Page 94 of A Game of Lies

‘This is your last chance, Ffion. Work out where your loyalties lie.’

Ffion goes to Mam’s house. Elen Morgan is unpacking a food shop, and without saying anything Ffion picks up a bag and starts putting things away. Dave helps by tearing open a multipack of crisps.

‘Bloody hell, Dave.’ Ffion snatches it away from him. ‘I can’t take you anywhere.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Mam looks at her daughter with sharp eyes.

‘They’re spicy beef flavour. He’ll be farting like a racehorse.’

‘I meant with you.’

‘I know what you meant.’ Ffion puts a packet of spaghetti in the larder cupboard.

‘You don’t want to talk about it, then?’

‘You’ve got four types of pasta here, Mam. Are you setting up an Italian restaurant?’

‘I’ll take that as a no.’

‘Can I work here for a bit?’

‘What’s wrong with your place?’

‘Nothing.’ For once, Ffion wants company. She wants to be annoyed by Mam’s incessant gossip and interrupted by requests to hold a tape measure or go up in the loft. Anything to stop her dwelling on the fact that she’s essentially been placed on gardening leave, when they’re within a breath of solving the most high-profile murder North Wales Police has ever had.

Ffion’s phone rings.

‘Is that DC Morgan?’ It’s an analyst from Bryndare police station.

‘Speaking.’

‘I’ve got your name on the exhibits seized from the Miles Young murder. We’re still working on retrieving the data from Young’s phone, but I’ve got the results from his watch, if you want them?’

Ffion should say she’s not working the case any more – tell the analyst to call Leo or DCI Boccacci – but it’ll be all around the station if she does, so she simply says, ‘Shoot.’ She’ll email George with anything useful.

‘It’s a fairly cheap watch. No texts or emails. It looks as though he mostly used it as a PB tracker. He was obviously a keen runner.’

‘He went every day,’ Ffion says.

‘Except Sunday.’

Ffion frowns. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I was just saying, he didn’t run on the day he died. The watch logs duration and distance, and his history shows that he ran for approximately the same amount of time every morning, but he didn’t go on Sunday. Day of rest, I suppose.’ The analyst laughs.

‘No, that’s not right,’ Ffion says. ‘He definitely went for a run.’

For a second she doubts herself, and she pulls up the memory for scrutiny. She remembers Miles stooping to put the key under the mat; remembers him deliberately ignoring her shouting across the courtyard and sprinting up the mountain away from her.

‘Maybe he just forgot to track it,’ she says, but it doesn’t fit with what she already knows. Miles was obsessive. A creature of habit.

‘Are you going to put that away? Mam says, once Ffion’s off the phone, and she realises she’s cradling a jar of honey as though it’s a baby. She puts it in the cupboard, still distracted by the analyst’s call. Milesdidgo for a run on Sunday morning. Shesawhim.

Her eyes widen as something suddenly hits her.

She saw a runner.

But was the runner Miles?

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