Chico and I tucked in to the excellent shepherd’s pie while Charles went off to search in his office for the video camera. Soon he returned triumphant, having found not only the camera but also some blank tapes to go in it, the mains lead and a tripod.

He set it all up on one side of the kitchen table, with the camera pointed across at me on the other.

‘Right,’ he said, standing back from the tripod. ‘I’d better just check it’s working.’

He pushed the record button and took a short video of me finishing my pie, saying how good it was and thanking Mrs Cross. Then he played it back on the small screen attached to the side of the camera. All worked perfectly, in spite of my voice sounding rather metallic from the inbuilt tiny speaker.

Charles pushed the record button again and gave me a thumbs-up.

I looked straight into the camera lens.

‘My name is Sid Halley,’ I said. ‘And I am making this recording of my own free will with no coercion or financial inducement. There are two witnesses here present, Admiral Charles Roland, Royal Navy retired, and Mr Chico Barnes.’

I waved for them to come round the table to stand in the shot behind me.

‘We are in the kitchen of Admiral Roland’s house in Aynsford, Oxfordshire.’ Next I gave the time and date, before waving the two witnesses back to their seats.

‘I wish to make this recording regarding information that has come into my possession over the past nine days.’

I covered everything I could remember in strict chronological order, right from that first telephone call from Gary Bremner asking for my help and telling me how frightened he was of threats made to kill his horses.

I went through how I had been to see him at Pinker’s Pond the day after the destruction of his stables, and my first discussion with Simon Paulson on the same afternoon about the trainers’ premiums. And I spoke about the final call I had received from Gary that evening, naming Anton Valance as the bastard he blamed for the fire and how he had intended, far from killing himself, to nail the culprit responsible.

I spoke to the camera about me going back to Middleham on Tuesday morning and shouting from the top of the Swine Cross. And about being taken to see a detective in Gary Bremner’s garden, and of then finding a yellow piece of paper with a telephone number under my windscreen wiper, and the subsequent warning about Valance not being a very nice person.

I talked about how I had spent that afternoon at Catterick races and how I was convinced that Jimmy Shilstone and Simon Paulson had conspired to ensure Plantagenet King and Night Shadow both lost races they could have won, and how I had then been attacked by two balaclava-wearing thugs in the racecourse car park.