I wondered if it was because I’d asked him the question, or was it perhaps due to the fact that it confirmed he had a mole in his organisation passing on information to the press? I expected the latter.

‘And if so,’ I went on, ‘I hope you’ve had the handwriting analysed. Because I wouldn’t believe it even if I’d seen Gary write it himself.’

‘It wasn’t handwritten,’ said DCI Williams, who was clearly then immediately angry with himself for having said anything at all.

‘So where was it?’ I asked.

‘Typed on his iPhone.’

‘But anyone could have keyed that in. You cannot seriously be using that as evidence of suicide. What does the note actually say?’

He stayed silent for a moment, perhaps deciding whether to tell me or not.

‘Not much,’ he said finally. ‘It just said he was sorry but he had lost everything, his stable yard, his wife and his children, and he couldn’t go on any longer.’

‘But he hadn’t lost everything. He still had this house, and the stables were fully insured.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘He told me.’

‘So while you two were reminiscing about old times and races you rode in together, he not only told you that he didn’t care much for his ex-wife and children, but he also casually slipped into the conversation the fact that his stables were fully insured, and that just one day before they were burned to the ground? Would you call that somewhat suspicious, Mr Halley?’

This whole conversation was getting more awkward by the minute, and I was beginning to regret not having told the detective everything in the first place. But I felt I could hardly go back now.

‘Why is it suspicious?’ I asked.

‘Because if the insurance on his stables was on his mind the day before his stables were destroyed by fire, then I have to ask the question of whether he set them alight himself.’

In truth, after I’d been called by an alive Gary on Saturday afternoon, I had also briefly considered whether he had set the fire himself as his way of proving to me that his horses really were in danger, but I had dismissed the notion almost as quickly as I’d thought it. There was no way he would have purposely put his horses at such risk, especially not his star performer, Kicking Rupert, which had died in the blaze.

I shook my head. ‘You must be wrong. Why would he do that?’

‘To collect the insurance money.’ He paused. ‘And perhaps the real reason he killed himself is because he couldn’t live with the guilt that his little scheme had gone wrong and he’d killed three of the horses, but he didn’t want to admit to that in his note.’

We were moving here into the realms of fantasy.