‘So let’s move on to the afternoon of her murder, shall we, Ryan? Your friends got off the Metro, and Margaret Krukowski got on. The woman who could land you in the shite big-time. She’d given you one last chance, but here you were bunking off school again. What did she say to you? Whatever she said, it must have been pretty strong, because you followed her to her seat and took out the knife you always carry . . .’ Just like Ricky Butt. ‘. . . and when she turned away from you – when she dared to turn her back on you – you stabbed her.’ Vera had allowed disgust to colour her voice. Kate Dewar was sobbing. She’d probably been sobbing all night.

‘Well, Ryan?’ Vera insisted. Looking, she saw that he was sitting upright now. Very tense. Reliving the humiliation of being put in his place by an elderly woman. White with anger.

‘She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. She looked at me. Kind as if I was a naughty kid. She’d been a prostitute. She had no right to look at me like that.’

‘So you killed her.’

‘Yes!’ Temper constricting his throat, so that his voice was hoarse. He half-rose to his feet and, when he spoke again, he sent a spray of spit across the table. ‘I killed her.’

There was a moment of silence in the room, broken only by Kate’s muffled cries.

Vera nodded at Joe Ashworth to continue the story. ‘I was in the Metro,’ Joe said. ‘I saw you with the girls, and I hated the way you treated them. It never occurred to me that you were a killer, though. Just a little jumped-up yob, I thought. And that’s what you were. A jumped-up yob who thought it was clever to sell drugs to vulnerable kids and stab an old lady to death.’

‘You left the Metro at Partington with all the other passengers,’ Vera said. ‘Hidden by the snow. The Metro bus was waiting and drove you back to Mardle. You got home late.’ Vera paused. ‘But your mother didn’t realize. She thought you’d come in from school with Chloe.’

Kate looked up. ‘I heard him come in,’ she said. Appalled, as if this tiny example of ignorance made her complicit in his guilt. ‘I heard the door and I thought it was just the wind rattling the letter box. It always rattles when the wind’s northerly.’