‘Sid Halley!’ I turned with a smile. ‘How’s the sleuthing business?’

Bill Burton, ex-jockey and now a mid-rank racehorse trainer whose waistline was getting bigger rather more quickly than his bank balance.

‘Fine, Bill.’ We shook hands warmly. ‘Keeping me in mischief.’

‘Good, as long as you keep your nose out of my business.’ He said it with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

We had ridden against each other regularly over many seasons and both of us knew that he had never been totally averse to a little extra cash for ensuring that his horse didn’t get to the line first. He would adamantly argue that he would only ‘stop’ those who had no chance anyway, what crime was there in that? I could read in his face, I thought, that he had probably not changed his ways in moving from the saddle to the saddling box.

Shame, I thought. Bill was not a real villain but rumours were beginning to circulate that he was not fully honest either. As always, it was much easier to get such a reputation than to lose it. Bill couldn’t see that he was never going to be the leading trainer as he had hoped, not because he didn’t have the ability but because he would not be sent the best horses by the most knowledgeable of owners.

‘Do you have any runners today?’ I asked.

‘Candlestick in the first and Leaded Light in the fifth. But I wouldn’t risk your shirt on either of them.’

I wasn’t sure whether he was warning me that they might not be trying their best. My doubts saddened me. I liked Bill a lot. We had been good friends and racing adversaries for many years.

He seemed to sense that I was looking deeper into his eyes than was prudent and briskly turned his head away.

‘Sorry, Sid,’ he said in my ear as he pushed past into the weighing room, ‘got to go and find my jockey.’

I stood watching him disappear through the door and then looked up in the paper who his jockey was. Huw Walker. One of the sport’s popular journeymen. He’d never yet made it to number one but had been consistently in the top ten over the past eight or nine years with numerous rides and plenty of winners. Son of a Welsh farmer with, it was said, a fondness for fast women and fast cars in that order. I hadn’t heard that he was ever suspected of ‘pulling’ — horses, that is.