‘To me?’ His eyebrows rose indignantly to his hairline.

‘Yeah, to you.’

‘Um, yeah, I suppose he did but my mum said, “Oh no, not my Omar,” and then he just sort of backed off because, obviously, then, he knew I was Omar, that I wasn’t Bob.’

Bannerman, looking at his notes, failed to see the twitch on Omar’s neck, head flicking back a little, but Morrow noted it. Something had happened there but Morrow didn’t know what. She looked at Harris. He was straining forward on his chair, alert, looking for clues as to what had just happened.

They both watched as Omar leaned across the table, his hand under Bannerman’s eye, drawing him back up. ‘And then, and then, the other one, the fat one, he grabbed my dad, like around the neck with his hand.’ Then Omar did a strange thing: he wrapped his own hands around his neck to illustrate the hold but somehow he pressed a little too tight, too adamant about it, as if he was actually trying to hurt himself. ‘And I thought he was going to kill him!’ He let go and stopped for breath. ‘I did! And then he said he wanted two million quid by tomorrow night and not to call the police or he’d kill my dad. And then he’s like: “This is payback for Afghanistan.” ’

He stopped talking, watching Bannerman to see if the dissemble had worked.

Bannerman had noted the change in tone, the excitement. He spoke calmly, ‘Do you know anyone in Afghanistan?’

Omar was bewildered. ‘No!’

‘Have you ever been there?’

‘Never.’

‘Does your dad have any dealings with Afghanistan, any family there or anything?’

A hand swept the table top. ‘No connection with Afghanistan whatsoever.’

‘OK. And then what?’

‘Then he grabbed dad there,’ he lay his forearm over the bottom of his rib cage, like the Queen carrying a heavy handbag, ‘and lifted him up,’ he tipped back in his chair, ‘and took him out the house.’ Omar’s arms flailed expressively at the door, making Morrow think of a stage magician diverting an audience’s eye.

‘Me and Mo ran after them, saw a big white van, like a Merc panel van, pull away. So we ran to Mo’s car and got in and followed them but we lost them at the motorway. They weren’t driving fast, just within the law, didn’t want to get caught, I suppose, and we shouldn’t have lost them but we were panicking and driving fast and following tail lights in the dark and they didn’t go the most obvious way, down the main roads.

‘Then we saw a police car and stopped and I said to them that my dad had been taken by men in a van and about Afghanistan and that, but they tried to arrest us.’

Morrow saw the boy on the screen stop waving his hands and the hurt in his voice. To be treated with suspicion at a moment of grief. She knew the deep stinging cut of that feeling. That was why he looked like that in the road, he and Mo, because they knew they were not among friends, that they were other.

She sat back and glanced at the officers in the viewing room. Smart men, top of their game, all staring at the screen, willing him to be it. He must sense that.

When she stood up to leave someone called ‘Down in front’. Their voice tailed off when they realised it was her.

The officer who had given up his seat was leaning against the wall, tipped his forehead out of respect, ‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ He meant Bannerman, wrongly supposing they were friends.

‘Aye.’ She leaned over to Harris and tapped his shoulder. ‘Have a word?’

Out in the corridor they dropped their voices. ‘What happened, just before he started rambling?’

Harris shrugged. ‘I was trying to remember myself.’

‘Get the disk would you? As soon as…’

Still frowning Harris looked back into the room. ‘His mum said, “Not my Omar.”’

She turned her computer on, waited for what felt like ten minutes, signed herself in and called up her email. The digi recordings had already been forwarded to her. The transcript would take a few days to weave its way through form-filling and desk-landing but the digi recording was immediate.

Opening her bottom desk drawer she took out a brand new pad of cheap paper, a sharp new pencil from a box and a plastic container with a set of earphones in it. Plugging them into the hard drive stack, she clicked on the attachment.

The first file was numbered and she jotted it down in the pad before starting the recording. A caller panted loudly and a bored operator asked them: ‘Which service do you require?’

Barely contained sobs demanded, ‘Ambulance! Please! Tell them to come, please come! She’s bleeding all over the place!’

‘Who’s bleeding please?’

‘My daughter has been shot by… men, they came into our home and threatened-’ The mother, Sadiqa, had an English accent, a crisp fifties accent, and made the operator sound coarse.

‘Can ye give us your address?’

Sadiqa gave it, becoming calm in the familiar recitation, but she was interrupted by a girl crying out in the background and began panting again, ‘Oh dear, my God, my husband has been taken, my Aamir-

The operator’s voice was nasal and bland, told her to calm down, the ambulance was on its way. No, there wasnae any point in her getting off the line because the ambulance was on its way right now. She made Sadiqa spell her name, her husband’s name, what sort of guns were they?

‘I have no idea. Black guns? Big-’

‘Are they still in the actual house?’

‘Gone! Left! I’ve told you that.’

‘Did they leave on foot or in a car?’

‘I’m afraid no, I didn’t see. But my son, my Omar ran out into the street.’

‘Has your son come back in? Could he come to the phone and tell me if it was on foot or in a vehicle, maybe?’

But Sadiqa wasn’t listening to her any more. ‘Aleesha, oh Lord, Aleesha is bleeding. Please, please come quickly.’ She dropped the receiver noisily and spoke urgently to someone. A thump sounded like a body falling. Someone picked up the receiver and hung it up.

The call lasted one minute fourteen seconds. The second call started ten seconds later than Sadiqa’s.

Billal was calling from a mobile so the line was less clear. In the background she could hear Sadiqa’s voice repeating one side of the conversation she had just listened to. Shock made Billal shout a series of exclamations: ‘Police! Police! And an ambulance!’

‘And what is your call concerning, sir?’

‘Two men! Two men!’

‘Two men what, sir?’

‘Two men came in our house! They took my daddy away!’

‘So, they’re not there now?’

‘They shot my wee sister. In her hand!’

‘They shot her hand, sir?’

‘Yes! Yes! She’s bleeding really… God… badly! It’s all… blood-’

‘Did you see them shoot her?’

‘Yeah, with guns! Big guns, real guns.’

The female controller tried to get him to spell his name and the address but Billal could barely hear her he was so shocked.

‘Please come and help us, help us, please come.’

‘We are on our way, sir, right now, but-’

‘We’ve got a baby here, a new baby! They pointed the gun at a baby!’

‘Did they say what they wanted, sir?’

‘ Ob. ’

Billal had moved his face, his chin was slightly over the receiver, so it wasn’t very clear. Morrow had to use the mouse to listen to the portion of speech again.

‘… what they wanted, sir?’

‘Hob. Were after someone called Bob.’

It was clearer the second time he said it, the puff of air from his lips popping gently on the receiver as he said the ‘b’s.

Morrow wrote ‘Bob’ on the pad and put a question mark next to it.

‘Mum! She’s falling-’ He hung up. The conversation had lasted less than a minute.

The last call was from Meeshra, sobbing loudly, wailing about Aamir and Aleesha. She sounded calmer than the other two, even a little excited but much more upset, the way a distant acquaintance sobs at a funeral of a child while the family hold tight, afraid the force of grief will rip the earth from under their feet.