Although she came off as a politician to her fingertips, with little scope for hesitation or doubt when she spoke of how she “came back for the restoration of democracy” in Pakistan, it was obvious that the bombing had left a powerful impression.

She recounted the attempt, remembering each moment leading up to it in minute detail, becoming animated as the spoke. It had been a dark night and the lights had been switched off, the scattered dead bodies lying in the streets, “crumpled and lifeless”.

And, while blame for her death is being placed by many – including the Pakistani government – on Islamic militants and al-Qa’eda, she was not so instinctively certain when I asked her who she thought wanted her dead.

She didn’t point the finger solely at the militants, who she says could never be so co-ordinated and meticulous as to carry out such an operation, but mentioned groups and individuals who had undermined her government in the mid-1990s and were, she said, trying to derail democracy.

She wouldn’t speak in specifics, but instead said that she believed the assassination attempt on her was the product of an alliance between individuals in Pakistan’s intelligence services, the ISI, who had trained and groomed militant factions, and the Islamists themselves.

She also rejected the idea that she was back in her home largely because of American influence.

“These same critics who are now criticising me never spoke up when America was standing by Musharraf through thick and thin,” she said.

“And America is not backing me as an individual – they’re supporting democracy, which is the right thing to do.”

She acknowledged that she had held talks with Musharraf, but denied any deal.

She was also coy about whether there could have been any circumstances in which she would have served as prime minister while Musharraf was president, describing it as “highly speculative” and talking of taking “things step by step”.

However, she became annoyed when challenged on the charges of corruption against her and her husband.

“I’m fed up of hearing this word – faced charges – what do you think I’ve done for eleven and a half years but face so-called charges along with my husband? And we’ve been acquitted in seven.

There are still five because they won’t bring the prosecution witnesses because they’re scared we’ll get acquitted in them too… I’m not asking for immunity. After all, I’ve been prosecuted for eleven and a half years.”

It was hard to interview Benazir Bhutto without being struck, even annoyed, by the aura of leadership that emanated from her. An air that she was born to her role – and entitled to it – hung around her, as did the sense of her total determination.

But sitting with her after the interview, when she was tired, and perhaps more off-guard in the surroundings of the home where she grew up, I saw the passion that drew so many supporters.

She began speaking not as a politician, but as a mother and daughter: she was delighted and obviously proud that her eldest son, Bilal, had begun life as a student at Oxford, at the same college that her father had attended, Christ Church.

She also talked extensively about a book she was close to completing, a book about how “true Islam”, as she put it, protected and enabled the lives of women.

Her death leaves a huge and irreplaceable hole at the heart of the Pakistan People’s Party. As charismatic and talismanic a leader as she was, she made the mistake that so many who dominate their parties do, smothering and stifling any potential equals or heirs.

Under Bhutto, no one emerged from within its ranks who could be a future leader. The PPP was a Bhutto family creation, founded by Benazir’s father and inherited by her.

Her husband is not a Bhutto, and has no legitimacy, while her children are too young. Her death leaves the party ripe for implosion under factional competition, as, for the first time in its history, it tries to select someone other than a Bhutto to lead it.

Even more diminished by Benazir Bhutto’s murder is President Pervez Musharraf. He, more than anyone, is now the embodiment of the deepest grievances Pakistanis have about their political system.

He represents the army’s continued domination of government and politics, he represents Pakistan’s role in the “war on terror”, and he also represents the suspension and abuse of the rule of law and the democratic civilian process.

Worse than that, as the hostile chants and demonstrations throughout the country have shown, he is now being seen as the man who could have prevented Bhutto’s death had his government reacted quickly to the PPP’s demands for beefed-up security for their leader, for example by providing equipment such as scanners to jam detonating devices in the vicinity.

Two spectres now haunt Pakistanis. One is Iran, where the United States continued to support the Shah and his army in the face of clear opposition from the majority of the people.

The second – both more recent and more bloody – is Algeria, where the military government, backed by the West, fought a vicious and hidden war against its own people that not only led to tens of thousands of deaths, but produced a generation of jihadist fighters, a number of whom are now part of networks affiliated to al-Qa’eda.

This is because Pakistan is facing a twin crisis.

The first is the fact that Pakistanis are fighting Pakistanis, due to the country’s integral involvement in the “war on terror”; a campaign whose military successes are, many feel, far outweighed by its social and political failures towards people in the region.

The second is that Pakistan has still not found an alternative to military governments.

There is only a small pool of politicians from which civilian regimes have been drawn, and they have mostly been either co-opted, dismissed or dominated by the military at one time or another.

Pakistan has now lost the one politician who – despite her many faults and failures – could have helped begin a process of changing this.

In life, Benazir Bhutto was controversial and compelling.

But only in death does the world realise that she was perhaps the only figure who could have brought together enough people from this divided, nuclear-armed country to find an alternative to the military-dominated governments that have ruled Pakistan for more than half its life.