‘So was there an enquiry held of which there is an official record?’

He hung up.

So what had I learned?

Anton Valance was a registered jockeys’ agent in spite of not being listed in the TBG, he was considered untrustworthy by the BHA Integrity Department, had been investigated, but had not been found to have broken the Rules of Racing, at least not sufficiently for there to have been an official enquiry. But I still didn’t know how to find him.

I tried Gary Bremner’s phone.

This person’s phone is currently unavailable. Please try again later.

Where did I go from here?

I tried the Racing Administration website, but I needed to enter a password to gain access and, as I was not a BHA-registered person, I didn’t have one. Damned GDPR. They made life so much more difficult for us private investigators.

I wondered who I could ask to use their password, even though they would know it was against the racing regulations.

Once upon a time, even after I’d retired from riding, my standing in racing as a four-time former champion jockey had been quite high, and most honest people would help me out as they realised the good I was doing in rooting out the dishonest ones. But it had been a long time now since I was a regular on a racecourse and many of my former contacts had either retired or died.

And it didn’t help that, three years previously, I’d been questioned on suspicion of child abuse.

The accusation had been without foundation, and was designed to undermine an investigation I was involved with at the time. I had quickly been released without charge, but most people forgot that part, only remembering the widespread reporting of the original arrest after my name had been maliciously leaked to the press by the police.

One of my best racecourse sources of both real information and juicy gossip had been a man called Paddy O’Fitch. He’d been a walking encyclopedia of racing knowledge, but he had finally drunk himself into an early grave the previous year.

And I could hardly ask Simon Paulson. He’d made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want me to contact him again—ever!

Even the nature of racing’s hierarchy has changed in recent times.

When I’d first started my investigating, racing had been administered under the direct control of the Jockey Club, a private institution dating back to 1750, which, at the time, had been responsible for all rule and disciplinary matters.

New members of this prestigious organisation, many of them with titles, were elected only by the already existing members, but all of them were steeped in racing, either as owners, trainers, or amateur riders, although current and former professional jockeys were, and still are, specifically excluded from the club bearing their name.