City of Westminster Magistrates Court is around the back of Victoria Station on the Horseferry Road. It’s a bland box of a building built in the 1970s; it was considered to be so lacking in architectural merit that there was talk of listing it so that it could be preserved for posterity as an awful warning. Inside, the waiting areas maintained the unique combination of cramped busyness and barren inhumanity that was the glory of British architecture in the second half of the twentieth century.

There were two benches outside the court. We sat on one while the accused, Celia Munroe, her lawyer and a friend she’d brought along for moral support shared the other with Mr Ranatunga and Mr Ranatunga’s brother. None of them wanted to be there, and all of them blamed us.

‘Any word from Los Angeles?’ I asked.

‘Brandon Coopertown was a man on the edge,’ said Lesley. ‘Apparently all of his American deals had fallen through and his production company was about to fold.’

‘And that house?’ I asked.

‘About to go the way of all flesh,’ said Lesley. I looked blank. ‘Mortgage was six months in arrears,’ she said. ‘And his income this year barely scraped thirty-five thousand.’

That was a good ten grand more than I was getting as a full constable – my sympathy was limited.

‘It’s starting to look like a classic family annihilation,’ said Lesley, who’d been reading up on her forensic psychology. ‘Father faces a catastrophic loss of status, he can’t live with the shame and decides that without him his wife’s and kid’s lives are meaningless. He snaps, tops a fellow media professional, tops his family and tops himself.’

‘By making his face fall off?’ I asked.

‘No theory is ever perfect,’ said Lesley. ‘Particularly since we can’t even find a reason for William Skirmish being in the West End that night.’

‘Maybe he was on the pull,’ I said.

‘He wasn’t on the pull,’ said Lesley. ‘And I should know.’