Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(88)

Sharon glares at him; her anger is perilously close to the surface now. ‘He had his headphones on.’

But Agnew isn’t letting up – he’s done his homework. ‘But even so – surely he would have noticed – surely he would have told you as soon as you got back? After all,’ he says, holding her gaze, drilling each word, ‘you’re his mother, he’s your son – ’

It’s the last straw.

‘That bloody kid is not my son!’ The words are out before she can think them. ‘And as for him hearing anything or doing anything, you’ve got to be bloody joking. There’s something wrong with him. There always has been. He burned the sodding house down, for Christ’s sake. If anyone’s to blame it’s his stupid mother. Not me.’

Kirby is again on her feet objecting, and people in the public gallery are shouting and pointing. It’s nearly five minutes before order is restored. And all that while, Sharon sits there, her shoulders heaving.

‘So you stand by your story,’ says Agnew. ‘That you never saw Daisy after she got home. You never spoke to her and you never saw her.’

She flushes, but she does not speak.

‘In that case, how do you explain this?’ He lifts another plastic bag from the desk in front of him. ‘Exhibit nine, my Lady. A small cotton cardigan found under the heap of wheelbarrows in the car park. A cardigan which, as we know, has been identified as that worn by Daisy Mason on the day of her disappearance.’ He presses his remote control again and the CCTV from outside the school appears on the screen. There are more gasps around the court: the police haven’t released this before. No one has seen this footage. Agnew lets them watch. Let’s them see Daisy alive, Daisy laughing, Daisy in the sun. And then he freezes the frame.

‘This is the last sighting of Daisy Mason. The cardigan is tied round her shoulders and, as you can see, it is completely clean. Both sleeves are visible and there are no marks.’

He lifts the evidence bag again. ‘I accept that the jury will find it hard to discern, in among the mud and filth, but analysis has proved that there are bloodstains on the left sleeve of this cardigan. This blood is not Daisy’s. It’s from someone else entirely. That person, Mrs Mason, is you.’

He pauses, waiting for it to sink in. ‘So perhaps you could tell us, Mrs Mason, how your blood came to be on this cardigan, when it was not present at 3.49, when your daughter left school. Do you still claim you never saw Daisy after she got home that day?’

She must have known this was coming, and yet she has nothing to offer. No story that will stand the slightest scrutiny.

‘I cut myself,’ she says eventually. ‘There was glass on the kitchen floor.’

‘Ah, the famous broken jar of mayonnaise. But that still does not explain how your blood got on to this cardigan. Can you enlighten us, Mrs Mason?’

‘I found the cardigan on the stairs after I heard her come in. When I went to call up to her. So I picked it up and put it on the hook in the hall. I was tidying up. For the party. I didn’t realize my hand was still bleeding or I’d have put it in the wash.’

‘So when did you notice the cardigan was gone?’

She looks at him now and her chin lifts. ‘When Leo got home. I just assumed she’d come downstairs and got it.’

‘And you never mentioned this to the police? Not once – in all those hours of interviews before they arrested you?’

‘I didn’t think it was important.’

The courtroom is silent. No one believes her. But it’s all she has.

There is a long, long pause.

*

19 July 2016, 4.09 p.m.

The day of the disappearance

5 Barge Close, kitchen

She knew he was lying. There was something about his voice, the noises on the line. The echoes were all wrong. He wasn’t out in the open, at a site, he was in a room. A room with other people in it. She’s got a long nose for them now. The backing tracks to his lies.

She puts the phone down carefully and stares at the kitchen floor. The mayonnaise is solidifying into a sticky glutinous mass, buzzing with flies. There’s glass everywhere, tiny splinters crunching underfoot. When the front door opens five minutes later Sharon is on her hands and knees, collecting the pieces in a piece of kitchen roll.

‘Daisy? Is that you?’

Sharon gets to her feet and reaches for a tea towel. There’s blood on her hands.

‘Daisy! Did you hear me? Come in here at once!’

Daisy eventually appears, dragging her school bag along the floor behind her. Sharon’s mouth hardens; there are two spots of livid colour on her cheeks.

‘You did this, didn’t you?’ she says, gesturing at the mess on the floor. ‘You were the last one in the kitchen this morning. It had to be you.’

Daisy shrugs. ‘It’s just mayonnaise.’

Sharon takes a step towards her. ‘I’ve been out all day shopping and sorting things out for the party, and now I have to go out again, because you couldn’t be bothered to tell me what you’d done. And what were you doing with it anyway? No one has mayonnaise for breakfast. Or is that something else your fancy friends do? Something else we’re just too thick to understand?’

Daisy opens her mouth, but thinks better of it. She stares at the mayonnaise, and then at her mother. Her chin lifts in a gesture of defiance. The two of them have never looked more alike.