The Mason Murders

Six

Teenagers run away from home every day in Britain. Most of them return quickly or soon enough; some don’t though. The police aren’t always called either to report what has happened and, when they are, they can’t always expend full effort in trying to return those runaways. The level of attention paid to each case depends upon the individual circumstances. Every and all efforts were thrown at locating Amy Mason. This teenager was different from others. She was the daughter of the Home Secretary and her mother had been murdered the day before. The police assigned multiple officers and were going to give this their all. In addition, because of ongoing events, MI-5 became involved too. The Security Service were able to greatly assist North Yorkshire Police by providing ‘technical means’ to aid the investigation far beyond what that county force could ever hope to have access to themselves if this was any other missing teenager.

The powers of the state, when put to work, can be far-reaching and very effective. What is needed for them to be brought into play is the political will to do that. One of William Mason’s junior ministers at the Home Office, the Policing Minister, intervened to make sure that there was full support given from the country’s intelligence services in locating his boss’ daughter. He believed that this was justified because, while the police had arrested that police protection officer in the early afternoon, when Amy Mason was first reported missing, it was then the late morning. At such a stage, it still hadn’t been ruled out that Charlotte Mason had been killed in an act of domestic terrorism or wasn’t some sort of hostile foreign intelligence operation gone awry. The daughter running away could have been staged to look ‘innocent’. MI-5 as well as the nation’s super-secretive GCHQ electronic surveillance organisation were instructed to help. A remote data dump was conducted on the telephone and internet communications of the missing teenager. Phone-calls made to her phone by her father had gone unanswered and there was another one made by an officer with MI-5 using an ordinary number which would show up as ‘unknown’ on her phone. Maybe she would answer it when she wouldn’t take calls known to be from her father? Nope, she wouldn’t. Still, when the phone was switched on and then afterwards turned off –difficult to do with modern mobile phones; you have to take the battery out because there is no actual ‘on-off’ switch/button – the SIM card remained in-place. It was still taking signals from broadcasting towers. An interactive map was brought up inside the operations rooms at Thames House where everything was being collated before being passed onto North Yorkshire Police. The phone (and hopefully Amy Mason too) was moving fast. That was a train where its signal was being traced to and this showed it as having already moved far out of North Yorkshire Police’s operational area. West Yorkshire Police, the neighbouring county force, was brought in on this in response. What information had been gathered suggested that the the Home Secretary’s daughter was on a train slowing down as it approached the main station in the city of Leeds. She could get off the train there or maybe stay on it. Whichever she did, the hope was that West Yorkshire Police could locate her.

The data dump was something being analysed while this tracking was going on. This was a teenager’s communications with fellow teenagers and adults alike. There was a lot of it to go through. The initial work was done to discover anything related to her disappearing that morning yet, at the request of the MI-5 officer who was involved in investigating the matter of her mother’s murder, it would all be gone through. Several of those given this task rolled their eyes at the news that they were given this task. Teenagers had their own world and much of it was incomprehensible… and other bits sure to be tedious too.


Saunders remained in York. She hadn’t been present when Keane had been arrested and attempted to make a run for it. She didn’t even know that was going to happen. Being cut out of the decision-making was one thing but she was more aggravated at not being told in advance. There were other matters that needed more attention than he ego though. The Security Service had sent her up here yesterday evening and she still had a lot of work to do. The police were certain that they had their man. They were saying that Keane was certainly a murderer and why he had done so would soon be uncovered. She wasn’t so sure of any of that but all evidence was still pointing that way. Things were still happening on that note as far as she was concerning: this included the return of results of those tests done on Keane’s blood & urine looking for any chemical substances. Two pressing matters took up her attention ahead of that. There was the missing daughter as well as the behaviour of the police protection officers who were assigned to the Mason family. She got on the phone to the head of SO1 down in London. The Chief Superintendent wasn’t pleased with what she told him when it came to her opinion of his officers. Saunders didn’t care. She had the permission to say what needed to be said and was certain that her own bosses would be talking to the senior policeman’s bosses too. She was in the right on this. One SO1 officer had been having an affair with the wife of the politician he was supposed to be protecting, another had known about this while keeping her mouth shut and there was that extra man brought in an emergency situation to babysit the daughter who then let her flee. This had to be sorted out.

Done with that phone call, Saunders got ready to set off to go talk to the Home Secretary whether he liked it or not after he’d cancelled that morning meeting of theirs. She’d have to be far more polite to him that she had been to the policeman at New Scotland Yard she’d just been dressing down but intended to get some answers out of him as to what he knew. Reviewing the reports from North Yorkshire Police officers, she didn’t like what she had read with how they appeared to have let him direct the course of conversations and only answer questions that he himself posed. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to go, Cabinet member or not. She never got going though. One of the police officers here, a female DC assigned to work with her, called her into the operations room. There was bad news with the Amy Mason matter. It seemed that she’d gotten off that train in Leeds but avoided the efforts of fast alerted police officers at the station to detain her. Somehow they had missed her. Regardless, she was out of the station and moving on foot. Her phone signal was still being tracked off broadcast towers. Saunders had an idea. A screen-shot was taken off the profile picture attached to her social media account because it was considered a good likeness. That was attached to an urgent message sent to the police-issued phones carried by all officers in the central area of Leeds. Find this girl, they were told, with immediate effect. Hundreds of pairs of eyes started searching the city centre for Amy Mason during the late Monday evening just ahead of rush hour.

It's not gonna be Amy but someone is about to meet an unfortunate end.
He has been getting away with a lot. The pressure on him will greatly increase after those things said earlier in the day on the news.
Establishment opposition will be something there will be a lot of too.

   James

Eight

What Elizabeth Flint had to say about the Home Secretary dominated media coverage that evening and night. She had accused William Mason of cheating on his wife, hitting her and even being somehow involved in her death. The accusations had been made on camera and unprompted. This was something that couldn’t be ignored as far as journalists and their editors were concerned. Producers had some concerns over whether this was libel but as long as they reported on what Flint had said as well as reaction to those comments from others, without their organisations making any allegations of their own without any serious proof, the story was free to run. On the radio, the television and across the internet, the Mason Scandal was in full swing when fueled like it was by those remarks made earlier in the day.

‘Marmite Flint’ – love her or hate her – was part of the story herself. In what manner her remarks were covered by each media organisation depended a lot upon previous actions of hers and things which she had said in the past. The Home Secretary had his own fans and detractors across the media too. Such underlying factors when it came to the personalities involved brought about the variety of coverage given. Flint and her accusations were treated as a joke in some quarters (mockery, not humour) while elsewhere they were given serious consideration. With Mason, for those who looking for an angle of attack due to his politics, this was pure gold. He had his defenders though too. The particular turn that this had all taken was decried by others. There remained a woman dead, killed in such brutal circumstances and with her daughter reported to have found her. Charlotte Mason was a victim and now things had gone as crazy as they had: certain parts of the media were sitting on their high horse here and swiping at those below turning this all into a circus.

Then there was DC Robert Keane too. North Yorkshire Police had released full details of the police protection officer’s arrest and their charging of him with the murder of the Home Secretary’s wife. Ahead of that announcement from the chief constable – he fronted the press conference himself –, many details were already in the hands of the media when it came to what was going on with Keane’s detention. They had been busy through the day digging into his life. Once the police up in York made things official, the media considered themselves given a green light. Pictures of him were put out there for public consumption. It was in the public interest, those who released them would say. The value of locating some of the images and the personal details about Keane wouldn’t be what everyone would agree was supposedly ‘in the public interest’. On the constantly changing, up-to-date website of one of the country’s biggest newspapers – their online presence brought in far more viewers than they could ever get in readers for their print edition – there were holiday pictures of Keane. These were gleamed from elsewhere on the internet. The policeman was in swimming trucks and nothing else as he emerged from the sea on beautifully-looking beach somewhere. How much did these images of his muscular physique add to the public interest? How much would this add to their readership figures? Only one of those questions was important for that particular outlet. Another news website focused on Keane himself too though looking at things with a different angle. It didn’t take a genius to discern the coded messages being presented when it came to that story suggesting him as everything that was wrong with modern British policing… and Britain too. The issue of Keane’s ethnicity was raised while a poor attempt was made to disguise the fact that this was a racial matter.

Keane’s solicitor was interviewed for several television news broadcasts. She had been one provided for not by the Police Federation – the quasi union that served British police officers in the stead of a real one – but instead by the National Black Police Association. The arrested officer was a member and the NBPA found him what they considered the right kind of legal representation: someone who would give it their all in defending Keane in the public arena. Hannah Clark did just that. Her client was innocent and had been framed, she declared. She deplored the racism too when it came to Keane as evident in certain sections of the media. Just because he was a black man and Charlotte Mason was a white woman, this didn’t give the media an excuse for their racial smears! She was fighting for Keane in the court of public opinion and made sure that on this what she would have to say would get most airtime; the ‘standard’ claim that her client was innocent and framed would get less attention in comparison. Clark was going to keep this up, making sure that even if by a miracle all the other factors that made it all a major news story suddenly vanished, her message on this would continue to play. Whether that would ultimately benefit Keane when it came to criminal matters, not what the public might think, was a different matter.


Nowhere amongst all of this was any mention of an explosion outside of York within a travelling vehicle. Louise Saunders’ slaying wasn’t covered in the national news. Locally, there were several mentions of a vehicle accident and a subsequent fire but this was highlighted in terms of how the particulars of that series of lies effected travelling commuters. The police shut a stretch of road for some time. Their overt presence back from the ‘accident’ covered covert activities from others at the burnt-out vehicle. In the early hours, Saunders’ remains would be removed and so too would the wreckage of her car which had been destroyed by that bomb. Still, the road would remain closed until late the next morning with forensic examinations taking place.

No one in officialdom kidded themselves that this was anything but a targeted assassination. An on-duty officer with the Security Service had been murdered and not in a subtle fashion either. MI-5 had lost people before in the fight against terrorism (Irish troubles and Islamic extremism) but not like this. Senior people at Thames House pondered over why a bomb had been used. If someone had wanted to kill their officer, why not push her down a set of stairs or have her vehicle crash? A bomb was completely over the top. Whoever had killed her wanted to make a statement. What was that statement and to what end too?

Everything with the investigation which Saunders had been assigned to had been pointing in the direction of a violent domestic incident as being behind Charlotte Mason’s death. The police had someone in custody and all of the pieces had seemed to fit together. Yes, there had been that issue earlier in the day with the Home Secretary’s daughter going missing but she was found safe and well within hours. What could have brought upon this assassination? Dozens of officers were tasked to this matter now. The Security Service threw everything it had into this. If there had been a foolish intent to kill Saunders to bring MI-5 involvement to an end, the exact opposite had been caused by setting off that bomb.