The Globe didn’t put a photographer on Kendall because they thought he was making plans for the budget. And that snap shows Clare as I’ve never seen her: looking up and down the deserted street, as if she could sense the danger; staring straight into the photographer’s lens without realising. She didn’t look frightened. She looked wary.

What did Bob Ringer tell me? Keith Kendall is a naughty boy who can’t keep his hands to himself.

I remember what I asked Jeremy: No telltale signs? Sudden departures from the office that aren’t in the diary? A decision to walk somewhere rather than take the ministerial car? I’d been asking about Kendall, but now I recall that was how Jeremy described Clare’s erratic behaviour in recent weeks.

And Charles: She was six weeks pregnant. We hadn’t had sex since before Christmas.

Me: Which minister ran the security services until two years ago?

Maybe I should have seen it sooner. Maybe I knew, but couldn’t bear to articulate it – because even though I like to think of myself as a relentless bloodhound for a story, the scent of some trails is too poisonous. The photograph has shaken me badly: Clare’s grainy eyes staring out, saying you can’t ignore this any longer.

Clare was having an affair with Kendall. She was pregnant with his child. That was the leverage Robin Muller had when he went to see Kendall, tipped off by his client Breitner, who was alerted by Jock and the Globe. And that is why Kendall dropped the policy. Naturally Clare was incensed, livid. She’d been doubly betrayed. It all made total sense.

And maybe that wasn’t the only favour they asked. As long as Breitner knew Kendall’s secret, he had him in a headlock. The Chancellor of the Exchequer as their puppet. So Kendall did the only thing he could. He got rid of the problem.

This is the kind of idea or hunch I would dismiss as a lurid absurdity if I heard it from another hack. But I can’t shake it off. My cock-up theory of history has been put through the crusher.

Every day the Globe is full of stories of crimes of passion: cheating spouses who murder wives, or lovers, so they can start a new life or reclaim an old one. Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer immune to those impulses? You could argue he has more at stake.