‘There’s too many people about,’ he said, waving a hand at his staff. ‘You’d better come into the house.’

The state of it was every bit as bad as he had said, worse even. There were stacks of unwashed plates everywhere, some of them growing a green mould, and the carpet in the living room was almost invisible under a mass of strewn newspapers and empty biscuit wrappers.

He should get together with Marcus Capes, I thought. He could learn a thing or two about being tidy.

Simon shifted one of the piles of papers spread out on the sofa to give me some room to sit, while he descended into an armchair.

‘I told Valance it was a bad idea,’ he said, even before I had a chance to ask him my first question.

‘What was a bad idea?’

‘To send someone to beat you up. He said it would frighten you off, but I knew it wouldn’t. I told him that you’re not like other people. All it would do would be to make you more determined.’

Simon had been right.

‘So you did call him to tell him I was at Catterick?’

‘That wasn’t why I called him—at least, not exactly.’ He looked away from me briefly, then his eyes returned to mine. ‘After you confronted Jimmy about his riding in the first, we both felt it was too dangerous to do it again in the fifth, so I called Valance to tell him that Night Shadow would be running on his merits. He went totally ballistic. Claimed they had too much invested on the race and I would be liable for their losses if Night Shadow won. It was then that Jimmy agreed to make the horse fall. But I didn’t like it. Not at all.’

I sat there in silence for a few moments, not quite believing, or wanting to believe, what I was hearing. Making any horse intentionally fall could easily result in unnecessary injury, or even a fatality.

‘What is the hold that this man has over you and Jimmy that would make you take such drastic action not to win a lowly Class 5 handicap chase?’

He sighed deeply.

‘I think I’ll retire,’ he said. ‘Right now. This minute. The BHA can’t take away my licence if I haven’t got one.’

‘They can still warn you off.’

‘Warned off’ was the old-fashioned term for what is now called exclusion. It was originally called ‘warned off Newmarket Heath,’ and it is the ultimate sanction handed out by the racing authorities to miscreants and cheats. It means that not only are they forbidden from entering any racing establishments, including their own stable yards, but they are also banned from associating with any other licensed individual, which includes all owners, trainers, jockeys, vets, farriers and stable staff—indeed, everyone involved in horse racing—on pain of those also losing their own licences.