‘I wish I’d asked. Looking back, it smells like another Tory scandal – and that would suit us down to the ground.’ A cheeky half-smile. Is he goading me to find the truth behind Clare’s estrangement from her boss? There is something he’s holding back but I can’t work out what and I’m uneasy. There is a scandal here. But how big? And is it connected to how she died? Or is that my grief talking? As Patrick Munis would no doubt have it: an invented conspiracy to distract me from feelings of unbearable pain.

A scandal. Todd wasn’t the only person to whom Clare spoke about this tax raid. She also confided in Alan Scott. Who, for all his trainspotting tedium, is a wizard at rooting out complex public-sector corruption. Is that why she went to him?

I’m about to put this to Todd, when we’re interrupted by the chime of the front-door bell.

‘That’ll be your snapper.’ Todd jumps up and goes to put the kettle on, while I hear his wife running for the door again. ‘I’m afraid we went a bit off topic, didn’t we. Did you get enough? I’m going to have to run after this.’

I look down at my notebook. Thirty prepared questions and perhaps one and a half answered. But I got what I came for.

‘That’s plenty to be going on with. Thanks.’

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Tuesday, 25 March – 37 days until Election Day

I’M WOKEN BY A DRAUGHT and the sandpaper feeling of the cat licking my big toe. ‘Morning,’ I croak at him. He’s about the only person who gives me affection at the moment, which is ironic, given that he is the least affectionate cat I’ve ever known. He’s an enormous tabby – a killer, who models himself on Clint Eastwood in those Spaghetti Westerns – and this licking is his signal that it’s time to eat. For him; my breakfast is never more than strong black coffee. I badly need it this morning. My mouth is dryer than as if I’d subsisted on sawdust for a week, and my head is in a vice. I push myself into a sitting position. Outside the window it’s as if the volume knob for the world has been turned right up: a mum shouting at her children to get in the car and stop squabbling may as well be in the next room.

Cat sees he has my attention and starts to miaow loudly. When that doesn’t work, he leaps back on the bed and bites my foot. A tussle ensues between man, cat and duvet, which ends with the cat on the floor and me swivelling off the bed.