‘Don’t you think it’s a bit macabre?’ Leo says. ‘Getting a signed photo from Rhys Lloyd a week after he’s been murdered?’ They’re waiting in the corridor outside custody, eating the contents of the vending machine.
‘People are weird.’ Ffion tips her bag of crisps up, catching the broken bits in her mouth. ‘I’ve never understood the point of autographs anyway.’
‘Some of them are worth a lot of money.’
‘Not when you’re punting them out to anyone who wants one.’ She folds the packet into a triangle. ‘There must have been fifty in that pile alone, and Ceri reckons she delivers a batch every week. That’s a fuck of a lot of signed photos.’ She looks at Leo. ‘What? That’s your I’ve had an idea face.’
‘No, I’ve just put two and two together, that’s all. Lloyd had a cut on his tongue, remember? It was on the post-mortem report, with a shaving nick, and the injuries to his face.’
‘So?’
‘I was at my ex-wife’s this morning when she was sending wedding invitations. She licked an envelope and cut her tongue. Lloyd probably did the same thing, replying to his fan mail.’
‘You have a weird relationship with your ex.’
‘I’m not sure I have a relationship with her at all. If I did, I might stand a chance of actually seeing my son.’
Ffion’s phone rings and she takes the call gratefully. Relationship angst makes her itch. ‘DC Morgan.’
‘This is DS Dewing, Soho CID. We’ve raided Number 36.’
‘What did you find?’
‘Two bankers, a politician and a somewhat red-faced high court judge. The people running the show will take longer to trace, but a few of the sex workers are singing like canaries.’
‘Do any of them know Rhys Lloyd?’
‘Why do you think I’m ringing? Your analysts say his membership ended in June, right? Well, the day before, he threw his weight around with his regular girl and left her with a broken jaw and a voicebox too bruised to speak. Turns out Lloyd had a penchant for rough sex – something Number 36 indulged, until he assaulted a woman there so badly she ended up in hospital.’
Ffion feels a rush of nausea. She imagines Rhys’s hand around a slim throat. Bruises. Broken bones.
‘It seems he had something of an obsession with this particular girl,’ DS Dewing says. ‘Even gave her his card and suggested they hook up privately – something Number 36 expressly forbids. It wasn’t reported at the time, for obvious reasons, but some of the other girls took photographs. I warn you – they’re pretty full-on.’
It can’t be any worse than anything else she’s seen.
‘DC Morgan?’
‘Can you email what you’ve got? We have his wife in custody.’
‘Will do.’
‘Where was this woman on New Year’s Eve?’ Leo says, once Ffion’s filled him in.
‘Out of the country. Flew back on the third.’ Ffion’s head feels light, as though she hasn’t slept in days. ‘They’re looking into her associates, to see if any of them have been in North Wales recently.’ She refreshes her inbox, waiting for the email to drop from the Met; for the photos she doesn’t want to see. She imagines Rhys coming home after the assault, kissing his wife, his daughters. ‘What a bastard,’ she says.
‘I imagine Yasmin feels the same way,’ Leo says. He starts walking back to custody. ‘Assuming she knows.’
‘I thought he was having an affair,’ Yasmin says. She blinks rapidly, her eyes fixed on the table between them. ‘I never imagined he was visiting a . . .’ She takes a sharp breath. ‘A brothel.’
Leo pushes a sheet of paper across the table. ‘This is a printout of the malicious communications your husband received on Twitter over the course of the past eighteen months.’ Next to the document, he places a plastic bag containing a mobile phone – one of two found in Yasmin’s handbag. ‘Communications you made from this device.’
Yasmin glances at the solicitor, who nods. ‘Yes. But I didn’t send the first ones.’ She points at the first half-dozen tweets, which mock Rhys’s diminishing career. ‘These ones. I don’t know who sent them, but they really upset Rhys.’
‘And you wanted to continue upsetting him?’ Ffion says flatly. Yasmin Lloyd is a piece of work.
Yasmin lifts her chin, her lips tight. ‘I believed Rhys was having an affair. I thought if I made him think the tweets were connected, it might scare him enough to stop.’