ways have come back to him. Unusually for a vicar, Lucas found God in prison. Or rather, God found him, leaning over a fellow inmate, about to slam a fist into his face. Then Lucas felt it, clear as anything: a hand closing around his, holding it back. When Lucas turned around, there was no one there, but Lucas had an overwhelming sense that he wasn’t alone. That Sunday, he went to chapel and prayed for the first time since primary school.

It would be a relief, Lucas thinks now, if his criminal past were the ‘secret’ Miles Young planned to expose. But Lucas has been upfront from the start. In his audition tape, he’d outlined the rocky start he’d had in life and the events which had resulted in a custodial sentence. He’d made it clear he didn’t consider it a secret – in fact, Lucas often speaks of prison in his sermons, he told Miles, to show his parishioners no one is beyond redemption.

The Church holds strong views on sin, and Lucas has been part of it long enough to understand there is a right kind of sin and a wrong kind. The right sort is stealing cars, going to prison then repenting, finding God, doing a theology degree then serving as curate in the parish of Lower Deansford. The wrong sort is bending Mrs Barnsby over the harvest festival display.

‘There’s quite a few celebrity vicars, aren’t there?’ Henry is saying.

Lucas hasn’t been listening. ‘Yes, it’s quite the trend,’ he says vaguely. Where are his bloody socks?

‘Is that what you’re after, then? A programme on Radio 4? A chat show?’

‘Definitely not.’ Lucas has no aspirations to fame. By applying forExposure, he hoped only to show that the clergy were no different from the people in their congregations.

‘I saw one on the cover of a magazine, the other day,’ Henry says. ‘Dog collar and all.’

‘Magazine interviews, TV adverts, a book deal for a cosy crime series. And a podcast, of course.’ Lucas sighs. ‘I find it a little tasteless, to be honest. A vicar’s job is to serve God and their parish, not to be a celebrity pin-up.’ He clenches his teeth in frustration. ‘Someone’s taken my bloody socks!’

‘You just want a quiet life, then?’

‘That would be nice,’ Lucas says wistfully. ‘Have you seen my socks? They’re hot pink and they have a small hole on one heel.’

‘Sorry, mate.’

‘Are you sure? I left them on my bunk.’

‘I’m not sure I like your tone.’ Henry stands then, and before Lucas knows what he’s doing he’s standing too, squaring up to Henry.

‘Well, I don’t like people who take my socks,’ he says with icy calm, ‘so you’d better—’

‘Are you threatening me?’ Henry glares at Lucas, but a second later his eyes crease into laughter. He claps Lucas on the back. ‘Chill! I haven’t got your socks, mate. Here, I’ll help you look for them.’

That evening, Lucas sees a glint in Roxy Wilde’s eyes. He knows even before she says it that he’s been sentenced to the confession pod. All his life, Lucas has hated snakes, and as he leaves behind the supportive cheers of his campmates (he isn’t fooled: their enthusiastic support is entirely down to relief at not being in the firing line themselves) he steels himself. He will not give up his secret.

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