I had things to complete here in the UK first.

Forty-two Leyburn Road was the middle one of three terraced, stone-built cottages set close to the road about two hundred yards down the hill from the centre of Middleham.

I parked MY S1D in the marketplace and, much to Rosie’s chagrin, I left her in the back of the Discovery, behind the grille, with all the windows slightly open. For all her usual gentle nature, Rosie was not very fond of cats and I didn’t want there to be an ugly scene with Tiddles to distract me from my real purpose.

I had studied the Racing Post app, and although there was jump racing only forty miles away down the M1 at Wetherby that afternoon, Noel Kline didn’t have any runners and Marcus Capes had not been declared to ride for anyone else. So, with morning exercise well over by noon, the chances were quite reasonable that he would be at home at one o’clock.

I knocked loudly on the front door of number 42 at precisely two minutes past the hour.

It was opened an inch or two by a white-haired old lady wearing slippers.

‘Yes?’ she snapped through the narrow gap. ‘What do you want?’

‘Are you Mrs Doris Robinson?’

‘Who wants to know?’ she replied caustically.

I ignored her question. ‘I’m here to see Marcus Capes. Is he in?’

She didn’t reply. She just opened the door a bit wider, turned her head and shouted up the stairs. ‘Marcus, it’s for you.’ And then she went back down the hall and disappeared from my sight.

Late the previous evening, I had spent some time on my computer researching young Mr Capes. As Charles had said, he was a conditional jockey employed by trainer Noel Kline.

A ‘conditional’ is a young, inexperienced jockey just starting out in his or her career. Unlike their more experienced counterparts, who are considered to be self-employed, a conditional is paid directly by the trainer as an employee of the stable.

Marcus Capes had been born in Preston and was now riding in his third season. He had won a total of thirty-eight races, half of them in the present term, putting him joint eighth in the current conditional jockeys’ standings. And I knew what he looked like from googling images of him from the internet.

I had also watched video replays of all sixteen of his race rides in the past month. Two of those had been winners and none of the other fourteen had aroused my suspicion that he hadn’t won because he wasn’t trying. Either he hadn’t actually ‘stopped’ any of those, or else he was very good at it.

From where I was standing just outside the front door, I could see straight up the stairs, and some legs in blue jeans soon appeared on the landing.