‘The staff and students are all waiting in the cabin. We’ve cleared it as a crime scene, so we thought it best to contain them there until you arrived to help us take statements,’ Forest replied. ‘The pastoral support assistant called the deputy head when he realised both Leon and the head were missing, and she told him to call us while she drove up here.’

‘Who’s searching for the boy at the moment?’ I asked.

‘There were some staff from the park, but we’ve asked them to team up with uniformed officers,’ Singh explained. ‘We don’t want anyone getting lost in the woods, so we need people who know the grounds. And I’ve asked them for the CCTV from the gates, but there are several different ways in and out of the park that aren’t covered by cameras.’

‘There’s an awful lot of land to cover,’ Forest said with a frown. ‘There are parts of the park we don’t think have been searched yet, and we have no idea which direction Leon might have gone in. But now you’re here, Paige, we’d better go and see if there’s anything else the school group can tell us.’

The DI strode off through the snow, not waiting to see if we were following. Singh held out his hand to indicate I should go first, and the two of us set off down the path through the woods.

‘No sign of the head teacher where you’ve been searching?’

He shook his head. ‘No. It does seem very strange that he hasn’t turned up yet, but we’re keeping an open mind at the moment.’

We walked in silence through the trees for a few minutes, the sounds of our footsteps eerily muffled by the snow, then Singh stopped short and turned to face me.

‘How are you doing? You know, after …’ His voice tailed off. I knew he was referring to when we’d worked together in February, when my sister and I were both attacked by the person who’d murdered a little girl.

I shrugged. ‘I’m okay. I had a couple of sessions with a counsellor but I wasn’t comfortable talking to her. It’s …’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘No, tell me,’ he said, and I could see genuine concern in his eyes. ‘I’ve been worried about you, not having any sort of debrief afterwards. If you’d been a police officer there would have been support we could put in place. As it was, you were just left, really.’