‘You can’t park for shit,’ Leon teased.

James looked down from a bare-bulb landing, with the apartment door open. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘We parked the Focus in the lot out back, like you told us,’ Leon explained, as he crossed the threshold into the grimly furnished studio. Campus staff had already delivered most of James’ clothes and a pair of aluminium flight cases containing communication and surveillance equipment. ‘This nutter tried to reverse park and it was a total fiasco.’

Daniel tutted. ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

‘Did anyone see you?’ James asked warily.

‘Just some guy in a white van hooting,’ Leon said, grinning.

‘Cuppa?’ James asked. ‘Nurtrust is only a couple of hundred metres from here, so you’ll need to be discreet when you visit me.’

After tea and chocolate digestives, James helped the twins take the remaining luggage out of the Ford and sent them off to Nurtrust. Leon pressed a buzzer on a barred door, set between a betting shop and a local council office. The voice through the intercom was indecipherable, but he pushed when it buzzed and the pair found themselves in a graffitied hallway that smelled of cleaning product.

There was an office at the top of a staircase and a Sikh man in jacket and jeans greeted the pair at the top.

‘Leon and Daniel?’ he said, offering a hand to shake. ‘I’m Gurbir. Welcome to Nurtrust Sandy Green.’

They filled out forms and discussed rules. The whole time a girl in the next office sobbed helplessly. She was twelve and very skinny. She sat on an armchair with knees tucked under her chin and what looked like her worldly possessions split between a school backpack and a pair of canvas bags.

Daniel tried giving the girl a reassuring smile as Gurbir led them on a tour of what had once been the upper floor of a furniture showroom. A small kitchen gave off a smell of veg cooked to oblivion. There was a room with pool tables and vending machines, another with TV and battered recliner chairs.

‘You’re in rooms twelve and fifteen,’ Gurbir explained.

They passed a locked corridor.

‘Is that solitary, for if we misbehave?’

‘We have nine secure rooms,’ Gurbir explained. ‘Only five are currently occupied and you’re not allowed beyond that door, should you ever find it open.’

‘What did the kids in there do?’ Daniel asked, as he put his face up to a shatterproof pane in the locked door.

‘There’s nobody in there now,’ Gurbir explained. ‘Most of them are at school.’

‘So they can come and go?’ Leon asked.

Gurbir laughed. ‘The courts set different rules and curfews for our secure residents, but this isn’t a prison.’