FORMER Oxford police commander Jim Trotman would have been “unbelievably stupid” to set fire to his own car after revealing problems in his personal life, a court heard yesterday.

Chief Superintendent Trotman is accused of setting fire to the Citroen C4 Picasso to make an insurance claim and then blaming the husband of his mistress for the blaze.

The 45-year-old, of Abingdon, denies charges of arson, fraud and perverting the course of justice.

Just a few hours before the car was set alight, Trotman had been to see his colleague, Detective Superintendent Ashley Smith, of Thames Valley Police’s professional standards department.

He told Mr Smith about his 20-month affair with married woman Karin Gray.

Trotman told Mr Smith that he and Mrs Gray had been receiving emails threatening to tell her husband Ian about the affair and warning him to stay away from her family home.

Addressing the jury at Swindon Crown Court, Fiona Elder, prosecuting, said: “He tells Detective Superintendent Smith about the affair and shows him the content of the emails. You may think there are two interesting aspects to that conversation.

“The information given to Det Supt Smith about Ian Gray effectively makes out he is meek and mild.

“Not necessarily violent himself but ‘resourceful’ is the word that Det Supt Smith used and Trotman made sure that Det Supt Smith understood that Mr Gray previously intervened in an affair his wife had in the early 2000s.

“You might think that after that conversation there is no doubt that Det Supt Smith is left in the position where Ian Gray is pinpointed for him as the prime suspect for the emails.”

After the car fire, Mr Gray, a lawyer, was arrested on suspicion of arson but he was never charged over the incident.

After talking to Trotman about the emails, Mr Smith advised him not to visit Mrs Gray that night, but Trotman decided to go to her home in Boars Hill, near Oxford.

Despite first telling police officers that he had arrived at Mrs Gray’s home at 9.45pm on October 20, 2009, mobile telephone transmission records showed that Trotman had not been in the Boars Hill area until 10.19pm and had continued to contact her using his phone until 10.33pm.

A neighbour spotted the flames from the burning car at about 10.25pm.

Fire crews were on the scene by 10.45pm.

However, John Beggs, defending, told the court that Trotman had not caused the car fire.

He added that if Trotman had, he would not have gone to see Mr Smith and would not have told police he had arrived at Mrs Gray’s house at 9.45pm.

“Did this man commit an unbelievably stupid crime with unbelievable disregard for his own prospects of getting away with it?” he asked the jury.

He added: “That trip to see [Mr Smith] is one of the reasons you can be sure that Mr Trotman did not commit the crime, because it flies in the face of all forms of common sense.”

The case continues.