He swallows. ‘I don’t know.’
‘No explanation at all? Come on, Mr Mason, an accomplished liar like you – you must be able to do better than that.’
‘There’s no call for sarcasm, Inspector,’ says Emma Carwood.
‘Look,’ says Mason, his voice breaking, ‘have either of you got kids?’
I open my mouth but no sound comes. ‘No,’ says Quinn quickly. ‘Not that it’s in any way relevant.’
‘Well, if you did,’ he says, ‘you’d know that they’re always getting into scrapes – falling over, grazed knees. Daisy has nose bleeds all the time – the blood gets all over the sodding place. Those gloves were just lying about in the house – there are all sorts of ways it could have happened.’
‘I believe you tested my client’s car, Inspector?’ says Emma Carwood. ‘As well as the high-viz clothing he had in the back? As far as I know, you found no incriminating evidence whatsoever. No fluids, no DNA, nothing.’
Quinn and I exchange a glance. It still bugs me. That he left no trace in the truck. He doesn’t strike me as that meticulous. Though as Quinn was quick to point out, everyone’s that meticulous if there’s enough at stake.
I change tack. ‘Has your daughter ever been to the car park by the level crossing, Mr Mason? For a walk on Port Meadow, perhaps?’
He puts his arms on the table and drops his head into them. ‘No,’ he says, his voice muffled. ‘No no no no no.’
Emma Carwood leans over and touches him on the shoulder. ‘Barry?’
Then suddenly he sits up. There are the marks of tears about his eyes, but he wipes his face with a sleeve and sits forward.
‘Show me that bloody footage again,’ he says quickly, pointing at the screen. ‘Show it to me again.’
‘OK,’ I say as I slide the cursor back three minutes and press Play.
‘Slow it down,’ he says after a moment. ‘There, slow it down.’
We’re all staring, watching the screen. The entire sequence only takes two or three seconds. We see the figure with the barrow take a couple of steps, his head down. That’s all.
Barry Mason sits up, like a man come back from the dead. ‘That’s not me, Inspector. And I can prove it. Do you hear me – did you get that on your bloody tape? I can prove that isn’t me.’
*
It’s 5.45 and Quinn and I are standing behind Anna Phillips as she taps her keyboard.
‘Are you sure we can’t get a better close-up – see his face?’
She shakes her head, her eyes still on the screen. ‘’Fraid not. I’ve tried, but he has his back to us the whole time.’
‘Bloody hell,’ says Quinn under his breath. ‘That’s all we sodding need.’
‘But what Mason said – you think he’s right?’
‘Give me a second,’ she says, frowning into the screen. ‘I’ve downloaded a photogrammetry app – I haven’t used one before but I’m hoping it’ll give us some sort of answer.’
‘What the hell is photo-whatsit when it’s at home?’
‘It creates three-dimensional models from ordinary photos. It’s pretty impressive actually – look.’
Three clicks and the still from the train camera opens up into 3D. A plastic replica of reality hangs suspended in a bright blue universe, like one of those cross sections you used to get in geography books. I can see the figure with the barrow, the railway line, the trees, the far edge of the car park, even the bushes along the track. Anna moves the cursor around and the image rotates. Left, right, tilt up, tilt down.
‘It’s accurate enough to give you proper measurements,’ she says. ‘Heights, distances between objects, that sort of thing. I could probably tell you how fast the train was going if you gave me long enough.’
‘I just need to know if what Mason said is right.’
More work on the keyboard and grid points appear all over the image. One more click and the 3D image disappears, leaving only lines between the points, and numbers at each intersection. Anna sits back.
‘Afraid he is. Perhaps not to the millimetre, but yes. He’s right.’
*
At 11.15 the following morning, Anna Phillips draws up outside the Victorian two-up two-down owned by Pauline Pober. There are hollyhocks in the front garden and borage plants swarmed with bees. DC Andrew Baxter loosens his tie and looks out of the car window. The night’s rain has blown over and the sun’s already hot.
‘This has Wild Goose Chase written all over it,’ he says testily. ‘We’ve arrested Mason now, so what’s the point?’
Anna turns off the engine. ‘Judging by what I saw yesterday, that Mason arrest isn’t as cut-and-dried as we might have thought. And in any case, I told Mrs Pober we were coming. It would be rude to just not turn up.’
Baxter mutters something about old biddies and cats, which Anna decides not to hear. They get out and she locks the car, and as they go up the path, a curtain twitches next door. Anna was brought up in a village like this – she knows what piranha bowls they can be.
But far from being on the watch for their arrival, Mrs Pober takes a good three minutes to answer the door. There’s a dark smear across one cheek and a rather unpleasant – and very distinctive – smell.
‘So sorry,’ she says, smiling broadly and wiping her hands on a pair of grubby trousers. ‘The bloody drains are blocked again, so I had to get the rods out. Come through to the back. The air’s a bit better out there, if you catch my drift.’
Anna suppresses a smile at the expression on Baxter’s face, and the two of them follow her through the cottage to a small but dazzling garden. A square of lawn with flowers jostling for space in the borders. Lavender, clematis, penstemons, carnations, blue geraniums.
‘We had a garden three times this size before Reggie died,’ she says. ‘This is all I can cope with on my own.’
‘It’s lovely, Mrs Pober,’ says Anna, taking a chair.
‘Oh, Pauline, please,’ she says, flapping off a wasp. ‘Do you want a drink? I have some cold Stella in the fridge.’
‘Er, no thanks, not while we’re on duty,’ says Baxter in martyred tones.
‘So how can I help you, Officers? You said on the phone it was about that terrible accident in Lanzarote all those years back?’
‘That’s right,’ says Anna. ‘We were wondering if there’s anything you could tell us – anything that wasn’t in the press.’
Pauline sits back and wipes a hand across her brow. ‘Well, it was a powerful long time ago. I’m not sure how much help I can be.’
Anna looks at Baxter, who makes it quite clear that pursuing this particular feral poultry is her responsibility, not his.
Oh well, she thinks, in for a penny.
‘Did you have any contact with the Wileys before the accident, Pauline?’
‘I remember they were on the same flight as us. We’d done a fair bit of travelling by then, Reggie and me, but you could see they were complete novices. They’d brought this huge bag of sandwiches to eat on the plane, and a thermos, would you believe! Of course, this was long before 9/11. Mrs Wiley was clearly very apprehensive about flying. They were a couple of rows behind us and I could hear her all the way – I don’t think she was talking to anyone in particular. Just wittering away to relieve the nerves.’
‘What about the girls – Sharon and Jessica?’
Pauline smiles. ‘That Jessica was a little love. As soon as the seat-belt sign went off she was up and down the aisle the whole time, dragging this huge teddy bear behind her. She kept going up to people and asking what their names were. Terribly sweet. You could see the parents doted on her.’
‘And Sharon?’
Pauline takes a deep breath. ‘Well, fourteen isn’t an easy age, is it? Exams starting and periods and all that.’
Baxter’s face is a sight to behold.
‘And you were at the same hotel as well?’
‘Yes, and we did spot them occasionally, but to be honest, we’d gone for the birdwatching, not the beach. Reggie could never stand sitting around doing nothing. I used to say he had a bee up his bum.’