Janet has spared no expense for her husband’s send-off; she’s hired caterers in and people are getting stuck into the buffet. I wouldn’t eat a thing even if I could. It wouldn’t seem right. Besides, I’m not here as a guest, merely as an observer. I shouldn’t be happy on an occasion like this but I’m buzzing thanks to Leah Carlton. It’s not much, I know, but it’s an ID, a potential ID anyway, and she’s agreed to come to the station to do an e-fit and look at CCTV. As reluctant as she initially was to help – understandable given her career choice – I sense that Leah’s a decent girl and she appeared genuinely fond of Baxter. So the funeral, as I’d hopefully predicted, has thrown something up at least. It’s a start.

Janet is busy hostessing – drinks are topped up, plates are full – and seeing her fussing around, I suspect she’s been this way her entire life. Some habits are hard to break. I stand at the side of the buffet table, watching her.

She smiles at me, her thirteen-year-old son hovering behind her. His face is bloated, swollen from crying and he looks pale. I feel like hurting someone. Because I know that whoever did this will never see or never feel remorse for the paleness on that young man’s face. Whoever it was is only wrapped up in their own concerns. I ask him about football. It’s what boys and men do. He says he’s an Arsenal supporter because his dad was. Janet smiles at this, but it doesn’t reach her puffy eyes. When her son is led away by an auntie, I’m glad and I feel guilty at my relief.

‘I’m assuming there’s no news, nothing to report back to me…?’ Janet asks without personal or malicious overtones.

‘I’m sorry, Janet,’ I say, meaning it, ‘we’re following every lead we’ve got, we’re leaving no stone uncovered.’ I hear the clichés in my own words and feel like sticking my face into the trifle that’s on the table next to me. At least it looks home-made. I think about the dogging revelation and brace myself to share it with her; I don’t have a choice.

‘Janet,’ I repeat her name quietly, almost gravely, and she glances up at me with wide and expectant watery eyes. ‘We did find a number; a phone number in the records of your husband’s suspected mistress…’

She shifts from one foot to the other, her sensible shoes creaking, but her face remains the same. ‘We traced this number from a text message sent to this unknown suspect’s number, just once.’ I pause, take a silent breath. ‘It was registered in your name, Janet.’

Janet pauses for a few seconds, a sad half-smile flickers across her lips before she looks up at me again. ‘I know about my husband’s little pastime,’ she says, ‘the times he went to various “beauty spots” for that dog…’ A sad irony spills from her lips as she says it. She can’t bring herself to fully say the word ‘dogging’.

I blink back at her.

‘I guessed he was doing it again… I saw a message on his phone, I… I got one of those pay-as-you-go phone things, didn’t want Nigel to know that I knew. He would’ve been upset, ashamed…’ Her voice trails off before she composes herself again, ‘I sent an anonymous text to her, whoever it was he had been messaging.’

I nod. ‘And what did you say, Janet?’

‘Hold on,’ she replies and then disappears, returning less than a minute later with a small Nokia phone, one of those old ones that definitely isn’t smart. ‘Here, read it for yourself.’

I take the phone and look through it. There’s only one sent message on it. I open it.

‘I know what you’re both up to. Stop it now.’

I stare at the message; it’s short and non-threatening, very much like Janet herself, and I feel a wave of sadness wash over me. ‘Did she reply,’ I ask, ‘did Nigel ever mention it?’

‘He never mentioned it,’ she replies with a gentle sigh, ‘and no, she didn’t.’

‘I see,’ I say. ‘How long have you known, Janet, about Nigel’s pastime?’ I wish I could have a drink. The cold beer and Champagne that’s being passed around suddenly appears very appealing.

‘All our marriage, practically,’ Janet answers, her shoulders visibly sagging. The black cardigan she’s wearing seems too big for her now: it’s swallowing her up as she wraps it around her like a comfort blanket.

‘Right. I see. How did you find out about it?’

She snorts a little then, though not with mirth, and bows her head as though consumed with shame. ‘Because,’ she says, eventually looking up to meet my gaze with her watery eyes, ‘I used to go with him.’

See. I told you. Funerals. They’re always so revealing.