Wednesday morning, bright and clear, and the chance to breathe. Craig Gillard stood up on the pedals as the slope got too demanding even for the lowest gear. Getting out on his road bike was precious time. Since the Beatrice Ulbricht case had begun, there had been barely an hour for him to get the exercise that he felt he needed. This wasn’t just about the body, but letting the mind breathe, unpacking stress and complexities and really getting a chance to think. He wasn’t one of those cyclists who ploughs on along major roads, doggedly breathing in noxious traffic fumes. He always preferred minor lanes, cross-country routes going nowhere, even if that meant he couldn’t keep up the speeds that the smoothest tarmac offered.

Years ago, he’d been able to get out regularly on Sunday with a group of other off-duty officers, but now pressure of work meant you could never be sure anyone was available. More often than not he just slotted in a quick solo ride when he could. Today was one of those stolen moments. A dental appointment at 10.15 allowed him a free two hours beforehand.

He was just a few miles north of Redhill, heading up on the North Downs on a tiny, steep road between Bletchingley and Caterham. The wonder of this lane was that it took you over the M25, and its belching perma-jams, on the kind of winding and barely used route that many drivers would be surprised to find still existed so close to the capital.

It was on the very steepest part of the hill, a slope of nearly 17 per cent, that he could hear the approach of a vehicle behind him. There would be no room or visibility to pass for a couple of hundred yards. Not every motorist had the patience to accept being slowed to seven or eight miles an hour behind a cyclist on a steep hill. The engine note alone, high revs and a big engine, communicated the mindset of the following driver. He had learned to read that many years ago.

But the impact from behind took him completely by surprise.

A flash of bull bars in his peripheral vision, then he tumbled over the handlebars to the ground, the vehicle ran right over him, a dark growling monster swallowing him and spitting him out the other end. He glimpsed blue sky above with little puffy white clouds, then pivoted to look uphill. His face and neck were in agony, and there was blood and a screaming fizz in one ear, but he had no time to deal with that. The four-wheel-drive fifty yards further up was now reversing back towards him, transmission whining. Survival clicked in. He rolled to the side of the road, into a thick patch of nettles, and tumbled down a damp bank into a culvert. But not before he had taken a mental photograph of the back of the pick-up truck: Mitsubishi Warrior, olive green, double cab, and a Reading registration number beginning RG, from 2016.