If there’s one thing I hate more than suicides that turn out to be murder, it’s funerals. I owe it to Janet Baxter and her kids to be here today though; I want her to know that I haven’t forgotten her or her husband, and that I acknowledge her suffering, even if she’s been hiding stuff from me. Plus, funerals can often be quite telling events business-wise; grief can reveal secrets. In some cases, as I’ve seen before in my career, killers will even attend the funeral of their victim, giving them some kind of twisted gratification in the process I suppose, a chance to relish the grief they’ve caused and bask in the glory of pulling the wool over people’s eyes. While I’m pretty convinced Baxter’s murderer will give today a wide berth, I can’t altogether rule it out. And given that we’re no further along in the case I can’t afford to chance it either, even if it means digging out the suit I wore to Rachael’s funeral and bringing back my own painful memories.

Janet Baxter looks almost unrecognisable at Our Lady of the Rosary church in a pretty corner street behind the hub of Chelsea. Her face is pale and gaunt and the pounds have dropped off her. The heartbreak diet. I imagine that Janet Baxter has struggled to shift the extra weight her entire adult life. I noticed a diet-club sheet pinned to the fridge in her kitchen during one of my visits, one of those Slimming World things where you spend your entire day counting the points of everything you put down your neck, causing you to obsess about food constantly – which seems to defeat the whole object to me. A healthy diet, exercise and lots of good sex, that’s what Rach used to say. I get the impression that none of these things factored into Janet Baxter’s life with Nigel though, at least not in the end. In any other circumstance I imagine she’d be thrilled to have shrunk a couple of dress sizes.

She thanks me for coming and musters up a smile for Davis who, admittedly, I have brought along with me for the gentle touch. Nothing sexist about it, just fact. She’s got a nice face has Davis, unassuming to the point of being cute. I figured this would be more palatable than mine and Baylis’ old grids. The Gentle Touch. It makes me think of Jill Gascoine as Detective Maggie Forbes in the 1980s’ TV series. She reminds me a little of Janet actually, Jill Gascoine, all that curly hair and the whiff of ’80s nostalgia. Come to think of it, Jill Gascoine’s husband dies in the first episode, leaving her to juggle single parenthood and life as a working copper. Funny how life imitates art sometimes.

There’s a healthy turn out of people for Baxter’s send-off. Family of course, friends and colleagues. He was a well-liked and well-respected man by all accounts.

It’s a Catholic ceremony. Long and drawn-out. Janet is practising, though she says her Nigel only ever really ‘went along with it’ and wasn’t especially religious. Catholicism is all about forgiveness and I wonder how she’s getting on with that after discovering her husband’s many indiscretions. Davis and I sit at the back of the church. No one turns to look at us. I pay attention to the mourners and listen intently to the eulogy that Janet and her children give. It’s difficult to hear them talking about their ‘beloved daddy’, sharing intimate stories and recollections of him throughout their young lives. But it’s Janet’s words that threaten to undo me, the catch in her clipped voice as she recalls the time she first set eyes on ‘the one’ all those years ago and her anecdotes, bittersweet memories of intimate moments and life events they’d shared together: the times she told him she was expecting; how he put the greens on backwards at the birth of their son and she’d had to help him out of them between contractions and puffs of gas and air – ‘he never could dress himself properly,’ she recalls. Private moments in time witnessed only by them as husband and wife, partners, parents, lovers and friends.

I tell Davis that I’ll meet her outside and she briefly registers surprise swiftly followed by understanding. This is my first funeral since Rachel’s. They bury Baxter in the ground. Rach was cremated. ‘Scatter me somewhere beautiful, Danny’, she’d once said during one of those conversations you have as a couple about the event of your death. A death you never really, truly consider. ‘Somewhere like the ocean, near a beach, out in the elements, sun and sand and sea – so that I can become part of the waves, forever turning in eternal sunshine…’ she’d said. So I did. Rach wasn’t religious, though she did appreciate elements of Buddhist philosophy. I scattered her ashes in a remote place called Moonstone Beach in a small town named Cambria, California. It’s peaceful and tranquil, little visited by tourists but stunning nonetheless with grey sands and melancholy surroundings. We stopped there once, on a road trip from LA to San Fran and she commented on its unspoilt natural beauty – words I would use to describe her too. I know she would be happy with my choice. I hope she is. I remember painstakingly debating the exact point at which to sprinkle her remains from, clamouring up craggy rocks and assessing the views. Her remains felt gravelly to touch. The term ‘ashes’ is misleading because what you receive after cremation isn’t soft powder, but a kind of coarse grey material with the texture of fine gravel: the ground remnants of human bones.

It’s difficult to watch, from a distance, as Nigel Baxter’s shiny black coffin is lowered into the earth, into the hole that’s been dug for him: his final resting place. In direct contrast, Rachel went through a curtain in a gleaming white casket decorated with pink and white roses and lilies. She liked pink flowers; in that sense she was a girl. My girl.

I remember watching Rach disappear through the crematorium curtain to the sound of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. It was no mistake that the first line of the song says, ‘Imagine there’s no heaven…’ I wanted to run after her, I had to physically stop myself. I didn’t want to watch my girl as she slowly descended into the 1,000-degree furnace to be turned to dust, or gravel. But I had no choice. Just like Janet Baxter doesn’t now. I have to turn away. And that’s when I see her, the woman, standing by the tree.