Clough took a moment to find the right words. ‘I think he had something on his mind. This is a particularly exciting government. The Cabinet don’t share with each other as much as we’ve been used to. I have seen whips who were just one altercation shy of assault charges, whips confronting whips. That never happens. To be blunt with you, Detective Inspector, Superintendent, I’m privileged to serve within a government that at any moment might start fighting itself. If this is the brain of the country, that would be Britain having a stroke. So Mr Spatley was probably wise to keep his own counsel about whatever he was planning. Perhaps defection to the opposition, perhaps some uncovering of Tory misdeeds that might increase his own party’s currently minuscule leverage within Cabinet – who knows? Actually, I do remember something. Just before he died, I asked him when he was going to pick a fight, meaning when was he going to start taking his own bills into committee again. He said he had a big one planned.’

Quill smiled in sudden appreciation. ‘Interesting. Did you see any sign of this fight materializing?’

‘Now you put it that way…’ Clough seemed to be reassessing some of what he’d regarded as certainties before Quill had started asking him his simple list of questions. ‘He displayed a certain paranoia. These days, that isn’t unusual. He called in security on a couple of occasions. He felt the integrity of his office might have been breached, that it might have been searched. He said he’d put hairs across his desk drawers or something. I said, while sharing his concerns, that it was very unlikely that the place could have been turned over. He was also anxious that he might have a virus or bug on his mobile. Nothing was ever found. He was always changing phones.’

‘Did you tell all this to our colleagues on the main inquiry?’ asked Quill.

‘Of course. They wrote down everything. But at that point we were all convinced it was an open-and-shut case of a protestor forcing his way into the car.’

Now here, thought Quill, is a diplomat. If Lofthouse went back to Jason Forrest and created trouble about that, she’d have something to work with, but if it made too many waves, Clough would have absolute deniability. ‘So you don’t think the driver, Tunstall, did it?’

‘Well, who knows? But he and Michael were certainly friendly. Tunstall would come in to see him before they went home almost every day. They’d have a cup of tea.’

‘Do you mean they were … too friendly?’

Clough sighed. ‘I don’t think their relationship was anything that out of the ordinary.’

*   *   *

‘Bloody hell,’ said Quill, as he walked into Spatley’s office and took his first slow look around. ‘We actually have a few tiny new possibilities to follow up.’