LAST week, the school caretaker was emphatic. Ian Huntley was sure that the missing girls had not run away.

His partner, Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant in Holly's and Jessica's class, was equally adamant: The girls would not have gone off with strangers.

Last night, after almost two weeks of false leads and false hopes, police brought the couple in for questioning.

It was not the first time that Mr Huntley, who worked at Soham Village secondary school, had told his story. He has spent the past week doing the rounds of TV and newspaper interviews.

Yesterday morning it was GMTV. ''It doesn't help the fact that I was one of the last people to speak to them, if not the last person to speak to them,'' he said.

''I keep re-living that conversation and thinking perhaps something different could've been said, perhaps kept them here a little longer and maybe changed events.''

Mr Huntley said he had been at the front door, washing his alsatian dog, Sadie, as the two girls passed his house on Sunday August 4, the day they disappeared. He said they chatted briefly.

''They said: 'How's Miss Carr?' I said: 'She's not very good, she didn't get the job.'''

A short time later, a CCTV camera picked up the two girls, in their matching Manchester United shirts, as they crossed the car park of the Ross Peers sports centre.

At 6.30pm, a member of the public saw them walking along Sand Street. Then nothing. They had disappeared.

Since then, Mr Huntley has been billed as ''the last person to speak to Holly and Jessica'', becoming an expert on the missing girls, and a spokesman for a village in shock.

Yesterday, on television, he explained how locals had reacted at a community meeting addressed by the police. ''Overall, I think they are coping quite well. The overall view seems to be that while there's no news, there's still a glimmer of hope and I'd go along with that,'' he said.

A chance conversation had made the caretaker famous. Yet at first, he made a reluctant interviewee, turning down requests to appear on TV. His first interview, four days after the search began, was with The Herald.

Sadie barked when the doorbell rang. Mr Huntley answered and said that the BBC had been ringing his mobile trying to get an interview, but he did not want to have his face shown on the nation's television screens. Nor did he want his photograph taken, at first. Nevertheless, he would do anything that would help lead to the safe return of Holly and Jessica, so he invited The Herald into his cottage.

Our reporter, and two other journalists, spoke in their sitting room for about 20 minutes. Miss Carr joined the discussions. Both seemed distressed, understandably in the circumstances.

Early on in the interview, Miss Carr produced the card Holly had given her on July 25 - the last day of term before the summer holiday. It was a leaving card and commiseration card, after the teaching assistant had failed to secure a permanent job at St Andrews Primary School.

Mr Huntley said he had been out every night assisting police in the search of the campus. ''They wouldn't have run away from home,'' he said holding back tears. ''They didn't have a care in the world when they were out there. They were as happy as larry.''

Miss Carr said: ''They would not have got into a car with someone they didn't know. They would have kicked up a stink if someone tried to get hold of them. They would have screamed out.''

Mr Huntley said that one person could not have snatched the girls. ''It's got to be two people they know and trust,'' he said.

Miss Carr said the girls were extremely bright and very popular in the class. Wiping back tears, she told us that if she had not been having a bath when they were outside the house, she would have kept them talking for at least an hour. Her meaning was clear. On another day or at a different time, they would not have gone missing.

Last night, the room - and the rest of the house - was being picked over by a police search team.

Yesterday's developments are the latest twist in an investigation that has taken two sets of parents to the edge of despair and left them dangling for almost a

fortnight.

Police have been inundated with information but have been criticised after two important leads were not followed up for days.

A week after the girls went missing, detectives revealed a possible sighting. A taxi driver had seen another motorist driving erratically while struggling with two children.

The sighting was eventually dismissed - the timing did not match other witnesses - but not before police admitted a four-day delay in speaking to the taxi

driver.

Two days after, the girls disappeared a jogger came forward to tell police that he heard screams near woods about 10 miles from Soham. Officers filed a report yet a week later the same jogger had to press police to investigate after finding two mounds of earth in the area.

The two families faced an agonising night as police excavated what could have been two shallow graves on Tuesday night. The next morning police declared there was no sign of the girls, and the focus shifted back to Soham.

One of the most striking tactics used in the inquiry has been a series of appeals made directly to the abductor or abductors as police cling to the hope that Holly and Jessica are still alive.

The most dramatic was made on Wednesday. In a personal video-taped plea, Detective Superintendent David Beck urged the people holding the girls to ''work with me to stop this getting any worse than it is. You do have a way out''.

He called on the captor to telephone a hotline before midnight on Thursday. The deadline passed without a call.

Meanwhile, police were hinting that the answer would be found in Soham.

On Thursday, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb told a packed public meeting: ''Look at the behaviour of your friends, neighbours, anything.

''Think about how they are behaving. Are they doing anything differently? That's the important thing.''

Crucial moments on day girls went missing

5pm Jessica seen in High Street.

5.04pm Last picture is taken of the girls, both wearing Manchester United shirts.

5.11pm to 5.35pm Computer at Holly's house is in use, almost certainly by the girls.

5.45pm School caretaker Ian Huntley, who knows the girls, speaks to them as they pass his house. ''They were as happy as Larry. They haven't run away. They didn't have a care in the world,'' he recalled.

6.01pm Ian Webster, a taxi driver heading towards Newmarket, sees a motorist in front struggling with two children and swerving.

6.15pm Another reported sighting puts them in the lower end of the High Street.

6.17pm CCTV footage shows the girls crossing the car park of the Ross Peers sports centre.

6.30pm Four more reported sightings put the girls in the High Street walking towards the centre of Soham.

6.45pm A further four reported sightings, this time near the town's war memorial.

7.20pm Last sighting being treated as confirmed by police was by Margaret Willers, a Soham woman who said she saw the two 10-year-olds outside Sergio's Italian restaurant in the town's High Street.

8.30pm Holly's parents think the girls are playing upstairs but discover they are missing. Local residents join police searching for the pair.

10.40pm to 11.10pm Jogger out walking his dog at Warren Hill, Newmarket, hears what he describes as ''teenagers' screams''.