Which sounded great except that there wasn’t much to commit to memory. It was dark, the lighting was designed to help people find their cars, not to allow CCTV operatives to make like Martin Scorsese. All you could definitively say about the stalker was that he was medium height, medium build, wore glasses with thick frames and owned a jacket whose hood, pulled forwards, almost completely obscured his face. He kept his head down; he was clearly well aware of the risks of being captured on pixels. The rectangular case in his hand seemed quite heavy, though that fact offered no clue to its contents. Nadia disappeared from the top left of the screen, followed by the man. Even the gender was a presumption, Paula thought.

The third camera was the one that had picked up the action. Nadia’s car was close to the limit of its field of view, so again, there wasn’t much detail to be seen. She unlocked the car as she walked, taking the keys from her handbag. As she opened the boot, the man suddenly speeded up. ‘He takes something from his pocket,’ Cody said, his voice rising with excitement.

‘We think it’s a taser,’ Fielding said, watching Nadia put her shopping in the hatchback boot.

‘Where’s the confetti?’ Hussain asked.

‘Not all taser cartridges contain confetti,’ Paula said. ‘Usually it’s only law enforcement who use it, so there’s a record.’

‘And she kind of crumples forward as he comes up from behind,’ Cody continued.

It was over in next to no time. The kidnapper scooped up Nadia’s legs and shoved them in the boot. He straightened up and took something out of his other pocket then leaned into the boot. ‘What’s he doing?’ one of the others asked.

‘Hard to say,’ Cody said. ‘We watched it a few times and couldn’t make it out.’

‘Packing tape,’ Paula said. ‘He’s restraining her.’

Cody flashed a quick look at her. She couldn’t tell whether he was impressed or pissed off.

‘Could be,’ Fielding said. ‘We’ll take another look after we’ve seen the rest of it.’

There wasn’t much more of it. He finished whatever he was doing, closed the boot, walked round to the driver’s door, got in and shortly after, drove out of shot. All of it without letting the camera have even a fleeting glimpse of his features. It was as if he knew exactly where he was being surveyed from, so effectively did he avoid the lens, Paula thought.

‘Let’s have it again,’ Fielding said. This time, Cody slowed it down after the man tipped Nadia into the boot. It still wasn’t clear what was happening; the man’s body obscured what he was taking from his pocket. But Fielding conceded Paula was probably right. With a marker pen, she wrote what they knew about the man on the board. ‘Anything else?’