For the Alex Elliotts of this world, the truth is what you put in a press release. It is what they want the world to think about their clients. For me, truth is what the proprietor, the editor and the lawyer will allow me to write. Clare lived by a simpler and higher standard. She believed the distinction between truth and lies – between right and wrong – mattered.

So what is the simple truth about her death? What am I missing? To coin a phrase, I know nothing. And I can’t leave it alone. Lorimer implies it’s the shock, that I need time offline to recharge. But sod him. I’ve investigated enough dodgy stories to know when something doesn’t feel right.

He is always going to lie when there are hundreds of millions of pounds of his boss’s cash at stake. The Capital Television deal will be worth a couple of billion pounds. For that sort of money, I saw Elliott make up nonsense without even blinking.

Those tax credits are worth at least five billion pounds a year. Five billion every year. That is an incentive to dissemble on an epic scale.

There’s something not right about how Clare died.

What on earth am I thinking? The policy was dead, killed by the Chancellor.

Something that doesn’t happen isn’t news. And that is the point. Nobody would bump off someone over a tax plan that’s been dropped, that would have caused no one any serious harm, even if it had happened. I’ve got to stop obsessing.

On the television is a repeat of the 10.30 lookahead to the morning’s papers. Kay Burley holds up a copy of the Globe, with Wilkinson’s story about the election announcement splashed all over it. Literally shoving it in my face. I reach for the remote control and I’m about to switch it off when something on the front page she’s holding catches my eye.

It’s the Cheltenham Gold Cup tomorrow, and the Globe’s editor has decided to spice up the election story with a horse racing metaphor. OFF TO THE RACES, says the big block headline. Underneath is a photo of two horses neck and neck, with Todd’s and Ramsey’s oversized photos superimposed on the jockeys’ faces. Ramsey is grinning madly, a manic gleam in his eye, but it’s the picture of Todd that’s caught my attention. A surer smile, staring into the distance with the confidence of a man who knows his time has come.

He’s probably going to win the election, unless he completely cocks it up. It’s triggered me to go back to what Frankie Crowther said this evening, how he got the story of Clare’s death from Todd’s press secretary.

Why would Fisher know what happened to Clare?