‘Well, I thought it was a car backfiring or a bird scarer, but yes. A single shot.’

‘Did you make a note of the time you heard it?’

‘No, but it would have been about three p.m. A few minutes later, when Vicky and I had finished talking, she pointed out a plume of smoke. I went back towards our car to tell Ozzy but it was gone. Even at that point I sort of knew, I started walking towards the smoke and this lorry driver was coming the other way on foot. I asked him what the fire was, and even though he said he didn’t know, I thought he smelled of bonfires.’

‘We’d certainly like a description of him,’ Gillard said.

‘It was hard to see beyond the hi-vis jacket, mask and sunglasses. But he was a stocky six-footer, with curly grey hair. I’m not sure I would recognise his face. I walked up to within fifty yards of the burning car fire, enough to see that there was someone inside. I was terrified, so I ran back and bumped into Vicky, who had come to see what was happening. I was in floods of tears, but she said we had to get out of there.’ At this point Crystal broke down. Gillard nudged the box of tissues closer to her and waited while she used them.

‘I never guessed it would turn out this badly,’ Crystal sobbed. ‘We were just following our dreams. But they turned into a total nightmare.’

The post-mortem of Ozzy Blanchard was going to be a grisly affair. Gillard wouldn’t normally attend out-of-region autopsies, but he wanted to meet the forensic pathologist, Dr Maddie Robinson, before peppering her with questions. He arrived at the Royal Berkshire Hospital mortuary in Reading, which had recently been expanded to take many hundreds of Covid fatalities. Dr Robinson, a tall, pale woman in her early thirties, had just pulled the cadaver onto a stainless steel slab. Unzipping the body bag released a smell not unlike the Anvil’s kitchen. Even with the overhead extractor on maximum, the smoky bacon aroma hung around.

Already masked, and fighting against the extractor noise, Gillard struggled to hear what Dr Robinson was saying. Their introduction was brief, punctuated by a touch of elbows. However, a glimpse of poor Ozzy Blanchard revealed the usual difficulties of car fires: not only the horrific flame and smoke injuries, but the inability to tell where the deceased ended and the vehicle began. He was extensively burned from the waist upwards, with large amounts of plasticised seat cover welded to his back and thighs, and fabric from the seatbelt incorporated into his chest and shoulder. Only the feet and ankles were unburned, still in pristine training shoes and socks, seemingly part of somebody else.

‘I assume you’re looking for time of death?’ Dr Robinson said.