I’d thought of that and had two good headshot portraits I’d taken ready on my phone. The policeman gave me an email address to send them to, but it turned out that either his laptop or the police station’s Wi-Fi was on a go-slow; though the email showed as sent on my phone, for ages it didn’t show up in the relevant inbox on his screen. I counted the spider plants – parents and sprouting offspring – while we waited. There were fifty-nine in total.

‘Not exactly confidence-inspiring,’ Amelia stated after the detective had apologised a second time for the continuing delay.

‘These things happen. It’ll work eventually.’

‘Do you want me to have a look at the router configuration, help pinpoint the problem?’ Amelia offered.

‘Thank you, but no,’ said Hubert with a smile.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a police computer, Amelia,’ Xander said patiently. ‘As a rule they’re not just handed over to the public.’

‘I suppose not,’ she conceded. ‘But at least he should turn everything on and off at the wall.’

‘I suppose he should,’ said the detective. ‘In the meantime he could also ask Jack to text the photographs, or share them on WhatsApp.’

‘You do know I’m talking about you, don’t you?’ asked Amelia.

‘Amelia’s smart in a particular way,’ I told the policeman. ‘What’s your number? I’ll text them through.’

I’d just pressed send when the Wi-Fi kicked back in, so now detective Hubert had the photographs twice. Why that made me feel better I don’t know. In his smooth, deep voice he said he’d share them with the authorities in Goma and beyond, and he tried again to reassure me that, in his experience, communications difficulties were generally just that in the DRC. While he and his colleagues would launch an urgent search, he’d fully expect, on the balance of probabilities, Mum and Dad would call me or turn up of their own accord soon.

‘What are you basing your probability-balancing on?’ asked Amelia.

Without missing a beat the policeman, who seemed now to have figured her out, said, ‘Twenty-two years of experience.’. To me he wrapped things up with, ‘Rest assured, Jack, we’ll leave no stone unturned.’

‘Is that a joke?’ asked Amelia.

She was sincere, but sincere for her sometimes comes out hostile. The policeman bristled. Seeing his friendly face tighten, Amelia tried to right the situation. ‘Because, as Jack said, his parents were off to visit a bunch of mines. Lots of stones to look under there. I just thought –’

Xander said, ‘There’s a real joke here about digging yourself out of a hole, but in the circumstances I won’t make it,’ which was funny, because as always happens when a person says, ‘There’s a joke here but …’ he’d basically made it anyway.

I managed to laugh somehow.