Gerry took the picture of Samir out of her briefcase. Banks had told her to ask about him whenever she talked to anyone in the area, no matter what she was talking to them about. She passed it over to Myers, and he made an expression of distaste as he looked at it.

“The dead boy, I suppose?” he said.

“Yes. Have you ever seen him at all?”

“Around here?”

“Anywhere.”

“No,” said Myers, pushing the photo back over the wooden surface. “And I think I would have noticed. What would he be doing here? I thought his body was found on the East Side Estate?”

“That’s correct,” said Gerry. “But he wasn’t necessarily killed there. And we have no idea what he was doing in Eastvale. That’s what we’d like to find out.”

“Do you think he had something to do with the other drug addict’s death? Is that what this is about?”

“Other drug addict?”

“This latest one. I’m assuming the boy was on drugs, too, or somehow involved?”

“We have no evidence to suggest that, sir, or reason to think it.” Gerry certainly wasn’t going to tell him about the cocaine in Samir’s pocket. That piece of information hadn’t been released to the media. “As far as I know, there’s no connection between the two. Maybe your son would know something?”

“I can’t imagine Chris having anything to do with him, either. I mean, there’s the age difference, for a start. Eighteen-year-olds don’t usually hang out with younger kids. Besides, Chris is busy with his A-levels at the moment. We’re hoping he’ll get into Oxford. The teachers have high hopes for him.”

“That’s excellent, sir. Where does he go to school?”

“St. Botolph’s.”

“Ah.” St. Botolph’s was a minor public school in a moorland hollow a few miles north of Lyndgarth. It had an excellent reputation, and accepted day boys as well as boarders. Gerry knew that schools like St. Botolph’s also took quite a few foreign students, and for a moment the idea passed through her mind that Samir could have been a pupil there. He was the right age, and he could easily have come from a wealthy Syrian family. But he hadn’t, as they had just discovered. “Do you know anything at all about Howard Stokes, the dead drug addict?” she asked.

“Me? Why would I? All I know is what I’ve heard on the news.”

Gerry showed him a photograph. “Have you seen him around?”

“He was that scruffy old bloke on the mobility scooter, wasn’t he?”

“That’s one way of describing him.”

Myers tapped the photo and nodded. “I thought so. We had a bit of trouble with him once, hanging around the playground in the park, scaring the kids.”

“What did he do to scare them?”