Clay was acutely aware of the caravan of vehicles behind her, the rapidly scrambled marked and unmarked police cars in a procession of fools.

She glanced over her shoulder at Stone following behind her and shook her head. He responded with a thumbs down. Behind the railings to her left, she passed the solitary Pub in the Park, then slowed as she came to the only house on the road.

‘But you’re not 66,’ she said, listening to the sour note in her own voice.

She slowed down even further as she caught up with a procession of funeral cars and resisted the temptation to overtake.

Clay watched the hearse at the head of the queue turning left into Springwood Crematorium and saw the white flowers against the coffin bearing the word MUMMY.

The notion of her own funeral went through her like a cold wind. She imagined Thomas and Philip sitting in the car immediately behind the hearse as it inched up the path to the crematorium.

She pulled over near the entrance to the crematorium and, as she got out of her car, watched the five cars behind her slow down and stop. The officers emerged from their vehicles in puzzled silence.

‘Sorry, everyone,’ called Clay. ‘This is a bum steer. Karl,’ she addressed Stone. ‘Come with me. Thank you to the rest of you for supporting. Go back to Trinity Road and resume other duties.’

Clay followed the course of the hearses up the path towards Rose Chapel, her knuckles white as she grasped the steering wheel, and turned on to the small car park overlooked by the glass-fronted crematorium.

‘God help them!’ said Clay, as two girls, one aged eight years, her sister two years younger, and a man in his early thirties emerged from the lead car. The girls sobbed hysterically and their father stooped to gather both of them into a single embrace at the front of Rose Chapel. He kissed them in turn and whispered words of comfort from the depths of his own private hell.

Six undertakers shouldered the children’s mother’s coffin, the floral MUMMY desolate in the back of the empty hearse as Clay watched the mourners follow the dead mother into the chapel, and felt the weight of her own mortality like an iron anvil on her heart.

The music of Gerry and the Pacemakers filtered into the daylight.

With each breath, Clay felt time collapsing around her and it made the enclosed space of her car shrink, forced her to open the door and get out as the last of the mourners crept into the chapel.

Clay spotted a gardener pushing a wheelbarrow and walking in her direction. Locking her car, she caught the man’s eye and held up her warrant card. She looked over his shoulder and behind him the sheer breadth and width of the cemetery stood out like an infernal riddle.