I must have drifted off but, suddenly, I was awake again, and this time I knew why. The thought that had fleeted in and out of my brain in the car on the motorway had finally returned—and this time, it stuck.

I looked again at my clock—two fifty.

I didn’t want the thought to evaporate again, so I wrote down ‘Harry the Hands for Prime Minister’ on the notepad beside my bed as a reminder, then went soundly back to sleep for the rest of the night.

I went downstairs at six thirty, again wearing my dressing gown, to find Chico fast asleep in the kitchen armchair.

‘Call yourself a bodyguard?’ I said, gently kicking his foot.

He opened one eye. ‘I knew it was you,’ he said.

‘Liar.’

I made myself a cup of instant coffee, then sat at the kitchen table and opened my laptop.

There were eight new emails in my inbox—two were bills, one was from my accountant about changes in rates for the new tax year, one was an invitation to a past-champion-jockeys lunch at Cheltenham the following month. The other four were all spam.

I deleted the spam, accepted the invitation, and decided that the bills could wait for another day.

Next I logged onto the internet and removed the notepad from my dressing-gown pocket: ‘Harry the Hands for Prime Minister’.

Not that I really wanted my hand-transplant surgeon to go into politics.

I googled British prime ministers.

Then I looked up a certain name in the Thoroughbred Business Guide, but it didn’t appear. Not surprising, really. No one was obliged to have their details included in the guide. Anton Valance’s name didn’t appear there either.

Next I called Simon Paulson.

‘Can’t you bloody leave me alone?’ he said. ‘First lot goes out in twenty minutes and I’m busy.’

‘I only need one thing,’ I said quickly, before he had a chance to hang up.

‘What thing?’

I told him.

‘Why do you need that?’

‘I just do? It’s no skin off your nose, but I could ask the BHA Integrity Department, if you’d rather. However, they will probably also want to know why I want it, and I might end up telling them about your little arrangement with Anton Valance.’

‘Bastard,’ he said with feeling. But he told me what I wanted, and it was just as I had expected.

I disconnected.

‘Okay,’ I said to Chico. ‘I think I may have worked out who is Valance’s accomplice. And it pains me to say this, but it’s all thanks to you—you and the Kaiser.’

CHAPTER

31

AFTER BREAKFAST, CHICO and I took Rosie over to Aynsford.

Reluctantly, Charles had agreed to look after her again, even though he didn’t particularly like it.