“What makes you so sure?” Leo waits, but she doesn’t answer. “Ffion, you being on this case is already a terrible idea. If arresting Ceri is too great a conflict of interest, then you should—”
“I’m staying on the job.”
Leo glances at her. Four days ago, Ffion had been told she could go back to her own force.
“Apparently she begged her DI to let her stay,” Crouch told Leo. “I’d assume it was because you were knobbing her, only she’s not blind.”
Had Ffion stayed on the case so she could interfere with evidence? Leo tugs at his seat belt, suddenly too tight across his chest. Is that why she’s so insistent about staying on it now?
They’re waiting for Ceri when she pulls up outside her house. In spite of the cold, she wears shorts beneath her uniform fleece. She eyes Ffion and Leo with resignation.
“Please tell me you don’t need another statement. I’ve had a shocker of a day. You’d think I was personally responsible for missing Christmas presents, the way people go on. Like it’s my fault they—”
“Ceri.” Ffion interjects. “We need to talk to you about something else.”
Leo waits for Ffion to make the arrest—it’s her patch, her community. But when the hesitation begins to seem like reluctance, he steps forward. “Ceri Jones, you’re under arrest on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
“What?” Ceri gives a burst of laughter. “Is this some kind of joke?” She looks at Ffion. “Ffi?”
“No joke, Ceri,” Ffion says shortly.
They travel to custody in silence, Ceri white and shaken in the back seat. A good actor? Leo thinks. Or simply shocked to have been caught? Ffion stares out the window, her entire body radiatingfuck offvibes. There are so many different women there, Leo thinks. The caustic, spiky Ffion, making him laugh with one-liners and piss-taking. Yesterday’s open, raw Ffion, in so much pain, it made Leo’s heart hurt. Today’s shut-down, don’t-talk-to-me Ffion. And, of course, the Ffion he’d met on New Year’s Eve. The caution-to-the-winds, don’t-care-who’s-watching woman who had kissed him as though they were the last two people standing, then curled into his outstretched arm when they finally fell asleep.
Leo likes them all.
He looks out at the road ahead, the snow becoming lighter as they leave Wales. Maybe when they aren’t working together. Maybe they could have a drink or something.
Maybe.
Because Ffion has a stronger motive for killing Rhys Lloyd than anyone else in Cwm Coed, and for all that Leo wants to spend time with her, the detective in him can’t rule out the possibility that she was involved. Ffion was in a bar with Leo at the time of Rhys’s death, but she’d been with Lloyd just hours before. Had she set something in motion that had resulted in his death?
If she had, it makes Leo her alibi.
In custody, Ceri listens to her legal rights in silence—the only sign of stress two vertical lines in the center of her brow—then she asks for a solicitor. It’s late when they finally get into the interview.
“Tell me about your relationship with Rhys Lloyd,” Leo starts.
Ceri shrugs. “We went to the same school. Like everyone did.” She looks at Ffion. “You know all this. This is such bullshit.”
“Were you friends?”
Ceri exhales noisily. “You know we weren’t.” She places her hands flat on the table as though bracing herself, then looks up. “He bullied me, all right? No doubt you’ve heard it from various people in the village, so you might as well hear it from me too. From the minute I started at secondary school, he made my life a living hell. He wrotedykeon my locker. He sent notes to girls in my year, with my name at the bottom. He stuck a picture of my head onto porn. He and his mates threatened to rape me toturn me straight.” Ceri’s voice is flat and hard.
“That must have been awful.” Ffion puts a hand on the table, then pulls back, as though she’d been about to reach across before realizing where they were.
“There was this girl I fancied.” Ceri stares at the table. “I don’t know how he knew, but he did. He sent me a message, pretending to be her, saying she wanted to meet up.” She breaks off, shaking her head at her naïveté.
“In Rhys’s music studio,” Ffion says flatly, but Ceri frowns.
“I’d never have gone there. She said she’d meet me at the park, by the kids’ play area. She told me things she…” Ceri flushes. “Things she wanted to do with me.”
“Rhys was waiting for you, wasn’t he?” Ffion says. Her voice is cold, and Leo shifts in his seat. She shouldn’t be here. If they charge Ceri with Lloyd’s murder, the defense will look for every possible chink in the prosecution’s armor. Even if what Lloyd did to Ffion never comes to light—even if she has nothing to do with his death—she’s just too close to the case. How can she possibly be objective?
“Him and a bunch of his mates. I was all dressed up and…” Ceri brushes angry tears from her eyes. “So yeah. I hated him. Wouldn’t you?”
“How did you feel about Rhys when he returned to Cwm Coed? When he built The Shore?”
“I hated him even more.”