The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(21)

Two men stand outside the shop, one in a three-quarter-length black wool coat and a striped scarf, the other wearing a thick fleece under a bodywarmer with pockets stuffed to bursting. The latter carries a camera on one shoulder, and a furry mic on a long pole.

‘We just want to ask a few questions, Mrs Lloyd.’ Striped Scarf is rapping on the door. ‘We’re very sorry for your loss,’ he shouts, as an afterthought.

‘Let’s do the headteacher,’ the cameraman says. ‘Come back later.’

Ffion crosses the road and points at the sign saying ar gau. ‘Shop’s closed today. As a mark of respect,’ she adds pointedly.

‘Did you know Rhys Lloyd?’ The reporter gets straight to the point, his colleague setting a readying hand on his camera.

‘Is that why you’re here?’ Ffion furrows her brow. ‘I’d have thought you’d be at the vigil.’

‘What vigil?’

‘Up Pen y Ddraig mountain. There’s a path leading up from the lake and, halfway up, there’s a little stone hut where Rhys used to sing, before he was discovered. Someone lit a candle in his memory and now there are hundreds there. They’re having a sort of service for him this morning so the children can sing in his memory.’ Ffion closes her eyes briefly, one hand flat against her heart. ‘It’s going to be so beautiful.’

For two men who don’t look in peak condition, they can’t half shift.

Ffion retraces her steps and heads back towards the lake, where Leo’s waiting for her. ‘Sorry, manic morning.’

‘Late night?’

Ffion spent last night watching re-runs of Call the Midwife, while Seren skulked in her room on YouTube and Mam did the accounts for the holiday cottages, but she finds herself giving Leo a lopsided smile; the sort of smile which says wouldn’t you like to know? It’s habit, this playing to type; the Ffion Wyllt of long ago. The comparison makes her feel cold.

‘Are you alright? You look as if you’re having a stroke.’ Leo nods towards the boathouse. ‘What’s the skinny on Steffan Edwards?’

‘The business has been here forever. Busy in the summer, dead in the winter, like most places around here. Steff took over from his dad a few years ago.’

‘Reliable?’

Ffion starts walking towards the boathouse. ‘Completely.’ She stoops to pick up an empty bottle of vodka from outside the workshop door. ‘Unless he’s had a drink.’

When Steffan Edwards senior died, young Steff went on a bender that lasted five days. The locals were largely sympathetic, but when he threw up in the font at Emyr Williams’ christening, enough was enough. An intervention was staged, and whatever was said was enough to make Steffan Edwards pack in the drink for good.

Until now.

‘How’re you doing, Steff?’ Ffion says. The man’s eyes are bloodshot, and, although he doesn’t seem drunk, he certainly isn’t sober.

‘Investigating Rhys Lloyd’s death, are you? No comment.’

‘We wanted your advice, actually.’ Flattery gets you everywhere. ‘No one knows the lake better than you.’

Steff stops work, but his fist is tight around the wrench.

‘The victim washed up by the jetty yesterday morning,’ Leo says. ‘We think he’d been in the water for less than ten hours. If he went in by The Shore, could—’

‘Victim? That man’s a victim of nothing!’

‘Could the water have carried him to the jetty?’

Steffan doesn’t answer.

‘This is a police enquiry, Mr Edwards,’ Leo says.

The boatman looks away, then shrugs. ‘There’s a current. Runs past The Shore. If he’d gone in from there, he’d have ended up down the bottom, not across by the jetty.’

Leo brings up a satellite view of Llyn Drych on his iPad, and takes a digital pen from his pocket. ‘Can you show me how the current flows? Where would the vict—’ He stops. ‘Where would the deceased have to have been, in order to end up here?’ He marks the jetty with a red cross, then hands Steffan the pen.

Steffan leans over the map, in a waft of stale booze and sweat, and draws a series of curved lines across the screen. ‘He’d have been higher up. Here. Or here.’

‘Can you point out the access points?’ Leo says. ‘Anywhere you can get a vehicle to?’

Steffan adds half a dozen crosses around the edges of the lake, pinching the image and moving it to find the coves he wants. He draws a huge cross in the middle of the lake. ‘More likely he went in here.’

‘From a boat?’ Leo says.

Ffion raises an eyebrow. Check out Einstein. ‘Got any out on hire?’ she asks Steff, but she knows the answer already. It’s winter: the boathouse is only open for repairs. If Rhys was killed on a boat, it didn’t come from here.

‘Is there any way of knowing which boats were on the lake on New Year’s Eve?’ Leo asks. Ffion wanders across the room, to where a workbench serves as a desk, and picks up a blue A4 book. Steffan either doesn’t see, or doesn’t care.

‘I’m not the keeper of the lake. There’s not many want to sail this time of year, but Llyn Drych doesn’t close. There are always a few boats out on a good day.’

Each entry in the blue book covers two pages: the date and name of the owner on the far left, followed by a summary of the problem, and Steffan’s solution. On the far right are columns for the cost of repairs, and the date of collection. Ffion flicks to the end of December. She sees a few names she recognises and several with addresses further afield, owners of boats moored locally. It’s a meticulous – if old-fashioned – record of work, but all it tells Ffion is what boats weren’t on the lake, not which were. She takes a photo of the two pages covering the period between Christmas and New Year, then replaces the book.