‘You can knock off. We’re going to get frogmen in tomorrow morning.’
Erica frowns. ‘Really? If it was my budget I wouldn’t bother. The water’s not that deep – not like a river – and with all the boat traffic, the water’s constantly being disturbed. If she was here, we’d have found her by now.’
‘Look, I’m not disagreeing – between you and me I suspect it’s as much for PR as anything. The ACC wants to prove to the world we’re leaving no stone unturned. Hence the bloody helicopter.’
‘The press must be loving that.’
‘Yeah,’ says Baxter. ‘I rather think that’s the idea.’
*
I take my seat for the second press conference exactly twenty-four hours after I did so for the first one. A lot can change in a day. Daisy’s face is all over the internet, and they tell me #FindDaisy is trending on Twitter. It’s now, officially, a Big Story, which means the Super is chairing the proceedings and we’re in the media suite at Kidlington, though even here it’s standing room only for the hacks. There’s a live feed to Sky News and at least a dozen other cameras, and in among them, unobtrusive, Gareth Quinn and Anna Phillips with a digital hand-held. I want to make sure we get all of this, every single frame.
At precisely 10.01 we usher the Mason family on to the dais to the clatter of flashlights. Leo Mason looks green in the glare – for a horrible moment I think he might actually be sick, right there in front of the cameras. As for his father, he immediately pushes his chair back as far as it will go, which is about as obvious a ‘tell’ as I’ve ever seen. I just hope for his sake he never decides to take up poker. When I went round last night to tell them about the appeal he kept asking if it was really necessary, what it would achieve, whether that sort of thing ever works in bringing someone back. Safe to say I’ve never had a parent try to argue me out of publicity for their missing child. And this is his little princess, his adored daughter. And I actually don’t think he’s faking it. Not that part of it, anyway. Which only serves to make it more perplexing. As for Sharon, she hardly said a word the whole time I was there. I kept on talking but I knew she wasn’t taking any of it in. And now, looking at her, I can see what had suddenly become so preoccupying – she was wondering what to wear. Clothes, make-up, jewellery – everything about her is matching, immaculate. She looks like she’s here for a job interview, not to beg for her baby back.
At 10.02, the Super clears his throat and reads from the paper in front of him. We’ve had to be more than usually careful what we say, given what we now know. We can’t afford to lie outright, but we can’t afford to tell the whole truth either.
‘Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. Mr and Mrs Mason are going to give a short statement about the disappearance of their daughter, Daisy. This is all we will be saying at this conference today. Our priority is to find Daisy safe and well and return her to her family. We do not have any further information we can share with you at present, and neither the family nor DI Fawley will be answering questions. I appreciate your understanding in this matter, and I would ask you to accord the family the privacy they need at this difficult time.’
Flashlights, people shift forward in their chairs. They’re not interested in what the family say – everyone says the same things if a kid is missing – but they do very much want to hear how they say it. They want to gauge what sort of people the Masons are. Do they stand up to the scrutiny? Do they sound convincing? Do we like them? It’s about character and credibility. And, needless to say, that great English obsession, class.
The Super turns to his left, to Barry Mason. Who opens his mouth to say something but then buries his head in his hands and begins to sob. We can just about hear him mumbling something about his ‘little princess’. A word which is really starting to get on my tits. I make a conscious effort to keep my expression impassive, but I’m not sure how well I’m succeeding. As for Leo, his eyes widen and he shoots an anguished glance at his mother, but she’s looking at the cameras, not at him. Under the table, out of sight of everyone but me, he creeps a hand on to her leg, but she does not move, makes no sign.
The Super coughs. ‘Perhaps you could read the statement, Mrs Mason?’
Sharon starts, then reaches her hand to her hair. Just as she did when she saw the TV crew arrive at the house. And then she turns direct to camera. ‘If anyone knows anything about where our little girl is,’ she says, ‘please, please come forward. And Daisy – if you’re watching this, you’re not in any trouble, darling – we just want you to come home. We miss you – your dad and me. And Leo, of course.’
And then she reaches to put an arm round her son, drawing him close. Into the circle.
*
I watch the footage with Bryan Gow, the consultant we bring in for things like this. You’d probably call him a profiler, but these days they’re wary of anything that smacks of prime-time procedural. Bryan himself, ironically enough, is straight out of central casting: trainspotter, mainstay of his local pub quiz team and amateur mathematician (don’t ask me how that works – it’s always struck me as the ultimate contradiction in terms).
We run the tape all the way through, and then he asks to see it again.
‘So what do you think?’ I say eventually.
He takes off his glasses and rubs them on his trousers. ‘To be honest, where to start. The father definitely doesn’t want to be there, and I don’t believe all that theatrical sobbing.’
‘Me neither. In fact, I suspect it’s just an excuse to put his hands over his face.’
‘I agree – he’s hiding something. But it isn’t necessarily to do with the child. I would look into his background. It’s possible he’s having an affair or involved in something else that means he doesn’t want his face on TV.’
‘He runs a building firm,’ I say drily. ‘I imagine there are plenty of people he might be avoiding. And the boy?’
‘Harder to read. He’s troubled by something, but it could just be the trauma of his sister going missing. Again, I’d check into his behaviour recently. See if something else has been going on that pre-dates the disappearance. How he’s been at school.’
‘And Sharon?’
Gow makes a face. ‘Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice. Did she come straight from the hairdresser or is that just how it looks?’
‘I got Everett to ask her about that – casually, so as not to spook her. Apparently she said, “You don’t want them to get the wrong impression.”’
‘Them?’
‘I noticed it before. She’s clearly paranoid about what other people think, but never actually defines who “they” are.’
Gow frowns. ‘I see. Rewind to where she talks about her daughter.’
Sharon Mason’s face appears, close up, and then freezes, her mouth slightly open.
‘Have you heard of someone called Paul Ekman?’
I shake my head.
‘But you’ve seen Lie to Me?’
‘No, but I know which show you mean. The one where he works out who’s telling the truth just from their body language?’
‘Right. That character is based on Ekman. His theory is that there are certain emotions that can’t be faked, because you can’t consciously control the muscles in your face that express them. So with sorrow, for example, it’s all about the space between the eyebrows. If you’re really miserable, not just pretending to be, your brows will be drawn together. It’s surprisingly hard to fake that convincingly for more than a minute or two – I know – I’ve tried. If you look at people in TV appeals who turned out later to have committed the crime themselves, you’ll see exactly what I mean. It’s the brows that give them away – the top half of the face doesn’t match the bottom. Try googling Tracie Andrews next time you’re online. Classic example. And now look at Sharon Mason.’
And there it is. There may be tears welling in her eyes, and a quiver to her lip, but her brow is smooth. Untroubled.