"The only reference I need to get a job in the stable I am going to is no reference at all."

"Whose stable?"

"Hedley Humber's."

"Humber!" He was sombrely incredulous.

"But why? He's a very poor trainer and he didn't train any of the doped horses. What's the point of going there?"

"He didn't train any of the horses when they won," I agreed, 'but he had three of them through his hands earlier in their careers. There is also a man called P. J. Adams who at one time or another owned six more of them. Adams lives, according to the map, less than ten miles from Humber. Humber lives at Posset, in Durham, and Adams at Tellbridge, just over the Northumberland border. That means that nine of the eleven horses spent some time in that one small area of the

British Isles. None of them stayed long. The dossiers of Transistor and Rudyard are much less detailed than the others on the subject of their earlier life, and I have now no doubt that checking would show that they too, for a short while, came under the care of either Adams or Humber. "

"But how could the horses having spent some time with Adams or Hunter possibly affect their speed months or years later?"

"I don't know," I said.

"But I'll go and find out."

There was a pause.

"Very well," he said heavily.

"I'll tell Inskip that you are dismissed. And I'll tell him it is because you pestered Patricia."

"Right."

He looked at me coldly.

"You can write me reports. I don't want to see you again."

I watched him walk away strongly up the gully. I didn't know whether or not he really believed any more that I had done what Patty said;

but I did know that he needed to believe it. The alternative, the truth, was so much worse. What father wants to discover that his beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter is a lying slut?

And as for me, I thought that on the whole I had got off lightly; if I had found that anyone had assaulted Belinda or Helen I'd have half killed him.

After second exercise the following day Inskip told me exactly what he thought of me, and I didn't particularly enjoy it.

After giving me a public dressing down in the centre of the tarmac (with the lads grinning in sly amusement as they carried their buckets and hay nets with both ears flapping) he handed back the insurance card and income tax form there was still a useful muddle going on over the illegible Cornish address on the one October had originally provided me with and told me to pack my bags and get out of the yard at once. It would be no use my giving his name as a reference he said, because Lord October had expressly forbidden him to vouch for my character, and it was a decision with which he thoroughly agreed. He gave me a week's wages in lieu of notice, less Mrs. Allnut's share, and that was that.

I packed my things in the little dormitory, patted goodbye to the bed I had slept in for six weeks, and went down to the kitchen where the lads were having their midday meal. Eleven pairs of eyes swivelled in my direction. Some were contemptuous, some were surprised, one or two thought it funny. None of them looked sorry to see me go. Mrs. Allnut gave me a thick cheese sandwich, and I ate it walking down the hill to Slaw to catch the two o'clock bus to Harrogate.

And from Harrogate, where?

No lad in his senses would go straight from a prosperous place like Inskip's to ask for a job at

Humber's, however abruptly he had been thrown out;

there had to be a period of some gentle sliding downhill if it were to look unsuspicious. In fact, I decided, it would be altogether much better if it were Humber's head travelling-lad who offered me work, and not I who asked for it. It should not be too difficult. I could turn up at every course where Humber had a runner, looking seedier and seedier and more and more ready to take any job at all, and one day the lad-hungry stable would take the bait.

Meanwhile I needed somewhere to live. The bus trundled down to Harrogate while I thought it out. Somewhere in the northeast, to be near Humber's local meetings. A big town, so that I could be anonymous in it. An alive town, so that I could find ways of passing the time between race meetings. With the help of maps and guide books in Harrogate public library I settled on Newcastle, and with the help of a couple of tolerant lorry drivers I arrived there late that afternoon and found myself a room in a back-street hotel.

It was a terrible room with peeling, coffee-coloured walls, tatty printed linoleum wearing out on the floor, a narrow, hard divan bed, and some scratched furniture made out of stained plywood. Only its unexpected cleanliness and a shiny new washbasin in one corner made it bearable, but it did, I had to admit, suit my appearance and purpose admirably.

I dined in a fish and chip shop for three and six, and went to a cinema, and enjoyed not having to groom three horses or think twice about every word I said. My spirits rose several points at being free again and I succeeded in forgetting the trouble I was in with October.

In the morning I sent off to him in a registered package the second seventy-five pounds, which I had not given him in the gully on Sunday, together with a short formal note explaining why there would have to be a delay before I engaged myself to Humber.

From the post office I went to a betting shop and from their calendar copied down all the racing fixtures for the next month. It was the beginning of December, and I found there were very few meetings in the north before the first week in January; which was, from my point of view, a waste of time and a nuisance. After the following Saturday's programme at Newcastle itself there was no racing north of Nottinghamshire until Boxing Day, more than a fortnight later.

Pondering this set-back I next went in search of a serviceable second-hand motor-cycle. It took me until late afternoon to find exactly what I wanted, a souped- up 500 cc Norton, four years old and the ex-property of a now one-legged young man who had done the ton once too often on the Great North Road. The salesman gave me these details with relish as he took my money and assured me that the bike would still do a hundred at a push. I thanked him politely and left the machine with him to have a new silencer fitted, along with some new hand grips, brake cables, and tyres.

Lack of private transport at Slaw had not been a tremendous drawback, and I would not have been concerned about my mobility at Posset were it not for the one obtrusive thought that I might at some time find it advisable to depart in a hurry. I could not forget the journalist.

Tommy Stapleton. Between Hexham and Yorkshire he had lost eight hours, and turned up dead. Between Hexham and Yorkshire lay Posset.

The first person I saw at Newcastle races four days later was the man with the black moustache who had offered me steady employment as a stable spy. He was standing in an unobtrusive corner near the entrance, talking to a big-eared boy whom I later saw leading round a horse from one of the best-known gambling stables in the country.

/-^,.

From some distance away I watched him pass to the boy a white envelopAand receive a brown envelope in return. Money for information, I thought, and so openly done as to appear innocent.

I strolled along blum Black Moustache when he finished his transaction j^mad amp;tfs way to the bookmakers' stands in Tatters alB As before he appeared to be doing nothing but axamining the prices offered on the first race: and as oefere-B staked a few shillings on the favourite in case I should be seen to be following him. In spite of his survey he placed no bets at all, but strolled down to the rails which separated the enclosure from the course itself. There he came to an unplanned looking halt beside an artificial red-head wearing a yellowish leopard skin jacket over a dark grey skirt.