My drive home was dull but easy, a straight run up the A15, freshly gritted and clear of snow, so I could let my mind wander a bit. I wondered how the search party was getting on at Normanby Hall. Surely Leon would be a long way away from there by now? If he left the grounds with a purpose and hadn’t been found yet, either it was because he’d been successful and made his way away from there without being recognised, or else something far more sinister had happened to him.

A forty-five-minute drive later I drove up Ashby High Street in Scunthorpe, looking for a parking space. In the end I turned down a side street and parked on the road, then walked back to the cafe Singh had chosen. I was the first to arrive, and I chose a table in the window. Only two other tables were occupied, one by a couple of young mums with pushchairs and another by an elderly man who had three different newspapers on the table in front of him.

I ordered two coffees and a scone, as I hadn’t had the chance to have any lunch. Not knowing what Singh might want to eat, I figured I’d let him order his own. As I sat back at the window, I saw him standing outside with his phone to his ear, his other hand in his pocket and a look of concentration on his face.

A few minutes later, he pushed open the door to the cafe and sat down opposite me.

‘What was that about?’

‘The tech team have been going through Leon’s school account. It looks like he’d been accessing a lot of chat rooms and a couple of dating sites after hours.’

‘How could he get onto those on the school system?’ I asked. I thought schools were supposed to have safety settings to prevent students accessing inappropriate material.

‘That’s one of the things I asked them. Apparently they can’t figure that out without access to the system itself, so I’ve left a message for Saul Achembe to get back to me. Hopefully he can work that out. The other relevant thing, however, is that there are some messages that Leon saved. They’re very flirtatious, and there are a couple of mentions of meeting up, but then nothing more after that. The techs say they’re all from one account, but they think it’s most likely that some have been deleted.’

‘Who were they from?’ I asked quietly, conscious that there were other people who could quite easily overhear us if they tried.

Singh glanced over his shoulder. ‘They don’t know. There’s just a screen name. They tracked it back to a website, and the profile is claiming to be a sixteen-year-old boy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’

‘Is that why you asked Samira about Leon meeting someone?’