Page 98 of A Game of Lies

‘When was the last time you went into Miles’s room?’ George said.

‘No idea … Saturday? Friday, maybe? A couple of days before he died, definitely.’

‘Not the day of the murder, then?’ Leo said.

‘No.’ Owen didn’t blink.

‘The thing is,’ Leo said, ‘to my mind, there are only two ways you could have seen or heard something going on in the courtyard. One …’ he counted them off on his fingers, ‘you were in Miles’s bedroom. Or two, you were in the courtyard itself. Either way, you’ve lied to us, which makes me think you had something to do with Miles’s death. So I guess what I’m saying is, did you murder Miles, or did you steal a hundred quid from the petty cash.’ Leo leant forward. ‘Because, in case you haven’t worked this out, one of those things is more serious than the other.’

There was a long pause.

‘I took the money,’ Owen said eventually.

There is some irony, Leo thinks now, as he fills out the paperwork for Owen’s charge file, in Owen’s cementing his own alibi by confessing to a different crime.

Leo has never known a case where so many potential suspects have so many alibis. He is beginning to feel they will never identify who killed Miles; that he will be stuck in this loop of suspects and alibis forever.

Jason Shenton continued to grumble about the money it would cost for his solicitor to support his alibi, until Leo pointed out that if Jason were to be nicked for obstruction he’d be engaging a criminal lawyer as well as a family one. The recording of Jason’s video meeting arrived within the hour.

She can’t refuse to let me see them, can she?Jason asks, on the left-hand side of the screen. On the opposite side, a man in a navy suit is making notes.

‘There’s no time stamp on it,’ George says.

‘I don’t think we need one.’ Leo turns up the volume. There’s some sort of commotion happening in the background. Jason looks to the side, away from the camera, then frowns. There’s a faint but unmistakableStand back!then a crashing sound.

‘I’m kicking the door in,’ Leo says, half to himself.

Something’s going on outside, Jason says on the video.Can I call you back?

I’ll have my secretary book in a time. I’m afraid I will have to charge you for the full—

The screen goes black. Leo looks at George. ‘That’s that, then. Another one who couldn’t have done it. We’re going to have to cast the net wider.’ He closes the recording and brings up the spreadsheet he’s already spent hours poring over. It includes the names of every person who applied to be onExposure– all forty-five thousand of them. The analyst has added categories so Leo can group them geographically, by gender or date of birth, or separate out those who made it through each round of shortlisting. Even with the filters, the list is still overwhelming. Leo would like to know which of these applicants has a criminal record, but the man hours (personhours, Leo silently corrects himself) required to check each name against the Police National Computer make it an impossible task. Instead, the analysts have cross-referenced the list against the individuals identified as having made threats against Miles and his crew. There’s no match. No disgruntled applicant with an axe to grind.

‘Or a shoelace,’ Leo says, out loud.

‘Hmm?’ George looks up. They’re in the farmhouse kitchen – now their satellite incident room – which is distinctly less tidy, Leo notes, than when the production team were in charge. At the front of Carreg Plas, additional resources have been brought in to deal with the constant flow of ‘murder tourists’ who drive up the narrow road – made tighter still by the row of media vans still camped by the gate – to gawp at what they imagine lies behind the fluttering blue and white tape. Earlier, Leo had had to intercept Zee Hart giving what she’d introduced as an ‘official statement’ to a reporter from theEvening Standard.

‘But I’ve got breaking news,’ she’d declared, as Leo marched her off the grounds. ‘I can rule out Ceri Jones as a murder suspect.’

Leo had stared at her. ‘That’s not breaking news, that’s evidence, and evidence goes to the police, not the media.’

‘Iamthe media,’ Zee said petulantly.

‘Whatever you know, you need to share it with me,’ Leo said. ‘Now.’

Zee had waited a moment, before reluctantly producing a memory card from her pocket. ‘At the time of the murder,’ she said, ‘Ceri was still in camp.’ She’d opened the photo storage on her phone, scrolled to a video and pressedplay. The picture was grainy – clearly zoomed in from a distance – but Leo could make out Ceri, sitting on a fallen log inside theExposureenclosure, around twenty metres from the fence.

‘She was crying,’ Zee said. ‘Mind you, that wasn’t unusual. A few of them came out to the edge of the enclosure to have a good bawl.’

‘Did you talk to them?’ Leo said.

‘Sometimes. That’s not a crime, is it?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware. What did you talk about?’

‘What it was like in there, mostly. You know, for my content. And …’ Zee gave a sly grin ‘… I played a few games.’

‘Like what?’ Leo was checking the date and time on the video. Everything checked out.

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