I wondered if the racecourse stewards had questioned him as to why his tactics in the two races had been so different. Probably not. It was only obvious when you watched the two races immediately one after the other as I had just done, rather than separated by an hour and a half, as they had been on the day itself.

It was definitely time to go and visit Jimmy Shilstone, and maybe also Simon Paulson for a second time. But would they talk to me? Or would they run off to tell tales to their puppetmaster, putting me in greater danger? What could I do that would convince them that the former was the best route?

I looked up Jimmy Shilstone in the Thoroughbred Business Guide, but his entry didn’t give his address, only a telephone number, and I didn’t want to give him the chance to hang up on me when I was asking him some pertinent questions. That had to be done face to face, not on the phone.

Next I scanned the Racing Post website to see if he had any rides booked, so I could confront him at a racecourse. I discovered that he had nothing for tomorrow but was due to ride at Ayr in Scotland for two days after that. Ayr was almost twice as far away from Oxfordshire as Middleham, at least six hours in the car each way. I decided I’d wait until he was a little closer.

But what about the mystery man who had put his phone number under my windscreen wiper? Where was he? Was visiting him a possibility instead?

I still had the piece of yellow paper. I retrieved it from my pocket and looked at it. It had a mobile number beginning 07 written on it in black ink.

I searched on the internet for any help in finding out whose number it was. There were quite a number of commercial tracking websites but, on closer examination, it became obvious that, under the laws of the United Kingdom, they could only track the person from the number if the individual concerned had given their permission and had a certain app installed on their phone.

Dead end.

An easier route seemed to be simply to call the number and ask, but I had tried that before and he’d refused to say, so there was little point in my trying it again. But could someone else?

I reckoned that, if the telephone owner was riding a horse when he heard me shouting from the Swine Cross in Middleham, and he knew Anton Valance well enough to call him, the chances were high that he was a BHA-licensed jockey.