The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(69)

Triangulation has confirmed that Lloyd – or his phone, at least – remained within a fifty-metre radius of The Shore on December 31st, which tallies with the accounts given by Yasmin and the twins.

Call and message data has been retrieved for the twenty-eight days preceding the murder, and the analysts have already identified and traced the most popular numbers. Lloyd’s agent features heavily on the incoming calls, as does Yasmin, both daughters – Tabby more than Felicia – and Jonty Charlton. On December 29th the same number rang Lloyd seventeen times; the lines are highlighted in blue and carry a note: Huw Ellis. There are pages and pages of text messages, retrieved from Lloyd’s iCloud account, including increasingly threatening emails from Ellis, demanding the money Rhys owed him.

Leo scans the texts. Lots from the twins, asking for money or Can we have chips tonight? Mum says it’s okay. On New Year’s Eve Lloyd had a quick-fire conversation with someone about the party’s dress code. It’s a bit short, reads the message from an unknown number. Wear the dress, was Lloyd’s reply. Leo looks at the list of calls made to and from Lloyd’s phone, but the number doesn’t appear there.

In fact, Lloyd hardly made calls on his phone at all, and Leo works his way through the list, knowing he’ll be able to square away that job, at least, this evening. Then his gaze lands on a number Lloyd called around lunchtime on December 31st. Leo doesn’t have a great recall for numbers – he hates parking meters requiring him to enter his car registration – but there’s something about this particular number which triggers a memory. He unlocks his phone and scrolls through the contacts, not wanting to be right, yet at the same time knowing he is. He stops and stares at the screen.

The number Rhys Lloyd called on New Year’s Eve belongs to Ffion.





THIRTY




MID-AUGUST | SEREN


Seren is definitely getting a tan, even though Cwm Coed is literally the hardest place in the world to get one. It rains for, like, three hundred days a year, and even in the summer – if there’s a heatwave, as there is now – you come down to the lake and the beaches are all in shade from the trees. And she’s a redhead, with the sort of skin which looks like she’s actually dead. Except when she goes for a run, when she goes so red she’s basically purple.

But her arms are definitely a tiny bit browner than at the start of the summer. She found a sunbathing spot on the other side of the lake, where they’ve cleared the trees, ready for more lodges, and every chance she’s had she’s been catching some rays. Let’s face it, there’s fuck all else to do. Most of her ‘friends’ – if you can call them that – are away, and Ffion’s always working. Seren can’t wait till her birthday, when she can learn to drive and get the fuck out of this place. She literally doesn’t know how Ffion stands it. The only thing that makes Seren put any effort in at school – and she knows it’s uncool to brag, but her grades are shit-hot – is the thought of getting a job far away from Cwm Coed.

The lake’s loads nicer on this side. People always go straight to the jetty side, where the loos are, and the van selling cold drinks, but over here you can swim from the coves under the trees and never see another person.

There’s laughter coming from the lake. Seren can’t see through the trees, but she knows it’s the twins. She doesn’t know which is which, but she knows they’re called Tabby and Felicia, because they shriek it at each other whenever one of them gets splashed.

Right? Felicia and Tabby. And people say Welsh names are weird.

Seren pulls her top over her bikini, and skirts through the trees to come out further up the lake. Seren’s been at The Shore every day since it opened.

Watching.

It’s like something you’d see on Instagram. There are five lodges, and right now they’ve all got their doors open on to their decks. On the one nearest Seren there’s a yoga lesson going on: the instructor’s facing the cabin, and the two women she’s teaching are looking out on to the lake. One of them’s super-skinny and, like, pretzel-bendy, and the other one’s Clemmie. Seren is slowly working out who everyone is. Clemmie’s been here five minutes and she knows more people in Cwm Coed than Seren does. She’s trying to start a book club, and she swims in the lake every day. Mam calls her a ‘joiner’.

She watches them for a bit. Clemmie is not bendy. Seren sympathises. They did yoga in PE and Seren spent the whole time trying not to fart.

God, it’s hot. She looks longingly at the clear blue lake. It’s flat calm, and she can almost feel the cool water on her skin. The lake is always freezing. It could be thirty degrees and the water will still take your breath away. You have to stay in, have to keep swimming, until your arms and legs tingle and then as if by magic it starts to feel warm. When Seren was little Mam used to say that was the draig, breathing fire down the mountain, and Ffion used to roar and chase Seren through the water. Seren thought Ffi was the coolest big sister ever. Still thinks that, to be honest, even if she’d never admit it.

Rhys Lloyd is singing. At least, Seren assumes it’s him, because who else has the balls to belt out ‘Calon Lan’ except at a rugby match? The man’s like a God around these parts. The corridor in the music department at school is literally full of photos of him.

Wow. It makes the hair on the back of Seren’s neck stand up. She wonders if the twins put him off, shouting to each other from their massive flamingos. They’re always either on those things, or on their sun loungers. Seren’s never seen them actually in the water, and she can tell from the way they’ve done their hair all swishy, and how their make-up is, that they don’t plan on getting wet. One of them shrieks with laughter and tosses her head. She keeps spinning her flamingo back round so she’s facing one of the lodges a bit further down, and Seren moves through the trees to see what she’s looking at.