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she’s been caught going through Plum’s bag and hauled off by the bouncers, who are calling the police. My heart is pounding madly, my phone sweaty in my hand. It feels like hours before my phone finally buzzes with a message, and I stab so urgently at the button to see it that I miss, hit the wrong one, and it takes me ages to get back to the text menu and finally see:
    MEET ME OUT BACK
    Oh, thank God. I tear through the crowd, which is hard because everyone’s pouring the other way, but I make it through by dint of much shoving and pushing and I run up the stairs and out and duck under the velvet rope and stand there for a minute, not knowing which way to go, till I have a brainwave and pant to the doorman:
    “Where’s the back exit?”
    He jerks his head to the right. I take off, running as well as I can in these heels, and just as I turn the corner of the building someone grabs me and I yelp, spinning round, and Taylor’s voice says:
    “Run!” We both shoot back the way we came, to the front of the club, where Taylor—who’s faster than me, because she’s not wearing heels—makes for a taxi that’s just dropped off a group of partygoers. She grabs the door they’ve just slammed and hauls it open again even before the driver’s had time to switch on the orange For Hire light.
    We slump on the seat, gasping for breath.
    “The bouncers started putting everyone out the back,” Taylor pants. “I suddenly realized Plum might see you—”
    “Where to, ladies?” the taxi driver interrupts, turning round to look at us through the opening in the glass. He’s quite old, with silver hair and a jolly face. “On to your next party?”
    “No, we’re done for the evening,” Taylor says.
    “Oh, what a shame,” he says, making a tut-tutting sound. “Two pretty ladies like you should be dancing till dawn.”
    I giggle, mostly at Taylor’s appalled expression at being called a pretty lady. Fishing in my bag, I pull out the slip of paper on which I’ve written Lizzie’s address, and read it out to him.
    “All righty,” he says, setting the cab in motion. “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!”
    I look at Taylor.
    “Did it go okay?”
    “Yes and no,” Taylor says, still keeping her voice low. “I got the phone, I deleted the video, that’s all done—but, there’s a situation with the handbags.”
    “What?”
    Taylor sighs.
    “Limited edition, my ass. There were two bags exactly the same under that table,” she says. “When Nadia saw Dan’s EpiPen in Plum’s bag, she could’ve made a mistake. It might not have been Plum’s bag after all.”
    “Two?” I’m so incredulous I can barely get the word out.
    Taylor nods grimly.
    “Oh my God!” I exclaim. “That means—”
    “Yeah.” Taylor’s had more time to think this through than I have. “It might have been someone else besides Plum who took Dan’s EpiPen.”
    I stare at her, my heart sinking.
    “This is awful,” I say.
    Taylor nods glumly. I slump back into the corner of the taxi. This is so miserable. Twenty seconds ago, I was flying. Operation VPD had gone fantastically: we were well on course to find out everything that Nadia had to tell us, getting closer to solving the mystery of Dan’s murder. And now, it feels like we’re back to square one.
    Plus, it might not even be Plum who killed Dan. I realize I was really hoping to find out that Plum was guilty. Plum’s such a bitch; it would make complete sense for her to be a killer. She even had a motive—she was so keen on Dan she told people she was his girlfriend, which totally wasn’t true. If she was jealous of his flirting, that could have made her want to kill him  .  .  . couldn’t it?
    But now that I think it over, I have to admit, reluctantly, that maybe it isn’t that strong a motive. And the way Dan was killed was so sneaky. Poisoning the crisps with peanut oil, positioning them in front of him  .  .  . I don’t see Plum carrying out a plan that