‘Yeah, dead. Snow had been forecast and everyone was keen to get home.’ He leaned against the windowsill and turned to look out into the street.

‘So you’d remember anyone in the bar that evening?’

‘Early on, like I said. Not later. The Metro closed down and folk couldn’t get into town, so they all piled in here.’

‘George Enderby,’ Vera said. He didn’t respond straight away, so she continued, ‘He’s one of the regular guests at Kate Dewar’s guest house.’

Lawrence nodded to show that he knew who they were talking about. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘He was in that afternoon with a mate. Older. Kind of scruffy.’

‘Malcolm Kerr?’

‘Nah!’ Lawrence said. ‘He was in later, and he had a skinful. I didn’t know the other man.’

‘Was Dee Robson in then too? We know she was in sometime that afternoon. She picked up a guy called Jason. Then she was back later in the evening.’ Vera remembered seeing the woman coming out of the pub, tottering on her heels, bowled along by the jeers.

Lawrence thought for a minute. ‘I don’t think she was in at the same time as the men. They were on their own in the lounge.’

‘What were they talking about?’

Lawrence shook his head. ‘No idea! There was music and they were in the far corner. When I went to collect their glasses they shut up.’

‘But you’d have got some impression of their mood,’ Vera said. ‘It’d be instinctive, wouldn’t it, picking up the atmosphere in the pub. Keeping an eye out for trouble.’

Lawrence gave a little chuckle. ‘Those two would be no trouble. A couple of old gadgies, sitting over a pint. But one of them was upset. At one point he was crying.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one you were asking about. George Enderby.’

Then Vera’s brain was buzzing. Because George couldn’t have been crying for Margaret Krukowski. At that point she was still alive, making her way to the solicitor’s office in Gosforth, to talk about her will. Perhaps she’d talked to George and told him that she was dying, but then there’d be no need for the man to have lied to the police. And he’d still have had time to drive to Gosforth, to follow Margaret onto the Metro and to have killed her. Then plenty of time to collect his car and drive back to Harbour Street, arriving in the guest house just before Vera and Joe had turned up. But he’d been so charming then, so confident and pleasant. Not the demeanour of a man who’d just committed murder. Or that of a man who’d sat in a pub earlier in the day crying.

‘You really don’t know who the other bloke was?’ This was Joe, getting impatient, while she was staring out of the window lost in thought.