Page 8 of Making a Killing (DI Fawley #7)

‘Dear God,’ says Ev, looking pale. ‘Do you think the perp could have chosen that place deliberately ?’

‘The New Age nutters certainly think so,’ says Quinn drily. ‘The Daily Mail picked up on the story and now the wackos are all over it like flies on cowshit.’

‘It’s worse than that, though, isn’t it?’ says Sargent, turning to Ev. ‘Doesn’t it suggest that woman could have gone in that grave while she was still alive? Same as they did to the witch?’

That stops me in my tracks. I hadn’t even considered that as a possibility. ‘The PM lists cause of death as the blunt force trauma to the skull, but I’ll follow up with the pathologist – see how long she might have survived, even if she was unconscious.’

Ev shivers. ‘Let’s hope she was, because the alternative is too horrible to even think about – imagine coming round and finding yourself face down under a foot of earth –’

‘Though if you ask me,’ says Quinn, with the air of a man who’s confident he will, indeed, be asked, ‘the whole witchcraft thing is just a load of old hippy bollocks. And a distraction. We need to focus on the facts. And I agree with Gis: the only way Daisy’s hair got on that tape was by her being in pretty close proximity, either to the vic or the person who killed her. So the question we should be asking is why isn’t there any trace of him ? Why isn’t there any other DNA?’

‘He could have been wearing gloves,’ says Sargent, who’s going to live up to that name of hers one of these days. ‘Even some sort of boiler suit, so as not to leave any trace.’

Ev nods. ‘Which suggests someone who knew what they were doing.’

‘Exactly,’ says Quinn. ‘And the reason he knew it was because he’d done it before .’

He looks round the room, pushing his point. ‘This perp could have been under the radar for years. Who knows, maybe eight years.’

Sargent frowns. ‘You’re saying it could be the same man who took Daisy in the first place? I suppose it’s possible – someone had to have done it and we know now it wasn’t Sharon –’

Baxter is already shaking his head. ‘Nah. The timeline was too tight for it to be random. I pulled together the timings for that afternoon myself, and as far as I can remember, Daisy and her brother were only alone in the house for about half an hour. The chances of a passing paedo happening to make his move at precisely that moment were next to zero.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t random?’ It’s one of the new DCs Harrison has seconded in from Newbury. Morris, I think. ‘Maybe someone had been staking the place out?’

But Baxter is standing firm. ‘Even if they were, there were no signs of a break-in, the brother heard nothing, and both kids knew not to open the door when their parents weren’t in.’

‘But she’s not a kid any more, is she,’ says Ev. ‘She’s alive. Or at least she was until very recently. Why didn’t she come forward long before now?’

‘Maybe she couldn’t,’ says Morris. ‘Maybe she’s been under lock and key all this time. Like that Natascha what’s-her-name, the one who was kept in a cellar? Or those women in Cleveland? Maybe DI Quinn is right and the perp from the woods is the same perv who took Daisy originally. Think about it, just because there’s her hair on the tape doesn’t mean she was actually at the scene. The hair could have been on the tape already. He could have used it on her too.’

There are some nods, some murmurs of agreement, especially from the new people.

‘So who’s your vic, then?’ asks Gis. ‘In that scenario?’

Morris shrugs. ‘Maybe someone else he abducted. Someone else he’s had captive. And the reason she’s not coming up on MissPers is that it was years ago, just like with Daisy.’

He’s beginning to piss me off, ever so slightly – maybe it’s something about the 1970s footballer haircut. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

‘I can see why those of you new to the case would assume it must have been an unknown predator – I would too, in your position. But we need to factor in the forensic evidence, which strongly implicated Sharon. So if she wasn’t involved, that evidence must have been either planted deliberately by someone who knew enough about the family to pull that off, or somehow ended up where we found it by accident.’

Gis is shaking his head. ‘I don’t buy that – that cardigan of Daisy’s, for starters, it had Sharon’s blood on it – how did that get to the railway line “by accident”? Daisy tossed it out of the car as they drove off?’

A couple of grim smiles.

‘So that evidence was concocted specifically to implicate Sharon?’ asks Sargent. ‘Is that what you’re saying, sir?’

I spread my hands. ‘Maybe. We can’t rule it out. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Even so,’ says Quinn, ‘someone who knew the family back then could still be the same perp who’s now killed a woman in Hescombe eight years later. Just saying.’

‘Isn’t there an obvious issue with that?’ says Asante. He looks round, though I note he avoids making eye contact with Quinn. ‘The victimology: he abducted Daisy when she was eight; the current victim is at least in her twenties. No paedophile would be interested in her.’

Ev considers. ‘True, but I suppose the Hescombe victim could have been killed for a completely different reason – she could have found out what the perp was doing and threatened to turn him in.’

‘That could explain her,’ says Sargent, ‘but it doesn’t explain Daisy.’

Ev frowns. ‘I’m not with you.’

She flushes slightly. ‘We all know the stats, right? The vast majority of kids taken by this sort of predator are killed within the first three hours. But not Daisy. How come she’s still alive, eight whole years later?’

Quinn shrugs. ‘Maybe it’s two different perpetrators working in tandem. Paedo has his way with her, then hands her on to his mate when she passes her sell-by date.’

Sargent makes a face but says nothing.

Morris turns to Quinn. ‘I agree, sir. And it would have been a lot easier to pull off that original abduction if there’d been two of them.’

‘I still think a single perpetrator is far more likely,’ says Asante coolly. ‘And as DCI Fawley says, almost certainly someone she already knew. As for why she might still be with him, maybe we’re looking at some sort of Stockholm Syndrome – victim turned collaborator.’

‘Oh God,’ says Sargent, ‘please don’t tell me she’s part of this.’

Likely? No. But feasible, yes. Look at Myra Hindley, only eighteen when she met Ian Brady; Rose West was even younger, just fifteen. But this is different. The day she went missing, Daisy Mason was only eight – barely two years older than Lily is now.

But now I’m remembering the Daisy I came to know, even if only at second-hand. The first time I saw her it was on the scuffed screen of her brother’s mobile phone, dancing for the camera in the daisy costume her mother bought for the party. Dancing, not in that free, unselfconscious way kids have that gets bred out of us by the time we hit our teens, but with control. With purpose. She knew how to play to an audience, she knew the effect she wanted to have.

Remembering, too, all those school-gate parents we spoke to who said what they knew they were supposed to – that she was beautiful and bright and so mature for her age – but later, when pressed, said she couldn’t be trusted, that she was always ‘making things up’. And her friends, even her closest friends, who said she was clever and funny and made them laugh because she was so good at impersonating other people, even getting their accents right. But later, when it all got closer to home, we found out how she’d turned that talent against them in the cruellest and most calculated way. Listened in secret and stored away what she heard to use against them later, even Portia Dawson, her one-time best friend, who she’d made so miserable the girl stuck pins in a Daisy doll and wanted her dead.

So we need to remember who we’re dealing with. Daisy did things you’d never believe of a typical eight-year-old. Bad things. Eight years on, could she be capable of collaborating in a murder? I hope not, I really do. But maybe.

Maybe.

And we need to remember what else they found.

‘You should also be aware that a silver stud earring was found in the loose soil covering the body – a small stud without a back. There’s no DNA and for all we know it could have been lost by some random dog walker months ago. We can’t exclude that, but we can’t exclude Daisy either.’

‘What about the perp?’ says Ev. ‘If it’s just a stud it could be a man’s as much as a woman’s. And it could easily have fallen out when the grave was being dug.’

I nod. ‘Yes, that’s a possibility too.’

I gesture to Gow. ‘You’ve been listening to all this, Bryan, what’s your take?’

Then I remember – some of them won’t know him – and I turn back to the room. ‘Sorry, I should have said. This is Bryan Gow, the forensic psychologist who worked with us on the original investigation. We’re lucky he happened to be at home in Oxford today and could join us at short notice, given all his other commitments.’

Though if you ask me, he’d have moved heaven and earth to be here whatever his diary said: this has ‘Potential TV Special’ written all over it.

There’s a definite uptick in interest now – even if they haven’t worked with him, some of them definitely recognize him. He sits back a little, waiting for their full attention, then clears his throat.

‘If you’re asking about Trauma Bonding – or so-called “Stockholm Syndrome” – then it’s a possibility, yes, especially if there was a pre-existing relationship. But as for two collaborating perpetrators,’ he glances at Quinn then shakes his head as if confronted by a keen but hopelessly slow-witted pupil, ‘the likelihood of two people with such different proclivities coming together in a joint criminal enterprise and managing to avoid detection for the best part of a decade, as you suggest, strikes me as the stuff of TV drama.’ He smiles drily. ‘I’ll do some research but, frankly, I can’t think of a single example.’

No one’s looking at Quinn, and it’s just as well Quinn can’t see himself. It’s not pretty.

‘So what would be your best guess, Bryan, based on where we are now?’

Gow settles his glasses on his nose. ‘I haven’t had time to review all my case notes, but I do remember the Mason family extremely well. Clearly, I was never able to observe Daisy herself, but the picture that emerged from other people’s accounts was of a child who was both highly manipulative and extremely intelligent – far more intelligent than either of her parents, and absolutely aware of that fact, even at the age of eight. At one point she had, indeed, been convinced that the only way to explain this lamentable disparity was that she had been adopted or even “stolen” from her real parents as an infant.’

He takes off his glasses now and starts to clean them. ‘And even though she’d been disabused of that misapprehension some time before her disappearance, the idea that she “deserved” another, better life may have remained a powerful psychological urge.’

‘So she wanted a better life,’ says Baxter, ‘and thought this mysterious “family friend” could give it to her?’

Gow smiles again. ‘Exactly. If she did indeed go with someone she knew, she wouldn’t have seen it as an abduction. She’d have seen it as escape.’

‘You’re saying she could have gone along with it?’ says Sargent.

Gow raises an eyebrow. ‘I don’t know, of course, but I think it’s eminently feasible. Psychologically speaking, it’s entirely consistent with what we know of Daisy. A way to trade in her old unsatisfactory life for richer and greener pastures elsewhere. With the emphasis on richer.’

‘It would also explain why no one in the neighbourhood saw anything,’ says Gis. ‘That never made sense to me. It was one reason why we were so convinced it was Sharon – there was no way some stranger could have got a struggling child out of the house and into their car in broad daylight and no one even batted an eyelid.’

‘Even if she was drugged?’ asks Morris. ‘Something fast-acting like chloroform?’

Gis shakes his head. ‘He’d still have had to carry her.’ He turns to Gow. ‘I agree with you – far more likely that Daisy just left quietly of her own accord and closed the door behind her. In every sense.’

‘And bear in mind,’ says Gow, ‘that depending on what Daisy told them, the adult in question might not have been a sexual predator at all, but someone who genuinely saw themselves as saving her from abuse or neglect. Classic White Knight Syndrome.’

‘But do you really think she could have left her whole family, just like that?’ Another new DC, a woman this time. ‘Without a single glance back, not even now, when she’s old enough to understand the consequences? Not least the fact that her own mother is serving a life sentence for something she clearly didn’t do?’

‘Actually,’ I say, ‘knowing what I know of her, I think it’s eminently possible. If any child that age could have colluded with her own disappearance, it was her.’

‘So someone who knew the family,’ says Ev, ‘and with access to a vehicle.’

‘I hope she held out for the chauffeur-driven Rolls,’ says Baxter drily. ‘S-Classes are so downmarket.’

Which is, of course, funny, but not funny at all, and I’m not laughing, even though one or two of them are.

‘And not just that,’ I say. ‘It had to be someone capable of putting this whole complicated plan together. Someone we never identified, who managed to stay completely under the radar, not just then but in the eight years since. That takes some doing.’

‘Not to mention balls,’ says Baxter under his breath.

‘Indeed,’ says Gow. ‘And for the record, in my view, Predator is far more likely than Protector.’

A small mischievous part of my brain is wondering if the alliteration was pre-prepared. TV just loves that stuff.

He looks round the room, holding their attention. ‘Daisy might have thought she was being “rescued” – even congratulated herself for being so clever – but her abductor could have had quite another outcome in mind. Deception is such people’s stock-in-trade.’

Gis’s face is grim. ‘You’re saying she was groomed.’

Gow nods. ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

***