Two spots of colour flamed in her cheeks, and she looked almost as if she was going to try to throw me out bodily.

'No, no, I say,' Lucas Wainwright said, writhing as usual with naval embarra.s.sment in the face of immodest female behaviour, 'George, make your wife listen to what we've come to tell you.'

Rosemary was persuaded, with a ramrod stiff back, to perch on a chair in her elegant drawing room, while Chico and I sat lazily in armchairs, and Lucas Wainwright did the talking, this time, about pig disease and bad hearts.

The Caspars listened in growing bewilderment and dismay, and when Lucas mentioned 'Trevor Deansgate' George stood up and began striding about in agitation.

'It isn't possible,' he said. 'Not Trevor. He's a friend.'

'Did you let him near Tri-Nitro, after that last training gallop?' I said.

George's face gave the answer.

'Sunday morning,' Rosemary said, in a hard cold voice. 'He came on the Sunday. He often does. He and George walked round the yard.' She paused. 'Trevor likes slapping horses. Slaps their rumps. Some people do that. Some people pat necks. Some people pull ears. Trevor slaps rumps.'

Lucas said, 'In due course, George, you'll have to give evidence in court.'

'I'm going to look a d.a.m.ned fool, aren't I?' he said sourly. 'Filling my yard with guards and taking Deansgate in myself.'

Rosemary looked at me stonily, unforgiving.

'I told you they were being n.o.bbled. I told you. You didn't believe me.'

Lucas looked surprised. 'But I thought you understood, Mrs Caspar. Sid did believe you. It was Sid who did all this investigating, not the Jockey Club.'

Her mouth opened, and stayed open, speechlessly.

'Look,' I said awkwardly. 'I've brought you a present. Ken Armadale along at the Equine Research has done a lot of work for you, and he thinks Tri-Nitro can be cured, by a course of some rather rare antibiotics. I've brought them with me from London.'

I stood up and took the box to Rosemary: put it into her hands, and kissed her cheek.

'I'm sorry, Rosemary love, that it wasn't in time for the Guineas. Maybe the Derby... but anyway the Irish Derby and the Diamond Stakes, and the Arc de Triomphe. Tri-Nitro will be fine for those.'

Rosemary Caspar, that tough lady, burst into tears.

We didn't get back to London until nearly five, owing to Lucas insisting on going to see Ken Armadale and Henry Thrace himself, face to face. The Director of Security to the Jockey Club was busy making everything official.

He was visibly relieved when Ken absolved the people who'd done blood tests on the horses after their disaster races.

'The germ makes straight for the heart valves, and in the acute stage you'd never find it loose in the blood, even if you were thinking of illness and not merely looking for dope. It's only later, sometimes, that it gets freed into the blood, as it had in Zingaloo, when we took that sample.'

'Do you mean,' Lucas demanded, 'that if you did a blood test on Tri-Nitro at this minute you couldn't prove he had the disease?'

Ken said, 'You would only find antibodies.'

Lucas wasn't happy. 'Then how can we prove in court that he has got it?' 'Well,' Ken said, 'you could do an erysipelas antibody count today and another in a week's time. There would be a sharp rise in the number present, which would prove the horse must have the disease, because he's fighting it.'

Lucas shook his head mournfully. 'Juries won't like this.'

'Stick to Gleaner,' I said, and Ken agreed.

At one point Lucas disappeared into the Jockey Club rooms in the High Street and Chico and I drank in the White Hart and felt hot.

I changed the batteries. Routine. The day crawled.

'Let's go to Spain,' I said.

'Spain?'

'Anywhere.'

'I could just fancy a senorita.'

'You're disgusting.'

'Look who's talking.' We reordered and drank and still felt hot. 'How much do you reckon we'll get?' Chico said.

'More or less what we ask.'

George Caspar had promised, if Tri-Nitro recovered, that the horse's owner would give us the earth.

'A fee will do,' I'd said dryly.

Chico said, 'What will you ask, then?'

'I don't know. Perhaps five per cent of his prize money.'

'He couldn't complain.'

We set off southwards, finally, in the cooling car, and listened on the radio to the Dante Stakes at York.

Flotilla, to my intense pleasure, won it.

Chico, in the back seat, went to sleep. Lucas drove as impatiently as on the way up: and I sat and thought of Rosemary, and Trevor Deansgate, and Nicholas Ashe, and Trevor Deansgate, and Louise, and Trevor Deansgate.

Stab. Stab. I'll do what I said.'

Lucas dropped us at the entrance to the car park where I'd left the Scimitar. It would be like a furnace inside, I thought, sitting there all day in the sun. Chico and I walked over to it across the uneven stone-strewn ground.

Chico yawned.

A bath, I thought. A long drink. Dinner. Find a hotel room again... not the flat.

There was a Land Rover with a two-horse trailer parked beside my car. Odd, I thought idly, to see them in central London. Chico, still yawning, walked between the trailer and my car to wait for me to unlock the doors.

'It'll be baking,' I said, fishing down into my pocket for the keys, and looking downwards into the car.

Chico made a choking sort of noise. I looked up, and thought confusedly how fast, how very fast a slightly boring hot afternoon could turn to stone cold disaster.