A nurse found dead lying face-down dead on a snow-covered field may have missed her bus stop and tried to walk home in freezing weather, according to police.

The body of Shelley Whitfield, 21, was found behind Meadowfield sports centre in Brandon, near Durham on Wednesday.

A post mortem test has failed to establish the cause of death.

A Durham bus driver says a young woman matching Miss Whitfield's description caught his bus on Tuesday evening.

The driver of the X49 bus said the woman indicated she wanted to get off at Brandon, where her body was found the following day, only a few hundred yards from her flat.

Police said the driver indicated she missed her stop and then got off near Meadowfield High Street, not far from the sports centre.

When she left the bus at 6.30pm she was carrying a light-coloured clutch bag which matches the description of a bag she had with her in Durham earlier.

Det Ch Insp Andy Reddick, leading the investigation, said: "If the lady on the X49 was Shelley, then finding her bag would be a positive step forward in tracing her movements.

"We now have a reasonable picture of what happened until 6.30pm, but we have a blank canvas about what happened since then."

Today, a police search team will search the area in an attempt to find the bag.