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Lilian Chamberlain@LilianChamberlain

Jenny T@56565656Jennifer

16.24

@56565656Jennifer I know what you mean, but perhaps it was just the party? Something to take her mind off it? #Justice4Daisy @ElspethMorgan959

@ElspethMorgan959 I guess so. Just keeps nagging at me, that’s all @LilianChamberlain #DaisyMason

***

‘Boss? I’m at Mercers.’

Quinn sounds like he’s in a wind tunnel. A gust whips the words away but I can still hear the defeat in his voice, and in the background the thud and grind of heavy machinery.

‘I’m guessing it’s bad news.’

‘I’ve texted you a picture. Has it come through?’

I reach for my mobile and open the photo. A wide space like an opencast mine, ringed with huge dunes of waste. Three lorries tipping out their loads in a billow of thick white dust, and in the centre, a huge yellow machine crushing the debris into a stream of something that looks like not much more than sand.

I pick up the handset again. ‘Shit. I see what you mean.’

‘They don’t even know exactly where the stuff that came from Oxford ended up. And even if they did, God knows how many tons of other crap has been dumped on top of it since then. Needle and haystack is so far off it’s laughable. It’s a complete fucking non-starter.’

He doesn’t usually swear. Not at me, anyway.

‘Add to that the fact that they’re absolutely refusing to accept they could have overlooked a body. However small it was, however carefully someone had wrapped it. They won’t budge.’

‘But they can’t prove it.’

He sighs. ‘No, of course they can’t. But we can’t prove it either. So the question is, do you think we have enough? Will the CPS be prepared to charge him, even though we don’t have the body?’

‘Ev just called – looks like they’ve found some physical evidence at the crossing. And there could be something else too. I’m waiting for Network Rail to get back to me.’

His voice lifts a little. ‘I’m on my way.’

***

Twenty minutes later the email comes through. I download the video attachment and watch it, then I call the team into the incident room and we watch it together. There’s relief, and there’s consensus, and there’s even a tear or two. No high-fives, no excess, but a pride that the team done good. And they did. Baxter offers to leave a message for Gislingham (‘that was solid police work, tracking down that Ford Escort’), and in the middle of it all a call comes through from the ACC asking when we can brief the press.

***

Just after three, Emma Carwood arrives, and we get Mason up from the cells. I’ve loathed that man pretty much since I laid eyes on him, but a small part of me is actually sorry for him when the custody sergeant leads him in. He looks like he’s been hollowed out from the inside. Like the bones have gone and it’s just the skin holding him up. No more walk of the cock now. He takes his seat like an old man.

‘Mr Mason, this interview is in continuation of the one suspended at 13.14. It is now 15.14 and I am restarting the tape. Those present, Detective Inspector Adam Fawley, Acting Detective Sergeant Gareth Quinn, Mr Barry Mason, Miss Emma Carwood.’

I lift my laptop on to the table and swing it round to face Mason. Then I open the video and start the film. He stares at it, rubs his eyes, and stares at it again.

‘I don’t get it. What are you showing me this for?’

‘This, Mr Mason, is footage from the cab camera of a CrossCountry train. This particular train left Banbury at 16.36 on Tuesday the nineteenth of July, arriving at Oxford at 16.58. As you will see, at 16.56, the train starts to slow as it approaches the station, and you will briefly see the area around the old level crossing.’

Mason puts his head in his hands and digs his nails into his scalp. Then he looks up at me. ‘You’ve lost me. This is all some hideous bloody nightmare. I haven’t a fucking clue what’s going on.’

I change the player to slow motion and we see the allotments come into range on the right, and the heavy machinery parked alongside. Then I press Pause and point at the screen.

‘There,’ I say.

On the left of the track there’s a figure in a hard hat, high-viz jacket and trousers. He has his back to us but he’s clearly pushing a barrow across the car park towards the new footings, and the heap of rubble beyond. There’s a tiny moment when we can see a flash of orange glove, and then the train has passed and the image is gone.

Barry Mason looks none the wiser. ‘I still don’t get it.’

‘That’s you, isn’t it, Mr Mason?’

He gapes at me. ‘You’re having a laugh – no, of course it fucking well isn’t me .’

‘You own high-viz gear like that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but so do thousands of other people. That doesn’t prove anything.’

Emma Carwood intervenes. ‘Are you seriously alleging that my client drove to the level crossing, unloaded his daughter’s body into a random wheelbarrow and then disposed of it in that pile of whatever it is, all in broad daylight, without a single person noticing anything?’

‘I think you’d be surprised how easy that would have been, Miss Carwood. The locals are so used to contractors on that site they probably wouldn’t have given him a second glance.’

‘And the wheelbarrow in question – do you have it? Have you examined it?’

‘Our forensics officers have collected several wheelbarrows from the site and are analysing them now. As well as two further items that we believe have a bearing on the case. We will, of course, keep you fully informed. May I resume?’

She hesitates, then nods.

I turn to Mason. ‘So, Mr Mason. As we have already informed you, we have found a pair of gloves carrying your DNA and your daughter’s blood. The same sort of gloves the man in this footage is clearly wearing. We also found particles of railway ballast on those gloves. Are you really still claiming this man isn’t you?’

‘Yes I bloody well am – I was nowhere near there at the time. I’ve told you a thousand times, I was driving about and then I went home. That’s it.’

‘We’ve found nothing to corroborate that story, Mr Mason.’

‘I don’t fucking care, that’s what happened.’

‘OK,’ I say, ‘let’s just accept, for the sake of argument, that your story is true. Explain to me how gloves bearing your DNA ended up in a skip in Loughton Road.’

‘I could have left them somewhere – anyone could have picked them up.’

‘When did you last see them?’ asks Quinn.

‘I told you, I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

‘Fair enough,’ I reply, ‘let’s accept that as well. Just for the sake of argument. Next question: how did your daughter’s blood get on them?’

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.’