The house of secrets: behind the high walls of Osama's compound

When the milkman delivered he did not even ring the bell but simply left it outside the green double gates. If anyone ever stopped and leaned against the cream coloured wall someone would emerge and tell them to clear off. Cricket-playing children who exuberantly hit their shots over the compound's high, barbed-wire topped walls were given money to go the local shop, but they were never allowed inside to retrieve their ball.

"There was a rumour that the person living there was a smuggler from Peshawar," said Hussain Jaffri, a resident of the Thanda Choha neighbourhood of Abbottabad, and whose house overlooked the compound occupied by Osama bin Laden. "In this area, when there is a large house you know it's black money, perhaps from white powder."