‘What is it?’ she asked, putting down her mug of tea. ‘Is something wrong? Are you feeling a bit ropey? Can I get you anything?’

Without answering her questions, he held out the letter, and Anne was surprised to see the sheet of paper was trembling in his hand. Afraid the council might have voted to remove him from his office, she took the letter. As she did so, an even more terrible thought struck her.

‘Is it about Daisy?’ she whispered.

Although she and David were not wealthy people, their circumstances were certainly comfortable. She had a small pension from the years she had spent teaching part-time while Jessica was at school, and David received a decent pension from his law firm which seemed to have been very happy to pay him to retire. She wondered if it was possible that someone was demanding a ransom for her granddaughter’s safe return. Or they might be attempting to blackmail David for reasons that were still obscure to her. Taking a deep breath, she read the letter. It was typed on an A4 sheet of paper, addressed to David Armstrong, Leader of the Council, so there could be no mistaking its intended recipient. There were just three words on the paper, printed in a very large font size so that each word took up a whole line on the paper. The message itself was short and stark: YOU WILL DIE.

Anne raised her eyes from the message.

‘This is a nasty prank,’ David said.

Snatching the piece of paper from her, he crumpled it in his huge fist but she remonstrated before he could destroy it completely.

‘No! Wait. We should keep it.’

‘Keep it? Why?’

‘Because we ought to show it to the police. David, don’t dismiss this so lightly. That’s a death threat. Remember the crazy man who was shouting at you at a meeting in a library the other day? What did he say to you in the car park?’

David shook his head. ‘I can’t remember. I wasn’t really listening.’

‘Well, I was. He shouted that it wasn’t over, and he said you won’t get away with what you’re doing. He said someone was going to stop you.’

‘Idle threats from an impotent heckler.’

‘Maybe, but what if it was more than that? What if he really is out to stop you? I mean, really stop you. David, we have to go to the police before anything else happens.’

David scoffed at her fears, telling her with false lightheartedness that of course he was going to die. Didn’t everyone, sooner or later? Reluctant to let the matter drop, she determined to convince him to report the hate mail to the police.

‘I’m a politician,’ he told her airily. ‘This sort of thing happens all the time.’

His face had resumed its normal florid glow.