Кара Хантер: Close to Home

The girl shrugs. ‘Maybe. What do I know – I don’t have kids. Do you?’

She doesn’t know. No one’s told her.

‘No,’ I say.

Not any more.

***

BBC Midlands Today

Wednesday 20 July 2016 | Last updated at 06:41

Police appeal for help in search for missing Oxford girl, 8

An 8-year-old girl has gone missing from her home in Oxford. Daisy Mason was last seen at midnight on Tuesday in the garden of her family home, where her parents Barry and Sharon Mason were holding a party.

Daisy is described as blonde with green eyes, and was wearing a flower fancy dress with her hair in bunches. Neighbours say she is outgoing but sensible, and is unlikely to have gone willingly with a stranger.

Police say that anyone who sees Daisy or has any information about her should contact the Thames Valley CID incident room on 01865 0966552.

***

By half seven the forensics team have nearly finished in the garden, and uniform have started another search of the area in and round the close, every movement watched, now, by a bank of hungry TV cameras. There’s the canal as well, but I’m not even going to think about that. Not yet. Everyone is going to assume this girl is still alive. Until I say so.

I stand on the tiny patio looking down the back garden. There are scraps of burnt-out firework littered across the flower beds, and the dried-up summer turf has been trodden to scrub. That uniform was right: chances of a decent footprint, or anything else remotely useful, is practically zero. I can see Challow down by the back fence, bent double, picking his way along the undergrowth. Above his head, a balloon is caught in the bushes on the towpath, its silver streamer rippling gently in the early air. As for me, I’m desperate for a fag.

The canal curves slightly here, which means the Masons’ garden is a little longer than most of those in the close, but it would still be pokey for that many people. I can’t decide if it’s the swing in the corner, or the crappy pampas grass, or just the lack of sleep, but it’s unnervingly like the garden we had when I was growing up. Boxed in with all the other identically dreary houses in a dismal ribbon development that owed its entire existence to the Underground – a stop on the final stretch, thrown down randomly in what had once been meadows, but were long since concrete by the time we lived there. My parents chose it because it was safe, and because it was all they could afford, and even now I can’t argue with them on either score. But it was horrible, all the same. Not a place of its own at all, just ‘south’ of the only thing resembling a real town for miles around. The same town I went to myself – to school, to my mates’ houses, and later, to pubs and to meet up with girls. I never brought a single friend home; I never let them see where I really lived. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on these Canal Manor people: I know what it’s like to feel you’re on the wrong side of the glass.

—

At the bottom of the Masons’ garden the barbecue is still smouldering, the metal giving tiny clicks as it cools. The chains of the swing are bound together tightly with duct tape, so it can’t be used. There’s a stack of garden chairs, a gazebo (folded) and a trestle table with a gingham cloth (also folded). Underneath, there are green cool boxes labelled BEER, WINE, SOFT DRINKS. There are two wheelie bins on the patio behind me, the one for recycling gaping with cans and bottles, the other stacked with black bags. It occurs to me – as it should have done straight away – that Sharon Mason has done all this. The tidying, the folding up. She went round this garden making it presentable. And she did it after she knew her daughter was gone.

Gislingham joins me from the kitchen. ‘DC Everett says nothing useful from the house-to-house so far. No one we’ve spoken to who was at the party remembers seeing anything suspicious. We’re collecting their camera photos though – should help with the timeline. There’s no CCTV on the estate but we’ll see what we can find in the surrounding area. And we’re checking the whereabouts of known sex offenders within a ten-mile radius.’

I nod. ‘Good work.’

Challow straightens up and waves us towards him. Behind the swing, a fence panel is loose. It looks solid from a distance, but push it hard enough and even an adult could squeeze through.

Gislingham reads my thoughts. ‘But could someone really get in, take the kid and get out without anyone noticing? In a garden this size, with that many people about? And the kid presumably struggling?’

I look around. ‘We need to find out where the gazebo was and how big it is. If they put it across the bottom of the garden, it’s possible no one would’ve been able to see that hole in the fence, or anyone going through it. Add to that the fireworks – ’

He nods. ‘Everyone looking the other way, lots of bangs, kids screaming – ’

‘ – plus the fact that most of the people here were parents from the school. Bet you any money the Masons had never met some of them before. Especially the fathers. You’d need balls of steel, but you could walk in here and pretend to be one of them and you might just get away with it. And people would actually expect you to be talking to the kids.’

We start up the lawn towards the house. ‘Those photos you’re collecting, Chris – it’s not just a timeline we want from them. Start ticking off their names. We don’t just need to know where people were, but who they are. ’

***

At 7.05, out in the close, DC Everett is ringing at another door. Waiting for it to open, waiting to fix her professional smile and to ask if she can come in and speak to them for a moment. It’s the fifteenth time she’s done it now and she’s telling herself not to be irritated that she got lumbered with the house-to-house, while Gislingham gets to be inside the only house that matters. At the heart of things. After all, you can count on the fingers of one hand the times a child abduction turned on What the Neighbours Saw. But to be fair, some of these people were actually in the Masons’ garden when their daughter went missing. Though considering how many potential witnesses were in that small space, Everett’s had little of any real use thus far. It was ‘a nice party’, ‘a pleasant-enough evening’. And yet at some point in the middle of it a little girl disappeared and nobody even noticed.

She rings again (the third time) and then steps back and looks up at the house. The curtains are pulled back but there are no signs of life. She checks her list. Kenneth and Caroline Bradshaw, a couple in their sixties. They could easily be on holiday before the schools break up. She makes a note next to their name and goes back down the drive to the pavement. One of the uniforms comes up to her, slightly out of breath. Everett’s seen her about at the station, but she’s only just out of training at Sulhamstead and they’ve never actually spoken. Everett’s trying to remember her name – Simpson? Something like that. No – Somer. That’s it. Erica Somer. She’s older than most new recruits, so she must have done something else first. Rather like Everett, who has a false start in nursing to her name. But she keeps that one quiet, knowing that all it would do is give her male colleagues one more excuse to make her the one to break bad news. Or knock on bloody doors.

‘There’s something in one of the bins – I think you should see,’ Somer says, gesturing back from where she came. She’s straight to the point, no nonsense. Everett warms to her at once.

The bin in question is on the corner where the close turns in from the side road. A forensics officer is already there, taking pictures. When he sees Everett he nods, and the two women watch while he reaches into the bin and pulls out what’s lying on the top. It unpleats like a snakeskin. Flaccid, empty, green. Very green.