In order to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information to either gamblers or bookmakers, all licensed jockeys riding at any race meeting have not only to register their mobile phones with the authority, but are banned from making or receiving calls, texts, or emails during a restricted period beginning half an hour before the advertised time of the first race and finishing when the last race starts, unless under the strict supervision of an official in a designated ‘phone zone’ within the weighing room. They also have to agree to provide the Authority on request with fully itemised billing records for any calls made by their phones during that restricted period.

I called Charles.

‘Could you do me a favour?’ I asked.

‘Depends on what it is,’ he replied.

‘Can you phone a number for me and pretend, in your most severe Royal Naval voice, to be from the Integrity Department at the British Horseracing Authority?’

‘For what reason?’

‘I have someone’s number but I want to know his name. I think he must be a jockey, and all jockeys have to register their phone numbers with the BHA. So please could you ring the number as the BHA and ask his name.’

‘But will he tell me?’

‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me yesterday morning, so probably no, not if you ask him straight out. So I suggest you could ask him for his postcode, as a security question, and for the first line of his address. Then you say that the details he’s given you are different to the ones the BHA have on file. Then, sounding confused, you check that it is actually, I don’t know, John Doe you’re talking to. He’ll say no, of course not, it’s … and he’ll give you his name.’

‘Sid, you’re a genius.’

‘Only if it works.’ Which I feared it wouldn’t.

‘Okay, what’s the number.’

I read it out from the piece of yellow paper.

‘Right, I’ll call you back.’

I sat and stared at my phone as five minutes became ten.

Eventually it rang and I grabbed at it.

‘His name is Marcus Capes,’ Charles said. ‘He’s a twenty-year-old conditional jockey employed in Middleham by a trainer called Noel Kline. He lives in digs at 42 Leyburn Road with an elderly widow, Mrs Doris Robinson, and her Siamese cat, Tiddles, and he’s trying his best to save up to buy a second-hand car, to make getting to the races easier.’

‘How on earth did you get all that?’