'Thank you,' I said faintly. 'And you may take it,' he said firmly, 'that that is the official Jockey Club view, as well as my own.'

'Why,' I said slowly, 'does Eddy Keith want me stopped?'

He shrugged. 'Something about access to the Jockey Club files. Apparently you saw some, and he resented it. I told him he'd have to live with it, because I was certainly not in any way going to put restraints on what I consider a positive force for good in racing.'

I felt grindingly undeserving of all that, but he gave me no time to protest.

'Why don't both of you come upstairs for a drink and a sandwich? Come along, Sid, Philip…' He turned, gesturing us to follow, leading the way.

We went up those stairs marked 'Private' which on most racecourses lead to the civilised luxuries of the Stewards' box, and into a carpeted glass-fronted room looking out to the white-railed track. There were several groups of people there already, and a manservant handing around drinks on a tray.

'I expect you know most people,' Sir Thomas said, hospitably making introductions. 'Madelaine, my dear…' to his wife, '… do you know Lord Friarly, and Sid Halley?' We shook her hand. 'And oh yes, Sid,' he said, touching my arm to bring me around face to face with another of his guests…

'Have you met Trevor Deansgate?'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We stared at each other, probably equally stunned.

I thought of how he had last seen me, on my back in the straw barn, spilling my guts out with fear. He'll see it still in my face, I thought. He knows what he's made of me. I can't just stand here without moving a muscle… and yet I must.

My head seemed to be floating somewhere above the rest of my body, and an awful lot of awfulness got condensed into four seconds.

'Do you know each other?' Sir Thomas said, slightly puzzled. Trevor Deansgate said, 'Yes. We've met.'

There was at least no sneer either in his eyes or his voice. If it hadn't been impossible, I would have thought that what he looked was wary.

'Drink, Sid?' said Sir Thomas; and I found the man with the tray at my elbow. I took a tumbler with whisky-coloured contents and tried to stop my fingers trembling.

Sir Thomas said conversationally, 'I've just been telling Sid how much the Jockey Club appreciates his successes, and it seems to have silenced him completely.'

Neither Trevor Deansgate nor I said anything. Sir Thomas raised his eyebrows a fraction and tried again. 'Well, Sid, tell us a good thing for the big race.'

I dragged my scattered wits back into at least a pretence of life going uneventfully on.

'Oh… Winetaster, I should think.' My voice sounded strained, to me, but Sir Thomas seemed not to notice. Trevor Deansgate looked down to the glass in his own well-manicured hand and swivelled the ice cubes round in the golden liquid. Another of the guests spoke to Sir Thomas, and he turned away, and Trevor Deansgate's gaze came immediately back to my face filled with naked savage threat. His voice, quick and hard, spoke straight from the primitive underbelly, the world of violence and vengeance and no pity at all.

'If you break your assurance, I'll do what I said.'

He held my eyes until he was sure I had received the message, and then he too turned away, and I could see the heavy muscles of his shoulders bunching formidably inside his coat.

'Sid,' Philip Friarly said, appearing once more at my side. 'Lady Ullaston wants to know… I say, are you feeling all right?'

I nodded a bit faintly.

'My dear chap, you look frightfully pale.'

'I… er…' I took a vague grip on things. 'What did you say?'

'Lady Ullaston wants to know…' He went on at some length, and I listened and answered with a feeling of complete unreality. One could literally be torn apart in spirit while standing with a glass in one's hand making social chit chat to the Senior Steward's lady. I couldn't remember, five minutes later, a word that was said. I couldn't feel my feet on the carpet. I'm a mess, I thought.

The afternoon went on. Winetaster got beaten in the big race by a glossy dark filly called Mrs Hillman, and in the race after that Larry Server took Philip Friarly's syndicate horse to the back of the field, and stayed there. Nothing improved internally, and after the fifth I decided it was pointless staying any longer, since I couldn't even effectively think.

Outside the gate there was the usual gaggle of chauffeurs leaning against cars, waiting for their employers; and also, with them, one of the jump jockeys whose licence had been lost through taking bribes from Rammileese.

I nodded to him, as I passed. 'Jacksy.'

'Sid.'

I walked on to the car, and unlocked it, and slung my raceglasses onto the back seat. Got in. Started the engine. Paused for a bit, and reversed all the way back to the gate.

'Jacksy?' I said. 'Get in. I'm buying.'

'Buying what?' He came over and opened the passenger door, and sat in beside me. I fished my wallet out of my rear trouser pocket and tossed it into his lap.

'Take all the money,' I said. I drove forward through the carpark and out through the distant gate onto the public road.

'But you dropped me quite a lot, not long ago,' he said.

I gave him a fleeting sideways smile. 'Yeah. Well… this is for services about to be rendered.'

He counted the notes. 'All of it?' he said doubtfully.

'I want to know about Peter Rammileese.' 'Oh no.' He made as if to open the door, but the car by then was going too fast.

'Jacksy,' I said, 'no one's listening but me, and I'm not telling anyone else. Just say how much he paid you and what for, and anything else you can think of.'

He was silent for a bit. Then he said, 'It's more than my life's worth, Sid. There's a whisper out that he's brought two pros down from Glasgow for a special job and anyone who gets in his way just now is liable to be stamped on.'

'Have you seen these pros?' I said, thinking that I had.

'No. It just come through on the grapevine, like.'

'Does the grapevine know what the special job is?'

He shook his head.

'Anything to do with syndicates?' 'Be your age, Sid. Everything to do with Rammileese is always to do with syndicates. He runs about twenty. Maybe more.'

Twenty, I thought, frowning. I said, 'What's his rate for the job of doing a Larry Server, like today?'

'Sid,' he protested.

'How does he get someone like Larry Server onto a horse he wouldn't normally ride?'

'He asks the trainer nicely, with a fistful of dollars.'

'He bribes the trainers?'

'It doesn't take much, sometimes.' He looked thoughtful for a while. 'Don't you quote me, but there were races run last autumn where Rammileese was behind every horse in the field. He just carved them up as he liked.'

'It's impossible,' I said.

'No. All that dry weather we had, remember? Fields of four, five or six runners, sometimes, because the ground was so hard? I know of three races for sure when all the runners were his. The poor sodding bookies didn't know what had hit them.'

Jacksy counted the money again. 'Do you know how much you've got here?' he said.

'Just about.'

I glanced at him briefly. He was twenty-five, an ex-apprentice grown too heavy for the Flat and known to resent it. Jump jockeys on the whole earned less than the Flat boys, and there were the bruises besides, and it wasn't everyone who like me found steeplechasing double the fun. Jacksy didn't; but he could ride pretty well, and I'd raced alongside him often enough to know he wouldn't put you over the rails for nothing at all. For a consideration, yes, but for nothing, no.

The money was troubling him. For ten or twenty he would have lied to me easily: but we had a host of shared memories of changing rooms and horses and wet days and mud and falls and trudging back over sodden turf in paper-thin racing boots, and it isn't so easy, if you're not a real villain, to rob someone you know as well as that.