Chloe found Dan in the incident room with Jake. They had Syed Hassan’s record open on the database and were discussing their failed attempts to find out where he had been staying since his father had kicked him out of the family home.

‘Seems he got himself involved with some notorious names down in Cardiff,’ Dan said, referring to the array of faces that filled the computer screen. ‘This lot have got more than fifty convictions between them.’

‘Faadi just called me,’ Chloe said, pulling up a chair and sitting beside them.

Dan turned to her. ‘How come?’

‘I knew he was hiding something,’ she said. ‘He’s so nervous, that boy. Here.’ She slid a piece of paper across the desk. On it was scrawled ‘bottleman4000’.

‘What’s this?’

‘Xbox username. Faadi and Corey played FIFA on Xbox Live on Saturday. He said they mostly played against usernames he recognises – I’ve written those on the back of the sheet, there – but there was someone new this time, someone who struck up a conversation with them on one of the message boards.’

‘A conversation about what?’ asked Jake.

‘Just general stuff, Faadi said. But by the sounds of it, this person would have gained enough info to know that the boys were together at Faadi’s house, if they knew who Faadi’s username belonged to.’

‘So they would have known where to find Corey, or near enough,’ Dan said.

‘If they knew where Faadi lived, yes.’

‘Why didn’t Faadi mention this before?’

Chloe shrugged. ‘Could be a number of reasons. I think he’s scared of his brothers, for one – he may have been too frightened to speak to us in front of them. I think his mum might keep him a bit mollycoddled as well. Perhaps she wouldn’t be too pleased to know he chats with people online.’

‘Bottleman,’ Jake said, looking at the name on the sheet. ‘Strange username.’

‘Think there may be a clue in there somewhere?’ Dan suggested.

‘Not unless our suspect’s a milkman,’ Jake said.

Chloe rolled her eyes. Sometimes it was easy to see why Alex had so little patience where Jake was concerned. ‘Are we dealing with a paedophile here?’ she asked, ignoring Jake’s remark. ‘Why else target kids online?’

‘Corey wasn’t sexually assaulted,’ Jake said.

‘But was that only because the attack was intercepted.’

Dan shook his head. ‘The petrol. That would have come after, surely.’

‘Unless it was a response to the interruption,’ Chloe suggested. ‘What if he’d been intent on sexual assault, but threw the petrol once he realised he wasn’t going to get what he wanted?’ She gestured to the username on the paper and looked to Dan. ‘Can you do something with this?’

He pulled a face that immediately quashed any hopes she might have had. ‘I can try. It’s not that easy to locate a user by IP address when it’s an individual. They make it look easy on TV.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘I’ll do my best.’

Jake returned to his own desk, leaving Chloe at Dan’s.

‘She’s told me,’ she said, knowing that if she waited any longer she would only talk herself out of broaching the subject. If they were going to salvage the team they’d been building during the past year, they were going to need to get everything out in the open. In Chloe’s experience, secrets and lies only ever resulted in disaster.

‘Told you …?’ Dan glanced at her. He was wearing guilt like a second skin. Her raised eyebrow told him there was no point in attempting to evade the subject. ‘Right.’ He looked around the room, checking there was no one near enough to overhear the conversation. ‘Look, it was my fault, all right. I don’t know why it happened, it was a moment of madness—’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself to me,’ Chloe said, cutting him short. ‘I just think you should sort it out – people are going to start noticing there’s something going on.’ Her tone was clipped; her disapproval obvious.

‘It was just a kiss,’ Dan added.

‘So I heard.’ She stood and gestured to the Xbox usernames. ‘Let me know if anything shows up from those.’