I described how I had been to see Marcus Capes and how he had told me that, at a time when he’d been desperate for cash to pay his rent, he had foolishly accepted two hundred pounds to stop a horse that he knew had no chance anyway, payment of which had been secretly filmed by Valance, who was now using the video for blackmail.

I recounted the whole sorry story of Simon Paulson’s wife leaving him and then him getting into financial difficulties because no one was sending out the invoices to the owners. And how Valance had taken advantage of that situation by lending him sixty thousand pounds at such high interest rates that he had little chance of ever paying it back, and how he, Paulson, had then been thrown a financial lifeline to reduce the loan—all he had to do was ensure that another no-hoper didn’t win. Of course it didn’t, but Valance now had the leverage to blackmail Paulson into losing other races.

I described how I had disturbed two men, also in balaclavas, who had turned up at my own home, and of how the local police had found a container of petrol in my garden.

And finally, I spoke into the camera describing the events of today, my visit to Jimmy Shilstone, and then the confrontation with Anton Valance himself at the Harrogate Turkish Baths.

I finished by saying that, in the event of anything happening to me, Admiral Roland had my authority, indeed my instruction, to lay this video before both the police and the racing authorities.

I nodded at Charles and he stopped the recording. It had taken the best part of an hour.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you give that to the police right now and get this man Valance arrested?’

‘Because he won’t be. Everything is supposition and hearsay. Sure, the police and the BHA might investigate, but you can bet your life that nothing will stick on Valance. The only ones warned off or arrested would be his victims.’

‘But at least it might stop what’s going on.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. He’d probably just find other jockeys and trainers to blackmail. Like Gary Bremner said to me, I want to nail the bastard, good and proper. I just have to find a way to breach his defences.’

‘Or go around them,’ Charles said. ‘Do to him what the Germans did to France in 1940.’

‘What was that? Invade?’

‘During the 1930s, the French built a huge defensive wall on their eastern border. The Maginot Line. Originally designed to reach all the way from the Mediterranean to the Channel, it was never finished in the north due to complaints from the Belgians, who were allies of the French.’

‘What has this got to do with Anton Valance?’ I asked.