‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘What do you suggest?’ I asked.

‘Do you have a client?’

We both knew what she meant. She was asking if anyone was paying me. When I’d done investigating for a living, having a paying client was essential to fill the coffers.

‘Only Gary Bremner, and now he’s hardly in any position to pay.’

‘How about the BHA?’

‘No chance. I’m beginning to think I’ve become persona non grata in those quarters.’

No organisation likes to have its failings exposed, especially not by an outsider, and that is exactly what had happened to the BHA when I’d once revealed that the much-heralded head of their security service was, in fact, a villain.

‘So this would be another Sid Halley investigation done only for the good of racing rather than for hard cash?’ Her tone was full of irony. We had been here before. ‘Why don’t you just leave it all to the police and the racing authorities?’

‘You know why.’ I said it slowly and softly.

And she did. I had never been one for leaving important things to anyone else. Maybe it was the self-belief, or perhaps a touch of arrogance, that I could do it better than others. It was part of my makeup, and delegation of duties had never been one of my strongest attributes. Add to that a burning desire to see wrongs righted in the sport I loved, especially when its very future was at risk, and there was no chance of me giving up just because I wasn’t being paid.

‘Would what I say make any difference?’ Marina asked.

Probably not, I thought, but I would still love to have her blessing, for her to be onside. There had been a time when she had found the whole process exciting. She had even nicknamed me ‘Sherlock’ for a time when we first got together.

‘Are you coming home?’ I asked, slightly dodging her own question, but her answer to mine might make a difference to my answer to hers.

She sighed. ‘I can’t at the moment. Mamma can’t cope with Pa on her own, and the hospital won’t take him.’

What, I wondered, would have happened if she hadn’t been there?

‘How about Elmo? Can’t he help?’

Elmo was Marina’s elder brother. He’d lived in New York for many years and rarely came over to this side of the Atlantic. He hadn’t even made the trip when his little sister had married me.

‘He has too many commitments at work to come at the moment.’

As I had half expected, Marina’s brother wasn’t prepared to drop everything to come and help his mother. Perhaps he’d make it to his father’s funeral, I thought, when I believed he really should be coming now to say goodbye.