He put his head to one side as if thinking.

‘It must have been after.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because in October, Valance was still trying to squeeze his trainers’ premium out of me. That’s why he stopped Capes riding at Sedgefield. To teach me a lesson for not paying, even when he knew bloody well that I was already stony broke. So it had to be after that. November, maybe?’

‘What did he offer you to make a horse lose?’

I could tell he didn’t want to tell me.

‘Come on, Simon,’ I said. ‘You’ve told me enough to hang yourself already. What difference would a little more make?’

‘Just don’t talk to me about hanging.’

No, I thought. Perhaps not a good turn of phrase to use. Not after what had happened to Gary Bremner.

‘Okay, I won’t, but tell me, what did he offer?’

‘He said he’d write off ten grand from the outstanding loan if I agreed for a horse of mine not to win when he told me. Just the once, he said. He promised.’ He sighed again. ‘I must be bloody stupid, especially as, by then, the fucking loan had increased by more than ten grand in the six months since I’d taken it out due to the interest charges, so he was actually giving me nothing.’

Yes, I thought, Simon had been bloody stupid. Probably more than that. But stupidity doesn’t necessarily mean wickedness. And, at least, the ten grand was a much more attractive sum that the paltry two hundred quid Valance had offered Marcus Capes.

‘So I decided to do it just the once,’ Simon said. ‘In fact, I couldn’t afford not to. Jimmy Shilstone was also in on the fix—he had his own reasons that I didn’t ask about. And it was so easy. The horse Valance wanted us to make certain didn’t win had absolutely no chance anyway. It was a cast-iron loser right from the start. We didn’t need to do anything special.’

Now where had I heard that before?

I didn’t leave Simon Paulson’s place until nearly seven o’clock, by which time he had laid bare his soul. And I spent much of the journey back to Oxfordshire going over in my head exactly what he had said.

He had admitted to me that he and Jimmy Shilstone together had made sure that horses of his didn’t win on eight separate occasions. After that first one, there had been a gap of a couple of months but, inevitably, Valance then came back for more. The requests were now becoming more frequent, with the latest two being on the same day, those I had witnessed at Catterick on Tuesday.

‘But, at ten grand a time, you must have surely paid off the loan by now,’ I had said to him encouragingly.