‘Absolutely fine,’ Jonty says.
‘Oh, darling, he wasn’t! He was behaving most oddly.’
‘In what way?’ Leo asks. Ffion’s pulse thrums.
‘Well, he was having a stupid argument with Yasmin, for one thing,’ Blythe says.
Jonty sighs. ‘He was drunk. From the get-go. And considering the whole point of the party was to chat up the locals—’
‘It was not!’ Blythe pouts. Ffion half expects her to stamp her foot. ‘The party was for us; for The Shore owners to have a good time. Only Jonty and Rhys tried to turn it into an olive branch.’
‘I don’t follow,’ Leo says.
‘Let’s just say the natives haven’t warmed to us.’ Jonty gives a lopsided grin. Ffion’s fingernails press into her palms. ‘We thought a few bottles of bubbly and a snoop at how the other half live might do the trick.’
‘And it did!’ Blythe claps her hands. ‘Everyone got on famously. They’ll be talking about it for months,’ she adds guilelessly. Even Jonty has the grace to wince.
‘When did you last see Rhys Lloyd alive?’ Ffion says bluntly.
‘He was here at midnight,’ Jonty says. ‘Wasn’t he?’
Blythe raises her palms skywards. ‘I think so, but it was all a bit crazy.’
‘Come to think of it,’ Jonty says, ‘I don’t know when I last saw the chap. People were coming and going all the time – you know what it’s like. Champagne flowing . . . just your average party.’
‘“Just your average party”，’ Leo says, when he and Ffion are back outside. ‘Just a dead body and thirty-odd potential witnesses, all drunk.’
‘Forensics’ll be a nightmare.’
‘Pinning down the guest list will be a nightmare. They basically don’t have a clue who was there, and it’s not as though they all came up the drive – at least half of them walked through the woods.’ Leo’s phone rings and he glances at the screen. ‘It’s the boss.’
Ffion stares at the lake. Several guests had come by boat, Jonty told them. At one stage there’d been a line of motorboats, making a bridge from one pontoon to the next.
‘Yes, sir,’ Leo says. ‘I’ll tell her, sir.’ He covers the end of his phone. ‘The DI wants you at the five p.m. briefing.’
‘Why?’
Leo’s mouth works silently for a moment, before he addresses his boss. ‘Um, in terms of added value, sir, what are you hoping she’ll bring to the . . . er . . . table?’ Ffion raises an eyebrow. ‘Right. Yup. I’ll tell her. Thanks, sir.’ He ends the call. ‘He says—’ He catches himself. ‘Actually, never mind what he said. You have to be there.’
‘No, I don’t.’ Ffion rolls a cigarette. ‘Your DI, your briefing. I’ll see you at the PM.’
Leo stares at her. ‘You’re something else, you know?’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘It wasn’t meant as one.’
Ffion follows the shoreline back towards the village. She can just about keep her shit together when only Leo’s involved. But a DI and a packed incident room? She simply can’t risk it.
NINE
JANUARY 3RD | LEO
Once Yasmin Lloyd had formally identified her husband’s body yesterday afternoon, and the newly appointed Family Liaison Officer had driven her home, Leo had reported to Crouch, as per his instructions. He was there for under five minutes before Crouch dismissed him. Come back when you’ve got something useful to share.
Ffion had made the right call. Leo thinks enviously of the freedom she seems to have. On paper their jobs are practically the same, but in practice they couldn’t be more different. Ffion appears to work her patch entirely unsupervised, while Leo reports for duty at the start and end of every day, as though he’s a schoolkid, not a murder detective.
Yesterday, after the briefing, he had felt suddenly emboldened. ‘The post-mortem’s at midday tomorrow,’ he told Crouch. ‘Is it okay if I work from home in the morning?’
‘They did a survey about people who work from home,’ Crouch said. ‘Thirty-nine per cent said they masturbate during the working day.’
Leo bitterly regretted asking.
‘Work from home? More like wank from home.’ Crouch guffawed with such ferocity that he went puce.
Not for the first time, Leo considered how much easier it would be to deal with Crouch if Leo were a woman. A female officer making a complaint about inappropriate language from a male boss would surely be robustly dealt with, in the current age. Did the fact that Leo was a man make this sort of thing okay? Allie frequently accused him of being a snowflake.