‘I hear you are a lawyer,’ said a female voice on my right.

I turned to find Deborah Radcliffe standing next to me. Why did I think she didn’t like lawyers? Maybe it was the way she looked down her nose at me. Lots of people didn’t like lawyers, that is until they got themselves into trouble. Then their lawyer became their best friend, maybe their only friend.

‘That’s right,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I’m a barrister.’

‘Do you wear a wig?’ she asked.

‘Only in court,’ I said. ‘Lots of my work is not done in courts. I represent people at professional disciplinary hearings and the like.’

‘Oh,’ she said, as if bored. ‘And do you represent jockeys at enquiries?’

‘I have done,’ I said. ‘But not very often.’

She seemed to lose interest completely.

‘How is Peninsula?’ I asked her.

‘Fine, as far as I know,’ she said. ‘He’s now at Rushmore Stud in Ireland. In his first season.’

Retired at age three to spend the rest of his life treated like royalty, passing his days eating, sleeping and covering mares. Horse paradise.

‘But he wasn’t born himself at Rushmore?’ I said.

‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘We bred him at home.’

‘Where’s home?’ I asked her.

‘Near Uffington,’ she said. ‘In south Oxfordshire.’

‘Where the White Horse is,’ I said. The Uffington White Horse was a highly stylized Bronze Age horse figure carved into the chalk of the Downs a few miles north of Lambourn.

‘Exactly,’ she replied, suddenly showing more interest in me. ‘I can almost see White Horse Hill from my kitchen window.’

‘I’ve never actually seen the horse,’ I said. ‘Except in photos.’

‘It’s not that easy to see unless you get up in the air,’ she said. ‘We are forever getting tourists who ask us where it is. They seem disappointed when you show them the hill. The horse is almost on the top of it and you can’t even see it properly if you walk up to it. Goodness knows how they made it in the first place.’

‘Perhaps it was the fact that they couldn’t see it properly that made it such a weird-looking horse,’ I said.

‘Good point,’ she said.

‘Do you remember Millie Barlow being there when Peninsula was born?’ I asked.

‘Who?’ she said.

‘Millie Barlow,’ I repeated. ‘She was the vet who was present.’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘We have foals being born all the time. We have a sort of maternity hospital for horses. They come to us to deliver, especially if they are to then be covered by a local stallion.’

‘But I would have thought you would remember Peninsula,’ I said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘We didn’t know at the time that he would turn out so good. He had good breeding but it was not exceptional. We were just lucky.’

It made sense. After all, the world knows that William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, but it is not known for sure exactly where and on which day he was born, although it is often assumed, for neatness, to be the same day of the year as his death. All that is actually recorded is that he was baptized on 26 April 1564.

‘Why do you ask about this vet?’ Deborah asked me.

‘It’s just that she killed herself last June and I wondered if you remembered her at Peninsula’s birth,’ I said.

‘Not that vet who killed herself during the party?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘I remember her doing that, of course,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t know it was the same vet who had been there to foal Peninsula.’

‘So you didn’t see a photo of her with Peninsula after the birth?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘Why? Should I have done?’

‘It seems to have gone missing,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ she said, losing interest again. ‘I can’t help you.’

A large group of the other guests suddenly returned to the box for their tea and I decided to go back outside onto the balcony rather than be continuously beguiled by the chocolate cream éclairs.

I woke early the following morning with butterflies rather than éclairs hovering in my stomach. I was used to that feeling. It happened almost every time I had a ride in a race but this time it was something special. The Foxhunter Chase at Cheltenham is known as the amateur riders’ Gold Cup. It is run over the same course and distance as its big brother, although, while the Gold Cup had the highest prize money at the Festival, the Foxhunter Chase had the lowest. But it wasn’t the prize money that mattered. For me as a jockey, winning the Foxhunters would be like winning the Gold Cup, the Grand National and the Derby all rolled into one.

I spent some of the morning on the phone, chasing some information for the Mitchell case that we had requested several weeks before. As a matter of course we had received copies of Scot Barlow’s bank statements with the rest of the prosecution disclosure, but I had also asked for those of his sister, Millie. The bank had kicked up a bit of a fuss about confidentiality and I had needed to go back to court and argue in front of a judge as to why they were needed.

It had now been two weeks since the hearing. I had referred to our Defence Case Statement in so far as we believed that Mitchell had been framed and that therefore, in our opinion, some unknown third party had been involved in the crime. Thus Barlow’s bank statements had been needed to determine if any unusual or relevant transactions had occurred between him and an unknown third party. I further pointed out that Millie Barlow, sister of the victim and lover of the accused, had, according to her friends, seemed quite well off prior to her suicide the previous June. More well off than might have been expected from her salary alone. I had argued that she might have been receiving an allowance from her brother, a successful sportsman who, at the time, had been earning near the top of his profession. Millie Barlow’s bank statements were needed therefore to cross reference with his, so as to be able to eliminate transactions on his statements made by him to her during her lifetime.

I was not altogether sure if the judge had believed me, or even if he had understood my argument, but he could see no reason why the bank statements of a suicide, whether or not she was the sister of a murder victim, should still have been covered by the bank’s confidentiality policy, and he made an order for the bank to produce them. He clearly rated suicides lower than criminals.

However, the bank was being very slow in complying with the order. Arthur had finally found me a telephone number that didn’t connect to an overseas call centre, so I rang Bruce Lygon and asked him to telephone the bank and tell them that, unless the statements were on my desk by Monday morning, we would have no option but to go back to the judge and argue that the bank was in contempt. I also told Bruce to ensure that he dropped into his conversation that the punishment for criminal contempt of court was a two-year term of imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

Bruce called me back within five minutes. He was laughing. He had clearly laid on thick the bit about a prison sentence and the bank’s commercial director had promised him absolutely that the statements would be couriered to our chambers this very day. I congratulated him.

Next I called Eleanor.

‘Hello,’ she said, sounding sleepy.

‘Late night?’ I asked.

‘More like early morning,’ she said. ‘I was in theatre until nearly four.’

My heart sank. I had so hoped she would be there to see me ride.

‘Are you coming today?’ I asked without any real hope.

‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘Believe it or not, but I’m still technically on call if there’s another emergency. I must get some sleep sometime.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ll try and be there if I can,’ she said. ‘What time is the race?’

‘Four,’ I said.

‘If I don’t make it, I’ll make sure I watch it on the telly,’ she said. ‘Call me after. OK?’