"You can't detect them in dope tests because technically they are not dope at all, but food. The whole question of vitamins is very difficult."

"They increase stamina?" I asked.

"Yes, quite considerably. Horses which " die" in the last half mile and as you pointed out, all eleven are that type would be ideal subjects. But vitamins were among the first things we considered, and we had to eliminate them. They can help horses to win, if they are injected in massive doses into the bloodstream, and they are undetectable in analysis because they are used up in the winning, but they are undetectable in other ways too. They don't excite, they don't bring a horse back from a race looking as though Benzedrine were cdittmg out of his ears." He sighed.

"I don't know…"

With regret I made my confession that I had learned nothing from Beckett's typescript.

"Neither Beckett nor I expected as much from it as you did," he said.

"I've been talking to him a lot this week, and we think that although all those extensive inquiries were made at the time, you might find something that was overlooked if you moved to one of the stables where those eleven horses were trained when they were doped. Of course, eight of the horses were sold and have changed stables, which is a pity, but three are still with their original trainers, and it might be best if you could get a job with one of those."

"Yes," I said.

"All right. I'll try all three trainers and see if one of them will take me on. But the trail is very cold by now… and joker number twelve will turn up in a different stable altogether.

There was nothing, I suppose, at Haydock this week? "

"No. Saliva samples were taken from all the runners before the selling 'chase, but the favourite won, quite normally, and we didn't have the samples analysed. But now that you've spotted that those five courses must have been chosen deliberately for their long finishing straights we will keep stricter watches there than ever. Especially if one of those eleven horses runs there again."

"You could check with the racing calendar to see if any has been entered," I agreed.

"But so far none of them has been doped twice, and I can't see why the pattern should change."

A gust of bitter wind blew down the gully, and he shivered. The little stream, swollen with yesterday's rains, tumbled busily over its rocky bed. October whistled to his dog, who was sniffing along its banks.

"By the way," he said, shaking hands, 'the vets are of the opinion that the horses were not helped on their way by pellets or darts, or anything shot or thrown. But they can't be a hundred per cent certain.

They didn't at the time examine all the horses very closely. But if we get another one I'll see they go over every inch looking for punctures. "

"Fine." We smiled at each other and turned away. I liked him. He was imaginative and had a sense of humour to leaven the formidable big-business-executive power of his speech and manner. A tough man, I thought appreciatively: tough in mind, muscular in body, unswerving in purpose: a man of the kind to have earned an earldom, if he hadn't inherited it.

Sparking Plug had to do without his bucket of water that night and again the following morning. The box driver set off to Leicester with a pocketful of hard- earned money from the lads and their instructions to back the horse to win; and I felt a traitor.

Inskip's other horse, which had come in the box too, was engaged in the third race, but the novice 'chase was not until the fifth race on the card, which left me free to watch the first two races as well as Sparks' own. I bought a race card and found a space on the parade ring rails, and watched the horses for the first race being led round.

Although from the form books I knew the names of a great many trainers they were still unknown to me by sight; and accordingly, when they stood chatting with their jockeys in the ring, I tried, for interest, to identify some of them. There were only seven of them engaged in the first race: Owen, Cundell, Beeby, Cazalet, Humber. Humber? What was it that I had heard about Humber? I couldn't remember. Nothing very important, I thought.

Humber 's horse looked the least well of the lot, and the lad leading him round wore unpolished shoes, a dirty raincoat, and an air of not caring to improve matters. The jockey's jersey, when he took his coat off, could be seen to be still grubby with mud from a former outing, and the trainer who had failed to provide clean colours or to care about stable smartness was a large, bad-tempered looking man leaning on a thick, knobbed walking stick.

As it happened, Humber 's lad stood beside me on the stand to watch the race.

"Got much chance?" I asked idly.

"Waste of time running him," he said, his lip curling.

"I'm fed to the back molars with the sod."

"Oh. Perhaps your other horse is better, though?" I murmured, watching the runners line up for the start.

"My other horse?" He laughed without mirth.

"Three others, would you believe it? I'm fed up with the whole sodding set up. I'm packing it in at the end of the week, pay or no pay."

I suddenly remembered what I had heard about Humber. The worst stable in the country to work for, the boy in the Bristol hostel had said:

they starved the lads and knocked them about and could only get riffraff to work there.

"How do you mean, pay or no pay?" I asked.

" Humber pays sixteen quid a week, instead of eleven," he said, 'but it's not bloody worth it. I've had a bellyful of bloody Humber. I'm getting out. "

The race started, and we watched Humber 's horse finish last. The lad disappeared, muttering, to lead him away.

I smiled, followed him down the stairs, and forgot him, because waiting near the bottom step was a seedy, black-moustached man whom I instantly recognized as having been in the bar at the Cheltenham dance.

I walked slowly away to lean over the parade ring rail, and he inconspicuously followed. He stopped beside me, and with his eyes on the one horse already in the ring, he said, "I hear that you are hard up."

"Not after today, I'm not," I said, looking him up and down.

He glanced at me briefly.

"Oh. Are you so sure of Sparking Plug?"

"Yeah," I said with an unpleasant smirk.

"Certain." Someone, I reflected, had been kind enough to tell him which horse I looked after: which meant he had been checking up on me. I trusted he had learned nothing to my advantage.

"Hmm."

A whole minute passed. Then he said casually, "Have you ever thought of changing your job… going to another stable?"

"I've thought of it," I admitted, shrugging.

"Who hasn't?"

"There's always a market for good lads," he pointed out, 'and I've heard you're a dab hand at the mucking out. With a reference from Inskip you could get in anywhere, if you told them you were prepared to wait for a vacancy. "

"Where?" I asked; but he wasn't to be hurried. After another minute he said, still conversationally, "It can be very… er… lucrative working for some stables."

"Oh?"

"That is," he coughed discreetly, 'if you are ready to do a bit more than the stable tells you to. "

"Such as?"

"Oh… general duties," he said vaguely.

"It varies. Anything helpful toer the person who is prepared to supplement your income."

"And who's that?"

He smiled thinly.

"Look upon me as his agent. How about it? His terms are a regular river a week for information about the results of training gallops and things like that, and a good bonus for occasional special jobs of a more, er, risky nature."

"It don't sound bad," I said slowly, sucking in my lower lip.

"Can't I do it at Inskip's?"

"Inskip's is not a betting stable," he said.

"The horses always run to win. We do not need a permanent employee in that sort of place. There are however at present two betting stables without a man of ours in them, and you would be useful in either."