Until now.
‘How’re you doing, Steff?’ Ffion says. The man’s eyes are bloodshot, and, although he doesn’t seem drunk, he certainly isn’t sober.
‘Investigating Rhys Lloyd’s death, are you? No comment.’
‘We wanted your advice, actually.’ Flattery gets you everywhere. ‘No one knows the lake better than you.’
Steff stops work, but his fist is tight around the wrench.
‘The victim washed up by the jetty yesterday morning,’ Leo says. ‘We think he’d been in the water for less than ten hours. If he went in by The Shore, could—’
‘Victim? That man’s a victim of nothing!’
‘Could the water have carried him to the jetty?’
Steffan doesn’t answer.
‘This is a police enquiry, Mr Edwards,’ Leo says.
The boatman looks away, then shrugs. ‘There’s a current. Runs past The Shore. If he’d gone in from there, he’d have ended up down the bottom, not across by the jetty.’
Leo brings up a satellite view of Llyn Drych on his iPad, and takes a digital pen from his pocket. ‘Can you show me how the current flows? Where would the vict—’ He stops. ‘Where would the deceased have to have been, in order to end up here?’ He marks the jetty with a red cross, then hands Steffan the pen.
Steffan leans over the map, in a waft of stale booze and sweat, and draws a series of curved lines across the screen. ‘He’d have been higher up. Here. Or here.’
‘Can you point out the access points?’ Leo says. ‘Anywhere you can get a vehicle to?’
Steffan adds half a dozen crosses around the edges of the lake, pinching the image and moving it to find the coves he wants. He draws a huge cross in the middle of the lake. ‘More likely he went in here.’
‘From a boat?’ Leo says.
Ffion raises an eyebrow. Check out Einstein. ‘Got any out on hire?’ she asks Steff, but she knows the answer already. It’s winter: the boathouse is only open for repairs. If Rhys was killed on a boat, it didn’t come from here.
‘Is there any way of knowing which boats were on the lake on New Year’s Eve?’ Leo asks. Ffion wanders across the room, to where a workbench serves as a desk, and picks up a blue A4 book. Steffan either doesn’t see, or doesn’t care.
‘I’m not the keeper of the lake. There’s not many want to sail this time of year, but Llyn Drych doesn’t close. There are always a few boats out on a good day.’
Each entry in the blue book covers two pages: the date and name of the owner on the far left, followed by a summary of the problem, and Steffan’s solution. On the far right are columns for the cost of repairs, and the date of collection. Ffion flicks to the end of December. She sees a few names she recognises and several with addresses further afield, owners of boats moored locally. It’s a meticulous – if old-fashioned – record of work, but all it tells Ffion is what boats weren’t on the lake, not which were. She takes a photo of the two pages covering the period between Christmas and New Year, then replaces the book.
‘Thanks for your time.’
‘If I’d found him, I’d have pushed him back and let the fish have him.’ Steffan stumbles against the boat, the wrench falling on to the concrete with a clatter. ‘Rhys Lloyd’s no loss to Cwm Coed.’
‘Should he be working on boats, in that state?’ Leo says, as they leave. ‘Surely he’s breaking some sort of law?’
‘Probably.’
They take Leo’s car to The Shore. There’s a child’s car seat on the back seat, but none of the detritus Ffion expects from kids. When Seren had been little, Mam’s car was a repository for clothes, squashed raisins, broken breadsticks and toys. Leo keeps his car the way he keeps his flat: strictly functional.
‘Your son doesn’t live with you, then?’
‘I was looking into Lloyd’s career.’ Leo sidesteps the question. ‘He’s not done much recently, has he?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘He was massive ten, fifteen years ago, but then everything tailed off. He hadn’t had a West End role for five years. His website talks about “TV work” but all I can find is a couple of adverts.’
‘What’s your point?’
Leo shrugs. ‘Maybe he was depressed, or worried about money.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Maybe.’
Ffion pushes her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. Suicide would have been too good for Rhys Lloyd.