There was a parade of shops on the other side of the road, and I knew the police were hoping that one of them would have CCTV that might cover the front of Samira’s house. They knew the reasonably narrow timeframe in which Leon had left the house, so that would help. Uniformed officers were knocking on the doors of houses nearby, in the hope that someone had seen something.

‘Sir.’ A PC approached the car and knocked on the door to get Singh’s attention. The man held something up, and as Singh took it from him I could see it was a rucksack, matching Sasha’s description of the one Leon had taken with him on the school trip.

‘Where did you find this?’

‘It was dumped in a bush next door,’ the PC replied.

‘Have you opened it?’

‘No, sir.’

Singh called to one of the crime scene officers and asked them for a pair of latex gloves, which he snapped on before carefully opening the bag.

‘It does look like it’s probably Leon’s,’ he said, pulling out a hoodie that Sasha had mentioned Leon had with him.

After a bit more rummaging, Singh pulled out a mobile. ‘This is his original phone, the one we’ve been keeping an eye on in case he turned it on again. He’s probably got the one Samira gave him with him. Forest has sent the details to the tech team to start tracking it.’

Singh put the rucksack and its contents into a large evidence bag, sealed and labelled it and handed it over to one of the crime scene officers. She looked at the list of contents and frowned.

‘We just found another phone,’ she told Singh, who looked puzzled.

‘Where?’

‘It had slipped under the table in the hallway. It was wedged quite far back, so I don’t know if someone dropped it and kicked it under there by mistake, or maybe it fell down behind it.’

Singh went inside to find the evidence bag containing the other phone, and when he came back he looked grave.

‘The phone they found inside matches the description of the phone Samira gave to Leon. It’s locked, though, so we need to get it back to the station before we can have a look at the messages.’

‘Why would he leave without his phone or his bag?’ I asked. Maybe he’d heard about Saul’s murder and had run because he thought he was in danger, but I couldn’t see him doing that without his stuff.

‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ Singh replied.

‘Hang on. He had his original phone, his secret second phone, and also the one Samira gave him. Two of these phones are here, so does that mean he still has one?’