A scrum was forming on the pavement. Officers had pushed the press back and King’s PA, Siri Voss, was handing out a press release. Two journalists walked behind us, each with one of the A4 sheets in their hands.

‘So it’s a British Army DPM desert camouflage jacket,’ said the first. ‘Does it say what DPM is?’

‘Yeah, there, look – disruptive pattern material,’ said the second. ‘There’s the front page tomorrow, mate.’

‘He should have worn the full kit. Better shot with the full kit.’

‘Siri says there was nothing left of the trousers.’

They were silent for a moment.

‘God.’

‘Yeah.’

There were tears, now. Some emotional dam had broken in the women and the men of the town, and their children took their cue, confused and upset by the unravelling of the adults.

The boys from Potter’s Field gritted their teeth, set their jaws and held out for longer.

I looked at Peregrine Waugh. The Head Master was dry-eyed.

‘A terrible day for you, sir,’ I said.

‘Ned was a soldier,’ he said. ‘I could not wish for a better death for him, only a better war. When did the first British soldier die in that wretched country? 1839? “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan plains – and the women come out to cut up what remains – just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains – and go to your god like a soldier.”’

‘Suicide?’

He looked at me with disdain. ‘Kipling, actually. But there’s no shame in suicide, detective. It’s only milksop Christianity that clucks with disapproval. The Romans and the Greeks saw suicide largely as a pragmatic act. A graceful and courageous exit when life has become unendurable. Ah – I think Captain King’s coming now.’

A black hearse was moving slowly down the high street. In the back was a coffin wrapped in the Union Jack.

‘Suicide didn’t seem like a pragmatic act for James Sutcliffe,’ I said, watching the first of the flowers being tossed from the pavement. They fell on the windscreen, they fell on the gleaming black hood, and they fell under the slowly turning wheels. ‘For him, suicide seemed like an act of despair. Both times.’

Waugh sighed, his eyes never leaving the hearse.

‘I’m afraid I have no idea what goes on in the mind of every disturbed adolescent,’ he said. ‘But I’m with the Romans and the Greeks – every human body is the property of the gods. Good day, detective.’