‘He ran again the week after my nonappearance at Sedgefield, and I wasn’t offered the ride. Not surprising, I suppose. Anyway, he wins again, this time with Danny riding, and he’s been riding him ever since.’

Those involved in horse racing could be very unforgiving, and not just the BHA.

Danny and Mackerel Fisher duly won the race, and at a canter.

‘He’ll be moving up a class next time out, that’s for sure,’ said Marcus bitterly. ‘Maybe two classes. Perhaps even to a listed.’

Listed races were all Class 1, where the purses on offer were serious money.

I was surprised how much it mattered to him.

When I’d started my riding career all those years ago, my fellow jockeys and I had studied the Sporting Life newspaper every morning over our breakfasts to note the winners from the day before, to try and decide whether we had a chance in any upcoming races. Nowadays, it was all more instant, with every race available to watch live on the satellite TV channels, and replays instantly available on your phone, via the internet.

How the world has been changed by technology, I thought, and almost exclusively for the better. Certainly the probity of British horse racing had been much advanced by the introduction of reliable dope testing, and by the DNA profiling and electronic microchipping at birth of every Thoroughbred foal born worldwide. Gone forever were the bad old days when running a ‘ringer’, a horse purporting to be one when it was, in fact, another, had been commonplace.

Some may hanker after a perceived former romantic era when racing attracted an array of dodgy characters, many with syringes of ‘go-faster’ or ‘go-slower’ juice in their pockets, and everyone over a certain age has a colourful story about ‘a friend of a friend’ who got away with beating the bookies. But beating the bookies also involved defrauding the betting public, and it was no coincidence that racegoing among the young had increased greatly in recent years due to the widespread appreciation that horse racing is honest and fair.

But, it seemed, there was still someone out there who wanted to manipulate the results, and blackmailing susceptible young jockeys, such as Marcus Capes, was his chosen modus operandi.

So what could I do to stop him?

Marcus and I sat in silence for some time, me waiting patiently for him to continue, and he probably worrying about what he had already told me.

I needed him not only to trust me, but also to help, and I had to weave a careful path if he was not to cut and run straight to Anton Valance or, worse still, to pack in his whole career.