‘Officer,’ she said, ‘my husband arrived home very shaken by what happened to him while he was in the car, so he had a whisky. But he hadn’t been drinking before he got home. You can see from the letter we showed you that my husband is being targeted by some maniac. He needs your protection.’

‘This is a politically motivated campaign to frighten me into resigning from the council,’ David stormed. ‘But I can tell you right now, anyone deluded enough to think they can bully me into stepping down couldn’t be more wrong. Now, this has gone far enough. I want the police to warn this imbecile to keep away from me. If necessary, I’ll apply for an injunction to stop his shenanigans, but hopefully a stern word from one of your senior officers will put an end to this tomfoolery without the need for any action from me. Surely even a junior officer like you must appreciate that I’m a very busy man. I don’t have time for this kind of foolishness. Please tell your chief constable that I expect this to be sorted out without any further shillyshallying.’

The constable nodded. ‘This letter you received was sent anonymously, but we’ll have it checked for prints.’

She picked the letter up carefully by one corner and dropped it into an evidence bag.

‘Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?’ Anne asked.

‘Be quiet,’ David snapped at her. ‘The woman knows what she’s doing. They’re going to have the letter forensically examined by – by a forensic team.’

‘And you’re certain you could identify the man who threw eggs at your car, sir?’

David nodded. ‘Oh yes, I saw him clearly. He darted out from between two parked cars as I was driving past so I got a clear view of him, and that’s when he chucked a handful of eggs at me. I can’t have been doing more than five miles an hour because I was in the car park, probably three miles an hour at most. He made no attempt to hide and I’d have no hesitation in identifying him.’

‘Did you manage to get a picture of him while you were both in the car park?’

‘Don’t be stupid. I was driving. A few of the eggs hit my windscreen and it took all my concentration not to swerve into another vehicle. Fortunately there were no other cars driving around the car park or there would almost certainly have been a collision. As it was, I barely managed to avoid hitting any parked cars. It really was a dangerous attack, and potentially lethal.’

‘You didn’t take a photograph of the incident at the time?’