‘And what about Leon?’ Singh asked, standing up so he could look Liz in the eye. ‘Should we forget about trying to find him? A vulnerable runaway teenager?’

For a brief moment I thought Liz was going to snap back at him, but she didn’t reply, her hands clenched into fists at her side, and a moment later she stormed back out of the room. Blowing out a long breath, Singh rubbed his head.

‘Shit. This has made things a lot more difficult. We need to track down this leak as soon as possible.’

‘It wasn’t me, Rav,’ I said, but he held up a hand to stop me.

‘Of course it wasn’t you, I know that. I expect it was a member of staff looking for a bit of extra cash. I told her it was a bad idea telling them all about it yesterday, but I understand why she did it. If any staff members referred students’ disclosures on to Steve, we need to follow them up and see if he dealt with them accordingly. This leak could easily have come from a staff member who has lost faith in this school’s ability to handle safeguarding concerns.’

I didn’t say that I was sure I knew who had put the idea into Liz’s head that it might have been me – Mike hadn’t been happy with the way I’d spoken to him last night, so it stood to reason that he could have leaked the story then tried to lay the blame on me in a twisted sort of revenge. Besides, he always needed extra cash, and he’d see this as an easy payout.

Singh called Forest to discuss what to do next while I sat in the entrance and waited. Liz had left the tablet behind, so I scrolled through the story. It didn’t give out too much detail, which suggested that the person leaking the information didn’t actually know that much, or they were holding some information back for more money. If it was Mike, that was definitely something he would do.