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A few weeks later, I drive to Hodnet, near Maesbrook, to the West Midlands Clay Pigeon Shooting Ground, where I'm due to meet Graham Evans, an old friend and shooting partner of Foster's. Clay pigeon shooting was one of Foster's great hobbies. He used to come to Hodnet every Tuesday night. It was, in fact, how he spent his last day on earth: clay pigeon shooting at his neighbour's barbecue.

On the way, it starts to rain and so, by the time I arrive, Graham Evans and the other shooters are crammed into the bar, passing the time until they can shoot by telling incredibly offensive jokes.

"What's the difference between a prostitute and crack cocaine?" says Bill (not his real name). "A prostitute can clean her crack and re-sell it."

Everyone laughs. There are an awful lot of tasteless jokes floating around here today. In fact, the minute I arrived at the club - practically before I was out of the car - someone asked if I knew the one about the black woman in the sauna. Then there was the sign on the gate of the pretty, wisteria-covered farm next door to the shooting range: "Every third traveller is shot. The second has just left." In the old days, I think, jokes such as these were intended to display superiority, but now they seem to do the opposite. Although this is a lovely, rustic and quite posh shooting club, the men here seem a bit sad and ground down.

"I'm sure there are jokes we can do about Fossie," says member called Simon (not his real name). "Let's see. Did you hear the one about the barbecue that ran out of Fosters...?" Everyone looks at Simon.

"...Um..." he says. He falls silent. "That doesn't really work," he says.

"I can understand why Fossie might want to kill himself," Bill says. "I've thought about doing myself in loads of times..."

Nobody seems at all surprised by this blunt admission, so casually made. Who knows: maybe Bill is always going on about killing himself. Or maybe lots of the men here have considered the option. There are racks of rifles for sale all over the place - Berettas and Winchesters and so on. Perhaps being in proximity to so much weaponry invariably turns a man's mind to thoughts of suicide.

"I even know the place where I'd do it," Bill continues. "There's a lovely spot up over there on that hill near the satellite dish."

There are a few murmurs along the lines of, "That is a nice spot."

"But to shoot your own daughter..." Bill says. He trails off.

"Anyway," Graham Evans says. "The rain's stopped. Do you want a go at shooting?"

"OK," I say.

We head outside. Graham hands me a .22 rifle. This is, coincidentally, the same type of gun Foster used to murder his family. I aim, shout, "Pull!" and proceed effortlessly to blow to pieces every clay pigeon that has the misfortune to fly past my magnificence. I'm a natural at this, and clay pigeon shooting turns out to be an incredibly exciting thing to do.

Suddenly, lots of the other shooters start yelling, "Whoa! Whoa! Jon! Steady on!"

"What?" I say, perplexed.

"You're doing this," says Graham. He does an impersonation of a crazed psycho waving a gun terrifyingly around.

"I am not," I say.

"You are," half-a-dozen shooters say in unison.

The truth is, holding a gun does something to you. It awakens in you some weird, dormant, fetishistic man-gene. You feel alive and special. You feel - as Homer Simpson once said - like God would feel if he was holding a gun.

Graham says it's great to see me so invigorated, and adds that if I want even more excitement, I should try shooting pheasants. "Pheasants have minds of their own," he says, "so that's rewarding. The best time to shoot them is at the end of October, a few weeks into the season, because they've already been shot at and survived. So they're wise then, you see?"

And then it starts raining again so we rush back indoors and pass the time window-shopping the guns for sale. The conversation turns back to Foster. Graham says he was a really impressive sight, turning up in his Porsche every Tuesday night. He says everyone knew he was loaded, "but around here people aren't prejudiced against that sort of thing. Fossie was a good guy. A good shot. He called me El Supremo." Graham pauses, sadly. "He loved guns," he says. "He had hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of them. He was a real collector."

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