Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(80)
16.18
Lilian Chamberlain @LilianChamberlain
@ElspethMorgan959 It’s heartbreaking, the whole sad story #Justice4Daisy
16.20
Jenny T @56565656Jennifer
@ElspethMorgan959 @LilianChamberlain I still say that she didn’t look like an abuse victim in that photo – looks so happy, like she’s looking forward to something
16.22
Lilian Chamberlain @LilianChamberlain
Jenny T @56565656Jennifer
16.24
@56565656Jennifer I know what you mean, but perhaps it was just the party? Something to take her mind off it? #Justice4Daisy @ElspethMorgan959
@ElspethMorgan959 I guess so. Just keeps nagging at me, that’s all @LilianChamberlain #DaisyMason
*
‘Boss? I’m at Mercers.’
Quinn sounds like he’s in a wind tunnel. A gust whips the words away but I can still hear the defeat in his voice, and in the background the thud and grind of heavy machinery.
‘I’m guessing it’s bad news.’
‘I’ve texted you a picture. Has it come through?’
I reach for my mobile and open the photo. A wide space like an opencast mine, ringed with huge dunes of waste. Three lorries tipping out their loads in a billow of thick white dust, and in the centre, a huge yellow machine crushing the debris into a stream of something that looks like not much more than sand.
I pick up the handset again. ‘Shit. I see what you mean.’
‘They don’t even know exactly where the stuff that came from Oxford ended up. And even if they did, God knows how many tons of other crap has been dumped on top of it since then. Needle and haystack is so far off it’s laughable. It’s a complete fucking non-starter.’
He doesn’t usually swear. Not at me, anyway.
‘Add to that the fact that they’re absolutely refusing to accept they could have overlooked a body. However small it was, however carefully someone had wrapped it. They won’t budge.’
‘But they can’t prove it.’
He sighs. ‘No, of course they can’t. But we can’t prove it either. So the question is, do you think we have enough? Will the CPS be prepared to charge him, even though we don’t have the body?’
‘Ev just called – looks like they’ve found some physical evidence at the crossing. And there could be something else too. I’m waiting for Network Rail to get back to me.’
His voice lifts a little. ‘I’m on my way.’
*
Twenty minutes later the email comes through. I download the video attachment and watch it, then I call the team into the incident room and we watch it together. There’s relief, and there’s consensus, and there’s even a tear or two. No high-fives, no excess, but a pride that the team done good. And they did. Baxter offers to leave a message for Gislingham (‘that was solid police work, tracking down that Ford Escort’), and in the middle of it all a call comes through from the ACC asking when we can brief the press.
*
Just after three, Emma Carwood arrives, and we get Mason up from the cells. I’ve loathed that man pretty much since I laid eyes on him, but a small part of me is actually sorry for him when the custody sergeant leads him in. He looks like he’s been hollowed out from the inside. Like the bones have gone and it’s just the skin holding him up. No more walk of the cock now. He takes his seat like an old man.
‘Mr Mason, this interview is in continuation of the one suspended at 13.14. It is now 15.14 and I am restarting the tape. Those present, Detective Inspector Adam Fawley, Acting Detective Sergeant Gareth Quinn, Mr Barry Mason, Miss Emma Carwood.’
I lift my laptop on to the table and swing it round to face Mason. Then I open the video and start the film. He stares at it, rubs his eyes, and stares at it again.
‘I don’t get it. What are you showing me this for?’
‘This, Mr Mason, is footage from the cab camera of a CrossCountry train. This particular train left Banbury at 16.36 on Tuesday the nineteenth of July, arriving at Oxford at 16.58. As you will see, at 16.56, the train starts to slow as it approaches the station, and you will briefly see the area around the old level crossing.’
Mason puts his head in his hands and digs his nails into his scalp. Then he looks up at me. ‘You’ve lost me. This is all some hideous bloody nightmare. I haven’t a fucking clue what’s going on.’
I change the player to slow motion and we see the allotments come into range on the right, and the heavy machinery parked alongside. Then I press Pause and point at the screen.
‘There,’ I say.
On the left of the track there’s a figure in a hard hat, high-viz jacket and trousers. He has his back to us but he’s clearly pushing a barrow across the car park towards the new footings, and the heap of rubble beyond. There’s a tiny moment when we can see a flash of orange glove, and then the train has passed and the image is gone.
Barry Mason looks none the wiser. ‘I still don’t get it.’
‘That’s you, isn’t it, Mr Mason?’
He gapes at me. ‘You’re having a laugh – no, of course it fucking well isn’t me.’
‘You own high-viz gear like that, don’t you?’