I’m going mad. My father always said that I should be locked up.

The sleet was heavier now, filling the sky with pieces of ice, and Northumberland Street was almost empty.

What would Margaret want me to do?

Malcolm looked down the road and saw that there were two people on the opposite pavement now. They walked away from him, one after the other. He hesitated for a moment and then he followed.

Chapter Forty

Joe Ashworth drove home. Sal was almost hysterical and he couldn’t get any sense out of her on the phone. All the way there he wanted to yell at someone. At Sal for being so bloody daft as to let their daughter into town, especially with a gang of older kids that he’d never met. At the mother of the kids who’d said she’d keep an eye on them. And at Jessie, who’d pestered them for months to get her own mobile phone and then had left it behind, the one time that she really needed it.

Mostly he was furious at himself. He drove through the empty country roads and began to imagine scenarios. Vera would call them stories. Margaret Krukowski had been killed in the Metro. Dee Robson had been in the same Metro and she’d been killed, possibly because she’d seen the murder or guessed what had happened. And now he realized what hadn’t clicked before: that Jessie might have been a witness to Margaret’s murder too. Jessie, who was sharp as a knife, with a memory like an elephant’s. She’d gone missing and so had their prime suspect, whose car had been found at Partington Metro station. Maybe that was a coincidence, but Joe was so wound up with worry that he couldn’t believe in coincidence any more. He pictured his Jessie, in the train with her mates, chatting and laughing because it was nearly Christmas and she was getting her first taste of freedom. He saw Jessie glancing across the train and seeing someone she recognized through the crowd. Someone who’d been on the Metro when Margaret was stabbed. He imagined a flash of contact between them. Then the killer, threatened, following his daughter, and so desperate to escape that he might feel he had to kill her too.

Their estate was on the edge of an ex-pit village and a skein of geese flew overhead from a subsidence pond as he walked up the path. He looked up to watch them, before opening the door. The younger children were in the front room watching a DVD, so he and Sal stood in the small kitchen, communicating in hissed whispers.

‘So what happened?’ He tried to tell himself that really it wasn’t Sal’s fault and she’d be feeling even more wretched than him, but he couldn’t quite keep the hint of accusation from his voice.