I walked down the Leyburn Road and straight into the open front door of number 42. Marcus was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

The transfer of the video took less than a minute. We connected our phones by Bluetooth. He opened the file and then touched the share button—share by AirDrop—and I accepted it. Dead easy.

I checked that it had transferred properly by playing a bit of it and then scrolling to the end and noticing the thirty-one-minute total length.

‘Great. Thanks, Marcus.’ I put my phone away carefully in my pocket.

‘What should I do now?’ he asked. His hands were shaking.

‘Carry on just as normal. When I’ve checked that I’ve got everything, you can then delete the video in case Valance turns up again and looks through your phone.’

‘What if he calls and tells me to stop one, or even to not turn up?’

‘When’s your next booked ride?’

‘Tomorrow, at Sedgefield. This time I’m riding one for Mr Kline, Jahaz Bar, in the second, the three-mile conditional jockeys’ chase.’

‘Does it have a good chance?’

‘Maybe. It’s won before but I wasn’t riding it then.’

I wondered if Valance would try again so soon. Quite possibly, just to test him.

‘Phone me if Valance calls you and we’ll decide what to do.’

‘Okay.’ The poor boy looked sick with worry.

‘Keep calm, Marcus. I’m on your side.’

I wasn’t sure he believed me.

There was no sign of either Chico or Rosie when I got back to the car, so I stood beside it in the watery sunshine.

The Swine Cross at the top of the town, from where, just a week ago today, I had shouted at the riders going out to morning exercise on the moors, is not the only medieval cross in Middleham.

There is another one, in the marketplace itself, a simple iron cross inserted into the top of a six-foot-high stone shaft, which is itself mounted on four square steps of diminishing sizes, all of them heavily worn by the passage of much time and many footfalls.

Before the widespread availability of paper, and the teaching of reading and writing to the masses in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these crosses acted not only as sites of public proclamation, but also as places where market sales and purchases were concluded with just a handshake rather than any written contract, as if swearing the deal in the sight of God’s cross made the transaction binding on both parties.

Perhaps I should get Valance here to swear a few binding deals with a handshake, not that I really had any desire to touch him.

Chico returned, holding Rosie on her lead in his right hand, and two full tied-up poo-bags in his left.

‘What do I do with these bleedin’ things now?’ he asked.