‘Look, Marcus,’ I said. ‘I need to flush this man out into the open, and you winning the race today is the best way. Yes, sure, he’ll be angry, but not so angry that he will waste the future opportunities that you give him. When he contacts you, just say the horse was too good and you couldn’t help but win without it being too obvious. But, and this is the most important bit, try and record what he says to you either over the phone or in person. If you can’t get an actual recording of him speaking, write down exactly, word for word, what he says to you just as soon as you can. Do you understand?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Yes, Marcus, you try—you try very hard. I’m trying to save your career and I need you to step up and help me. Got it?’

‘Yeah, I got it. I have to go now and get down to the gaffer’s house, or I’ll be late.’

Marcus hung up and I remained sitting at the kitchen table wondering if he would have the nerve to defy Valance’s instruction.

Hexham was at least four and a half hours’ drive from Nutwell so there was no chance of me getting there in time to provide him with any last-minute moral support as he walked to the parade ring to board Meeru just before one o’clock.

I would just have to wait and watch the race on the television. On past form, Valance wouldn’t even be doing that. However, I somehow doubted that he’d be back at the Harrogate Turkish Baths having another massage, not after his experience of yesterday, but I was sure he would be elsewhere, rather than at Hexham races, providing himself with a suitable alibi—after all, that’s what the word alibi means in Latin: ‘elsewhere’.

‘Who was that on the phone?’ Chico asked from the comfy armchair, without moving anything other than his lips.

‘I thought you were sleeping,’ I said.

‘I was. But I always sleep with one eye, and one ear, wide open. You know that.’

I certainly did. He’d once thrown me over his shoulder onto the hall carpet at Aynsford when he’d mistaken me for an intruder. I had carelessly padded my way downstairs in bare feet, and in the dark, while he’d been snoozing on guard in the kitchen. How he’d heard me coming then, I still didn’t know. But I suppose I should be grateful.

‘That was a young jockey on the phone called Marcus Capes, the one who left his number under my windscreen wiper in Middleham. He said that Anton Valance had just called him and told him to lose on a horse called Meeru in the one o’clock race at Hexham this afternoon.’

‘And will he?’