The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(8)

‘Right thigh,’ Ffion cuts in abruptly. ‘Can we quit playing Operation now? It’s pretty obvious we’ve got a positive ID, isn’t it? This is Rhys Lloyd. End of.’ Without looking at the body again, Ffion turns and leaves the room.

Outside, she lights a cigarette and draws the smoke hard into her lungs. Then she calls her boss, keeping her voice breezy. As though it doesn’t matter.

‘I’m not going to be able to work this job, sir – conflict of interests.’

‘How come?’ DI Malik sounds distracted. He’s been Ffion’s boss for a little over a year, but the topography of their patch means she’s met him just a handful of times.

‘I know the victim.’

‘Ffion, you know everyone in Cwm Coed. Six months ago, you gave evidence against your own aunt.’

Ffion stares at the tip of her cigarette, the glowing tip consuming the paper.

‘She got six months for fraud.’

Ffion won’t win this one. Aunty Jane isn’t a close relative – a twice-removed, second cousin’s mother sort of thing – but she and Ffion do indeed share a family tree.

‘Yes, but—’

‘Is the victim in your immediate family?’

‘No, but—’

‘Then you’re keeping the job.’ DI Malik ends the call, and Ffion takes a final, angry drag on her cigarette, before stubbing it out on the wall and chucking it into the bushes. Fucksake. She stares at her phone. Nothing from Mia.

Ffion slides into the driver’s seat of the Triumph Stag. The car is older than she is, a constant source of arguments during her short-lived marriage. It breaks down regularly, struggles on hills and leaks like Julian Assange; and boasts a hole in the footwell which blows wind up the driver’s skirt. But then, Ffion never wears skirts. She bought the Triumph with the money her dad left her, and she was damned if she was going to swap it for something more practical, just to please her husband.

‘We can’t drive kids around in that,’ he’d said.

‘It’s not safe.’ ‘I don’t want kids,’ Ffion had replied, and that was beginning of the end. He’d tried to persuade her, and then he’d tried to accept it, but eighteen months later Ffion was stuffing her clothes into the back of the Triumph and moving back in with Mam.

Wind rattles the windows, whistling through the cracks around the doors. Ffion rests her forehead on the leather steering wheel and lets out a long, slow breath. It’s true, then: Rhys Lloyd is dead. He’s really dead.

Thank God for that.





FOUR




NEW YEAR’S EVE | 11.25 P.M. | RHYS


Rhys Lloyd has the worst hangover ever. His head is pounding, and his skin crawls with something which feels like the flu. Vomit lingers in his throat. He blinks in the darkness.

What time is it?

In the distance, he hears the strains of the party – music, laughter. He remembers now: he left early, in search of his bed.

Only he isn’t in bed.

There’s no soft pillow beneath his head, and something hard digs into his back.

Where is he?

There’s a sharp pain between his eyes, and something sticky and wet trickles down his nose. He feels a cold wind on his face, then something even colder.

Rhys is outside.

Did he go on to the balcony of the bedroom, to get some air, but fall asleep?

He can hear the lake. It’s reassuring at first – he’s become accustomed to the sound, as they eat on the deck, or drift off to sleep with the windows ajar. But this isn’t the gentle breaking of waves on the shore, heard from the balcony, or through a window. The lake is right here, all around him. It moves rhythmically, insistently. It sprays across his face.

What is he doing here?

Did he sleepwalk?

He hears a voice, and he wants to call out, in case its owner doesn’t realise he’s here, surrounded by water, but his body won’t comply. The pain is swallowing him whole and the water is all around him, and as he manages a pathetic jerk of his body he realises he is too weak to move.

And that’s when Rhys knows he’s about to die.





FIVE




NEW YEAR’S DAY | LEO


Leo scrolls through Wikipedia as he walks from the mortuary towards his car. Rhys Lloyd had been well respected in the music business. He hadn’t charted in a while – the top ten seemingly a constant stream of manufactured bands and ‘fresh talent’ – but a few years back the guy could do no wrong. Awards left, right and centre, and charity work, too: playing for laughs in a spoof version of The Pirates of Penzance for Children in Need. Lloyd was working class – which everybody loves nowadays – and even though he’d apparently lost his accent, he spoke glowingly in interviews about his ‘idyllic’ upbringing in north Wales.

Lloyd was a rags-to-riches poster boy, plucked from obscurity when Lesley Garrett’s agent was on holiday in Llangollen, and had popped into the Eisteddfod arts festival to find a loo. In the years that followed, Lloyd had released numerous albums, including a Christmas hit with Leona Lewis, crossing the bridge from light opera and musical theatre into something Leo is more likely to listen to. In fact, Leo realises, as he scans the list of tracks, he has listened to some of these. Liked them, even.