‘It’s Omar Asad. He’s a second-year student and he’s studying engineering. He’s in halls.’ She gave the hall and number.

‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to pass on information about students. But we can get a message to him asking him to contact you. How long has he been out of touch?’

There was a muffled noise at the other end, then a man’s voice spoke.

‘Hello? This is Omar’s father. What do you mean, you can’t tell us how he is?’

‘I’m sorry, but we can’t pass on confidential information about students. Your son is an adult. But we will of course do our best to help. When did you last contact him?’

‘A week last Saturday.’

‘That’s not very long for students to be out of touch, Mr Asad.’

‘No, but he’s not been himself recently. It was his mother’s fiftieth birthday at the weekend – he should have come down on Thursday. His sisters were all here. But we’ve heard nothing and he’s not answering his phone, his WhatsApp or his emails. I asked my cousin to pop in and see him yesterday morning and again today and he’s not in his room. We’re at our wits’ end.’

The welfare officer promised to look into it, took their details and rang off. Normally, she would email the hall warden and let her deal with it, but the name was familiar. She pulled out her Prevent Duty referrals file and, yes, there it was. Three months earlier, a student had raised a concern about Omar Asad with his personal tutor. He had been concerned Asad was hanging around with a hard-line faction on campus. The complaint had been forwarded to a local Prevent Duty adviser – in this case, a Medieval specialist in the Faculty of History, one of a dozen academics given responsibility for assessing whether students were at risk of radicalisation. The tutor had found evidence Asad was spending time on the extremist fringes but none that he had intention to use violence or the determination to do so. The review had been inconclusive – there was insufficient evidence for the college to offer Asad support or forward concerns to outside agencies – and his case had been put on file.

#

Three hours later, the director of student services had her Marks & Spencer sandwich lunch interrupted.

‘When was Omar last seen?’ she asked.

‘Tuesday,’ said the welfare officer as she stood in her doorway. ‘He went to a lecture in the morning. No attendance since. He’s in Buckingham Hall – we got the warden to look in on him earlier. He didn’t answer, so he used the master key. No sign of him and there’s post from Thursday onwards in his pigeonhole.’

‘That’s not long. Surely he’s most likely to be away with friends.’

‘Possibly,’ said the welfare officer. ‘But the warden was alarmed by some of the literature in his room. Some was pretty far out.’

The director of student services groaned and put the sandwich down. ‘In normal times, my instinct would be to wait for him to show up. He’s probably gone off to spend a week with his girlfriend. But I guess these aren’t normal times. Leave it with me.’