The girl is starting to look anxious and, seeing her mother’s concerned glance, Everett elects to change tack.
‘What’s the best thing about having Daisy as a friend?’
Portia brightens a little. ‘She’s really clever. She helps me with school stuff. And she does these – what do you call them – when you try to sound like someone else?’
‘Impersonations.’
‘She’s really good at them. She does one of her mother. And of famous people on the telly.’
‘TV,’ says Eleanor Dawson quietly. ‘We say “TV”.’
‘Do they make you laugh, the impersonations?’
Portia looks away. ‘Sometimes.’
‘And what’s the worst thing?’
Portia opens her mouth, then stops. ‘She listens,’ she says eventually, her face red.
‘You mean she eavesdrops?’
‘Sometimes she hides and you don’t know she’s there and she listens to what you say.’
‘I see,’ says Everett as her phone starts to ring. She gets up with an apologetic gesture and moves quickly to the shade of an apple tree that’s probably older than her flat. It’s Gislingham.
‘Boss wants us all back at the station in an hour.’
‘OK, I’m pretty much done. How did it go – the scan?’
She can almost hear him beaming. ‘All OK. And it’s a boy.’
‘Brilliant, Chris. I’m really pleased for you.’
‘We’re just finishing here so I’ll come and pick you up after I drop Janet at home.’
‘Give her my love. And tell her not to let you bully her into calling the baby something he won’t forgive you for. Like Stamford Bridge.’
‘Coming from someone called Verity Mabel, I’d call that pretty rich.’
But she knows he’s smiling.
*
At 3.30, I push open the door to the St Aldate’s incident room. I could hear the noise halfway down the passage, but as soon as they see me the room falls silent. Silence with the fizz of expectation. They have the bit between their teeth now.
I go to the front and turn to face them.
‘Right, I’m sure a lot of you have got wind of what’s happened today, but we all need to be on the same page, so bear with me. First, the appeal. We’ve had over a thousand calls so far, and the usual crop of supposed sightings halfway across the country but nothing that looks particularly promising. Yet. Certainly no authenticated sightings of Daisy after she left the school gate at 3.52 that afternoon, and contrary to what the Masons originally led us to believe, Sharon Mason did not pick the children up from school, so Daisy and Leo had to walk back. Mrs Mason has also just called me to confirm that her daughter’s school uniform is missing. All of which means we cannot completely discount the possibility that Daisy was abducted on her way home. On the other hand, we haven’t located the mermaid costume yet either, and given she can’t have been wearing both at the same time something clearly isn’t adding up. Likewise both parents insist that when Daisy came home from school that afternoon she went upstairs and put on her music. Both say they heard it, but neither of them actually saw her. So that isn’t adding up either. And I’m afraid there’s something else we need to factor in as well.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Sharon Mason now says she went out for up to forty minutes that afternoon, leaving the children alone in the house – ’
‘For Christ’s sake, now she bloody tells us.’
‘Look, I’m as frustrated as you are, but there it is. She didn’t want her husband to know, apparently, which is why she didn’t tell us until we got her alone. She thinks it was just after 4.30 that she left, because that’s when Leo got home. She says she went first to the Glasshouse Street parade and then the M&S on the ring-road roundabout, but their CCTV is out of action and no one remembers her. Which may prove something or absolutely nothing. The important point for all of you is that the children were alone, and the side gate and patio doors were probably both open. So in theory Daisy could have just wandered off on her own, though if that was the case the odds are we would have found her by now, given the number of people we have looking. The other possibility is that someone could have taken her. Either from outside the house, or even – just conceivably – from inside.’
‘Come on,’ says a voice at the back. Andrew Baxter, I think. ‘The chances of a random paedophile happening to swing by in that precise forty minutes – ’
‘I know, and I agree with you. The odds are vanishingly small. In fact, there’s only one way that would make sense and that’s if someone was already watching the family and saw their opportunity when Sharon went out. Possibly someone Daisy knew, and would have let into the house. And that may not be as far-fetched as it sounds. Everett – can you share what you got from Daisy’s friends?’
Verity Everett stands up. ‘I just got back from speaking to Nanxi Chen and Portia Dawson. They both confirmed that Daisy had met someone recently and that it was a big secret. Neither could tell me who it was, but both said Daisy was angry afterwards and wouldn’t speak to them about it.’
‘And you’re sure,’ says Baxter, ‘that they meant angry, not upset?’
Everett stands firm. ‘Definitely angry. And there’s something else. The kids in Daisy’s class wrote fairy stories this term, and Daisy’s has gone missing. The teacher’s going to have another look for it. And yes, it could just be a complete coincidence, but we’ll need to check that no one’s been in that classroom who wasn’t supposed to be there. Because it’s just possible there’s something in that story that could identify the person she’d been meeting. Something that person doesn’t want anyone to see.’
‘So,’ I say, looking around the room, ‘we urgently need to find out who that person was. And given Daisy Mason seems to have been pretty closely monitored most of the time, my guess is the only place she could have met anyone without her parents knowing is at the school. So I need someone to go through the CCTV at Bishop Christopher’s for the last six weeks. Every break-time, every lunchtime. Extra brownie points for volunteering or else I just pick a victim.’
I scan their faces. ‘OK, if there’s no takers it’s your turn to get the short straw, Baxter.’
‘He won’t mind,’ quips Gislingham. ‘He’s an Aston Villa fan. He’s used to watching a screen for hours and nothing happening.’
‘What about the boy?’ says someone else at the back, over the ensuing laughter. ‘Leo – what’s his story? Surely he would have heard if someone got into the house?’
I wait for the noise to die down. ‘Good question. Bloody good question, in fact. When we first questioned Leo he said that Daisy got distracted by a butterfly on the walk home and he went on without her. Which didn’t tally with what Sharon said about Daisy getting home first. So we pushed him a bit more and got a different story entirely. What he says now is that some of the older boys have been bullying him at school, and they caught up with him and Daisy on the way home on Tuesday and started to have a go. Pushing him about, making fun of his name. They call him “Nuka the puker”, apparently. Nuka’s a character in The Lion King. For those of you who haven’t seen it. The mangy one.’
‘Christ,’ says Baxter. ‘It’s all a bit bloody poncey, isn’t it? It was Zit-face and Fat-bum when I was at school.’
More laughter. Baxter, for the record, is rather on the chunky side, but at least the zits are long gone.