‘Like that bird of yours? Bet she loves it, you now having two hands to stroke her lovely body.’

If only, I thought.

‘Chico, behave yourself. She’s not here at the moment anyway.’

‘Yeah, you said. Over in Holland with her sick dad. Pity.’

We drove on in silence for a while.

‘Tell me,’ Chico said eventually,. ‘Who are the bad guys you need me to protect you from?’

‘A couple of heavies in balaclavas.’

‘Not more Northern Irish terrorists, I hope?’

Chico had also been there when we’d had our troubles from the Irishman in the past.

‘No. These two are from Yorkshire, but they’re still pretty terrifying.’

As I drove home, I brought him up to speed with the details of my encounters with the two men, first in the car park at Catterick races on Tuesday afternoon, and then again outside my house on Thursday night.

‘Not petrol again,’ he said. ‘Don’t people ever learn? You should never ever start fires with petrol. It’s far too bleedin’ dangerous. It explodes.’

‘I’ll be sure to tell that to my Yorkshire friends next time they come calling.’

‘Did they come back again last night?’

‘Nope.’ I laughed. ‘Nothing exciting happened here either.’

Chico ignored my little joke.

‘But I sat up all night with Charles’s shotgun on my knees just in case.’

‘The admiral?’ Chico said. ‘How’s he doin’?’

‘He’s fine. I’m sure you’ll see him sometime while you’re here.’

We arrived at my house in Nutwell and Rosie was as excited to see the new arrival as he was her.

‘Amazin’ how they remember,’ Chico said, tickling Rosie’s chin and stroking her head, as her tail wagged enthusiastically further back.

‘It’s your smell,’ I said. ‘Dogs never forget a smell.’

‘Right then,’ Chico said, standing up, welcome over. ‘Fill me in with all the gen.’

We sat at the kitchen table drinking cups of coffee as I told him the whole story, right from when Gary Bremner had called me eight days previously.

The only thing I missed out was the real reason Marina had taken Saskia to Holland, before she found out how ill her father really was.

‘And you don’t want to just go to the racing authorities and tell them the whole lot?’ he asked when I finished.

‘Not yet,’ I agreed. ‘This man Anton Valance is no fool, far from it. He will have ensured that, if the authorities investigated, he would come out of it squeaky clean while all his victims would carry the can.’

‘He doesn’t seem very clever to me,’ Chico said. ‘Otherwise he’d never have sent a couple of heavies to beat up Sid Halley. Bleedin’ stupid, that was. Everyone knows that’s the best way to get your arse kicked.’