Julie shook her head vehemently. “He was my husband. I’ve got rights. I’ve got the right to see the look on her face when she realizes she hasn’t got away with taking my Tom’s life. Anyway, you said she’d already murdered someone else and got away with it. Who’s to say the police won’t make a bollocks of this one as well?”

Lindsay struggled to her feet, clutching her head. “The police weren’t even involved last time. And believe me, if it comes to having axes to grind, you’re not the only one. The man she killed nine years ago was one of my closest friends. If you’re going to front up Laura Craig, then I’m going with you. Besides, you need my evidence. I’m the only person who can put her at the scene of the crime at the right time.”

In spite of Sophie’s protests that they should go to the police, that had been the end of the argument. Now, hurtling towards the conference center at a speed calculated to get them the worst kind of police escort, Lindsay couldn’t stop herself returning to the notebook, like a child irresistibly drawn to picking the most painful scab. Her first reaction to the discovery that Union Jack had dug into the Blackpool files long before her had been chagrin. Then she’d grown puzzled, wondering what had set him off on his search, wondering what she had missed that had pointed all those years ago to Laura as a killer.