‘No.’ A pause. ‘Well, I met her once at the winter fair – she’d come with Margaret – but I had a bit of a panic attack. All those strangers. I didn’t really talk to anyone.’ And Emily walked on, leaving Holly to follow. She must have realized that Holly wasn’t someone who could help her. When Holly caught her up, Emma continued talking about the murders. It seemed that she hadn’t spent any time with Dee Robson at the Haven because she’d only been in the hostel for a few weeks, referred from the adolescent unit of the local psychiatric hospital. ‘The girls told me about Dee. They always made out she was a bit of a joke. Nobody deserves to die like that, though, do they?’ They walked for a while in silence, the only sound the cawing of rooks in the nearby trees and the engine of a distant tractor.

‘Did Margaret mention if anything was bothering her?’ Though Holly thought the last person Margaret would have chosen as a confidante would be Emily, who was weak and had so many problems of her own.

Emily shook her head. ‘You had the feeling that nothing bothered Margaret, that she’d seen it all.’

Laurie knew Dee, though. ‘She was one of those lasses who were always around in Mardle. Like people got so used to seeing her making a spectacle of herself that they didn’t notice her any more. It’s the same with the Big Issue sellers. They’re there, but you don’t really see them.’ Laurie swiped at the dead brambles by the side of the path with her stick. ‘Margaret thought that some time at the Haven would sort Dee out.’

‘But it didn’t?’

‘Nah. She hated it from the time she got here. I love the countryside, me, but Dee didn’t know anywhere outside Mardle.’

‘Where did she stay before she came to the Haven?’ Holly hoped that she’d remember all these details when she got back to the station. She was lost without her iPad.

‘Prison. She’d got into a scrap with some guy in the Coble and got done for ABH. She was already on a suspended for shoplifting. At the end of the sentence she wanted to go back and stay with her gran, but they’d stuck her into a home when Dee was inside. So the probation brought her to us. Jane didn’t want to take her, but Margaret persuaded her to give Dee a chance.’ Laurie shrugged. ‘I could have told them it was never going to work.’

‘Did Margaret know Dee from before?’ That, after all, was the information Vera had wanted.