‘You know what they say.’ Jonty nudges him. ‘If there’s grass on the wicket, time to play cricket.’ He opens his mouth, a guffaw at the ready, but Rhys looks so revolted it takes the wind out of Jonty’s sails. ‘Joke!’ he says, both palms out, in self-defence. This is what happens when people get drunk – they lose their sense of proportion. It was just a bloody joke.
Rhys looks as though he’s about to say something else, and Jonty is relieved to be interrupted by Tabby and Felicia, the former thrusting a sandwich at Rhys. ‘Mum says you have to eat this.’
‘Not hungry.’
‘She says we’re not to leave you alone till you’ve eaten it.’ Tabby rolls her eyes dramatically.
‘Might be a good idea to get something down you, old man,’ Jonty says. ‘Line the stomach, and all that.’
‘Can you just eat it, please, Dad? Like, we’ve got better things to do with our time than pass messages from Mum.’
‘Eat,’ Felicia says, sharper than her sister. ‘You’re lucky she still cares enough about you to make you something. You’re lucky we care enough.’ She gives her father a loaded look, then flounces off, Felicia close behind.
‘Fallen out with the famalam, have you, old man?’ Jonty claps a hand on Rhys’s shoulder, then swiftly removes it when the other man glares at him. Rhys mumbles something unintelligible through his sandwich. Jonty makes out . . . all your fault. His cocaine-fuelled good mood is being severely tested. ‘Now, come on, I hardly think—’
‘。 . . should never have helped you out,’ Rhys mumbles.
Jonty has had enough. How dare Rhys try to take the moral high ground, after everything he’s done?
‘Look here, that’s simply not fair. Yasmin would never have found out, if you hadn’t told her. And, frankly, she’s not the only one pissed off with you – I’m pretty fucked off with you myself, truth be known.’
Rhys is staring at Jonty, but his eyes are wild, unfocused. Jonty can’t even be sure Rhys can see him, hear him, even. The man is utterly wasted. He won’t remember any of this in the morning, and Jonty can’t resist the opportunity to twist the knife.
‘I’m not going to bail you out, you know. I had to fend off that chap you owe, earlier, and if you think I’m going to do it again, you can think again.’ Jonty leans closer, hissing in Rhys’s ear. ‘If I were you, I’d be checking over my shoulder.’
ELEVEN
JANUARY 3RD | LEO
‘Your boss is a dick.’ Ffion sits on Leo’s desk, the heel of one boot resting on the handle of the bottom drawer. A crescent of dried mud has fallen on the floor, and Leo itches to pick it up. ‘I wouldn’t put up with it.’
Crouch had greeted them with a loud aside to Ffion to tell her to let me know if he doesn’t pull his weight – he’s a lazy fucker.
Leo doesn’t want to put up with it. He even started writing an email to HR once, but when he’d looked at the list of Crouch’s petty taunts it had seemed so pathetic that he’d deleted it. Moaning about someone calling you fatty bumbum is the sort of behaviour you were supposed to leave behind in primary school. It’s just banter, isn’t it? What lads do. He hears Allie’s voice in his head. Snowflake.
‘Is he like that to everyone?’ Ffion says.
‘Yes.’ Leo’s response is automatic, then he thinks for a moment. ‘Actually, no. Just me.’
‘Racist, then.’
‘No, he’s never said anything racist. He wouldn’t dare.’
Ffion yawns. ‘Exactly. He targets you for no apparent reason, and the only difference between you and the rest of the office is . . .’ She looks around the room, where every officer has one thing in common. They’re white.
An email pings into Leo’s inbox, relieving him of the need to continue the conversation. Out on the streets or in an interview room, resolving conflict comes naturally to him, but his personal life is another matter. Leo once switched gyms rather than tell the personal trainer he’d been allocated that he hated the cross-trainer.
‘Tech team update.’
Ffion jumps off the desk to see over his shoulder, resting a hand on the back of Leo’s chair. It brushes against him for a second, before she leans forward to read out the email. ‘Lloyd’s Apple Watch stopped recording a heartbeat at 11.38 p.m., which is consistent with the pathologist’s report.’
‘But look at his heart rate.’ Leo points to the reading, which averages sixty beats per minute for the first half of New Year’s Eve, then shoots into the eighties from mid-afternoon onwards, before it finally slows and then stops completely. ‘Something made it spike. Or someone,’ Leo says.