The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(108)

‘It’s my lifejacket. I keep it in a locker on the lugger.’ Angharad gives a sad sigh. ‘Kept.’

Shortly after arresting Angharad, this morning, Ffion had broken the news that the red-sailed lugger was at the bottom of the lake.

Angharad had wept. ‘She’s been with me for forty years.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Ffion had looked as though she might cry too, and Angharad had put a hand on her arm.

‘Seren is safe. And that is all that matters.’

Leo indicates the rusty stain on the grubby lifejacket. ‘How can you explain the fact that it has Rhys Lloyd’s blood on it?’

Angharad frowns. ‘I can’t.’

‘And that divers have retrieved rope from your boat which matches fibre patterns found on his body?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Where were you on New Year’s Eve?’ Ffion says.

‘I was at home all evening.’

Ffion makes a note in her book. ‘Can anyone corroborate that?’

‘Of course.’ Angharad smiles at Ffion. ‘Your mother.’

‘My—’

‘Elen came to me around eight-thirty, I think. I’d prepared supper, although we ended up eating it outside, with the animals. Bloody fireworks – they should be banned.’

Leo can feel a headache brewing. Is there anyone Ffion and her family aren’t tangled up with? ‘Your boat went in to Steffan Edwards for repair on January second, correct?’

‘Yes. It had been out on its mooring for a few days, and when I rowed out on the second I noticed a hairline crack on the central buttress. I must have forgotten to pull up the centreboard, and the lake had been choppy, so . . .’ She catches Leo’s blank expression. ‘Bigger boats have keels below the waterline, to stop them tipping over. In smaller boats, like mine, the bottom of the boat is flatter. The stability comes from the centreboard.’

‘Is that something you’ve done before?’ Ffion says. ‘Left the centreboard down?’

‘I can’t recall ever doing it.’

‘Apart from the centreboard,’ Leo says, ‘was anything else out of place?’

Angharad’s gaze drifts to the wall as she thinks. From the corridor, Leo can hear footsteps; one officer briefing another. ‘The locker.’ Angharad snaps her attention back, her eyes wide. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but . . . I never wear a lifejacket, you see – I know I should, but old habits die hard – so it’s always at the bottom, under the spare rope and the diesel can.’ She grips the side of her chair, animated for the first time since the interview began. ‘But when I rowed out on the second – when I found the damage to the buttress – the lifejacket was on top.’

‘You’re sure?’ Ffion says.

‘A hundred per cent.’ She sits up straight. ‘Someone had been on my boat.’

Leo thinks through the possibilities. If it was Ceri who used Angharad’s boat to dump Lloyd’s body, how had she got out to the mooring? Did someone take her? And in what? Leo runs through the guests who arrived at The Shore’s party by boat. Any one of them could have slipped away from the party, but only one of them had a grudge against Lloyd.

Huw Ellis.

Was he working with Ceri? If so, why go to all the trouble of taking Angharad’s boat, when they could have taken Lloyd’s body on Huw’s motorboat? It doesn’t make sense.

And then, suddenly, it does.

There’s more than one way to travel through water. Leo thinks about Angharad’s assertion that no one from The Shore was at the Cwm Coed swim on New Year’s Day, and he knows with absolute certainty that he’s been lied to.

He knows who dumped Rhys Lloyd’s body in the lake.





FIFTY-SIX




NEW YEAR’S EVE | GLYNIS


Glynis Lloyd is not enjoying the party. Parties are for young people, and Glynis is feeling her age. There is nowhere to sit down, and, even though she is surrounded by familiar faces, she feels lonely.

It was Yasmin who persuaded her to come.

‘You’ll have a nice time,’ she said, before following it up with: ‘And what will people think, if Rhys’s own mother isn’t there?’ which was so obviously the primary motive that Glynis almost refused on the spot. Her daughter-in-law cares a great deal about appearances.

‘I tried to get OK! to cover it,’ Yasmin went on. ‘But they said it wasn’t the “right fit” for them.’ She tutted. ‘Heaven knows what would fit better. The Staffords alone are surely a draw, even if Rhys is no longer—’ She swallowed her words, remembering who she was talking to.

Glynis is under no illusions about her son’s failing career. Oh, he has talent, no one ever doubted that, but she – more than anyone – knows how duplicitous this business is. On the surface, all success and smiles, but dip below and the truth is a murky affair.

She feels a pang of guilt whenever she thinks about Rhys’s career. About the favour she’d done one of the Eisteddfod judges, which meant they owed her a little favour, and it wasn’t all the world to mark Rhys the tiniest bit higher, was it? So, there he was, on the main National stage, in the right place at the right time to be spotted for success.