A college caretaker and a teaching assistant at the school attended by missing British 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman voluntarily went to police stations in Cambridgeshire yesterday afternoon to explain what they were doing on the night the girls disappeared.
In an extraordinary twist on the 13th day of the inquiry, Mr Ian Huntley (28) and his girlfriend Ms Maxine Carr (25) walked out of their detached home in the heart of Soham to separate police cars, having agreed without argument to answer questions. They were not arrested and were not talking to detectives under caution. The couple gave police permission to search their detached house in the college grounds, which was cordoned off. The search continued last night.
Mr Huntley is the caretaker at Soham Village College and has told police he saw the girls on the afternoon they disappeared. He said they seemed "happy as larry".
Four days after the girls disappeared, Mr Huntley told reporters: "I must have been one of the last people to speak to them. You cannot help thinking about that." He appeared on GMTV morning television yesterday to say how upset he was the girls had not been found.
Ms Carr is an assistant teacher at St Andrew's primary school. She taught both girls until last month in class 12 of year five, and claimed she had not seen Holly and Jessica on Sunday, August 4th, because she was in the bath.
Last week, she told reporters Holly had given her a card with a smiley face on the front and a poem inside. She said Holly was crying because she had not got a full-time teaching job.
Yesterday evening the parameters of the search were extended to include St Andrew's Primary, the girls' school.
But a police source has indicated that search officers would still be working on the site on Monday.
A senior police source said: "We are anticipating that this search could last days not hours." The search team was last night being directed by the national police search specialist advisor, Mr Mark Harrison, who recently advised both Surrey police in their hunt for Milly Dowler, and the Essex force in their investigation into the disappearance of Danielle Jones.
Four plain-clothed police officers arrived at the home of Mr Huntley and Ms Carr at 3.40 p.m. It stands in the grounds of Soham Village College, where the parents of the two girls, Kevin and Nicola Wells and Sharon and Leslie Chapman, had given a press conference four hours earlier.
Det Chief Inspector Andy Hebb then addressed a hastily arranged briefing inside the college.
"In the last few minutes a 28-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, both from the Soham area, have been spoken to by police officers and have agreed to give witness statements to us," he said.
"They have both been taken to police stations elsewhere in the county for that purpose. A police search team is about to complete a detailed examination of their house in Soham for any evidence that may point to the whereabouts of the two missing girls.
"A search is also about to be mounted at Soham Village College, looking for similar evidence.
"In the circumstances it would be inappropriate to make any further comment at this stage, other than to say this development is one of many active and interesting lines of inquiry." The couple have only been in Soham since last September. Mr Huntley helped to put out chairs at the meeting in the college on Thursday night between police officers and 300 members of the community.
Both he and Ms Carr had been checked by police before they started work, according to Mr Bob Pearson, a spokesman for the local education authority.
Mr Pearson said that Mr Huntley applied for his job under the name of Ian Nixon. He had worked in Lincolnshire where he had had another care-taking post.
Police said the decision to ask the couple to give witness statements had nothing to do with the appeal for the potential abductors to call a hotline before midnight on Thursday. The deadline passed without anyone calling.