‘This is something you can’t sweep under the carpet,’ said Sharon Pike. and slammed her hand down on what looked to me like – and on further forensic analysis proved to be – the plastic tray from inside a box of Milk Tray chocolates.

Windrow looked down at the plastic tray, back up at Sharon Pike, and then put his hand over the microphone in front of him and said something.

‘Of course I’m all right,’ said Sharon, loudly enough to be picked up by an adjacent microphone. ‘What are you afraid of? Look at it!’

Windrow spoke again, too low to be picked up.

Sharon Pike glared at him and then looked down at the sad crumpled piece of plastic in front of her. Her head snapped back up and she opened her mouth, but didn’t speak. The camera angle was all wrong to see her expression clearly, but you could read the confusion in the set of her shoulders as she looked back down at her ‘evidence’.

Then, without a word, she turned and walked away. The police camera swung madly to keep her in frame as she marched up the central aisle between the ranks of silent journalists and camera operators.

I had one of those ‘somebody do something’ moments when you suddenly have the realisation that the person supposed to be doing something is you. I scrambled up from my desk and ran down the front staircase without a care for health and safety or the two uniforms coming up towards me. They sensibly flattened themselves against the railing and I shouted a thank you as I jumped past.

I missed her in the car park, so I ran around to the police zone and hopped into the Asbo. By the time I was on the main road I’d already done a PNC check to find out what she was driving – a BMW X5 Diesel, which seemed like quite a serious car for someone who lived alone in a small village. Perhaps she had a lot of relatives?

I decided that her most likely destination would be her house in Rushpool, second most likely would be her main house in London. Beyond that, it was anyone’s guess. I managed to get Dominic on the Airwave and asked him to ask, politely, if they could keep an eye out for the BMW and Sharon Pike.

‘She’s going to be acting a bit weird,’ I said. ‘So she may have to be sectioned.’

I heard Dominic spluttering. Sectioning a prominent journalist would be, as they say, problematic. But both Bartholomew and Kingsley had left detailed case notes about people who had been put under the influence, seducere as Bartholomew called it, and had become maddened to the point where they rent their garments and would be like to injure themselves if not restrained.