‘Nah!’ She was indignant. ‘I thought that was the idea, that he’d spend the evening with me, but he just let me out of his flat and I had to find the Metro station myself. It was snowing. Fucking freezing.’

‘What time was that?’ Joe asked.

‘Dunno. It was dark, though.’

‘And you came all the way to Mardle on the Metro?’ Joe asked the question; Vera held her breath.

‘Nah, the train stopped at Partington. Because of the weather. We all had to get out and get the bus. It took ages to come. Total fucking waste of time for a few quid.’

‘Which carriage were you in, Dee?’

She looked at Joe as if he was mad. ‘What?’

‘On the Metro? Were you near the front or the back?’

‘I can’t remember! Why?’

‘Because that’s where Margaret was stabbed,’ Vera said quietly. ‘On the Metro that was stopped by the snow.’

‘I didn’t see her!’ Dee turned to her, horrified. ‘If I’d seen her I might have saved her.’

Chapter Fourteen

Holly tracked down Margaret’s GP to a practice in Gosforth. An efficient receptionist said that Margaret had visited a couple of times in the last month, but not on the afternoon of her death. If they wanted more details they’d have to make an appointment to come into the surgery and talk to the doctor. When Holly rang Vera to tell her, expecting at least to be thanked for her efforts, the boss only seemed disappointed.

‘Oh well, it can’t be helped, but I really need to know what the woman was doing in Gosforth yesterday.’ There was a pause before Vera added, ‘How’s it going there otherwise?’

‘I think the press conference went okay, but I’m going bog-eyed here, boss. It’s a nightmare trying to collate all the info we’ve got through so far, but I’m pretty well up to date. I don’t think we’ll get another surge of calls until after the six-thirty news.’

It was already late afternoon. After the buzz of the press conference Holly had spent the next couple of hours in the police station, plotting names onto large pieces of graph paper. She’d tried to map the location of passengers in the Metro carriage electronically, but in the end it worked best to spread the graph paper over a double desk, each large square marking either a seat or a space. Still there were gaps. Some of the people Joe had remembered – the smooching kids and the partying businessmen – had failed to come forward. Other passengers had seen Margaret get onto the train at Gosforth, but hadn’t noticed if she’d been followed onto the platform.