He had looked at me. ‘Don’t be daft. He didn’t offer me ten grand the next time. Only five. And it’s been going down ever since. He even told me on Tuesday that I would get no reduction in the loan at all for the latest two. I protested, but he simply said that if I didn’t like it I should complain to the BHA. I ask you.’

‘So why did you still do it?’

‘Because he has me over a fucking barrel, that’s why. I still owe about thirty thousand on the loan and he said he would send details of all the horses Jimmy and I had stopped to the BHA unless we continued.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘I couldn’t take the chance not to.’

Anton Valance was very clever, no doubt about it. He lured in his victims like a patient fisherman dangling a juicy worm. He said he only wanted you to do it once, a nice easy task, something that didn’t even feel like it was dishonest—the horse had no chance anyway, so what difference did it make? But, having made that first easy step, when you’ve tasted his bait, he strikes and now has you well and truly hooked, playing you forever at the end of his line until you are too tired to refuse anything he asks for.

So I finally knew for sure what was going on—or, at least, a part of it. Now all I had to do was stop Valance doing it again in the future, and somehow to manage that without the blame for past transgressions falling squarely on his vulnerable victims.

So where did I start?

It was gone ten o’clock by the time I reached home, and Rosie was beginning to complain bitterly that it was way past her suppertime.

I was hungry too.

I had stopped briefly at a motorway services to fill the Discovery’s fuel tank with diesel—all this toing and froing to Yorkshire was doing dreadful things to its mileage—but otherwise, I had pushed on through without stopping to fill my own fuel tank.

I yawned as I turned in through the gate. I was glad to be home, even if the place was deserted and in darkness, but how I longed for things to be back as they had been, with a warm welcoming kiss from my wife.

Rosie also seemed glad to be back and she bounded across ahead of me down the side of the house towards the back door. But suddenly, she stopped dead in her tracks and started barking.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Something wasn’t right.