‘It’s on the download list,’ he says. ‘But the queues for full analysis these days are beyond belief. Could be a month or two.’ He shrugs. ‘Maybe longer.’

Shaken, I drive back to Budleigh. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had far too many dealings with the police, and I should have learned by now to be more circumspect. The business of law and order is very black and white, but in the shape of young Brett Atkinson I thought I might have found a little room for manoeuvre. Not only was I wrong, but from now on he’ll probably think I’m as bent as McFaul. Or, much worse, an airhead.

I take my frustrations out on Evelyn.

‘If we lived in Holland,’ I tell her, ‘none of this would bloody have happened. They’re civilized people. Get something like MND, and you have the right to call it quits. Killer injection. Final curtain. Huge applause. Gone. So why can’t we have some of that? Why couldn’t Christianne?’

Evelyn is a woman of faith. Choosing to end your life, she thinks, raises issues that might be a little more complex.

‘Like?’

‘Like it might not be your life to end.’

‘Then whose is it?’

‘God’s. Life is a loan, my lovely. It comes with strings attached, duties, obligations, responsibilities. One of them is not to waste it. Another is never to throw it away. Life is a sacrament. A precious gift. We should understand that. We should treasure it.’

‘But if it hurts? If it turns you into someone you don’t want to be any more?’

‘Then that is simply another of God’s plans. He loves us, Enora. He truly does.’

Evelyn very rarely calls me by my Christian name and it’s a mark of the nerve I’ve touched that she should be doing so now. I’ve always respected her deeply, and I always will, but all I can think of just now is DI Bullivant. He, too, has evidently put his trust in the Lord and look what’s happening.

He turns up in person a couple of hours later. I hear the Kawasaki first. I’m lying on my bed upstairs, trying to have a nap, but the high insect whine as the bike powers up the hill towards the cul-de-sac draws me to the window. It’s definitely Bullivant. I recognize the leathers. He parks behind the forensics van and removes his helmet before going to the front door. I hear a brief conversation, and then the door closes behind him. I linger at the window for a moment before returning to bed.