The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(98)

‘I’ll make you a coffee.’

‘I don’t want a fucking coffee!’

A chair scrapes behind him and Steff turns around. They’re all looking at him. All of them. Gruffydd Lewis, Euros Morgan Davies. Idris fucking Evans, who gets so pissed after darts, his wife makes him sleep with the dog. All staring at him, judging him, just because he wants one fucking pint.

‘Fuck you.’ Steffan slams out of the pub. There are plenty of places to buy alcohol. One beer, that’s all he wants.

Then he’ll work out what to do about Rhys.





FORTY-EIGHT




JANUARY 8TH | FFION


Ffion slaps Steffan’s face. The boatman groans, but doesn’t open his eyes, and she shakes him hard by the shoulders, shouting his name.

Leo pulls her gently back. ‘He’s out cold.’ He’s holding his radio to his ear, and, as the operator responds, he walks away from the office. ‘DC Leo Brady, Cheshire Major Crime. I need to report a MisPer.’

Ffion picks up Steffan’s log book. The man’s off his face; maybe he’s confused – forgotten he’s already fixed Angharad’s boat. She runs her finger across the line logged against Angharad’s name. Taking on water. Damage around centreboard. The column headed Completion is empty.

‘Sixteen,’ Leo is saying. ‘Very upset. We believe she’s out on Mirror Lake in a boat which may not be structurally sound.’ Ffion pushes past him, looking around the boathouse, and beyond, to the yard, where boats list on stilts, waiting for repairs. Is Steffan mistaken? Could Seren have taken out a different boat? But Angharad’s lugger, with its distinctive green hull and red sails, is nowhere to be seen.

‘The helicopter can’t take off while the weather’s so bad,’ Leo tells Ffion, when he’s off the phone. ‘Control room’s contacting Search and Rescue, but the nearest team with a boat is twenty miles away.’

Ffion’s back in the office, rifling through the drawers in Steffan’s desk, scanning the boards on the wall, where a handful of keys hang, each with a brown label bearing a customer’s name. She shakes Steffan again – ‘Where the fuck are your keys?’ – but there’s no response. Ffion checks his pockets.

‘Does Steffan work with anyone?’ Leo says. ‘Maybe they could—’ His radio crackles, the operator giving his call sign. Ffion finds what she was looking for: a single key attached to a large cork fob. She grabs a searchlight from the rack on the wall and runs.

‘The fire service has a water rescue capability,’ Leo shouts, running after her. ‘They’ll be here in ten minutes.’

‘We don’t have ten minutes!’ Outside, snow as hard as hail stings Ffion’s face as she runs towards the jetty. Steffan’s motorboat jerks against the fenders as though the engine’s already running. It’s senseless calling Seren’s name, but she does it anyway, the wind hurling it into the blizzard.

She’ll be fine, she keeps telling herself. She’ll have moored up somewhere. She might even be off the boat by now, sheltering in the woods.

Leo catches up with her on the jetty. A fierce gust almost throws him off balance, and he braces himself – knees bent – against another attempt. ‘This is crazy – we have to wait for a specialist team.’

‘She might die!’ Ffion jumps into the motorboat, and it rocks precariously. The cockpit’s open, a low windscreen the only protection from the elements, and water sloshes around the bottom of the boat. A wave breaks over the bow, crashing inside. Leo is ashen, his feet still stubbornly planted on the jetty.

‘I can’t . . .’ His eyes close briefly, a look of intense shame on his face. ‘I can’t swim.’

Ffion thinks of Seren, out there in the blizzard, in an unsafe boat. She looks at Leo, fear and panic combusting into anger. ‘Then don’t fucking fall in.’

Leo doesn’t move.

When they find Angharad’s dinghy they’ll need one of them in Steffan’s motorboat, while the other gets Seren to safety. Ffion can’t do this on her own.

She might have to.

She starts the engine, and the boat fights against the mooring lines.

Leo takes a step forward, then two back. ‘I – I don’t think I can.’

Just then, a sound rings out: the pop of a firework, audible even over the wind. Above the water, shooting high and bright into the whiteout, comes a streak of vibrant red.

Not a firework.

A distress flare.





FORTY-NINE




NEW YEAR’S EVE | 11.45 A.M. | RHYS


‘I want a divorce.’ Yasmin says this as she’s making the bed, as casually as though she’s asking for a cup of tea. Rhys looks at her in the reflection of the dressing table mirror, where he’s assessing the level of grey in his hair. Divorce? He knew this wasn’t going to blow over as easily as their usual spats – they’ve barely spoken since Christmas Eve – but divorce?

‘Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?’

‘No, Rhys.’ Yasmin pummels a pillow with unnecessary force, before placing it on the bed. ‘Poisoning our daughter is extreme.’

‘For the hundredth time, I did not poison her!’ There is an art to shouting in a whisper, and Rhys and Yasmin are experts at it. They might not agree on many things, but they have always tried to keep their arguments from the twins.