It had been easy at the time to ignore the circumstances of his death. The fact had been all that had mattered. It had been the harshest year of her life, a year when death closed in on her life like a fist crushing a flower. But Lindsay couldn’t help feeling guilty now that she hadn’t paid more attention to Ian’s death. Not that uncovering the murder would have made her feel any better. But at least Tom Jack would still be alive now, and regardless of how she felt towards him while he was alive, he had been a human being and he hadn’t deserved to be murdered in cold blood by a selfish and ruthless killer. But what she desperately wanted to know was why Ian had had to die. What benefit had Laura gained from his death that made it worth killing the man she’d supposedly loved? Surely it couldn’t just be the money?

Lindsay’s reverie was shattered by Julie’s strident voice. “I said, we’ve lost your oppo,” she repeated. Lindsay swung round in her seat. The evening rush-hour had choked the main roads in and out of the city with traffic. In the clogged road behind her, Lindsay could see no sign of the sky-blue metallic roof of Helen’s car. “She fell behind at last roundabout,” Julie said. “I thought she’d catch us up, but we’ve lost her, I reckon. Does she know where she’s going?”

“She knows where she’s headed. I’m just not sure if she knows how to get there,” Lindsay said with an indulgent smile.

Behind the wheel of the little sports car, Sophie was in no doubt about that. There was nothing wrong with her sense of direction. Besides, she’d checked out the whereabouts of police headquarters within half an hour of crossing the Sheffield city boundary only two days before.

Michael Jackson getting on down in Oxford Street at noon would have stood more chance of escaping unnoticed than Lindsay and Julie’s arrival at Pennine University campus. Julie hadn’t even switched off the engine before there was a knot of delegates staring at the pair of them, muttering excited identifications to each other. “Let me handle this?” Lindsay said.

Julie unfastened her seat belt and let it snap back with a crack. “Only as long as I like the way you do it,” she replied, opening the driver’s door and climbing out. As they marched towards the main building, they accumulated a trail of followers, like a pair of Pied Pipers. Some of the pursuit tried to head them off, circling round in front of them like wasps driven demented by the smell of raspberry jam, buzzing questions at them which the two women brushed aside indifferently.