‘Did you know the penalty for not having a horse passport is a maximum five thousand pounds fine, or imprisonment for up to three months, or both?’ said Becky Hurst.

‘Prison? For not having the right bit of paperwork for your horse?’

‘You offend the bureaucrats at your peril.’

‘God, I’m beginning to think Matt and Claire were right about easy targets,’ said Cooper, dialling his next call.

‘What, Ben?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘. . . I guarantee, if the gypsies have your horse and you don’t have a passport for it, the police will not take it off the gypsies. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. So off to Appleby they go. I tell people to get the feet post-coded if they breed their own.’

‘What’s a flesh mark?’ asked Luke Irvine, in between calls of his own.

‘A patch of pink skin on the horse’s face. It’s hairless in summer, so it shows up as a distinctive mark.’

‘Thanks.’

‘. . . I suppose she’s gone for pet food, or glue.’

‘And what the heck’s a Prophet’s Thumb?’

‘A small indentation on the neck. Like a thumb mark in putty.’

‘Really?’

‘If you ask me, that wasn’t really the purpose of horse passports. They were actually for the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, and the vets. To make sure medicines like Bute don’t have to be withdrawn from market.’

‘Why?’

‘They haven’t been tested to see how long they take to withdraw. So the only way of being certain they don’t enter the human food chain is by not slaughtering any horses that have been treated with them. It’s overkill, almost certainly. But that’s the way our authorities like to do it in this country.’

Then Cooper found one case where a horse had been sent out on loan, but was slaughtered without the owner’s knowledge. How on earth could that happen? He was about to find out.

‘Yes, Starlight was a fourteen-year-old gelding. He’d been with us for about six years, but he was suffering from arthritis, and I decided he’d have to be retired. I browsed some of the local papers, and I came across an advert. It said something like: Wanted. Horse or pony as a companion. Need not be sound. Small fee paid. Knowledgeable home.’

‘Do you still have a copy of the advert?’

‘Yes, I’ll find it for you.’

‘So you contacted the advertiser?’

‘Yes, and arranged to visit her farm to see the facilities. To be honest, I was quite impressed with the set-up. Her idea was that Starlight would be a companion to an in-foal Arab mare she had. I saw the mare, and she was in beautiful condition. The stables were better than mine, and the paddocks were bigger. It didn’t occur to me that I could have anything to worry about. I delivered Starlight on the understanding that he’d be there for a two-month trial period. From the start, I thought it had been made clear that this was a loan arrangement and didn’t involve a change of ownership. I got on well with the woman, and we agreed not to bother with a fee. We kept in touch. I fact, I phoned her a couple of weeks before . . . well, before it all went wrong. She told me Starlight was fine.’