‘Downstairs in the car park. I told him to wait there until I was ready.’

‘Good.’ Renshaw wiped her hands dry with a paper towel. ‘Can you do me a favour? I was going to call the mum who sent Imogen that message about the fight between Poppy and Benji, but I’ve only got half an hour before we go up to Rushbrooke with the dogs and I need to pop to the chemist. I feel like crap; I think it’s something I’ve eaten.’

Renshaw did look a bit peaky now she mentioned it, her pale skin more wan than usual against her auburn hair.

‘Do you need to go home?’

‘No, it’s not that bad, it comes and goes. I just need something to settle my stomach.’

‘What’s the mum’s name?’

‘Tess Edwards. Her contact details should’ve been uploaded to the case file.’

‘I’ll go and do it now. Good luck with the search.’

‘Thanks. We need a breakthrough and I’m hoping this’ll be it.’

Tess Edwards answered her phone on the second ring and became animated when Maggie introduced herself.

‘I did wonder if Imogen might pass on my message,’ she trilled.

‘I was hoping you could tell me more about the fight between Benji and Poppy,’ said Maggie.

‘Well, according to my daughter Lucie the pair of them had to be separated in the cloakroom outside their class. They really went for it: hair pulling, the works.’

‘Does your daughter know what the row was about?’

‘It sounded quite trivial, to be honest. Poppy accused Dylan of knocking into her, then she accused him of telling lies for attention. She was quite het up, apparently. Lucie didn’t know what the supposed lies were and I don’t think any of the other kids knew either.’

‘You said in your message that it wasn’t the first time Poppy had lashed out at school and –’ Maggie had a screenshot of the text in front of her – ‘she could be a “right madam”.’

Tess noisily sucked in a breath.

‘Oh, it sounds really spiteful when you say it like that.’

‘But that is what you said, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Why do you think she’s a madam?’

‘Because of something else that happened at school. But I’m a bit embarrassed to talk about it, because Lucie was involved too.’

‘I just need to know what Poppy did.’

‘Well, one of the girls in their class had a notebook which she took into the playground and some of them started writing horrible things in it about the other kids – descriptions of how they looked,’ said Tess.

‘Poppy was writing the comments?’

‘No, that was Lucie and her friends. I know, it’s awful, but I did tell her off when the school told me. She had no iPad time for a week as a punishment.’

‘What was Poppy’s involvement then?’