On the main deck, a yellow cone marks a spot around which a further white-suited officer is swabbing. Leo looks down. ‘And that’s where he landed?’
‘Ten out of ten,’ the CSI says. ‘We’ll push on in here, but it’s going to be a real needle-in-a-haystack job: there are prints everywhere. The awards shelf isn’t so bad, but I’m not sure that’s much help – the offender wouldn’t need to touch the shelf itself to take an award.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t personal,’ Leo says, as they make their way back outside. ‘Maybe someone came to burgle the place – the awards are plastered all over Instagram, after all – and Rhys got in the way.’
‘So why not take the other trophies?’
‘No time?’
‘They had time to drag his body on to the balcony, push it on to the deck and then the pontoon, get it on a boat and dump it in the middle of the lake, but they didn’t have time to bung a few awards in a bag?’
Leo grins. ‘I admit, it’s not my best theory. We’ll see if the CCTV yields anything.’
Ffion feels hot. ‘That’s on my list. I’ll go and seize it.’
‘Already done. I got the keys while I was waiting for you this morning.’
‘I said I’d do it!’
The force of Ffion’s response makes Leo hold up his hands in surrender. ‘Easy. I thought I’d lighten your load, that’s all.’
‘I don’t need your help.’
Leo shakes his head. ‘You’re hard work, you know? You don’t do briefings, you don’t do teamwork . . .’ He blows out his cheeks, letting out the contents in a slow, noisy stream. Ffion says nothing. ‘Anyway, I seized the hard drive and downloaded twenty-four hours from nine a.m. on New Year’s Eve. There’s a glitch in the afternoon, around three p.m., where the footage skips forward an hour.’
‘Rhys Lloyd was alive for several hours after that.’
‘Exactly, and it seems fine from then on, so we can cross-reference people arriving at the party with the guests already on our list. See who’s missing. The cameras are trained on the drive, rather than the footpaths – but it’s a start.’
Ffion’s phone buzzes in her pocket, and she glances at the screen before answering, glad of the distraction. ‘Alright, boss?’
‘Good news,’ DI Malik says. ‘Now the crime scene’s been identified as being on the English side of the lake, they’ve got no justification for keeping you. I’ve spoken to DI Crouch and I’ve persuaded him to let you go.’ There’s an edge to this last, suggesting Crouch’s reluctance was short-lived. Ffion’s backchat clearly went down like a shit sandwich, but if the man can’t take it, he shouldn’t dish it out to Leo.
The thought of Leo makes her remember the CCTV, and her stomach hollows. If she isn’t working on the case, she’ll have no way of knowing what’s been uncovered. How close they are to the truth. She walks away from Leo.
‘The thing is, boss, I think I should stick with it.’
‘Ffion, you begged me to take you off!’
‘There are a lot of local enquiries to do on our side of the border. A number of witnesses who prefer to be dealt with in Welsh.’ She knows just how to play this one. ‘And I think it’s good experience for me. You know, working in a team. It’s an area for, um, personal development.’
There’s a long – and somewhat surprised – pause. ‘I can’t argue with that.’ Malik sighs. ‘Fine. Stay. But next time you ask me for a favour I want a cooling-off period.’
Yasmin and the twins have temporarily moved in with Rhys’s mother. Ffion hears music through the ceiling, as she and Leo sit on Glynis’s Dralon sofa, Yasmin opposite them in a narrow, high-backed chair. Glynis fusses around, making a pot of tea, and finding a plate for biscuits no one wants to eat.
‘Dach chi isio rwbath—’ Glynis breaks off, glancing at Yasmin and switching to English. ‘Would you like something more substantial? A sandwich, maybe?’
‘We’re fine, really,’ Leo says.
‘When can we go home?’ Yasmin’s pale and thin, her long legs drawn into her chest, like a child.
‘The Crime Scene Investigation unit will be there for another couple of days, I’m afraid,’ Ffion says. ‘But if there’s anything you need, we can arrange—’
‘Not The Shore! I’d be happy if I never set foot there again. I want to take the girls home, back to London.’