‘Maybe the mother coloured the boy’s hair,’ said Gary. ‘But you’d know your own child, surely? I mean like . . . immediately?’

‘What if he doesn’t actually know him,’ said Kevin pensively. ‘What if the mother took the son away from him much longer ago?’

‘Go on . . .’ Jackman said.

‘Well, say the father’s been in jail, for instance. Mother never takes the kid to visit, never sends photographs, maybe never visits herself. Then he gets out and wants to see his son. Maybe he’s aggressive, even dangerous. She’s terrified and takes off with the boy. He traces her to this area, and, well—’ he held up his hands — ‘who knows what happened next?’

Jackman nodded slowly, then looked across to Marie. ‘I do believe that our Kevin has come up with a very believable chain of events, don’t you, Marie?’

‘Startlingly believable, I’d say! Smart thinking, Kev.’

Kevin shrugged. ‘I could be way off, but even if the actual circumstances are different, he could still be hunting for a son he either hasn’t seen for a long time or has never seen at all.’

‘Well, I think we start with trying to discover the identity of the woman known as Claire. There are only two registered women’s refuges in this area, one run by Women’s Aid and the other by Shelter. So we tackle them first, and we do it by phone. We can’t have men in plain clothes turning up unannounced. You know how it works. If anyone needs to go in person, it should be Marie or Stacey.’ He looked over to where Robbie, Max and Charlie were still working at their desks. ‘Max? Charlie? Any progress with Andrea Becker or her husband yet?’

Max looked up. ‘Can’t find the woman yet, sir, but we’ve made contact with Felix Becker. He’s now living in Leicester with his sister. He’s coming in to see us tomorrow morning, and he’s bringing a photograph of his ex-wife.’

‘Excellent. That’ll be a great help. All we have is a fuzzy image from a newspaper clipping about a church function, which could have been anyone.’

‘I’m not sure he’ll be too much help, boss,’ said Max. ‘I reckon she damaged him badly.’

‘Even so, it will help build up a clearer picture of her.’ He looked at Charlie. ‘Do we know if she actually did go off with this Hereward, the owner of the builder’s yard?’

‘No, sir,’ Charlie said. ‘She ditched him soon after she did a runner from Felix. I get the feeling Hereward was a means to an end, and once she’d got away, she dropped him too. He crept home to his wife, only to face divorce. Becker’s proving very hard to trace.’

‘Keep at it, Charlie,’ said Jackman.

Robbie was just setting his desk phone back in its cradle.