On January 10, 2005, Richard visited his ex-wife, Jennifer, who later told the police that he seemed “very quiet, like he’d retreated into himself, like his mind was gone.”

She asked him how his weekend was. He replied, “Not very good.”

Then he went missing for two days.

“Nobody knows where he went,” says Wendy.

On the morning of January 12, Wendy’s son Christopher looked in the garage. It was padlocked, so he broke in with a screwdriver. There was an old Vauxhall Nova covered with a sheet.

“I don’t know why,” Christopher later told the police, “but I decided to look under the sheet.”

Richard Cullen had gassed himself in his car. He left his wife a note: “I just can’t take this any more and you’ll be better off without me.”

•   •   •

WHO KILLED RICHARD CULLEN?

For instance: Why did so many credit-card companies choose to swamp the Cullens with junk when they don’t swamp me? How did they even get their address? How can I even begin to find something complicated like that out?

And then I have a brainstorm. I’ll devise an experiment. I’ll create a number of personas. Their surnames will all be Ronson, and they’ll all live at my address, but they’ll have different first names. Each Ronson will be poles apart, personality-wise. Each will have a unique set of hopes, desires, predilections, vices, and spending habits, reflected in the various mailing lists they’ll sign up for—from Porsche down to hard-core pornography. The one thing that’ll unite them is that they won’t be at all interested in credit cards. They will not seek loans or any financial services as they wander around, filling out lifestyle surveys and entering competitions and purchasing things by mail order. Whenever they’re invited to tick a box forbidding whichever company from passing their details to other companies, they’ll neglect to tick the box.

Which, if any, of my personas will end up getting sent credit-card junk mail? Which personality type will be most attractive to the credit-card companies?

I name my personas John, Paul, George, Ringo, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, Titch, Willy, Biff, Happy, and Bernard. And I begin.

HAPPY RONSON

Happy is delightfully ethical. He cares about everything all the time. He has a surfeit of caring. He subscribes to the magazines Going Green, Natural Parenting, and Vegetarians International Voice for Animals. He shops at Ecozone and donates to PETA—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“Happy! What a lovely name!” says the man in the Body Shop on Oxford Street as Happy fills out a Loyalty Card application form.

“Thank you!” I say.

Happy is happy for the Body Shop to pass his details to whoever they see fit. He doesn’t tick the box.

Happy fills out many lifestyle surveys, like the one published by the International Fund for Animal Welfare that asks which animals he especially cares about. Happy especially cares about dogs, cats, elephants, gorillas, tigers, whales, seals, dolphins, and all other animals in distress from oil spills. So he ticks everything.

Then I get worried that if anyone is really paying attention to Happy’s predilections, they might become wary of his wholesale compassion and suspect him of being an imaginary character, created by a journalist, to trick businesses into inadvertently revealing their data-trafficking practices. So I untick tigers.

PAUL RONSON

I imagine Paul looks like the kind of guy you see in credit-card adverts, the kind of guy you used to see in cigarette adverts—staggeringly handsome and healthy, fooling around in swimming pools on sunny days with equally beautiful friends.

Paul is an entrepreneur, a suave millionaire, the director of Paul Ronson Enterprises. Being a narcissistic aesthete who can’t bear being around ordinary people, he subscribes to Porsche Design (“Porsche: The Engineers of Purism”), Priority Pass (“The ultimate privilege for frequent travelers: Escape the crowds to a VIP oasis of calm. Your key to over 450 airport VIP lounges worldwide”), and so on.

GEORGE RONSON

George Ronson is a charming older gentleman. George orders from the Daily Express the CD set Sentimental Journey: “Take a sentimental journey with these 60 everlasting love songs on 4 fabulous CDs . . . Henry Mancini (‘Moon River’) * Glenn Miller (‘Moonlight Serenade’) * Perry Como (‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes’) . . .”

“If you do not wish to receive offers from other companies carefully selected by us, please tick this box,” reads the tiniest of letters at the bottom of the order form.

I imagine that George’s eyes still have quite the twinkle, but his eyesight isn’t what it once was. He is absentminded and cannot find his glasses, and so he doesn’t notice this infinitesimal print.

For this reason, he doesn’t tick the box.

George has also entered the Specsavers Spectacle Wearer of the Year competition (“Have You Got Specs Appeal? Our first-prize winner will be awarded a fantastic two-week all-inclusive holiday for two in the Maldives. Send a recent color photograph of yourself wearing specs to . . .”).

I am, unlike George, an embittered cynic, ground down by the travails of life, and so I consequently wonder if this whole spectacle-wearing beauty pageant is an excuse for the company to gather our names and addresses for their database, and to sell them on to other databases.

TITCH RONSON

Titch is the least favorite of my personas. He is venal. He is a gullible sex maniac. He thinks about nothing but pornography, his virility, Nazi memorabilia, and extreme martial arts. Today Titch takes up an offer in the News of the World: “The original BLUE PILL. Something for the weekend, sir?”

In this newspaper advert, a topless woman wearing a policeman’s helmet has a speech bubble that reads, “Allo, Allo, Allo. What have we here—is it a lethal weapon I see before me?” A warning covers her breasts: “IMPORTANT NOTICE. Some customers find the 100 mg Blue Pill we supply TOO EFFECTIVE. If this happens to you simply reduce usage to half a tablet.”

I assume the Blue Pill is some kind of herbal Viagra. Titch is taken in hook, line and sinker, because he does in fact see his penis as a lethal weapon.

He barely notices a tiny sentence at the bottom of the order form: “If you don’t wish to receive further mailings of exciting offers from us, or associated companies, please tick this box.”

Titch spends his every waking hour seeking depraved gratification and is therefore tantalized by the promise of exciting offers, so he doesn’t tick the box. Then he reads the rest of the News of the World and is saddened to discover that Kate Moss has got back together with Peter Doherty.

Titch also subscribes to Fighters Only, a magazine dedicated to photographs of frequently blood-splattered boxers, with captions like “Psycho Steve Tetley. Lightweight. Hyper aggressive. He’s called Psycho for a reason!”

There is no end to Titch’s troubles. He’s also, I decide, a hopeless gambling addict, and has signed up to William Hill and the Loopy Lotto free daily Internet draw.

Midway through my experiment I fill in a consumer lifestyle survey on Titch’s behalf, attached to a “Win a Day on a Playboy Shoot” competition. (“Get to hang out with girls like this in the flesh! There’ll be naked girls! It’s a once in an adulthood experience!”)

The consumer-lifestyle survey is quite detailed, and so it gives me the opportunity to really flesh out Titch’s character and circumstances:

Is Titch in employment?

No. He is an unemployed, single, thirty-eight-year-old homeowner.

His annual earnings are what?

I tick the “less than £10,000” box.