“What was all that about?” asked Luca, who had been silently watching the exchange. Betsy had been standing next to him throughout, and her eyes were now wide with surprise and inquisition.

“Nothing,” I said, and started to load the equipment into the car.

“It didn’t look like nothing to us,” Luca said.

I looked him in the eye, and then shot a quick glance at Betsy, hoping Luca would get the message that I didn’t want to discuss the matter within her hearing.

“Just who was that man?” said Betsy. “He didn’t seem very nice.”

“It was nothing,” I said again. “He wants something I have, and we have been negotiating about the price. That’s all.”

Luca looked at me with disbelief showing all over his face, but he too glanced briefly at Betsy, telling me that he did indeed understand not to discuss the matter further with her there. Betsy, meanwhile, had not got the same message.

“What?” she said.

“What ‘what’?” I asked.

“What have you got that he wants?” she persisted.

“Nothing much,” I said. “A type of television remote. Forget it.”

She looked like she was about to ask me another question when Luca interrupted her thought process. “Where do you want to go for dinner tonight, Betsy?” he said.

“What?” she said angrily, turning towards him.

“Where shall we go for dinner tonight?” he repeated.

“We’re going to my mother’s,” she said sharply.

“Oh yes,” said Luca. “I forgot.”

He winked at me as we climbed into the car. Luca was nobody’s fool, he forgot nothing.

Within ten minutes I could see in the rearview mirror that Betsy was again listening to her iPod and dozing with her head against the window.

“Betsy, please, could you pass me a tissue?” I asked fairly quietly.

She didn’t move.

Luca began to turn around.

“Leave her,” I said to him.

“So was this TV remote thing that the man wanted that RFID writer you showed me?” Luca asked me quietly.

“Yes,” I said. “He calls himself John Smith, but I very much doubt that’s his real name. He also says he’s working for the Australian Racing Board.”

“Why don’t you just give it to him, then?” Luca said.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “For some reason I don’t altogether trust him, so I made up a story about giving it to a friend who had then gone on holiday.”

“Nice one,” said Luca sarcastically. “Where to?”

“Greece, I think,” I said. “I can’t really remember. I told him she was back on Sunday, that’s tomorrow.”

“She?” he said, almost laughing. “So where did the RFID writer come from in the first place?”

“I was given it,” I said.

“Who by?” he asked.

“A man from Australia.”

“Not John Smith?” he said.

“No. Another man from Australia.”

“Hence the Australian Racing Board’s interest in it?”

“Exactly.”

“So who was this other man from Australia?” Luca asked persistently. I began to wish we had never started this.

“Just a man,” I said evasively.

“So a mystery man from Australia just gave you a device for writing RFIDs and now the Australian Racing Board wants it back?”

It sounded implausible even to me.

“Yes,” I said.

“But is it theirs?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you ask the mystery man who gave it to you?”

“I can’t,” I said. “He’s gone away.”

“Back to Australia?”

“Not exactly,” I replied. Farther than that, I thought.

“So are you going to give it to the man in the parking lot, this John Smith?” Luca asked.

“I might,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”

“Well, it’s not yours, is it? So why not give it to him? And I tend to think that next time he comes asking, you might just get another dose of fists and steel toe caps if you refuse. He seemed quite determined.”

“Yes, you’re probably right,” I said. “But there’s still something about him I don’t like. And I feel that giving up the microcoder is like giving up my trump card.”

“ ‘Microcoder’?” Luca said.

“That’s what the man calls it. But I know my father called it a ‘chip writer.’”

“Your father?” Luca said surprised. “I thought your father was dead.”

“He is,” I said without further elaboration. I’d forgotten that I hadn’t told Luca that the man murdered at Ascot had been my father. As far as Luca was concerned, my father had always been dead, and he knew I had been raised from babyhood by my grandparents.

“So how come your father knew about this microcoder thing?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said, trying to close the discussion.

“It’s a long journey,” he said.

“Yeah, well, not long enough.”

“So what’s next?” said Luca.

“Days off tomorrow and Monday, then Towcester on Tuesday evening,” I said.

“No,” he said, irritated.“I meant what’s next with this microcoder thing?”

“How difficult would it be to make another one exactly the same?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “As far as I remember, it’s just a radio transmitter that concentrates the radio signal at a point where you would put the RFID. It didn’t appear that sophisticated.”

“Could you make another one?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said slowly.

“I don’t want you to,” I added quickly. “I just wondered if you could.”

“Yeah, I reckon I might,” he said. “Or if I couldn’t, one of the little hooligans from the electronics club would probably be able to do it in no time. They are like bloody magic when it comes to electronics. One of them even made a device that fooled the authorities into thinking he was at home wearing his court-ordered ankle tag when he was really out all night breaking into people’s cars. He said it gave him the best alibi anyone could ever want. Even the coppers were impressed.”

“How did they find out?” I asked.

“Oh, these lads may be damn clever when it comes to electronics,” he said. “But they can be pretty dense otherwise. The bloody idiot broke into an unmarked police car that was parked right outside the police station, and everything he did was recorded on an in-car video camera.”

I laughed.“Almost as bad as that bank robber recently who wrote his demand note on the back of a check from his own checkbook. It had his name printed on it.”

“It’s a good thing villains are stupid or we’d all be victims,” Luca said with a laugh.

“But they are not all stupid,” I said, becoming serious. “Remember, we never hear about the clever ones because they don’t get caught.”

“Good point,” he said.

Talking about not getting caught reminded me of the stash of banknotes still hidden in the cupboard under my stairs. Who did they belong to? Were they meant to be payment for Shifty-eyes for killing horses? Or maybe they were his cut for approving the insurance claims after the horses were dead. Either way, I was pretty sure they weren’t actually mine, even if I did have a sort of claim to inherit them after my father’s death, for they had been in his luggage.

“So do you want a copy of this microcoder?” Luca said, bringing me back from my daydreams.

“No, not really,” I said. “I just wondered why it was so important to get this particular one back if any half-witted juvenile delinquent could simply make another.”

“But they would have to have something to copy,” he said. “And they would have to know the right frequency to set it at.”

“Is that difficult?” I asked.

“Not if you have the original,” he said.“But much more difficult, maybe impossible, without it.”

“So if our Mr. John Smith-or whatever his name is-is so keen to get his hands on the original, is it because he doesn’t have access to another one?” I said. “But you would have thought that the Australian Racing Board had access to whatever resources they needed. I think that’s why I don’t trust him. It doesn’t ring quite true.”

“So does that mean you won’t give it to him?” Luca asked.