Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(87)

‘He did hide it – that’s where it was – that’s where I found it.’

‘You also told the police that you had no idea until that moment that your daughter might be being abused?’

Silence.

Agnew puts his glasses back on and whips through his pages. ‘This assertion is in direct contradiction to what your husband has already testified. He says you accused him of having some sort of incestuous fixation with Daisy as long ago as April 2016, when you confronted him about the birthday card. And yet you did not see fit to report any of this to the appropriate authorities.’

Again, silence. Sharon is gripping her hands together so hard her knuckles are white.

‘It was revenge, wasn’t it?’ Agnew continues. ‘Pure and simple. You found out your husband had been on a dating site, meeting other younger women and sleeping with them, and you saw your chance to get your vengeance by framing him for your daughter’s death. You gave the police material that pointed to his guilt and you wore his high-viz clothing when you disposed of Daisy’s body, so that if anyone saw you they would assume the person they were looking at was not a woman, but a man. Not you, but your husband.’

‘He wasn’t just cheating. He was looking at porn. At kiddie porn.’ She leans forward and points at Agnew, stabbing the air. ‘He’s in prison for it.’

Agnew raises an eyebrow. ‘Ah, but you didn’t know he was doing that then, did you? You didn’t know that until after Daisy disappeared. At least that’s what you told the police.’

‘I didn’t know he was on that dating site either,’ she snaps. ‘How could it be revenge if I didn’t know? I’m not telepathic. I didn’t even know he had that phone.’

‘But you did know he was constantly coming back late from work. You did know he was giving you increasingly lame excuses for those absences. And you accused him, for months, and with monotonous regularity, of having an affair. Can you deny that?’

Sharon opens her mouth, then closes it again. Her cheeks have gone very red.

‘So let’s run through it once again, shall we?’ says Agnew. ‘Just so we’re all clear about this new story of yours. According to you, you are at home preparing for the party when your son and daughter get home from school. Daisy at 4.15, and Leo at 4.30. Daisy puts her music on in her room. You gather from Leo that the children had had some sort of argument but you don’t go upstairs to check on Daisy. At just after 4.30 you go out for mayonnaise, leaving the children in the house on their own. At 5.15 you return, without mayonnaise. Again, you do not go up to check on Daisy. Or on Leo, for that matter. Your husband returns at 5.30 and likewise does not go up to see the children. Guests start to arrive for the party at seven, and all through the evening you see a neighbour’s little girl running about in a daisy costume and have no idea – to use your own phrase – that she is not your daughter.’

Someone shouts abuse from the public gallery and the judge looks up sharply. ‘Silence, or I will clear the court!’

Agnew takes a deep breath. ‘When precisely, in all this, Mrs Mason, are you telling us your daughter disappeared?’

Sharon shrugs, avoiding his eye. ‘It must have been when I was out.’

‘So we’re back to the famous forty minutes? You would have us believe some unknown paedophile – some random intruder – just happened to choose that very moment to break into the house?’

‘She might have known them. She might have met them before and let them in. You didn’t know her. She liked keeping secrets. She liked doing things behind my back.’

There’s another ripple from the gallery at that, and anxious looks between the defence team.

‘Indeed,’ says Agnew, turning to look at the jury. ‘Members of the jury might well wonder at a mother who says such things about her own child – her own dead child – ’

Miss Kirby begins to rise again, but Agnew quickly forestalls her. ‘I withdraw that last remark, my Lady. But I will, if I may, ask the defendant if she can cite an example – any example – of any actual duplicity on her daughter’s part?’

‘Well,’ she flashes, ‘she was seeing that nasty little half-brother of hers for a start. I didn’t know anything about that.’

‘And you are asking the jury to believe that?’

‘Are you calling me a liar? We didn’t know. I didn’t know. I’d have put a bloody stop to it if I had.’

It was a trap, and she’s walked right into it.

‘I see,’ says Agnew after a heavy pause. ‘Are you in the habit, Mrs Mason, of putting a bloody stop to things you don’t like?’

It’s the judge who intervenes this time. ‘The jury will ignore that last remark. Move on, please, Mr Agnew.’

Agnew consults his notes. ‘Regardless of whether you knew Daisy was seeing her half-brother, it wasn’t Jamie Northam who came to the house that day, was it, Mrs Mason? Because we know for a fact that he was twenty miles away at a wedding rehearsal in Goring. Are you saying Daisy was meeting someone else as well – that she had a second secret assignation going on? Is that really likely – a child of eight with neither a mobile phone nor access to a computer? And even if such a person did exist, wouldn’t Leo have known if they had come to the door that afternoon or broken in?’