Even on the Companies House website, the name Valance was not listed among the officers of the company, nor among the persons of significant control. My suspicious mind wondered if that was because he preferred to remain in the shadows, like a puppetmaster, controlling everyone else with invisible strings.

The next person to arrive was Simon Paulson, and, as I had predicted, he wasn’t happy to see me. There was a distinct falter in his stride when he realised it was me, but he wasn’t alone and, short of veering off at a tangent, he had no choice but to continue towards me.

‘Hello, Simon,’ I said all cheerily. ‘Nice to see you again.’

‘Yes, hello, Sid,’ he replied somewhat hesitantly. ‘It’s been a long time.’

Only about forty-eight hours, I thought, but decided not to push the point. Instead, I stared at the person Simon was with, a tall man in his mid-seventies, wearing a camel-coloured overcoat, brown leather gloves and a slightly battered brown trilby. Eventually, the message got through.

‘Oh yes, sorry,’ Simon said, slightly flustered. ‘Henry Asquith, this is Sid Halley.’

‘Call me Harry,’ said the man, holding his gloved right hand out towards me. ‘Everyone else does.’

As I shook his hand, his gaze strayed just briefly from my face down to my left side. I suppose I should be used to it by now—but I wasn’t.

‘Harry is one of my owners,’ Simon said in a nervous rush, perhaps remembering that he had already told me about Henry Asquith when I’d visited his yard on Sunday. He was heir to the wool trade and the eccentric battle re-enactment enthusiast. He who wanted to use his racehorses as cavalry chargers.

‘Harry has a runner in the first. We’re just delivering his colours.’

He held up a set of royal-blue-and-red-halved silks, and a white cap with a red cross.

I looked in the racecard. ‘Plantagenet King?’

‘That’s my boy,’ Harry said with obvious pride. ‘A sure winner.’

‘So it has a real chance?’ I asked.

‘Always a chance, Sid, always a chance.’ Simon said it quickly, with a laugh, and I couldn’t read in his demeanour if he thought those particular chances today were good or bad.

I, meanwhile, wondered if the horse would even be running on its merits, to the best of its ability.

CHAPTER

11

I FOUND A SPOT in the old grandstand to watch the first race, a two-mile handicap hurdle of just five runners.

Catterick is a tight, left-handed track of just over nine furlongs round, with a two-furlong chute attached to the far end of the finishing straight. The two-mile start was at the far end of the chute so that the horses jumped three flights of hurdles before passing the winning post for the first time, then had another complete circuit to run, with five more flights, to the finish.