Кара Хантер - Close to Home

DC: Ah yes, sorry about that. Millie fell over and as it was getting late and she was a bit whiny we decided to call it a day. The tights were a write-off so we just ditched them. Apologies if it caused you a problem.

GQ: What costume was your daughter originally going to wear, Mr Connor?

DC: A mermaid, so my wife tells me. I never saw it but apparently it had a flesh-coloured top thing and a tail with shiny blue and green scales.

GQ: And any sort of headdress or mask?

DC: Hang on a minute.

[ more muffled noises ]

No, nothing like that.

GQ: So if Daisy had been wearing that costume at the party it would have been obvious she was there?

DC: I guess so – are you suggesting - ?

GQ: Merely establishing the facts, Mr Connor. Did you see Daisy last night?

DC: Now you come to mention it, I don’t think I did. I mean, on the news it said she was there – that she went missing afterwards, so I just assumed - Christ, that changes things a bit, doesn’t it?

GQ: And is there anything Millie can tell us – anything she might have heard or seen at the party?

DC: To be honest we’re not getting much sense out of her at the moment – she’s just crying all the time and refusing to talk about it. I don’t really want to push it. But when she calms down I’ll get Julia to ask her - I’ll call you back if there’s anything that might help.

GQ: Thank you, Mr Connor. And may I remind you not to discuss this conversation with anyone else. That’s very important. Particularly the press.

DC: Of course. And please let me know if there’s anything else we can do. We all have to pull together to find the bastard who did this, don’t we?

***

18 July 2016, 4.29 p.m.

The day before the disappearance

The Connor house, 54 Barge Close

Julia Connor fills half a dozen glasses with juice and carries the tray up to her daughter’s room. She can hear the noise the children are making all the way up the stairs; the neighbours can probably hear it halfway down the street. Inside, the carpet is buried in clothes and costumes.

‘I hope you all know which costumes belong to who,’ says Julia, putting down the tray. ‘I don’t want to get into trouble with your mums.’

Three of the girls are in front of the long mirror, lavishly admiring themselves. A pink princess, a flower, a butterfly.

‘Who is the fairest of them all?’ demands the princess of her reflection, as her gold cardboard crown slips over one eye. ‘Don’t you think I look absolutely beautiful? ’

Julia smiles to herself, wishing she’d had half that kid’s confidence when she was their age. Then she closes the door and goes back down to the kitchen, where she turns the radio on and starts chopping vegetables for dinner. They’re playing an old Annie Lennox track, so she turns up the volume and sings to herself. Sisters are doing it for themselves. It’s so loud, in fact, that she doesn’t notice the sudden commotion upstairs. So she never hears the wailing cries of ‘ I hate you! I wish you were dead! ’; she never sees the girl in the flower outfit pinned against the wall or the other child who is furiously attacking her, jabbing at the small pale face in its blank petal mask.

***

By six, the search team is running on empty. The towpath has been taped off to the public for over a mile north from the estate, and they’ve been along it, inch by inch, using poles to part the undergrowth, and collecting anything that might even conceivably be evidence in plastic bags. Sweet wrappers, beer cans, a child’s shoe. Why, wonders Erica Somer, straightening her aching back and checking her watch, is there only ever one shoe? Do those who lose them limp home half shod? And how exactly does a shoe get lost anyway – you’d hardly fail to notice it was missing. And then she shakes her head at the pointlessness of even thinking about it, and blames it on low blood sugar.

A few yards further on, six or seven conservation volunteers in waders are making their way through ditches half filled with rotting leaves and rubbish chucked by the day boaters. After so many hot days, the water levels are low and the smell is high. They’ve already covered the nature reserve a hundred yards behind. Erica never even knew it was there, despite growing up less than five miles away. But hers wasn’t the sort of school that went in for field trips or nature study days; the teachers had enough on their hands keeping a lid on the chaos. She had no idea there was somewhere so wild so close to the centre of the city. So wild, so overgrown, half flooded and unpathed. She saw three water rats and a family of moor hens and – suddenly – out of nowhere – a rearing, hissing beating of whiteness and wings as a male swan rose up in defence of his hidden young.

But all these hours later, what do they have to show for it? Beyond the backache and the glorified litter pick, nothing. No one saw anything – neither those living on the water, nor those backing on to it, several of whom were having barbecues in their gardens at the time the Masons were having their party. Two or three even remembered the fireworks, but none of them saw a little girl. It’s as if she vanished into thin air.

At 7.25 she gets a call from Baxter.

‘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.