“Not at all. Obviously, the killer wanted us to think Samir had been killed on the East Side Estate, that it was just the kind of place where a boy like him might have lived and died. The thing is, nobody’s ever seen him there. Nobody knew him.” He turned to Jason again. “He was thirteen,” he said. “He left his family in Syria because they could only afford to pay the smugglers for one passage. The idea was that when he got here, he would find an aunt and uncle, get work and send money home. But it didn’t happen like that. God only knows what privations he suffered on the journey—kids like him go through everything, from rape to robbery—but he made it, having walked over a good part of the continent. It took him months. He found a group of smugglers who got him into this country, but by then he’d lost his relatives’ address, and he had no money left. They kept him a virtual prisoner in Birmingham, in slavery, working off his debt. He got away and fell in with a bad crowd in Leeds, got involved in selling drugs. He was no angel. But he was only thirteen and a long way from home. He was still saving money to get his family over. And guess what? His family were all dead. Killed in a bomb attack not long after Samir left. And the irony was that he never knew. He never knew he was selling drugs for nothing.”

“That’s a very sad tale,” said Gus Bartlett, “but I don’t see what it has to do with us.”

Banks looked directly at Jason. “Does that really make Samir ‘no better than an animal,’ Jason?” he asked.

Jason reddened and turned away. Everyone else seemed nonplussed by the question. Clearly, Jason had not apprised his parents of his racist views.

Banks stood up. “Ask your son,” he said to Gus Bartlett. “He knows what I’m talking about.”

He noticed that Lisa was crying.

“It is a sad story, isn’t it, Lisa?” he said. “Anyway, I must be off. We’ve had a lot of developments down at the park today. I don’t know if you’ve seen our forensic officers at work, but pretty soon we’ll have a DNA profile of the killer, then all we have to do is match it up with one of our suspects.” He looked at Jason again, but the boy’s eyes were still averted.

“Well, I wish you luck, Superintendent,” said Gus Bartlett, “but I assure you it’s got nothing to do with us.”

“I do hope not,” said Banks. “And thank you. We’ll need all the luck we can get. Bye, then. Bye, Lisa. Mrs. Bartlett. Bye, Jason.”

But Jason didn’t look up or mumble a goodbye in return. He seemed lost in his own world.