‘After which he wrapped himself in a bin bag and then dug himself a grave?’ Gillard said.

‘He was a very scared man, apparently,’ Hancock said.

Delahaye spoke. ‘He might well have been, but I can’t think of a more agonising and less reliable way to end your own life than stabbing yourself in the neck with what inevitably would have been a fragile and corroded weapon.’

‘And who was it buried him?’ Gillard added.

After a few more inconclusive exchanges, Gillard thanked the two participants and after a reminder about confidentiality, ended the call and filed the recording, under the title Hancock’s Half Hour. The electronic case file was already bulging with fascinating details, expert insights, and plenty of witness statements. But despite establishing the identity of the body, the main questions remained unanswered. Who had killed Ozzy Blanchard? How had they done it, if not using an Anglo-Saxon weapon? And the most fascinating question of all: why?

Gillard sifted through Hampshire Constabulary’s inquiry record on the night of Ozzy’s accident. Mostly it had been done by the book. They had traced not only his phone, but also the unregistered mobile phone number that he had rung both before and immediately after the accident. They had triangulated the recipient phone to Bourne Lane in Rissington Common at the time of those calls. Some well-meaning plod had rung the recipient’s mobile and left a message the following morning, when the inquiry was thought to be no more than clearing up after a road traffic accident. Of course in hindsight that wasn’t so smart. It had simply tipped off whoever it was that the police were chasing down Blanchard’s communications. It was thus no surprise to Gillard that the unregistered mobile had ceased activity after that. Once DCS Stella Anderson was involved, the inquiry had broadened: the financial order to look at his bank accounts, examination of the metadata of his personal and work mobile going back months. The summary documents he saw referred to text messages and emails extracted from the service providers, but the details of those were not for some reason available on the local system, and he couldn’t find them on the police national computer either.