In the morning, having paid a few bills, I took the hired car to Heathrow and turned it in there and, with a feeling of shackles dropping off, hopped into the air.

I spent four nights in New York before I found Malcolm; or before he found me, to be more precise.

In daily consultations, the Stamford voice assured me that I wasn't forgotten, that the message would one day get through. I had a vision of native bearers beating through jungles, but it wasn't like that, it transpired. Malcolm and Ramsey had simply been moving from horse farm to horse farm through deepest Kentucky, and it was from there he finally phoned at eight-ten in the morning.

"What are you doing in New York?" he demanded.

"Looking at skyscrapers," I said.

"I thought we were meeting in California."

"Well, we are," I said. "When?"

"What's today?"

"Friday."

"Hang on."

I heard him talking in the background, then he returned. "We're just going out to see some horses breeze. Ramsey reserved the rooms from tomorrow through Saturday at the Beverly Wilshire, he says, but he and I are going to spend a few more days here now. You go to California tomorrow and I'll join you, say, on Wednesday."

"Couldn't you please make it sooner? I do need to talk to you."

"Did you find something out?" His voice suddenly changed gear, as if he'd remembered almost with shock the world of terrors he'd left behind.

"A few things."

"Tell me."

"Not on the telephone. Not in a hurry. Go and see the horses breeze and meet me tomorrow." I paused. "There are horses in California. Thousands of them."

He was quiet for a few moments, then he said, "I owe it to you. I'll be there," and disconnected.

I arranged my air ticket and spent the rest of the day as I'd spent all the others in New York, wandering around, filling eyes and ears with the city… thinking painful private thoughts and coming to dreadful conclusions.

Malcolm kept his word and, to my relief, came without Ramsey who had decided Stamford needed him if Connecticut were to survive. Ramsey, Malcolm said, would be over on Wednesday, we would all have three days at the races and go to Australia on Saturday night. He was crackling with energy, the eyes intensely blue. He and Ramsey had bought four more horses in partnership, he said in the first three minutes, and were joining a syndicate to own some others down under.

A forest fire out of control, I thought, and had sympathy for my poor brothers.

The Beverly Wilshire gave us a suite with brilliant red flocked wallpaper in the sitting-room and vivid pink and orange flowers on a turquoise background in the bedrooms. There were ornate crimson curtains, filmy cream inner curtains, a suspicion of lace, an air of Edwardian roguishness brought up to date. Rooms to laugh in, I thought. And with little wrought-iron balconies outside the bowed windows looking down on a pool with a fountain and gardens and orange trees, not much to complain of.

We dined downstairs in a bar that had tables at one end and music, and Malcolm said I looked thinner.

"Tell me about the horses," I said; and heard about them through the smoked salmon, the salad, the veal and the coffee.

"Don't worry," he said, near the beginning. "They're not all as expensive as Blue Clancy and Chrysos. We got all four for under a million dollars, total, and they're two-year-olds ready to run. Good breeding; the best. One's by Alydar, even."

I listened, amused and impressed. He knew the breeding of all his purchases back three generations, and phrases like "won a stakes race" and "his dam's already produced Group I winners" came off his tongue as if he'd been saying them all his life.

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" I said eventually.

"I won't know until you ask."

"No… um… just how rich ARE you?"

He laughed. "Did Joyce put you up to that question?"

"No. I wanted to know for myself."

"Hm." He thought. "I can't tell you to the nearest million. It changes every day. At a rough estimate, about a hundred million pounds. It would grow now of its own accord at the rate of five million a year if I never lifted a finger again, but you know me, that would be boring, I'd be dead in a month."

"After tax?" I said.

"Sure." He smiled. "Capital gains tax usually. I've spent a year's investment income after tax on the horses, that's all. Not as much as that on all those other projects that the family were going bananas about. I'm not raving mad. There'll be plenty for everyone when I pop off. More than there is now. I just have to live longer. You tell them that."

"I told them you'd said in your will that if you were murdered, it would all go to charity."

"Why didn't I think of that?"

"Did you think any more of letting the family have some of the lucre before you… er… pop off?"

"You know my views on that."

"Yes, I do."

"And you don't approve."

"I don't disapprove in theory. The trust funds were generous when they were set up. Many fathers don't do as much. But your children aren't perfect and some of them have got into messes. If someone were bleeding, would you buy them a bandage?"

He sat back in his chair and stared moodily at his coffee. "Have they sent you here to plead for them?" he asked.

"No. I'll tell you what's been happening, then you can do what you like."

"Fair enough," he said, "but not tonight."

"All right." I paused. "I won a race at Kempton, did you know?"

"Did you really?" He was instantly alive with interest, asking for every detail. He didn't want to hear about his squabbling family with its latent murderer. He was tired of being vilified while at the same time badgered to be bountiful. He felt safe in California although he had, I'd been interested to discover, signed us into the hotel as Watson and Watson.

"Well, you never know, do you?" he'd said. "It may say in the British papers that Blue Clancy's coming over and Ramsey says this hotel is the centre for the Breeders' Cup organisers. They're having reception rooms here, and buffets. By Wednesday, he says, this place will be teeming with the international racing crowd. So where, if someone wanted to find me, do you think they'd look first?"

"I think Norman West gave us good advice."

"So do I."

The Watsons, father and son, breakfasted the following morning out in the warm air by the pool, sitting in white chairs beside a white table under a yellow sun umbrella, watching the oranges ripen amid dark green leaves, talking of horrors.

I asked him casually enough if he remembered Fred and the tree roots.

"Of course I do," he said at once. "Bloody fool could have killed himself." He frowned. "What's that got to do with the bomb at Quantum?" "Superintendent Yale thinks it may have given someone the idea."

He considered it. "I suppose it might."

"The superintendent, or some of his men, asked old Fred what he'd used to set off the cordite…" I told Malcolm about the cordite still lying around in the tool shed – "and Fred said he had some detonators, but after that first bang, you came out and took them away."

"Good Lord, I'd forgotten that. Yes, so I did. You were all there, weren't you? Pretty well the whole family?"

"Yes, it was one of those weekends. Helen says it was the first time she met you, she was there too, before she was married to Donald."

He thought back. "I don't remember that. I just remember there being a lot of you."

"The superintendent wonders if you remember what happened to the detonators after you'd taken them away."

He stared. "It's twenty years ago, must be," he protested.

"It might be the sort of thing you wouldn't forget."

He shook his head doubtfully.

"Did you turn them over to the police?"

"No." He was definite about that, anyway. "Old Fred had no business to have them, but I wouldn't have got him into trouble, or the friend he got them from, either. I'll bet they were nicked."