‘How about your job?’ I asked.

‘I’m currently reviewing a paper to get it ready for publication, and I can do that here, online. They’re not expecting me back in the lab for at least two weeks, maybe three.’

Not so hopeful.

‘So what have you been up to today?’ she asked.

What did I say?

‘Not much really. I went to see a couple of old friends. We were all once jockeys together.’

‘That’s nice. Where do they live?’

She was only making small talk, so that we didn’t have to discuss the elephant in the corner of our rooms. Should I lie to her?

I decided not to.

‘Up in North Yorkshire, in Middleham.’

‘Wasn’t that where that dreadful fire was?’

‘Yup.’

There was a brief pause from her end.

‘Was that the reason you went?’

‘It certainly was.’

Another pause, longer this time.

‘And what did you find out?’

‘That the fire is extremely suspicious, and also that somebody is trying to seriously undermine the integrity of British racing.’

Yet another pause.

‘Then you had better get on and find out who that somebody is.’

CHAPTER

7

THAT SUNDAY NIGHT, I went up the stairs to bed with mixed emotions.

Marina had just given me the green light to carry on investigating the Middleham fire and the other things, so that was good. But I worried that the major switch in her position was simply because she had no intention of ever coming back to me, and so it didn’t matter to her one jot what I did.

I squeezed the toothpaste from the tube onto my brush, marvelling at the fact that I could now do it easily after so many years of spreading the red-and-white-striped stuff one-handedly all over the bathroom sink. But had this simple dexterity come at a price I couldn’t afford?

I looked down and studied my new hand.

Whatever magic the surgeons had weaved in making it move and feel, it still looked somewhat alien to me too. For a start, it had someone else’s fingerprints, and also their DNA. Even though I was told by the doctors that the human body regenerates itself all the time, the new cells take their pattern from the old ones they replace, so the DNA doesn’t change.

If my left hand were to be cut by a knife and bleed, the blood spilled would have the Sid Halley genetic structure, while the skin cells that might be deposited on the blade would have that of the original donor.

I smiled at the thought of some poor police forensic officer in the future trying to work out why two sets of DNA had been found at a stabbing crime scene when it was known for sure that only one person was injured. A bit like those locked-room lateral-thinking conundrums.