January 8
Leo
As Leo walks down the corridor toward the briefing room, his stomach tightens. Working with Ffion and spending so much time in and around The Shore has provided Leo with the perfect excuse to miss briefings, and it’s only now that he’s back in the office that he realizes how much he dreads seeing his DI.
“You’re early.” Crouch looks at his watch. “Shit the bed, did you?”
Leo sits down. He can feel Ffion’s eyes on him, but really, what can Leo do about it?Sir, sir, I don’t like the way you speak to me. Leo would be laughed out of the job. You don’t hear anyone else complaining. It’s just Crouch’s way. Blunt, coarse. Nothing personal.
“You know,” Crouch is saying to the DC nearest to him, “I hear Liverpool’s the only place you can be called a pedophile for shagging someone’s mum.”
Except itispersonal, isn’t it?
Is he like that to everyone?Ffion had asked the first time she’d met Crouch, and Leo was forced to admit the truth. No one else in the office bears the brunt of Crouch’s special brand of humor. Even if the jibes are childish—the sort of shit joke Leo heard time and time again when he was growing up—Crouch only makes them to Leo. Itispersonal.
“What do you call a Liverpudlian in a suit?” the DI says now to no one in particular. Leo hears Ffion’s words in his head.What about the next person he picks on?He thinks about everything she’s been through. She looked so broken yesterday, yet here she is. Still standing.
“The defendant,” Leo says before Crouch can give the punch line. The DI blinks, then opens his mouth to impart yet another “joke.” “I don’t think you’ve done the one about the Scouser who won’t accept a blow job in case it stops his benefits.” Leo fixes his eyes on Crouch. “Shall we just get them all out of the way now, sir?”
Silence falls heavily across the room as the two men look at each other. The DI’s face is a ruddy red, his jowls wobbling as he moves his mouth to formulate a response. “What’s the matter, Brady?” he says finally. “Everyone else finds it funny. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know how to take a joke?”
Leo’s gaze doesn’t waver. “I don’t know, sir. Try me with one that isn’t offensive or discriminatory, and let’s see if I laugh.”
Somewhere in the room, someone moves a chair, the leg scraping against the floor. Crouch clears his throat. Leo is stifled by the silence, by the eyes of more than a dozen officers, not a single one of whom gives enough of a shit to raise a hand and—
“I don’t find it funny, sir.” DC Clements speaks quietly but clearly, her unwavering gaze taking in first Leo, then Crouch.
“Me neither.” A DC by the window speaks up.
“Nor me.” Another.
“Or me.” Ffion. And of all the voices, Leo realizes it’s hers he wanted to hear.
Crouch looks around the room. “Bloody snowflakes, the lot of you,” he blusters, but there’s an ugly flush across his neck. “Who’s got the update on Number 36?”
“MetPol are still looking into the assault.” As DC Clements starts talking, Leo’s pulse begins to slow. All around the room, he sees nods of support, eye rolls aimed toward the DI. Whatever Crouch does next, Leo won’t be on his own. “The victim’s associates have been alibied, but they’re still working on tracing the owner of the club. The accounts are all offshore, the directors well hidden.”
“And in the meantime,” Crouch says, “DCs Brady and Morgan have a new theory.” He looks at Leo, and it’s so obvious he wants to have another go at him, to remind him of the hours spent interviewing Yasmin and chasing after dead ends. But all he says is, “Andthisone might actually hold water.”
“I think so, sir.” Leo coughs, self-conscious at once again being the center of attention. “We’ve had a good result on the trophy found in the lake. The fleck of glitter retrieved from Lloyd’s facial injuries is a match, so we’re confident this is the weapon used in the assault.”
“The award’s been in the water for a week,” Ffion says, “but CSI have been able to recover several sets of prints. Both the Lloyds’ prints are there, as you’d expect, but they also found a partial belonging to the postwoman, Ceri Jones.”
“She had a long-standing grudge against Rhys Lloyd,” Leo says when Ffion doesn’t elaborate. He glances at her, but her face gives nothing away. “She’s on her postal route till midday. We’ll be waiting for her when she finishes.”
“She didn’t do it,” Ffion says when they’re on their way to Cwm Coed. Other members of the team have been tasked with establishing a timeline for Ceri Jones on the night of the party, piecing together the information they have from witness statements and photographs.
“Her prints are on the weapon.”
“It’s not technically the murder weapon, though, is it? Izzy Weaver said the injuries were superficial. The assault brought on a heart attack. That’s what she thinks.”
Leo looks at Ffion. She’s zipped into her enormous coat, and with her hair tucked under a woolen hat, only her face is visible. “So what are you saying? Ceri Jones didn’t hit Lloyd with the trophy? Or she did, but she didn’t kill him?”
“I’m saying there’s an innocent explanation. I know Ceri. She’s not a violent person.”
“She was bullied by Rhys Lloyd so badly she left school a year earlier than planned and never did the art degree she’d dreamed of. Her fingerprints are on a weapon known to have been instrumental in his death.”
“It wasn’t her.”