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Ffion laughs—a messy, hiccupy laugh, but nevertheless a laugh. “Maybe underneath. He used to say the police werea waste of bloody taxpayers’ money.” She makes her voice a growl, then gives the same sad little laugh. Tears streak her face, and she scrubs at her cheeks with her hands. “Mind you, there’s a few would agree with him if they saw me bawling my eyes out when there’s a murder to solve.” Ffion takes a long, deep breath and looks at Leo with resolve. “Which we should probably get back to.”
“There’s no rush,” Leo says, but now there’s a patrol car pulling into the lake, heading for the boathouse, and Ffion sees it too, and she’s searching for her radio. Leo bumps the car along the foreshore, meeting the police car as it slows to a halt between the boathouse and where the two lads were fishing.
“DC Brady.” Leo shows his ID to the uniformed officers. “I’m working in the Rhys Lloyd incident room.”
“Good timing.” The officer nods to the two lads, who are wide-eyed with excitement. “I believe these young fishermen have caught your murder weapon.”
Thirty-Nine
Late August
Steffan
Steffan Edwards is in the pub. There was a time when this would have sent digital smoke signals around the village until someone’s husband was dispatched to persuade Steff out of the danger zone and back home or, at the very least, to drink with him and keep him out of harm’s way.
But Steffan has been sober for two years, nine months, and six days, and after the first eighteen months—when he couldn’t even trust himself to walk past Y Llew Coch, let alone set foot inside—he’d returned to his habitual spot at the bar.
He takes a sip of his coffee—black, two sugars—and stares morosely at the boathouse accounts. He deserves some kind of medal, doesn’t he, for staying sober in the face of these figures? You wouldn’t blame a man for having a drink when his business was going down the pan.
He won’t have a drink, though. He isn’t even contemplating it. Some blokes could do that: have a pint or a quick voddy, just to take the edge off, and not give it a second thought. Not Steffan. Steffan would have the second ordered before he’d finished the first, be three sheets to the wind before you could saylast call. Steffan is all-or-nothing.
At the end of every week, he tots up the takings and enters the amount in his ledger, along with the running total for the season, compared to the previous year. Every year, he works a little bit harder; every year, he takes a little less money. He can fix boats all year round, but 80 percent of his income comes in the holidays, when families fill the campsites and head to the lake every morning. Years ago, when his dad ran the business, it was all rowboats and pleasure cruises; now, it’s kayaks and windsurfing. Steff’s got the right gear—that’s not the problem. The problem is China. Or Japan, or wherever they make those bloody inflatables. Time was, you’d hire a boat on holiday, because of course you couldn’tbuyone—where would you put it? Now, you shove it under the stairs or in the loft, packed up all small in a rucksack. Steffan’s heart sinks every time he sees the camper vans rock up and spill their contents onto the grass. He adds up the hire fees: two paddleboards, a kayak, a crappy yellow boat for the kids. Another hundred quid lost.
Sometimes, they don’t even take them home. The plastic bursts, or they’re late and the boat isn’t dry. What arrived folded into a tiny cube is now far too big for the bag. It was only thirty quid in Aldi—they’ll get another one next summer. They stuff them into already-full bins or leave them on the shore for Steffan to tidy away before the lake takes them.
Steff’s no quitter, though. He’s always moved with the times, always looked for opportunities. He turns over the piece of paper he was using for his rough figures and then sketches a boat at the top. Below, he makes a list of all his hire services—kayaks, paddleboards, dinghies—and taps the end of the pen against his teeth as he contemplates what he can add.
Huw Ellis brings his empty glass to the bar and nods to Steff. “Iawn?” His eyes flick automatically downward, checking what Steffan’s drinking. It’s humiliating, but Steff can’t complain—Huw’s picked him off the floor more than once.
“Yeah, not bad.” Steffan’s doodling on the hull of the boat he’s sketched, his mind still on his list of hires, when something suddenly occurs to him. “What color’s that green they use, over at The Shore?”
“No idea. I’ve got the name somewhere.”
Steff looks at him.
“You want me to find it now?”
“Cheers.”
Huw gives a small shake of his head but gets out his phone. “It’s on my invoice, which—by the way—is still outstanding, so if you’re thinking of doing any work for them, get the cash up-front.” He zooms into the document on his screen. “It’s called Hunter.”
Steffan scribbles it down. “And white, yeah?”
Huw snorts. “You think Lord and Lady Lloyd would go for something as bog-standard as white? That’s Timid Mist, I’ll have you know.”
“He’s done all right for himself, hasn’t he?” Steffan says. “Rhys, I mean. And, fair play, he’s brought his money back home. There’s a lot who wouldn’t.”
“Do you see them in the shops?” Huw interrupts. “There’s an Ocado van there most days, and Ewan says he’s not sold as much as a rasher of bacon to them since the place opened. Bloody English.”
“Not Rhys. He’s as Welsh as you or—”
“You reckon?” Huw laughs. “He couldn’t wait to get out of here.”
Steffan stays quiet. Rhys owes Huw money, and where there’s money, there’s trouble.
Tucked away inside the boathouse is a wooden rowboat Steffan built by hand and was planning to sell. Over the next five days, he ignores his paid jobs and instead works on the boat, sanding and priming and making her watertight before giving her two coats of Hunter. He finishes the detail in Timid Mist and stencils letters on the stern, faithfully replicating the type he’s seen online.It’s a Shore thing!Smaller letters sayTabbyandFelicia—one name on each oar. Finally, Steffan applies a coat of varnish, and the hull gleams.
There’s been hardly any wind for days. The only sailors on the lake are those skilled enough to read the ripples, patient enough to wait for the pockets of breeze that will take them another hundred meters. Steffan fires up his motorboat and heads toward The Shore, the newly painted boat bobbing behind. He has a handful of paddleboards out on hire, dotted around the lake, and farther toward the mountain, he can see Angharad fishing from her red-sailed lugger. Earlier, Bobby Stafford—who, fair play, didn’t once haggle over the price of a summer’s rental—took Steff’s Jet Ski into the cove up the lake. Steffan sees him from the boathouse: noon every day, regular as clockwork.
