‘You’re right. We’ll need to make sure the forensics team keep an eye out for the third phone, though, in case he left that behind, too.’

I was about to ask another question when a PC waved Singh over to the house next door. As I wasn’t police I couldn’t really go with them, but I walked to the edge of the garden and loitered by the hedge separating Samira’s house from the one Singh had walked over to. If I stood very still, I could hear the conversation.

‘Please can you tell the detective what you told me,’ the PC was saying.

An elderly lady spoke next, presumably the neighbour. ‘I was letting the cat in, and I heard a noise coming from the house next door. I knew Samira should be at school, but I wondered if it was her brother. Sometimes he has people round and they play dreadful music, so loud. It’s all thump thump and words that I can’t understand.’

She paused, and Singh chimed in, trying to encourage her along. ‘Could you see anything?’

‘Yes, there was a black car outside, and as I looked there was a boy coming out the house. Someone else was with him, pushing him and grabbing his arm, but I didn’t see their face. They had a big coat on, with the hood up.’

I shifted position slightly so I could see them through a gap in the hedge.

‘Was it a man or a woman?’ Singh asked.

‘I couldn’t tell, love. Anyway, they shoved the boy into the car, and they drove off.’

Singh asked the neighbour which direction the car had gone in, and she indicated up the road away from the city centre, and then he and the PC were walking back towards me.

‘Did you get all that?’ he asked me with a wry look, when he saw where I’d been standing.

I shrugged. ‘Who was in the black car?’

‘That’s what we need to find out.’

I had travelled there with Singh, so I couldn’t leave until he did. One of the PCs was dispatched to find out if there was any luck with CCTV from the shops opposite, and she came back with a gleam in her eye.

‘We’ve got it,’ she said. ‘One of the shops has a camera that covers a good portion of the road. We can’t see the people, but we can see the car stopped outside Samira’s house. There might be enough detail to get a partial number plate.’

‘That should help,’ Singh said. ‘Right, until then I’m going to go back to the school. We need to try and find out which other student Saul Achembe was referring to in his email to Jane Villiers.’