The operation to remove Mrs Poppy Tilling from her home had been a number of days in the planning. A huge crowd had assembled in Linden Avenue to watch the contractors on the cherry picker removing the window from her bedroom and then using angle grinders to cut down through the brickwork to create a space big enough to remove her and her bed. An eight-wheeled crane with a large jib that soared high above the house was standing by. Two uniformed police officers were in her bedroom together with two contractors and a paramedic. Everything seemed to be going fine, even though Mrs Tilling was repeating that she was not going to co-operate and had no intention of leaving the room that she had occupied for over thirty years. Just as the contractors had secured webbing underneath her bed, she decided to wriggle off it. The sight of her in enormous leopard-print pyjamas, lying on the floor, was extraordinary. The paramedics spent a long time trying to persuade her to get back on the bed but she said she had no intention of allowing herself to be removed from her home. She then complained of breathing difficulties and had to be reconnected to her oxygen machine.

A group of demonstrators had been maintaining a vigil outside the house for some days. Justice for Poppy, it was called, and they were selling pink poppies to anyone who would contribute to her fighting fund. ‘This was a woman who suffered for justice. Why on earth should she be persecuted by the police and the courts for doing the job that they should have done?’ said a grey-haired spokesman for the group when interviewed by the BBC.

The operation had to be abandoned for the day when it became clear that Poppy Tilling’s pulse was racing, and it would no longer be safe to move her.

Gillard, who had been outside watching the operation, was later called into a meeting with Chief Constable Alison Rigby, the head of Staines adult social care, the chief lawyer for the CPS and a specialist bariatric consultant from St Mary’s Hospital in London.

‘This woman is making a laughing stock of the justice system,’ Rigby said. ‘There has to be a way to arrest her without making her have a heart attack.’

‘It’s going to be difficult,’ Gillard said. ‘Some of the news organisations have rented rooms in the house opposite so they have a good view with telephoto lenses into the bedroom. Effectively that means any forcible attempt to remove her will be filmed and risks us looking brutal.’

‘This new Justice for Poppy outfit seems to have got itself organised fairly quickly.’

‘By the woman herself,’ said the head of social care.

‘I thought we’d taken her mobile phone away?’ Rigby said, looking at Gillard.