Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(43)

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When I find the caretaker’s office, there’s a woman there with Baxter. She gets up at once and comes towards me, hand outstretched. She’s nervous, edgy.

‘Alison Stevens, I’m the head. DC Baxter asked me to pop over and look at the footage he’s found, but I’m not sure I can be of much help.’

I pull out a chair and sit down next to Baxter. ‘What have you got?’

‘The quality’s not great,’ he says. ‘No sound and it’s only black and white, but it’s better than sod all. The first one is early April. After the Easter break. This is lunchtime on the twelfth.’

The image is of the school gates, which are closed, and the chicken-wire fence either side. There are kids running in and out of the shot in the playground. Balls bouncing, two girls doing some immensely complex clapping game. Three skipping. Then I see her. Daisy. She’s alone, but she doesn’t seem bothered by her lack of company. She stoops to look at something on a leaf, then watches as it flies up and away. A butterfly, perhaps. It’s strange, watching her like this – this girl I have thought about every minute of every day since she disappeared, and yet know so little about. She couldn’t possibly have known anyone would look at this footage. She might not even have known the camera was there. It feels curiously intrusive and I realize suddenly that this is what paedophiles do. It’s not a good thought.

And then a figure appears on the pavement opposite. He must be fourteen or fifteen. Tall, blond. He comes up to the gate and calls Daisy over. She’s clearly intrigued, but wary, and she stays a good foot shy of the gate. They talk a while – or rather he talks and she listens – and then the bell must go because the kids start to drift towards the school door, and the boy disappears out of shot, leaving Daisy gazing after him.

‘The next one is a couple of days later,’ says Baxter. ‘Pretty much the same thing, only Daisy’s keener to talk that time, it seems. And then there’s April nineteenth. At 12.05 there’s a delivery and the van blocks the view for five minutes or so, then it moves away and this is what we see.’

Daisy is alone on the pavement. She keeps looking around, presumably to check if any of the supervisors in the playground have noticed she’s outside the gate. A few moments later, the boy arrives. Daisy seems really happy to see him. They talk briefly, and once or twice the boy looks over his shoulder, as if at someone just out of view. Then the two of them head off together towards his unseen companion.

I turn to Alison Stevens.

‘I want to say at once,’ she says quickly, ‘that what you just saw is absolutely against all our operating procedures. Playground supervisors are required to monitor any traffic coming on to school premises and ensure all the children are inside the gates – ’

‘Right now, I’m not interested in what should or shouldn’t have happened. All I want to know is if you have any idea who that boy is.’

She swallows. ‘I wish I did. I didn’t come to Kit’s until last year, so he’d have left here by then if he was one of ours. I’ve just sent a still from the footage to the local secondary heads, but no one’s come back to me yet. I’m afraid some might already have gone on holiday’.

‘Baxter, what time does the camera show Daisy getting back to school that day?’

‘On the nineteenth? She comes back into view about five to one. The bell is going so she just mingles with the other kids as they go back in. None of the supervisors seems to have noticed. And after that, there’s just one more sighting. You said check breaks and lunchtimes, but I thought it worth scanning home-time as well, just in case.’

He clicks on another file and the same corner of the street appears again. The same, but different, because you can tell summer is coming. There are flowers on the honeysuckle and the grass is lush. It reminds me of an old Columbo episode where he cracked the whole case by noticing that one CCTV shot showed a cut hedge and another, supposedly later the same day, an uncut one. If only it were always that easy.

The screen says 3.39 on 9 May. Daisy comes into view, talking to Nanxi Chen. Then Nanxi’s mother appears and there’s some discussion between them.

‘Looks to me like Mrs Chen was due to pick both girls up after school but Daisy’s persuaded her otherwise,’ says Baxter, as Nanxi’s mother leads her away, glancing back once at Daisy before moving her daughter towards their car.

‘We’ll need to check that with Mrs Chen.’

‘Easily done.’

The film continues and three minutes later Daisy is suddenly alert. She can see something – or someone – just out of range.

‘If it’s the boy, looks like he’s staying deliberately out of the way this time,’ says Baxter. ‘Either he’s just realized the camera’s there – ’

‘ – or he suddenly has a reason to be a lot more careful.’

I see the anxiety flood Alison Stevens’s face. ‘Oh no, surely not – he can’t be more than fifteen!’

On the screen, Daisy looks both ways, then hurries across the road. Baxter freezes the frame just before she disappears out of the shot. She has a huge smile on her face.

‘That’s as far as I got,’ he says, sitting back and looking at me. ‘But didn’t Everett say Daisy was really upset after she’d had her secret meeting?’