I know it’s true. But there’s no point even talking to the FC until I have unambiguous evidence, given how reluctant the editor will be to bring down a Chancellor of the Exchequer – after all, the FC has lived a hundred years embedded within the moneymaking machine that is the City of London. And what do I actually have? A blurred photograph of Clare leaving his house – suggestive, not conclusive. An autopsy that says she was pregnant, but all chance of a paternity test gone the moment the crematorium flames engulfed her. Witnesses – who may never go on the record – to Clare’s blazing public row with Kendall. And as Ringer told me, it’s an open secret in the higher echelons of the Conservative Party that Kendall struggles to keep his flies done up.

If I could only get my hands on the McTavish memorandum. Despite Wilkinson’s confidence, I initially wondered if he was fantasising. Would the Prime Minister really create a dossier of the misdemeanours of his own colleagues, knowing the risk that it would fall into unfriendly mitts?

But yesterday I ran into Lord Malmsey, the Tory chief whip in the House of Lords, the Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, who knows everything. I waylaid him in the courtyard that leads to Black Rod’s Garden and, as we talked about what Ramsey would need to do in the couple of weeks left before polling day, I casually mentioned the McTavish memo.

‘You know about that, do you?’ Malmsey said.

‘I don’t suppose you would like to share your copy with me?’

‘You’ve got to be fucking joking. I shredded mine as soon I’d read it. It’s beyond me what Ramsey was doing commissioning it. I’ll never understand that man.’ He shakes his head mournfully.

‘What exactly did it say about the Chancellor?’

He burst out laughing. ‘I’ve always admired your enterprise, Peck. Happy hunting.’

Not even a non-denial denial. There is no question the memo will prove everything I need. But I have run out of ideas about how to get it.

There is, however, something else I can do.

On Thursday morning I jump out of a black cab at Paddington and run to catch the 10.50 to Worcester. I am sweating buckets and I can see from the station clock that it’s 10.52. Shit. I can hear my mum’s voice in my ear telling me that my habitual lateness represents the height of disrespect for others. And then I hear over the loudspeaker: ‘The delayed 10.50 to Worcester will now be departing from platform six at 11.05.’ Thank goodness Ramsey’s idiotic privatisation of the network has turned a poor service into a laughable one. There’s even time to get a black Americano.