‘Where are those goddamn cops?’ Tony Andretti said it under his breath, quiet as a whisper, but it was full of frustration nonetheless.

‘Calm down,’ I murmured back. ‘They’ll be here soon enough.’

Tony and I were lying side by side, out of sight in the bushes, next to a lay-by off the A34 trunk road north of Oxford. We’d been in position for several hours, getting ever wetter thanks to the persistent rain.

‘Call them in now, Jeff,’ Tony hissed at me angrily. ‘Or we’ll lose them.’

I ignored him and went on watching through my binoculars.

Two men were standing in the lay-by, between the cars in which they had recently arrived, their heads bent close together as if they didn’t want to be over-heard. Not that there was much chance of that, I thought, not with a line of heavy lorries thundering past noisily on the dual carriageway only a dozen or so yards away.

One of the men, the shorter of the two, removed a white envelope from his trouser pocket and handed it to the other, who then turned away from the road, conveniently facing directly towards me, as he counted the banknotes it contained.

I used the camera built into my binoculars to take a couple of still shots as the man thumbed through the wad, then I switched to video mode and zoomed in, first on the money in the man’s hands and then up to his face. The light wasn’t perfect but my top-of-the-range digital system would be well able to cope.

Obviously satisfied with its contents, the taller man stuffed the white envelope into his anorak and then handed over a small flat package. I filmed it all.

‘Now, Nigel,’ I said quietly but distinctly into the microphone taped to my left wrist.

I went on filming as the two men briefly shook hands and then started to return to their respective cars.

‘We’re losing them,’ Tony said to me in an irritated tone.

I was beginning to think that he might be right, that I’d left it too late, when a couple of police squad cars arrived at speed, screeching to a halt and blocking in the vehicles in the lay-by. Even before they had come to a complete stop, the doors were flung open and four uniformed officers spilled out.

The shorter of the two men stood stock still, openmouthed in disbelief, but the taller one turned and ran — away from the police, and straight at me, at the same time removing a long-bladed knife from his coat pocket.

‘Knife!’ Tony shouted loudly from beside me, as he struggled to stand up.

The man changed from looking back at the police to looking forward to where Tony and I had been hiding. He saw Tony, who was now on his feet, and turned slightly to go directly for him, the blade facing upwards in his left hand in a manner that suggested to me that he knew exactly how to use it.

I rolled over, grabbed Tony by the ankles and pulled hard.

He came down on top of me, his considerable bulk sprawling over my legs.

‘Let go of me,’ Tony shouted angrily, trying to kick out towards my face.

I hung on tight.

The man with the knife hurdled the two of us and ran off into the trees behind, pursued by a pair of the policemen.

They’re welcome to him, I thought, even with their anti-stab vests. I’d been on the wrong end of a carving knife once before and had no wish to repeat the experience.

I released Tony’s legs and we clambered to our feet.

‘What the hell were you doing?’ Tony shouted at me, his face puce with rage. ‘I could have had him.’

‘He’d have had you, more like,’ I said. ‘Better to live to fight another day.’

Tony stood staring at me, his hands bunched into fists, adrenalin still coursing through his veins. I stared back at him.

Slowly he relaxed and his fingers uncurled.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘Thanks. But I’d have taken him down if I’d had a piece.’

‘Tony, you’re no longer with the NYPD.’

As a younger man, Tony had been a cop, one of ‘New York’s Finest’.

‘I can’t get my head round you Brits and guns. Not even your cops carry them. You’re just asking to get yourselves killed.’

I resisted pointing out to him that, in the previous ten years, only a handful of British police officers had been killed on duty, whereas hundreds of American cops had died in the same period.

The remaining two police officers had arrested the shorter of the men and were applying handcuffs to his wrists while relieving him of the package, which was then carefully enclosed in a plastic evidence bag.

Nigel had followed the police in his own car and was now standing to one side watching. Tony and I went over to join him.

‘Well done,’ I said, slapping Nigel gently on the back.

‘You’re certainly a cool one, and no mistake,’ Nigel said, smiling at me. ‘It was as much as I could do to stop the boys in blue turning up as soon as they knew the men had arrived.’

I smiled back at him. Nigel Green was a colleague of mine in the integrity service of the BHA, the British Horseracing Authority, and we had together spent several weeks setting up this operation after a tip-off. We had been surprised that the police had been so cooperative, agreeing to wait in a farm lane with Nigel until I called them in. Word of our past successes, when they alone had previously failed, had clearly filtered up to the powers that be.

‘Damn right he’s cool,’ Tony said. ‘Nerves of steel. I’d have called the cops in far sooner.’

‘I’m not cool,’ I said jokily. ‘At least, not in that sense.’ In temperature terms, I was extremely cool, and very wet. I shivered. ‘If the posse had turned up before the package was handed over we wouldn’t have been able to implicate both men. That’s all.’

‘Do you think those guys will get their man?’ Tony asked in his rich New York accent, looking over his shoulder towards the woods.

‘Eventually,’ I said. ‘If not today then sometime soon. I have all the evidence we need on disc.’ I tapped the binocular-camera round my neck.

The arrested man was frogmarched past us towards the police cars by two tall officers who made him look even smaller than he actually was.

He stared at me with hatred in his eyes.

‘Hinkley, you’re a bastard.’ He said it with feeling.

‘You shouldn’t get mixed up with drugs, Jimmy,’ I said.

The man was placed in the back of the police car.

‘He knows you, then?’ Tony said to me.

‘Indeed he does,’ I said. ‘Jimmy and I have crossed swords before.’

Jimmy Robinson was a jockey, quite a good jockey, who had previously tested positive for cocaine and been banned from riding for six months as a result. That had been two years ago but he had clearly not learned his lesson.

‘I thought you always worked undercover.’

‘I used to, but things change.’

It was a consequence of being a long time in the job. When I’d first started as an investigator at the BHA, fresh out of the army, I worked my entire time incognito, often using false beards and glasses to ensure that, even if I were seen, no one would recognise me again. But gradually, over time, my name and face were slowly put together by the racing fraternity and my covert work was now limited, although I could still occasionally get away with it provided I employed some of my more elaborate disguises.

It was a situation I was not happy with. I had enjoyed living in the shadows, rather than in the spotlight.

For some time I had even considered leaving the BHA altogether, packing up and moving abroad, possibly to Australia, to start again where my face was unknown.

The two policemen returned from the woods empty-handed, which didn’t please Tony.

‘They should have caught him,’ he said to me. ‘Your cops need to be fitter.’

I thought that was rather rich coming from him. Tony could hardly run fast enough to catch a cold. He had clearly put on far more than the odd pound since his days on the force.

‘We’ll have to call the dogs out,’ one of the policemen said. ‘They’ll soon find him.’

‘Get a helicopter up,’ Tony said, almost as an order. The policeman shook his head. ‘No point. Even their heat-seeking cameras can’t see through that lot.’

I looked past him into the trees. It was, in fact, more of a plantation than a natural wood, with evergreen firs standing cheek by jowl for as far as I could see, which wasn’t very far at all due to a lack of illumination beneath the trees. If visible light couldn’t penetrate the cover, it was no surprise that infrared would be unable to do so either.

‘Do you need us any more?’ I asked.

‘Not here,’ said the senior officer. ‘But you will each need to give a statement concerning this operation. Can you do that on a Section 9 Form?’

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I have one on my laptop.’

Section 9 of the UK Criminal Justice Act 1967 allowed written statements to be accepted by a court as evidence, provided they obeyed certain conditions. The Section 9 Form wasn’t absolutely essential but it contained the necessary declarations of truthfulness and I was happy to oblige. The police had been uncharacteristically helpful so far and I had no wish to upset them.

‘Come on, Tony,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’

Tony was my shadow, as he had been for the past two and a half weeks. His official title was Deputy Director at the Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency (FACSA) based in Washington, DC, and he was on a fact-finding mission to the UK to learn how the integrity service operated at the BHA.

He and I had instantly liked each other and I had enjoyed having him around, while he, in turn, had developed a love for British steeplechasing, and especially for the Grand National.

Ten days previously, Tony and I had travelled north by train from London to Liverpool for the big race.

He couldn’t get over the excitement that a single jumping race could generate in the population as a whole, with everyone discussing the relative merits of the forty runners, and every workplace running its own sweepstake.

‘At home in the States, steeplechase racing is mostly a small-town affair, run by farmers out in the boondocks. You’d be lucky to have more than a couple of tents in a field somewhere with some temporary bleachers. Nothing like this.’ He had waved his hand expansively at Aintree’s towering grandstands and the impressive media centre.

‘Over seventy thousand will be here today,’ I’d said, as Tony had shaken his head in disbelief, ‘with tens of millions more watching live on television.’

And the Grand National itself had certainly lived up to all the hype with the eight-to-one favourite catching the long-time leader on the line to win by a nose in a photo finish.

‘Amazing,’ Tony had said repeatedly, as the victor was loudly cheered all the way to the winner’s circle, flanked by two police horses. ‘Is all your jump racing like this?’

‘No,’ I’d said, laughing. ‘You should try a wet winter Wednesday at Hexham. Two men and a dog if you’re lucky.’

I had gone to the National not for any specific reason but simply to watch and listen, to gather intelligence and, maybe, to defuse any trouble before it started. At least that’s what I’d told myself, although I had mostly wanted to show off one of the great showpieces of British racing to my American guest.

He had not been disappointed.

Back in the lay-by, a police van arrived with a pair of vicious-looking German shepherds barking loudly through the rear windows.

Nigel, Tony and I stood watching as the excited, snarling dogs were removed from the vehicle by their handler, a mountain of a man with hands as large as any I had ever seen. He crouched down to cuddle each dog in turn, allowing them to nuzzle their snouts into his neck, sharp teeth and all.

Rather him than me, I thought.

After this moment of tenderness, it was time for work.

The dogs were first taken over to the car that belonged to the fugitive and given a few moments to register his scent. Then they were off into the woods, the strain on their leads almost pulling over the handler. A smaller man would have had no chance.

‘I’m glad I’m not the one they’re chasing,’ Nigel said. ‘Did you see those bloody fangs?’

We all laughed but with a slight nervousness — it was really not a joking matter.

‘I’ll miss all this excitement,’ Tony said to us with a smile as we climbed into Nigel’s car. ‘I’m back to being stuck at my boring desk from next Monday.’

‘Don’t you get out into the field at all?’ I asked.

‘Not much any more. I’m getting too old. And too fat.’ He guffawed loudly and clasped his hands round his substantial midriff. ‘Nowadays I have a team of young pups like you to do all my legwork.’

He remained unusually quiet and pensive all the way back to London, a smile never leaving his face. He didn’t elaborate on what was occupying his mind and I didn’t press him. He would tell me if he wanted to.

He didn’t. Not then, anyhow.

‘Diuretics!’

‘Yup. Mostly diuretics together with a few laxatives.’

‘No cocaine?’

‘Not even a dusting.’

‘Amphetamines? Or ecstasy?’

‘Nope. Nothing.’

‘Bugger!’

It was the following morning in my office at BHA headquarters in Central London. Nigel was giving Tony and me the bad news about the contents of the handed-over package.

‘The cops aren’t very happy about it either, I can tell you,’ Nigel said. ‘My contact says they’ve dropped the investigation and released Jimmy Robinson with no charges and an abject apology. The chief superintendent is really angry and intends to call Paul Maldini to give him what for.’ Paul Maldini was Head of Operations at the BHA — our boss. ‘He claims we’ve made them look like foolish amateurs.’

To be fair, I suppose we had. But we had also made fools out of ourselves.

Nigel had received a tip-off from one of his regular cluster of covert informants that Jimmy Robinson was again dealing in drugs. Perhaps I had been naïve or careless in assuming that the drugs in question were unlawful, but Jimmy had previous form in that respect. I had called in the police and, with much pushing on my part, the matter had eventually gone right to the top with the Director General of the National Crime Agency applying to the Home Secretary for a communication intercept warrant on Robinson’s mobile telephone. That’s how we knew where and when to wait for the hand-over.

‘Couldn’t they indict Robinson for anything?’ Tony asked.

‘Purchasing medicines without a prescription?’ Nigel raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s hardly grand theft auto. You or I could do the same on the Internet.’

‘Then why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff in some deserted lay-by?’ I asked. But I already knew the answer. Whereas the drugs purchased may have not been illegal according to the Misuse of Drugs Act, both diuretics and laxatives were banned substances for jockeys under the Rules of Racing.

‘Does Jimmy Robinson have trouble with his weight?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t every jockey?’ Nigel replied.

It was true.

Rises in racing weights had never kept up with the increasing height and bulk of the population as a whole. Before diuretics were added to the list of banned substances in 1999, their use had been widespread by jockeys of all abilities to control their weight.

One former champion jockey once joked to me about taking a handful of pee-pills every day as his only breakfast. ‘The trouble was,’ he said, ‘they made me so dehydrated I got dreadful cramps. On one occasion I remember being given a leg-up in the paddock and being unable to get my left foot into the iron because of it. Had to bump-trot the horse all the way to the start before it eased.’

Another told me he regularly used laxatives, taking them by the packet-full. ‘Explosive decompression,’ he’d said with a laugh. ‘I’d pebbledash the ceiling if I wasn’t careful.’

I’d asked him what the jockeys did now that those drugs had all been banned. ‘Fingers down the throat, mate,’ he’d said. ‘Eat to ease the hunger pain then throw it all back up again so as not to put on any weight. Not clever really.’

‘Can’t do much for their teeth.’

‘Teeth?’ He’d laughed again. ‘Bugger the teeth. Most of those get knocked out in falls anyway.’

I dragged my mind back to the matter in hand.

‘Surely Jimmy would know we would test him for diuretics,’ I said.

‘The police lab says this is something new. Still a thiazide, whatever that means, but a synthetic version. Perhaps Jimmy thought it wouldn’t show up in a test. And maybe he’s right.’

‘Why do these bloody drug firms keep muddying the water with new compounds?’ I sighed. ‘Don’t they realise we’re trying to stop the cheats?’

‘Apparently millions of people take diuretics every day for heart problems and high blood pressure.’

‘I’m one of those,’ Tony said meekly, tapping his jacket pocket.

I suppose I couldn’t realistically blame the drug companies for making our life difficult, not if they were doing good for millions.

I sighed again. ‘So why did the supplier run? And why pull a knife?’

‘He claims he didn’t know what was in the packet,’ Nigel said.

‘So they caught him then?’

‘My police contact said the man walked out of the woods with his arms in the air when he heard the dogs coming. He’d got rid of the knife by then, of course, and the cops weren’t about to launch a massive search for a weapon that hadn’t been used. The man claimed he was only an intermediary, delivering a sealed package for a friend.’

‘So why did he run?’

‘He says that he was told the package contained drugs and he’d assumed they were illegal.’

He hadn’t been the only one.

I was now even more relieved that Tony hadn’t had a ‘piece’ in the lay-by. I could imagine the furore that would have followed the shooting of a man who was supplying perfectly legal medication.

‘It seems odd to me that he just happened to have a knife in his pocket. Surely that’s not normal.’

Tony waved a dismissive hand as if to say that it was quite normal where he came from.

The man’s car had been removed to a forensic laboratory to be searched and, according to Nigel’s police chum, no illegal substances had been found. The man was free to pick it up whenever he wanted to.

The phone on my desk rang. I answered it.

‘Jeff, it’s Paul Maldini,’ said a voice down the line. ‘I need you in my office, right away.’

Oh God, I thought. The chief superintendent must have called.

‘On my way,’ I said.

‘And Jeff, bring Tony with you.’

‘And Nigel?’ I asked.

‘No. Only you and Tony.’

How odd, I thought. It had been Nigel and me who had been responsible for setting up this sorry affair, not Tony. He had simply been an innocent observer to the disaster. It didn’t seem fair that he should be facing the firing squad alongside me.

Tony and I made our way along the corridor to Paul’s office. It felt to me like we were two miscreant schoolboys who had been summoned to the headmaster’s study after having been caught smoking behind the bike sheds — hugely apprehensive and not a little frightened.

‘Ah, come in, come in, both of you,’ Paul said as I knocked and opened his door. ‘Sit down.’ He waved at the two chairs in front of his desk.

I thought the condemned always had to stand to receive their punishment.

Tony and I sat down.

‘Now, Jeff,’ Paul said, smiling and nodding at Tony, ‘Tony here has something to ask you.’

‘Eh?’ I was unsure what was going on.

‘I’d like you to come to the States,’ Tony said, half turning towards me.

‘Eh?’ I said again. ‘Isn’t this about the Jimmy Robinson affair?’

‘No,’ Paul said. ‘It is not.’

‘Didn’t the police chief superintendent call you?’ I asked.

‘As a matter of fact, he did,’ Paul replied. ‘And quite cross he was too. So I reminded him of all the things we had done right in the past and that we had acted in good faith in asking for their help in this case. I told him we had nothing to apologise for.’

‘What did he say to that?’ I asked.

‘Not much.’ Paul laughed as if amused by the memory. ‘I suspect they might not be so helpful in future, but we can live with that. Now, let’s move on. Tony spoke to me last evening and I’ve just had a meeting with the chief executive and the chairman and they have given their approval for his proposal.’

‘What proposal?’ I asked, confused.

I felt like I was living in a parallel universe. I had been expecting to get a severe telling-off and yet here was Paul Maldini, a man with an infamous temper, smiling and joking as if I was flavour of the month.

‘I would like you to come and work for me,’ Tony said.

I turned in my chair and stared at him.

‘Permanently?’

‘For as long as it takes,’ he replied.

‘For as long as what takes?’

‘Let me start from the beginning,’ Tony said. ‘But what I’m about to tell you is highly confidential and cannot be discussed outside the three of us. Not even the BHA chairman and chief executive have the full picture. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, even though I thought he was being rather melodramatic. As an ex-army intelligence officer, one thing I did know was how to keep a secret.

‘You are aware that I am Deputy Director at FACSA, an agency dedicated to preventing corruption in sport.’ He pronounced it ‘Facsa’, as a word rather than speaking out each of the letters in turn.

I nodded.

‘We have the particular task of keeping US horseracing free of organised crime. As you may know, unlike here in the UK with the BHA, there is no national racing authority in the US. Each of our states has its own rules and is responsible for enforcing them. My federal agency was set up to provide a nationwide focus on anti-corruption, and the Thoroughbred horse industry, both racing and breeding, represents a significant part of our efforts. We even have a special section dedicated to it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I knew most of this from discussions Tony and I had had during the last fourteen days. ‘But where do I fit in?’

Tony looked around him as if making sure no one was lurking and listening. He also lowered his voice.

‘For some time I have had my suspicions that we have an informant in our ranks.’

‘Mmm,’ I mused. ‘Corruption within the anti-corruption agency. Not good.’

‘Indeed not,’ Tony said.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘I only have suspicions. My racing team have initiated several operations only to discover that the target has got rid of the evidence just before we turn up. At first I thought it was bad luck, but it has happened too often.’

‘What sort of operations?’ I asked.

‘We recently raided the barns of a trainer who we believed was employing illegal immigrants as grooms, mostly Mexicans, paying them well under the minimum wage and in cash to avoid federal payroll taxes and Social Security dues. We had done our homework and were pretty sure we had the trainer dead to rights. All we needed was to catch the illegals in the act.’

‘But you found none?’ I said.

‘Not one. Vanished like mist in the morning sunshine.’ Tony held his hands out, palms uppermost. ‘On another occasion we received a tip from a disgruntled ex-employee that a Maryland horse farm was using an unlicensed antibiotic together with equine growth hormone on a newly born foal in order to determine if they made the foal grow faster and larger. This practice would be unlawful under the US Animal Welfare Act, but we were involved because it would also constitute a fraud on the future buyer of the foal. So the team arrived one day at dawn to search the premises and take blood samples for analysis.’

‘What did they find?’ I asked.

‘That the foal had been euthanised and the carcass cremated.’

‘Did the farm give a reason?’

‘They tried. Some hooey about the animal kicking out and breaking its leg. But the pit was still red-hot from the fire. They must have incinerated the poor thing through the night.’

‘It could have been a coincidence,’ I said. ‘They do sometimes happen.’

‘If it were only those two I might agree but there have been more, like a fire that conveniently destroyed all the computers in the office of an illegal bookmaker hours before they were to be seized.’

‘Arson?’

Tony rolled his eyes. ‘Not that anyone could prove.’ ‘Have you had a leak inquiry?’ I asked.

‘Not officially. But the Director and I initiated a review of our internal and external communications. In the process, we covertly examined the email and phone records of all of our staff who knew about the operations ahead of time, but it turned up nothing of any use.’

‘How many people knew about these operations beforehand?’

‘About twenty.’

‘Why so many?’

‘There are eight field agents in the horseracing team with a half a dozen backup support staff. Then there are three or four senior personnel, myself included, who would be fully briefed. Plus the Director. All would know about an operation ahead of time. Most would be involved either in the planning or in the decision to give it the green light.’

‘That’s far too many,’ I said. ‘A true secret stops being secret when two people know it, let alone twenty. Planning should be done by only two or three key decision makers, with those taking part in the raid briefed about the operation and told the target only immediately before the off, when it’s too late for the information to be leaked.’

Tony looked down at his hands as if somewhat embarrassed.

‘We are a relatively new agency,’ he said. ‘We clearly still have much to learn.’

‘So you want me to come and teach your people how to do it,’ I said rather flippantly.

‘I suppose that would be nice eventually,’ Tony said seriously, ‘but what I really want you to do now is to come and find our mole.’

A mile and a quarter

Churchill Downs, Louisville, Kentucky

‘America?’

‘Yes.’

I was on the telephone to Faye, my sister. Her with the cancer.

‘How long for?’

‘I don’t really know,’ I said. ‘But not for too long, I hope.’

For as long as it takes, Tony had said.

‘On holiday?’

‘No. I’m going to be on attachment to the American anti-corruption agency. It’s like an exchange. Their Deputy Director has been here with us at the BHA for three weeks and I’ll be doing the same over there.’

‘When do you go?’ she asked.

‘I’m already at Heathrow. My flight leaves in an hour.’

‘That was rather sudden.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I only knew about it myself two days ago. I should have called but, you know how it is, I’ve been busy getting everything done ready to leave.’

‘Is Henrietta with you?’

‘No,’ I said.

There was a silence from the other end of the line as Faye waited for me to expand my answer. I didn’t.

‘It is over then?’ she asked finally.

‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘We live in different worlds.’

Henrietta had been my girlfriend for the past few months. An initial whirlwind romance that had cooled almost as quickly as it had started. Such was life.

‘Does she know you’re going away?’ Faye asked.

‘I told her last night,’ I said. ‘I think she was relieved.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Yes, so was I. But it was no good trying to go on if it didn’t work.

‘You’ll also miss Quentin’s birthday.’

Quentin was Faye’s husband, my brother-in-law, and missing his birthday was not something I would be losing any sleep over, unlike Henrietta.

‘When is it?’

‘Next weekend,’ Faye said. ‘I was going to ask you over.’

‘I’ll send him a card.’

‘Right.’

She seemed distant, as if thinking of something else.

‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely.’

There was something about the way she said it that convinced me that things were absolutely not OK.

‘Are you well?’ I asked.

A simple question with so many unspoken nuances.

There was another silence from her end.

‘Faye, what’s wrong?’ I asked earnestly.

‘I’m told it’s nothing to worry about.’

‘What is nothing to worry about?’ I asked, with dread in my heart.

‘I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather recently.’ She forced a laugh. ‘Not that that’s been unusual these past few years. So I went to see my oncologist and he did some tests and a scan. I received the results yesterday.’

She paused.

‘And?’

‘There’s another spot on my liver.’

Oh dear God, I thought, will this bloody disease never leave her alone?

‘What precisely did the doctor say?’ I asked.

‘He told me it was nothing to worry about but, naturally, I do. I’ve got to have another round of chemo and maybe some radiotherapy. I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to it.’

‘My dear Faye, I’m so sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t be going.’

‘Nonsense. Of course you must go. The chemo won’t start for at least another week anyway as I have a touch of flu and they want me to recover from that first. It seems the damn chemo drugs also reduce my white-cell count and I need those to fight the infection. You’ll be back before things get really bad. I’ll be fine. I promise.’

Was she trying to convince me or herself?

‘I can always fly home if you need me. You only have to call.’

‘Thank you, but I’m sure I won’t need you. I’m a big girl and I can look after myself. You go and enjoy yourself.’

I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be a fun trip, but I didn’t say so.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I know where I’m staying. The agency’s head office is in Virginia, near Washington, DC.’

‘Say hi to the President for me.’ Faye laughed again, this time with a little more genuine amusement.

‘Sure will.’

On Sunday morning I walked down the street to the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, a vast shopping mall over four floors with everything from major international department stores to a shop dedicated only to the finer art of men’s shaving.

I was searching for a mobile-phone store. There were two and, in one of them, I found what I was looking for.

‘This one won’t go on the Internet.’ The young sales assistant was doing his best to direct me towards one of his more expensive models.

‘I know,’ I replied patiently. ‘It’s for my mother and she doesn’t really understand technology.’ In fact, my mother had died when mobile phones were still the size of a brick, but the young man wasn’t to know that. ‘This is the model I have been recommended by her care home. I’ll take two of them.’

‘Two?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know if we have two. No one ever wants phones like this any more.’

He went off into the back still shaking his head but triumphantly returned holding two boxes from which he blew off the dust.

‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘These are the last ones. The company is discontinuing this item when they’ve all gone.’

‘It will still work though, won’t it?’ I asked with mild concern.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll work fine for calls and texts, but it is not 4G. It’s not even 3G and doesn’t have Bluetooth, GPS or even a camera. Are you sure you still want it? The iPhone 6 does far more. That’s like a full-blown computer in your pocket and very good value. We have it on special offer.’

His enthusiasm was almost infectious.

‘These are just perfect,’ I said, touching the two boxes in front of me on the counter. Perfect, I thought, if you wanted phones that weren’t ‘smart’. Smartphones might be great for accessing the Internet and for using the thousands of apps available for download, but they could also be tracked and hacked.

‘Right,’ said the young man, slightly deflated. ‘Do you want them on a contract?’

‘No. Pay-as-you-go.’

‘It is cheaper on a contract,’ he said, ‘in the long run.’

‘But I’m not sure my mother has a long run,’ I said, smiling at him. ‘Pay-as-you-go will be fine.’

‘For both?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For both. My mother has a habit of mislaying things so I’m buying her two.’

He clearly thought I was mad but he inserted SIM cards into the phones before topping them up with a hundred dollars each of credit. More than enough, I thought, for calls and texts between Tony and myself over the next few weeks.

I paid for it all with cash and gave a made-up name and address to the young man for the guarantee — just to be on the safe side.

Next I went into a computer store and bought a desktop colour printer, spare ink cartridges, a USB connecting lead and some paper.

Finally, I went to the FedEx Office Print-and-Ship store on Crystal Drive, conveniently open on a Sunday, and arranged for one of the phones to be delivered early the following morning to Tony Andretti at FACSA.

‘Any message?’ asked the young woman behind the counter.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Only the box, thank you.’

I again paid in cash and gave a false return address. The transaction might have been anonymous but I had noticed the CCTV camera in the corner of the store, silently recording the faces of everyone who entered. I wondered whether I should have used one of my disguises, but perhaps I was being paranoid about secrecy.

But it was better to be paranoid, I thought, than dead.

By the end of the day I had been round the whole office and met all the section staff except for the most junior admin assistant, who was away on maternity leave.

I had a good memory for faces and facts and I had been easily able to match the individuals to their life stories as outlined in the personnel files. The only difficult thing was not appearing to know something that I hadn’t been told. For example, I nearly asked one of the two intelligence analysts if he liked working for FACSA more than for a bank when he hadn’t actually mentioned his previous employment.

‘Monday is a good day for you to start,’ Frank Bannister said over coffee in the FACSA cafeteria at lunchtime. ‘It’s when all the special agents try to be in the office for meetings and such. Mondays and Tuesdays are usually dark at the major tracks, unless they’re public holidays.’

By ‘dark’, he meant there was no racing.

‘Do you go to the tracks a lot?’ I asked.

‘I usually go somewhere every week,’ he replied. ‘All of us do. It is as important for us to be seen as it is for us to see what’s going on. I tend to concentrate on the northeastern tracks but I love going to the smaller ones too, especially those that race only for a few days each year. Over the years I’ve been to almost all of them.’

‘It must do wonders for your frequent-flier miles.’

‘We don’t get them,’ he said. ‘We often travel on government jets. Even when we are on commercial flights, federal-service rates don’t earn you miles.’

‘Where are you going this week?’ I asked.

‘Highlight of the year,’ he said with a big smile. ‘Louisville for the Derby. You coming?’

‘You bet,’ I said.

For years I had wanted to go to the Kentucky Derby but it was run on the first Saturday in May, usually on the same day as the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, and my presence had always been expected at one of the biggest days of the English racing season.

Now I was free of that obligation and the prospect of going to Churchill Downs thrilled me.

‘How do I get there?’ I asked.

‘The whole section is going Wednesday. Make sure the boss puts you on the manifest.’

‘I sure will.’

I was familiar with the British regulatory structure that had a simple but all-embracing rule in relation to drugs being present in a horse during a race — they aren’t allowed and, if detected, severe penalties would follow.

In addition, certain substances were not permitted to be introduced into a horse’s system at any time. They included all anabolic steroids, hormones, and any metabolic moderators such as insulin.

Reading one of the background briefing papers for the Churchill Downs raid, it became very clear to me that the situation in the United States was very different.

Anyone connected with racing worldwide was well aware of the widespread use in America of the drug furosemide, sold under the trade names Lasix or Salix. It is a potent diuretic and is used in horses to prevent bleeding in the lungs under extreme exertion, a condition known as EIPH, exercise-induced pulmonary haemorrhage. Whether they actually need it or not, almost every horse that races in North America has 500mg of the drug injected intravenously four hours before they race.

The diuretic effect is dramatic, with the horse producing ten to fifteen litres of urine in the first hour after administration of the drug. This in itself has a two-fold effect. First, it makes the horse ten to fifteen kilogrammes lighter, and second, it tends to flush out of the animal’s system any other drugs, which then become impossible to detect in a post-race dope test.

And, boy, according to what I was reading, there were plenty of other drugs.

American racing was seemingly rife with them, and most were allowed by the various state rules, even though there were attempts to reduce the dependence.

In some states, the administration of any legal medication was permitted up to twenty-four hours before a race, while in others the period could vary from a few days to a few weeks before racing.

A particularly worrying aspect of drugs in American racing was the widespread use of anti-inflammatory and painkilling medication such as phenylbutazone, known as ‘Bute’, which was often administered intravenously, allowing a horse to race when otherwise it would be unable to do so.

In the UK, the racing authority warned trainers that such painkillers should be discontinued a minimum of eight days prior to a race. In practice, most trainers stopped any course of treatment at least two weeks beforehand so that no trace remained. Otherwise they would be liable to large fines and lengthy suspensions. However, in the US, use of such drugs right up to race day was common, and a ‘positive’ post-race test for Bute was not against the rules.

According to the briefing paper, the disturbing effect of this was that the drugs allowed horses to compete when really unfit to do so, masking injuries such as sprains and even slight cracks. This could result in catastrophic collapse, an all-too-frequent occurrence on American tracks, where the rate of horses fatally injured in flat races was twice that of the UK.

However, the purpose of the proposed raid at Churchill Downs was not to look for Lasix or Bute. Finding those would be expected. It was to test recent runners for anabolic steroids, in particular stanozolol, a drug that promotes growth of muscle and hence improves performance.

I knew all about that drug.

Back in 2013, the BHA had expelled trainer Mahmood Al Zarooni from all racing for eight years for giving it to horses in his care. And the discovery of stanozolol in his urine had been the reason Ben Johnson was stripped of the hundred-metre Olympic gold medal in Seoul, bringing disgrace on him and his sport.

In UK racing the rule was crystal clear. Anabolic steroids were banned in horses at any time. But in the United States things were not so straightforward. Their use had not been regulated at all until 2010 and, even since then, several anabolic steroids were permitted for therapeutic treatment up to thirty days before racing.

But, it seems, some old trainers found it difficult to learn new tricks.

FACSA had received intelligence that one such trainer, Hayden Ryder, based at Churchill Downs, was still using the methods of the past and injecting his horses much closer to race time than was permitted, relying on a hefty dose of Lasix on race day to wash traces of the illegals out of their system.

And who could really blame him. The potential gains were huge and typical penalties for getting caught very modest — a fifteen-day ban and a maximum fine of one thousand dollars.

The date of the raid was set for very early on the coming Saturday morning, the day of the Kentucky Derby, the aim being not so much to remove a miscreant trainer from the sport as to get maximum media coverage to demonstrate that horseracing will not tolerate cheating.

It was to be a major media moment.

Today was Monday. The raid was due in five days. That would give Ryder plenty of time to get rid of the evidence if he was made aware of what was going to happen. It might even give him the opportunity to arrange transportation of horses elsewhere to prevent them from being tested.

I read through everything in the package twice, including Tony’s handwritten list of those present at the planning meeting.

I recognised most of the names. Section chief Norman Gibson was on the list, as was Frank Bannister, together with the other seven FACSA special agents I had met earlier in the day. In addition there were two others from the section: one of the intelligence analysts plus an admin assistant.

Tony had told me he had been present at the meeting but there had been two other senior agency staff there as well — the head of the resource planning office, and the assistant director in charge of security.

Would one of these fourteen people really pass on information to Hayden Ryder?

And, if so, why? For what gain?

National Airport, or Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to give it its full title, was only a couple of miles from the FACSA offices and I was there in good time for my flight.

As I waited at the gate for boarding to commence, I discovered that I was not alone among strangers. Three of the FACSA special agents were there too.

‘Hi, Jeff,’ Bob Wade said, walking over to where I was waiting. ‘How did you get on this flight? I thought all seats were taken. Steffi is having to go through Chicago.’

Oops!

I thrust my boarding pass for seat 8C into my trouser pocket.

‘I’m a standby,’ I said. ‘I get on only if there’s a no-show.’

Bob seemed to accept my hastily made-up explanation.

He came and sat down next to me while the other two took the seats opposite.

‘You’ve met Cliff Connell and Larry Spiegal?’

‘Sure,’ I said, leaning forward and shaking their hands. ‘We met yesterday.’

‘What is it yer do?’ Larry asked in a deep Southern drawl.

‘Much the same as you,’ I said, ‘but in England.’

‘I went to England once,’ he said slowly. ‘With a friend when I was in college. Absolutely loved it. The best thing was y’all being able to drink booze at eighteen without a fake ID.’ He laughed. ‘I remember we made the most of that. Sadly, now, I reckon I can’t remember much else.’ He laughed again and Bob joined him, producing his rapid-fire guffaws.

The flight was called and Bob, Cliff and Larry went to board. I remained seated.

‘Good luck,’ Bob said. ‘See you in Louisville.’

I watched them go through the gate and down the jetway to the plane.

I waited until the very last minute to board and then made my way down to 8C only to find that I was seated right next to Cliff Connell.

‘Made it then?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I replied sitting down. ‘Must be my lucky day. Where are Bob and Larry?’

‘Farther down the back.’

I strapped myself in and we taxied out to the runway for take-off.

The flight was scheduled to take two hours, not enough for a full meal service, but about half an hour in the flight attendant came through the cabin with a trolley offering drinks for purchase.

‘Fancy a beer?’ I said to Cliff.

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘On duty?’

‘Armed,’ he said quietly in my ear while lightly touching his jacket beneath the left armpit.

‘Really? Don’t you get stopped at security?’

‘I have authorisation to carry a concealed weapon at all times. All federal special agents do.’

‘I thought guns and planes didn’t mix.’

‘I wouldn’t really want to use it while airborne,’ Cliff said with a smile. ‘But I always have it with me, just in case.’

And they did go horribly wrong. At least, I thought so, although the others seemed to be remarkably happy with the outcome.

Everyone was ready well before the 6 a.m. call and it quickly became apparent why the agents’ baggage had been so heavy — body armour.

Each special agent was wearing a dark blue bullet-proof vest with FACSA in large yellow letters on the front and back. In addition they were all in matching uniform of dark blue trousers, a lighter blue shirt and black baseball cap, again with FACSA embroidered in yellow above the peak.

There was no attempt now to hide the weapons, their Glock 22Cs visible in full sight in gunslinger-style holsters attached to the agents’ belts and tied around their legs above the knee with black straps.

They were also wired with personal radios, with earpieces on curly wires, and microphones attached to their non-gun wrists.

The final touch was a shiny gold badge with ‘Department of Justice’ and ‘US Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency’ embossed around the edge and a large ‘Special Agent’ stamped across the middle. Secured to the front of each agent’s bulletproof vest above the heart, they reminded me of the toy sheriff’s star I’d pinned to my cowboy outfit as a child.

The sky was still totally black as Norman ushered the eight special agents into a line on the dot of six o’clock.

‘Does everyone know their roles?’

He received eight thumbs-up.

‘Justin and Mason, are you sure you’re happy?’

Justin Pickering and Mason Rees were the two agents who had arrived late via Atlanta the previous evening.

They both nodded. ‘We’re ready, boss,’ one of them said.

At that point, a black Chevy Suburban pulled up in front of the line and Tony Andretti climbed out from the back seat. He was wearing a dark suit as if for a day at the office, save for the earpiece already in his ear.

Norman Gibson stepped forward to greet him and the two men shook hands.

I, meanwhile, was hovering at the far end of the line, having previously asked Norman to introduce me to the Deputy Director.

Tony walked briefly along, stopping once or twice to talk to the agents. Then he came straight towards where I was standing.

‘Deputy Director,’ Norman said, ‘can I introduce Jeff Hinkley? He’s an international observer from England.’

‘Delighted to meet you,’ I said, shaking Tony’s offered hand.

‘What organisation in England?’ he asked.

‘The British Horseracing Authority.’

‘Then this operation should be up your alley.’

‘So can I come with you?’ I asked.

‘I don’t see why not,’ Tony said. He turned to Norman. ‘What do you think?’

‘Sure. It is only a rehearsal,’ Norman said. ‘No problem.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘OK, everyone, let’s load up.’

Even though there was a fleet of half a dozen black vans available, identical to the one in which Tony had arrived, the transport on this occasion was a military vehicle, identical to the ubiquitous American school bus, but painted dark blue rather than the regular bright yellow.

The three USDA veterinarians were already on board and no one had told them it was a rehearsal — because it wasn’t.

I had recommended to Tony that he should wait as late as possible before informing his special agents about the switch from rehearsal to real thing, so that no one would have the opportunity to make a call or send a warning text. But I hadn’t expected him to leave it as late as he did.

The journey from the Kentucky Air National Guard facility to the backside barns of Churchill Downs was only four miles.

We had turned off I-264, with the iconic twin spires of the grandstand almost visible in the pre-dawn twilight, before Tony stood up at the front of the bus.

‘Listen up, please, ladies and gentlemen.’ He spoke loudly and had the instant attention of all. ‘The operation has been brought forward. This is not a rehearsal. I repeat. This is not a rehearsal. We will arrive at Hayden Ryder’s barn at Churchill Downs in precisely two minutes. I trust you will perform your duties with the usual FACSA expertise and proficiency. Good luck.’

I was trying to watch their faces to see if I could detect any emotion, perhaps a touch of panic that information given to Hayden Ryder in good faith had now been rendered inaccurate.

From the look of his eyes, Norman Gibson was not at all happy. I couldn’t blame him. He was meant to be in charge of this operation but he, too, had been unaware of the switch. There was also some surprise among the others and a couple of murmurs of disapproval, but nothing particularly obvious in the way of panic.

Cliff Connell, sitting right opposite me, simply shrugged his shoulders and removed his Glock 22C from its holster. He checked once again that the magazine was full, and then cocked the weapon by pulling the slide back sharply and releasing it.

He saw me watching him and smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The safety’s still on.’

But I did worry, and I was beginning to wish I had a bulletproof vest like the rest of them.

I sat on the bus for the next two hours, by which time the whole area round Ryder’s barn had been cordoned off with bright yellow ‘POLICE — DO NOT CROSS’ tape by the Louisville Police.

From my vantage point, I watched as a black van with ‘County Coroner’s Office’ painted in white lettering on its side arrived and drove up to the barn.

A little while later, the van departed, carrying, I presumed, the mortal remains of Hayden Ryder.

Soon after that the three veterinary technicians were called forward to collect blood samples from the horses.

That left me alone on the bus. Even the driver had deserted me and I hadn’t seen Tony since before the raid had gone in.

Meanwhile, life on the Churchill Downs backside went on as usual with horses being prepared from the other barns for their daily workout on the track.

True, there were more members of the media on site than might be normally expected three days before a big race, and the crews were from the TV news networks rather than from the sports channels, but the welfare and training of the horses still had to go on. It seemed it would take more than the shooting of a trainer to derail the Kentucky Derby juggernaut.

With over 170,000 spectators expected for the main event, some having paid in excess of $6,000 for a single ticket, it was the big annual occasion for Louisville. Every hotel room was full for a hundred miles around, and you had more chance of walking on water than getting a dinner reservation in a city-centre restaurant.

But only for the first Saturday in May.

For the rest of the year, Louisville returned to its regular, sleepy existence where the tourist highlights included an educational visit to the Louisville Slugger baseball-bat factory, or nostalgic trips to the birthplace and grave of Muhammad Ali.

There was a debriefing for the FACSA raid team at four o’clock that afternoon, back at the mess hall of the National Guard facility.

Most of them had spent some of the preceding eight hours being individually interviewed by detectives from the Louisville Police Department’s fatal-shooting investigation team.

‘It is perfectly routine,’ Tony told me on the phone when I called him well away from the others. ‘There’s a standard procedure for all officer-involved shootings. Such events bring intense media scrutiny and we have to guard against any damage to the agency’s reputation. Hence the local police conduct a detailed enquiry and interview everyone involved.’

‘I wasn’t interviewed,’ I said.

‘The fatal-shooting investigation team is only concerned with events up to the moment the shots were fired. You were not a witness to the actual shooting so I didn’t give them your name. I thought it was best to keep you out of it.’

‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Thanks. So what happens next?’

‘The evidence may have to be presented to a grand jury to confirm the killing was justified, although that’s most unlikely in this case.’

‘So you think the killing was justified?’ I asked.

‘Without a doubt,’ Tony said. ‘Ryder attacked a law-enforcement officer with a deadly weapon. That in itself is enough reason for him to be shot.’

‘But surely not ten times.’

‘It can often take more than one shot to bring down a suspect. Our agents are trained to fire multiple rounds in case some of them miss.’

‘I was told your agents are all hotshots,’ I said. ‘Surely they don’t miss.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Tony said. ‘They may be OK on the range but operational situations are very different. A Miami police survey showed that of thirteen hundred bullets fired at suspects, more than eleven hundred missed. And NYPD found barely a quarter fired from under six feet hit their target, with less than a fifth at ten feet.’

‘How many hit Hayden Ryder?’

‘I don’t know yet. The autopsy will tell us. The important thing is that at least one did, and that one was enough to disable him.’

It had done more than that, I thought.

I had spent the day trying to erase from my mind the grisly image of Ryder’s head completely torn apart by an expanding bullet.

I’d seen more than my fair share of killings during my time with the army in Afghanistan but nothing really prepares you for the sudden finality of violent death, the instant wiping out of an active, vivid and cognisant existence, to be replaced by… nothing. Nothing more than a useless rotting corpse.

‘What will you do now?’ Tony asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay on here for the Derby. I wouldn’t want to miss that, but I feel I’m approaching the problem from the wrong end.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘These guys are smart — they don’t get to be federal special agents if they’re not. I can’t hang around forever on the off-chance that our friend will make a mistake. He won’t. And I’ll have wasted my time, and yours. I feel we have to tackle things from the opposite direction.’

‘Explain.’

‘I work best undercover but I’m not using those skills here. Everyone at the agency knows who I am and that severely limits my scope.’

I took a deep breath. In for a penny…

‘I need to get a job on a track backside, maybe as a groom or something, with one of the trainers. FACSA then has to plan a raid on that trainer for some reason and hope our friend somehow tips him off.’

‘Would the trainer be made aware of your existence?’ Tony asked.

‘Best not, at least to start with. I know from experience that being undercover is fraught with danger. It is ten times worse when somebody is aware of the truth. Body language can be a real giveaway.’

‘But how would you know if the trainer had been forewarned about a raid?’ Tony asked.

‘Hayden Ryder couldn’t have packed up the whole of his stable dispensary and arranged to ship out his horses without the help of his staff. Racehorses have to have grooms accompanying them — they would hardly walk onto a truck on their own. Ryder’s whole team had to be involved in the preparations even if they didn’t know the reasons why.’

‘But how will you get a job? Do you have any experience working with horses?’

‘Loads,’ I said. In truth, I’d only had a little. But I was confident around racehorses and that was half the battle.

‘And you’re hardly the right size,’ Tony said.

I was five feet ten inches in my socks, but I was lean and fit. Maybe I was a bit tall and perhaps a tad too heavy to ride young Thoroughbreds, but not to work as a groom.

One thing I had discovered while I’d been waiting at Churchill Downs all day was that, unlike in the UK, the grooms did not ride the horses. That was the preserve of the exercise riders, up-and-coming riders or retired jockeys who would often move from barn to barn, exploiting their skills for more than one trainer.

The grooms were simply there to, well, groom the horses, to muck out their stalls, and to fetch and carry their feed and water. On race days they might get to lead one of their charges over to the saddling boxes and the mounting yard but, in truth, the life of a backside groom was far from glamorous.

Tony wasn’t finished. ‘Most grooms are Latino or African-Americans. An Englishman would surely stick out like a sore thumb.’

He was right.

‘How about an Irishman?’ I said.

I had always been good at speaking with an Irish accent. While at school, I had entertained my classmates by mimicking our headmaster, who had come from County Cork.

‘I can easily pass as an Irishmen,’ I said. ‘I’ve done it before, and I know you have Irish grooms over here. I’ve heard their banter.’

‘Will you try to work at Churchill Downs?’ Tony asked.

‘That might be a bit of a risk. Almost all of the Churchill Downs backside staff came over to Ryder’s barn to have a look at the action at one time or another today and many of them asked me what was going on.’

‘Where then?’

‘How about at Pimlico?’ I said. ‘Isn’t the Preakness run there in two weeks?’

‘It sure is,’ said Tony. ‘But Pimlico isn’t used any more as a regular training centre. Their barns are only open for seven weeks during their spring meet. Better to try Belmont in New York. That’s where the third leg of the Crown is run. There are plenty of full-time trainers at Belmont.’

‘Isn’t Belmont where the Sports Illustrated journalist thought someone was blood doping?’

‘Yes,’ Tony said. ‘Jason Connor.’

‘Right, then I’ll try there. Can you get me a list of Belmont-based trainers, especially those you may have doubts about?’

‘Sure,’ Tony said. ‘No problem. Anything else?’

‘Yes. You told me in London about a raid on a trainer who employed suspected illegal immigrants as grooms. Where was that?’

‘Aqueduct Racetrack. Also in New York, near JFK. Back in February.’

‘Is the use of illegal-immigrant grooms widespread at all tracks?’

‘Cash gambling tends to make racing a cash-rich business. Wherever cash is used to pay staff there will always be illegals working.’

‘Could you therefore send an official letter to all the trainers at Belmont advising them of the severe consequences of employing illegal immigrants?’

‘What for?’

‘If you can fix me a legal work visa, it might help provide a vacancy for me to fill.’

Tony laughed. ‘The letter would be better coming from ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s part of the Department of Homeland Security. They’re responsible for tracking down illegal immigrants. I know the Deputy Director, we’ve been to conferences together. I’ll get him to write the letter.’

‘Best not to tell him why.’

‘I’ll say it’s a follow-up from FACSA’s raid earlier in the year. I’ll recommend he sends the letter to all registered racehorse trainers across the country threatening them with jail for employing illegals.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘But it could happen in extreme cases.’

‘Would your man be prepared to cover the cost of sending a letter to all trainers?’

‘Sure he will,’ Tony said. ‘It’s peanuts compared to what else they spend. Their budget is over five billion a year. I’ll get it sorted straight away — have it done this week.’

‘How about the work visa?’ I said. ‘Preferably in a false name.’

‘What name?’

Think of a common Irish name. ‘How about Patrick Sean Murphy?’

‘Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with someone I know in the State Department.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘And how are the bank statements coming along?’

‘They should be with me this evening. How shall I get them to you?’

‘Can we trust Norman?’ I asked. But it was a rhetorical question. He already knew the true purpose of me being there. If we couldn’t trust him my cover was totally blown anyway, and my future prospects were likely to be severely limited.

‘We have to,’ Tony said.

‘Then give the statements to him to pass on to me.’

‘He’ll want to know what they are.’

‘Then tell him. But best not to say that his bank statements are there too. He might not like that. In fact, you’d better remove his in case he checks, but scan them yourself first for any suspicious deposits.’

‘You don’t really trust him, do you? Not even now.’

‘I trust no one,’ I said.

‘Not even me?’ Tony asked. ‘Not even my mother,’ I said.

And she’d been dead for twenty-five years.

The rest of my time in Louisville was considerably less stressful, although equally exciting, but for different reasons.

The Kentucky Derby was the most hyped sporting event I think I had ever attended and easily outshone the Epsom version for glamour and glitz.

While the Derby at Churchill Downs could not match the pomp and circumstance and the genuine royalty of the original, it attracted the Hollywood ‘royalty’ in abundance, complete with red-carpet entrance where the public was encouraged to stand and idolise the screen superstars as they made their way to Millionaires Row, as the upper level of the grandstand is officially known.

I reflected on the differing attitudes to money that existed on either side of the Atlantic. In the UK, serious wealth is mostly played down by those who have it. To do otherwise is considered rather vulgar. In the United States huge riches are to be applauded, and flaunted at every opportunity.

And Kentucky Derby Week was certainly one of those.

Accompanying the two minutes of the race itself were several days of celebrations with a succession of parties and dinners to satisfy every taste and wallet. Those in the inner circle, and those with the greatest wealth, could secure an invitation to the exclusive black-tie eve-of-Derby gala, an event that regularly creates a lengthy traffic jam of stretch limousines throughout downtown Louisville.

For my part, I spent most of my time shadowing Frank Bannister and, fortunately for me, he enjoyed the good things in life and was not averse to using his federal-special-agent status to gain entry to occasions and activities where his presence was hardly warranted.

Early on Friday morning, Frank drove the two of us in one of the Chevy Suburbans from the National Guard facility to the backside of Churchill Downs, to see the Derby hopefuls in their morning exercise.

Hayden Ryder’s barn was still cordoned off with yellow tape but the local police no longer guarded the perimeter. The horses had gone too, quickly snaffled by other trainers eager to fill their own barns. The police did, however, guard the Derby runners, with a sheriff’s deputy standing watch outside each stall.

‘To stop them getting nobbled,’ Frank said.

I considered it was more of a token presence than true security. Any determined nobbler would have found it dead easy to get past the deputy’s laissez-faire attitude, chatting and joking with the stable staff with only half an eye at best on the actual horse. But it was good for the cameras, as TV crews from all the local stations were invited from barn to barn to observe the stars ‘at home’.

Frank and I joined the racing press on a small bleacher-seat viewing stand as the twenty Derby contenders made their way out onto the track. By this stage, with less than thirty-six hours to the race, the hard training work was done and now it was only a matter of maintaining peak condition and not overtiring the young equine athletes.

‘Come on,’ said Frank after fifteen less-than-exciting minutes of watching the horses gallop. ‘I’ve seen enough. Let’s go to Wagner’s before the rush starts.’

‘Wagner’s?’

‘Wagner’s Pharmacy.’

‘What do we need a pharmacy for?’ I asked.

‘You’ll see,’ he said with a laugh, leading me back to the Suburban.

Wagner’s Pharmacy was on South 4th Street, across from the entrance to the Churchill Downs infield. And it was not a pharmacy as I knew it.

True, it sold its own proprietary racehorse liniment in gallon containers for the treatment of bumps, bruises and strains, but it was most famously known as the place to have breakfast during Derby week.

Frank and I sat down on the only two free stools at the long counter.

‘Two orders of bacon, eggs over easy, toast and grits,’ Frank said to the waitress behind the counter. ‘Plus coffee and orange juice.’

‘Grits?’ I asked.

‘Boiled ground corn,’ Frank said. ‘I was raised on the stuff in Alabama.’

The waitress poured our juice and coffee and, shortly after, delivered two enormous plates of food — two fried eggs each, four or five rashers of crisp bacon, two rounds of toast, a mini-mountain of fried potatoes, plus a side bowl of grits — a white sloppy concoction akin to lumpy wallpaper paste, complete with a dollop of melting butter on the top.

I sampled a small amount and pulled a face.

Frank guffawed loudly. ‘I reckon it’s an acquired taste.’

I concentrated on the eggs and bacon.

‘Eat up yer grits, man. They’re good for you,’ he said, shovelling another great spoonful of the white stuff into his mouth. ‘Full of iron.’

I’d have rather chewed on a rusty nail for my iron than eat grits, but the rest of the meal was excellent and I was soon fit to burst.

‘It’s a tradition,’ Frank said, forcing in yet another mouthful. ‘It wouldn’t be the Derby without a breakfast at Wagner’s.’

Clearly everyone agreed with him and soon a line had formed out on the sidewalk as people waited their turn to get in. As it was, not a spare inch of floor space was wasted with horsemen, media and a few brave tourists crammed together at tables so close together that no one had enough elbow room to cut their bacon.

And it was noisy too, with most of the banter being about the chances of the various horses in the following day’s big race.

‘Fire Point, that big chestnut colt of George Raworth’s, will surely canter up,’ said one man on my left. ‘Destroyed the field in the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct in March.’

‘He’s no chance,’ called the waitress as she delivered more breakfasts. ‘He’s drawn in Gate One and everyone knows that being on the rail is not good. He’ll be swamped in the early running.’

Racing really was the religion in these parts come early May.

‘Did you hear that Ryder was shot seven times,’ said someone behind me. ‘Twice in the head, poor man. Killed him instantly, apparently.’

‘He shouldn’t have tried to stick one of them Feds with a pitchfork,’ said someone else. ‘He had it coming, if you ask me.’

Nobody did, and most of the sympathy was clearly with the dead trainer. Overall, however, I was amazed that Ryder’s death hadn’t caused greater disquiet among the racing fraternity. They seemed to take it in their stride, almost as if sudden violent death was an expected part of the business. Of course, it was, but not often for the human participants.

‘I fancy Liberty Song for the Derby.’ The man on the other side of us said it to no one in particular. ‘He was truly brilliant in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland last month. Won by five lengths easing up.’

‘But he had no competition,’ claimed a man sitting further beyond him. ‘I reckon it will be one of those two West Coast horses that’ll clean up this year.’

Racing chat was the same the world over as punters tried to pick a winner.

The truth was that the starters in the Kentucky Derby were all potential champions. They were the best three-year-old horses in North America, each of them having had to qualify through outstanding performances in some of thirty-five other major stakes races held at tracks all over the country. Points were awarded for the first four home in each race and the top twenty points holders were entitled to a place in the Derby starting gate.

This year there were four horses with far more points than any of the others but that was no guarantee of success. In 2009, the $1.4million prize was carried off by a gelding called Mine That Bird, which had been bought as a yearling for only $9,500. His career before the Derby had not been spectacular, finishing last in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, but he scraped into the Derby field with a win in the Grey Stakes at Woodbine and a fourth-place finish in the Sunland Derby in New Mexico.

No one gave the horse a chance, the press being far more interested in the trainer, Chip Woolley Jr, who had driven the horse himself the 21-hour, 1,700-mile trip from his home to Louisville in a horse trailer attached to a pickup truck, and with his broken foot in a cast to boot.

Yet, Mine That Bird, stone last and so far out of the running for the first half of the race that he didn’t even appear in the TV coverage, slipped through an opening on the rail at the top of the final stretch and romped home to win by six and three-quarter lengths, the longest margin of victory in over sixty years, and at a price of fifty-to-one. It was a lesson in not writing off any of the starters.

Frank and I finished our breakfast and gave up our seats to the next two in the ever-growing queue. He had been absolutely right about beating the rush.

‘Where to now?’ asked Frank as we climbed back into the Suburban.

‘You’re the expert,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been here before.’

He drove us round to the front entrance of Churchill Downs.

‘You’ll never find anywhere to park,’ I said. ‘It’s the Oaks today.’

The Oaks was sometimes called the Fillies’ Derby. It was raced over the exact same course and distance some twenty-four hours earlier, but was reserved for three-year-old female horses.

Frank just smiled at me. Oaks Day was second only to Derby Day itself as a crowd-puller, not least because if you wanted to buy a Derby ticket, you had to buy one for the Oaks as well. Most racegoers, therefore, made a two-day trip of it.

But that didn’t seem to worry Frank.

A quick flash of his ‘FACSA Special Agent’ metal badge and we were welcomed into the restricted parking lot with open arms.

The same tactic allowed us not only to gain entry to the public enclosures but also to jump the sizable line, and to get in for free. It seemed that the simple words ‘security check’, together with the badge, was an automatic ‘Open Sesame’ to every cave of treasures.

‘He’s with me,’ Frank said, when one of the staff asked for my non-existent ticket. I could get used to this, I thought but, to be fair, I too had an ‘access all areas’ pass for every racecourse in Britain.

Even though it was still well before nine o’clock, Churchill Downs was beginning to fill up. The entrance gates had opened at eight and many had been queuing for several hours before that for general admission tickets. Indeed, even twenty-four hours ahead, there was already a line for Derby Day with some hardy folk staking their place early so they could be first through the gates the following morning.

General admission ticket holders did not get a seat and were not able to get much of a view of the track itself, but that didn’t seem to dampen their spirits. They were there to see, and to be seen with, the rich and famous.

‘General admission tickets also give access to the infield through the tunnel,’ Frank said. ‘About seventy thousand will cram into there tomorrow and hardly any of them will even get to see a horse, let alone the race. Most come only to drink and get laid. It’s like a big frat party. The bars open at eight in the morning and everyone’s drunk by lunchtime.’

‘It must be hell if it rains,’ I said.

‘It is hell anyway,’ Frank said, laughing. ‘When it rains the women wrestle in the mud. When it’s dry, they just wrestle. It’s a complete nightmare.’

It was far removed from my mental image of Kentucky Derby Day, with gentlemen in seersucker suits and ladies in haute couture and fine hats, all of them sipping traditional Derby mint juleps.

‘Come on,’ said Frank. ‘Let’s go check out the upper echelons.’

The metal special agent badge again worked wonders as we rose in a special VIP elevator directly to the top floor of the clubhouse, to Millionaires Row and the even-more-exclusive ‘The Mansion at Churchill Downs’, where the admission charge was so high that, if you queried the $700 tab for a single bottle of bubbly, you plainly couldn’t afford it.

We wandered round on the deep-pile carpet between the lush leather seating of the dining area, and then out onto the spectacular terrace doing our ‘security check’. The view was indeed as stunning as the price.

Frank and I completed a full sweep of the clubhouse and the grandstand without finding anything out of place.

‘Do you and the others have a specific job to do here?’ I asked as we went through the private suites on the fifth level.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘They like us to provide a presence and react if necessary. But we won’t get into these sections tomorrow. The Vice President is coming and his security is the job of the Secret Service. They’ll have the place sealed up as tight as a tick.’

‘It must be confusing having so many law-enforcement agencies all working at the same place. Is there an accepted hierarchy?’

‘Not officially, but the Secret Service act like they’re the top dogs.’

‘And are they?’

‘I suppose so. They’re here to protect the Vice President, and what they say goes. They won’t be interested in the racing, only in the people.’

‘While you’ll be busy watching the horses?’

‘I keep an eye out for everything. But the racing integrity work is the responsibility of the state racing commission. They’ll contact us only if they think anything suspicious is going on.’

‘Have they done that before?’

‘A few times. Betting matters, mostly. Especially when someone is trying to avoid paying the tax on their winnings.’

‘Are racetrack winnings taxed?’ I asked with surprise.

‘Sure are,’ Frank said. ‘All gambling winnings are considered to be taxable earnings. Even if you win a car or a trip on Wheel of Fortune, you have to pay income tax on its market value.’

‘So how do people try to avoid it?’

‘Multiple identical bets,’ he said. ‘Any payout over five thousand bucks is subject to hefty withholding tax by the track. So big bets are rare. Much more sensible to have several smaller identical bets on separate tickets. Then, if they win, you collect from lots of different windows, keeping each one below five grand, and don’t tell the IRS anything.’

‘Clever,’ I agreed.

‘Yeah, maybe it is, but it’s also dishonest. And we’re getting wise to that tactic. The IRS is busy installing cameras at the track payouts windows to record faces.’

‘Spoilsports.’

He laughed. ‘Whose side are you on?’

‘Not the taxman’s,’ I said, ‘that’s for sure.’

‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘Anyway, some big gamblers now get their friends and family to collect for them so that no one individual collects more than five grand. But then those people are required to declare it on their own 1040s, or Uncle Sam might come knocking. There’s nothing as certain as death and taxes.’

‘It still seems unfair to tax a slice of good luck.’

‘Lotto and casino winnings are taxed too. You know those people who put a dollar in the big slot machines in Vegas, pull the handle, spin the reels and win a million? You see it sometimes on the TV.’

I nodded.

‘The IRS takes a quarter straight off the top, there and then. And there’s more to pay the following April fifteenth.’

I shook my head in disbelief.

‘What happens in England?’

‘There is no tax on racetrack winnings. Whatever it says on the ticket, that’s what you get. It’s the same for all gambling. All payouts are free of any form of tax.’

‘Even the lottery?’

‘Absolutely. Every sort of winnings.’

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll move to England.’

I finally turned out my bedside light at almost two in the morning. Not that I’d been partying the whole time.

Frank and I had returned to our quarters about eleven but I had spent the next three hours continuing my examination of the bank statements of FACSA’s racing section.

In the first pass, I had discovered not a single suspicious deposit into any of the accounts. But I hadn’t really expected to. Someone who had been clever enough so far to avoid detection would not have been so stupid as to make large payments into their own personal bank account.

They might, of course, have a second bank account, which they hadn’t declared. But that wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Every US bank is required to disclose the names of all account holders to the tax authorities, together with their dates of birth and Social Security numbers.

Maybe the mole was using an offshore account.

However, that option was also fraught with danger. Under the new Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the US Treasury forced a deal with over a hundred other countries compelling their banks to report the names of all US citizens holding accounts with them directly to the IRS. Even the traditional offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands had all signed up.

Basically, hiding illicit money in a bank anywhere is now extremely difficult, and is getting more so every year as governments bring in new anti-money-laundering measures.

So what is the alternative?

Cash.

We all use cash at some time — for burgers at McDonald’s, taxi fares, milk at a convenience store, even a wager on the horses. Sure, these days, we could probably pay with plastic if we had to, but no one blinks an eye at our using cash.

How about if we also paid cash to fill the car with fuel? Or for the weekly groceries? Even buying an expensive Christmas present for the wife or kids?

Still no one would question our cash in hand.

Indeed, under US law, it was not necessary to report any cash transaction under ten thousand dollars.

So I started to search through the bank statements again, looking for an account that had absolutely no cash withdrawals, no ATM records, and where other transaction activity was sparse, perhaps indicating that utility and other bills were also being settled with cash.

The columns of figures finally drove me to sleep.

But it felt like I had been dead to the world for only a short while when I was woken by a furious slamming of doors and the sound of feet running along the corridor.

Bleary-eyed, I stuck my head out.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Steffi Dean as she appeared from her room fully dressed in her FACSA uniform, including bulletproof vest and holstered Glock 22C.

‘We’ve been scrambled,’ she said. ‘There’s trouble at the track.’

As Frank had suspected, our movement throughout the grandstands was much restricted compared to the previous day. Indeed, I was lucky to be able to get in at all as I didn’t have a magic badge and a simple ‘I’m with him’ didn’t seem to work with the gateman today.

‘No ticket, no entry,’ he kept repeating.

Fortunately, Frank was able to rustle up Norman Gibson on his mobile phone, and he soon arrived, together with the racetrack head of security. Eventually the gateman relented and allowed me through, but he clearly didn’t like it. Perhaps he thought I looked a bit shady, and he was probably right. I hadn’t had a shave for four days, not since I’d decided to go undercover as a groom, and I was already sporting some substantial stubble.

If I thought that the Gold Cup at Cheltenham or the Grand National at Aintree were jam-packed, it was nothing in comparison to Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day.

At least at Cheltenham and Aintree it was just about possible to move from the grandstands to see the horses in the paddock and then get back to the stands to watch the race. Here, it was virtually impossible.

Several hundred of those with general admission tickets had no intention of ever seeing the race itself. They had arrived early to bag a preferred spot on the paddock rail from where they would not budge, couples taking turns to elbow their way to the restrooms and the beverage outlets, so as not to lose their place. In the grandstand boxes, suites and glass-fronted restaurants, meanwhile, the patrons wore their tamper-proof, colour-coded wristbands with pride and tended to stay where they were between races, venturing only as far as the nearest bar or betting window.

As the afternoon progressed, the excitement built, with rock bands playing in the infield and a string of A-list celebrities swaggering along the red carpet. At two o’clock, the Vice President arrived in a bulletproof limousine with much fanfare and the playing of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’.

There was some general dismay among the crowd that three of the best horses had been scratched from the race but it didn’t seem to diminish people’s enjoyment unduly.

Frank and the other FACSA special agents were assigned to assist with enhanced security measures for the Derby horses, so I made my way through the grandstands to find somewhere to watch the racing. That sounds easier than it actually was because, unlike on British racecourses, there was no standing concourse at the front. Rather, the ticketed seating went right down to the running rail.

I managed to talk myself past another gateman and into a spot in front of a temporary grandstand on the clubhouse turn, but it lacked any shade and, boy, it was getting hot, with the sun baking down from a cloudless sky. I began to wish I had one of the straw hats that were clearly popular all around me.

But I couldn’t leave my position to buy one or to find some other shade. With only a few hours to go to Derby post time, every vantage point had been seized by the tens of thousands without a reserved seat. If I left my spot now, I’d never get back, even if I could again talk myself past the gateman.

I started seriously to envy those upstairs in the air-conditioned luxury of The Mansion at Churchill Downs, enjoying a five-course Derby lunch while imbibing their seven-hundred-buck vintage champagne.

As in the UK, the first few races of the day were scheduled at half-hourly intervals, but here, as the afternoon progressed, the periods between races became longer. There was more than an hour between the ninth and tenth races and then almost a two-hour break before the Kentucky Derby itself.

I thought the crowd might have gone off the boil a bit during this extended period but the excitement was cranked up by the ‘Derby walkover’, when the seventeen equine participants were led from the barns on the backside round the track to the paddock to be saddled.

Each horse was accompanied by its owner and trainer, along with their various family members, friends and, of course, a sheriff’s deputy, all of them cheered to the rafters by the expectant spectators.

The full green-and-yellow brigade was there in force, the striped shoes getting covered with dirt from the track. The brash owner looked far more circumspect now as the nervousness had set in with fifty minutes to post time.

Fire Point, the big chestnut colt trained by George Raworth, was now the only one of the top-four points scorers still in the field and he was the overwhelming favourite.

I watched as he was walked past me led by a groom wearing a huge white bib with the number ‘1’ emblazoned large on both back and front.

I remembered back to what the waitress had said at Wagner’s.

He’s drawn in Gate One and everyone knows that being on the rail is not good. He’ll be swamped in the early running.

According to the race-day programme, which contained every Kentucky Derby statistic known to man, the race had been won eight times by a horse drawn in Gate 1, although the last of those had been over thirty years ago.

Would Fire Point break the mould?

We would soon find out.

A mile and three-sixteenths

Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, Maryland

‘Can you ride?’

‘To be sure, sir, I can,’ I answered in my best ex-headmasterly Cork accent.

‘You’re a bit tall.’

‘I blame my parents, sir,’ I said. ‘They fed me too well when I was a wee lad.’

My interviewer laughed. His name was Charlie Hern and he was the assistant to George Raworth, the Derby-winning trainer of Fire Point. I took him to be in his mid-thirties but he looked older, having already lost most of his hair.

‘You won’t have to ride the horses anyway,’ he said. ‘We have exercise riders for that. But it might be a bonus.’

He looked again at the slightly battered Green Card he was holding in the name of Patrick Sean Murphy complete with my picture and thumbprint. A Green Card’s official name was a United States Permanent Resident Card (USCIS Form I-551) and Tony Andretti had worked a miracle with the State Department to have mine delivered to his home the previous day.

It meant that I, as Patrick Sean Murphy, had the right to work legally in the United States.

Not only was the name on the card false but so was the date of issue, as it stated that I had been a US permanent resident for the past three years. Consequently I had spent some time the previous afternoon ‘aging’ the card by rubbing it under my shoe on a concrete floor.

The man shuffled once again through my equally fake testimonials while I stood in front of him without speaking, waiting.

‘Why did you leave Santa Anita,’ he asked, tapping one of the references.

‘Too hot, sir,’ I said. ‘Especially in the winter. I prefer me winters cold, same as at home, like.’

He was silent for a moment, then he shuffled the papers together.

‘OK, Patrick,’ Charlie said finally. ‘You’ll do. We’ve just had to let a groom go, so we’re shorthanded here at present. Can you start immediately?’

‘Indeed I can, sir,’ I said, smiling broadly at him. ‘And please call me Paddy.’

‘All right, Paddy,’ he said, handing me back the Green Card. ‘You’ll be paid minimum wage and half of it will be withheld for your room and board.’

I had looked up the minimum wage. I hadn’t been particularly impressed.

‘Where do I sleep?’ I asked.

‘Keith will show you. He’s the barn foreman so you do as he says.’

Keith had been standing next to me throughout the short interview.

We were in an office at the end of a training barn on the backside of Belmont Park Racetrack in New York. It was Wednesday morning, four days after the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and two days after every racehorse trainer in the United States had received a strongly worded letter of warning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement concerning the employment of illegal immigrants.

‘And Paddy,’ said the assistant trainer as I turned to leave, ‘Mr Raworth expects absolute loyalty from his staff. You will do as you are told without question. You will not discuss your work with others, and you especially will not speak to the press about any of the horses. Do you understand?’

I turned back to face him.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

Keith and I went outside.

‘Where’s your stuff?’ Keith asked.

‘Me life’s all in here,’ I said, indicating the canvas holdall over my shoulder.

Keith led me round the side of Raworth’s barn to a two-storey building that was desperately in need of a coat of paint.

‘In here,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘Do you want to share with a Mexican or a Puerto Rican?’

‘You keeps half me wages and then you makes me share a room?’

‘Take it or leave it. We have others after jobs, you know.’

‘The Mexican,’ I said, for no particular reason.

Keith showed me into a room that reminded me of a prison cell as depicted in a British TV sitcom of the 1970s. It was uniformly grey with a set of bunk beds taking up almost half the available floor space. In the corner, at the foot of the beds, were two wooden lockers stacked one upon the other, plus a hard, upright wooden chair. And overlaying everything was the smell of cheap disinfectant mixed with the characteristically pungent ammonic ‘horsey’ aroma.

There was no sign of my roommate.

‘Yours is the top,’ Keith said.

‘Bed or locker?’ I asked.

‘Both.’

‘And the jacks?’

He looked at me quizzically.

‘The jacks, man?’ I said. ‘The bleeding lavvies?’

‘If you mean the bathroom, that’s down the end of the corridor. You share it with four other rooms.’

It made my former life in the army look rather luxurious.

‘Dump your kit and I’ll show you the rest of the place,’ Keith said.

I tossed my bag onto the top bed and followed him out.

The ‘backside’ at Belmont Park was not actually in the back of the racecourse but to the side, situated around a second exercise track set close to one end of the main racetrack.

The barns were similar to those at Churchill Downs insofar that they were long thin structures, but these were enclosed at the sides rather than open, perhaps reflecting the fact that New York was further north than Louisville. And, whereas Churchill barns were white with green roofs, those at Belmont were the opposite.

Keith and I walked down alongside George Raworth’s barn. There was little chance of confusing his barn with any other. The initials GR were emblazoned everywhere and there was already a workman screwing a white sign to the green outside wall that read, Home of Fire Point. Winner of the Kentucky Derby.

‘That was a great day last Saturday,’ Keith said. ‘Now for the Preakness.’

‘Is Fire Point here?’ I asked.

‘Sure is,’ he said. ‘We flew back together from Louisville on Sunday afternoon. He’ll stay here now until he goes down to Maryland.’

‘Will he fly there?’ I asked.

Keith shook his head. ‘He’ll go by truck. It’s only two hundred miles from here. We could probably go down only the day before the Preakness but Pimlico demands that all the horses are down there earlier. It helps them market the race to the public. I expect we’ll go Monday. That would be usual.’

‘Does Mr Raworth have his own barn at Pimlico?’ I asked.

‘No. He did once but they’ve closed the barns there now, except for during the actual meet. I expect we’ll use the Stakes Barn.’

A Stakes Barn was where a trainer would keep a horse brought in especially for a big race when he didn’t have a barn of his own at the track. It would normally be shared by several trainers.

‘Do you think Fire Point will win?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Sure, he’ll win,’ Keith replied with unshakable confidence. ‘He’s in great shape. He’ll win the Belmont too.’

We walked over to a blue pickup truck.

‘Get in,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll show you around and get you registered.’

First we went to the backside office where I was issued with a groom’s photo ID card on a lanyard that I was expected to wear round my neck at all times, and handed a printed sheet of rules and regulations that mostly consisted of dire warnings not to smoke anywhere near the barns.

Next, we set off round the site. The backside at Belmont Park was considerably bigger than that at Churchill Downs, the barns being more spread out and separated from each other by smart white railings. It was like a small town with a recreation hall, learning centre, chapel, medical facility, even a bank branch where employees could cash their pay cheques and wire money home. But there was also the quirky side to the place — roosters pecking at undigested oats on the dungheaps, tethered goats acting as lawn-mowers on the grass between the barns, and dogs and cats lying out, warming themselves lazily in the mid-afternoon sun.

Add the occasional neighing of the horses and it was more like a tranquil rural oasis than the actual reality, squeezed as it was between a busy suburb and a six-lane highway of a major metropolis.

‘You eat here in the track kitchen,’ Keith said as we pulled up in front of it. ‘You get tokens from me for basic meals. If you want extra, you pay for it.’

We went inside and Keith introduced me to Bert Squab, the manager. ‘Paddy here has just joined Raworth’s,’ Keith said to him. ‘Usual system.’

Bert nodded at him and at me. ‘Supper at six-thirty,’ he said without much friendship in his voice. ‘Don’t be late or it’ll be gone.’

I smiled at him, trying to break through his icy exterior, but without response. In spite of working in a hot kitchen, Bert was solid permafrost.

Keith and I went outside and climbed into the pickup. He drove us back to Raworth’s barn.

‘Here, take these.’ Keith counted a number of plastic discs into my hand. ‘These are meal tokens. These will last you until Sunday. You’ll get more then with the others.’

I put the tokens in my pocket.

‘Evening stables are from four to six,’ Keith said.

‘Which horses do I do?’

‘That’ll be decided by Mr Hern.’

‘How many?’

‘Four or five horses to a groom, it depends on how many we have in. Our barn is one of the larger ones here. It has thirty-two stalls and we’re usually pretty full — today’s count is twenty-eight. We also have two other permanent barns, one at Del Mar in California and the other at Gulfstream in Florida. Mr Raworth splits his time between the three, the fall at Del Mar, winter in Florida and the rest of the time either here or upstate at Saratoga where we all go for six weeks in the summer.’

‘So he’s here right now?’ I asked.

‘Certainly is,’ Keith said. ‘Arrived back from Louisville last evening for today’s racing.’

‘Here at Belmont?’

He nodded. ‘We race here throughout May, five days a week. Mr Raworth is coming over from the track to see everyone at four, so don’t be late.’

I could see that ‘don’t be late’ was going to be my mantra as long as I was here.

I went back to the bunkhouse and lay on my bed to do some thinking.

I very quickly slipped into the routine of George Raworth’s barn.

Other than Keith, the barn foreman, there were seven full-time staff, including Maria, plus a yard boy who was clearly the oldest of us all, using his ever-present broom more as a support than for actual sweeping.

Maria showed me where the stable equipment was stored.

‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her, trying to be friendly.

‘I came here January as hot-walker,’ she said haughtily, still unhappy, ‘but I should be groom by now. I have done my study.’

A hot-walker was someone employed simply to lead the horses around as they cooled after exercise. It was the lowest rung on the horse-care ladder.

‘But I am still treated by boss as mere hot-walker.’ She sighed and drew herself up to her full height, posing and pouting with obvious irritation. Her facial expression reminded me of a flamenco dancer.

I berated myself slightly for fantasising about Maria cavorting around a dance floor in high heels. I was not here to chase the female stable staff.

‘Is being a hot-walker all that bad?’

‘I want better,’ she said. ‘How come you are groom already when I be here much longer?’ She turned and walked off, gyrating her hips in an overly belligerent manner. I found it rather sexy, and she knew it.

I sighed and went to work.

I cleared the soiled bedding in stalls one to four and replenished the straw for the equine residents, placing the waste into the huge grey metal skips that were earmarked for the purpose at either end of the barn.

I was quite surprised to see that straw was in widespread use, the preference in the UK having moved towards wood pellets, shavings or shredded newspaper.

As Keith had told me earlier, the barn had thirty-two stalls — two blocks of sixteen built back-to-back down the centre — with a wide covered walkway called a shedrow that ran right around the building inside the exterior walls.

The stalls, like the rest of the building, were constructed from wood and they opened onto the shedrow so that the horses were able to look out over half-doors.

At each corner of the barn was an exit with a sliding door. During the day the doors were left open with only a single bar across the gap to prevent any loose horses from escaping.

The doors were slid shut at night but not locked. The wooden structures, together with large quantities of straw and hay, meant that fire was always uppermost in people’s minds and large signs with ‘No Smoking/Prohibido Fumar’ hung from the rafters every twenty feet or so along the shedrow.

The barns at Belmont were fitted with sprinkler systems but, nevertheless, locked exit doors would hamper the evacuation of the horses if the worst was to happen, as had occurred in 1986 when forty-five top Thoroughbreds, collectively worth several million dollars, had all died one night when fire destroyed barn 48 on the eastern edge of the site.

‘Equine viral arteritis,’ Tony said. ‘EVA.’

‘What is that?’

‘It’s a disease caused by a virus. The three horses at Churchill have tested positive for antibodies in their blood. There’s no doubt. It seems it is quite common in some breeds but less so in Thoroughbreds.’

I’d never heard of it

‘How did they get it?’ I asked.

‘Strictly speaking, according to one of the veterinarians I spoke to, EVA is contagious rather than infectious,’ Tony said. ‘It is a respiratory disease but horses have to have their noses in contact to pass it on, as the virus exists in their nasal discharges — snot to you and me — rather than in the air. But it can also be transmitted via any nasal droplets left on shared tack or feed bowls, anything that is moved from one animal to another, as long as it is done immediately.’

‘How long is the incubation period?’

‘Anywhere from three to fourteen days depending on the strain of the virus and the amount transmitted.’

‘That means that one of them couldn’t have given it to the other two because all three went down with it on the same day. So where did it come from initially?’

‘Maybe there was another horse with a mild case of the disease,’ Tony said. ‘It seems that some horses don’t show any clinical symptoms when infected but they still shed the virus and so can infect others.’

‘Can you find out when those three horses arrived at Churchill Downs and where they stayed when they were there? If you can, find it out for all the Derby runners. See if any were together in a Stakes Barn.’

‘I’ll contact the Churchill backside manager,’ Tony said. ‘He must have had a list of where each horse was housed to know where to detail the sheriff’s deputies.’

‘Also try to discover if there’s anything else that might be a common denominator for those three. Perhaps they flew to Louisville on the same flight or something.’

‘OK,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll get on to it. Oh yes, there’s one more thing. We’ve had the results back from the samples taken from Hayden Ryder’s horses after he was killed in the raid at Churchill. At least half of them were dosed to the eyeballs with the steroid stanozolol and had obviously been running with it in their system.’

‘That’ll be why he was trying to ship them out to Chattanooga.’

‘Stupid man,’ Tony said. ‘Hardly worth dying for.’

I agreed.

‘Anything else?’

‘Not that I can think of at the moment,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you again tomorrow, same time.’

‘I’ll be here.’

I went back into the recreation hall. Maria was now sitting on one of the young men’s laps holding court, and cousin Diego was almost beside himself with rage. Meanwhile, the baseball was in the bottom of the fifth inning, not that anyone was taking much notice any longer.

There was now a far more interesting game to watch — sexual electricity.

I left them to it.

One of my greatest frustrations at working undercover was that I’d had to leave my laptop and iPhone at Tony’s house — a groom working on minimum wage would never have such things — and I desperately wanted to do some Internet research on EVA.

I left Maria to her admirers and sat myself at one of the recreation-hall computer workstations, the one at the far end closest to the wall. I angled the screen such that prying eyes could not see what I was reading.

According to a veterinary website, equine viral arteritis had been first isolated as a separate disease in horses in Ohio in the 1950s, although it had been blighting horses around the world for centuries. It was easily confused with other equine respiratory diseases such as influenza or herpes, and could be confirmed only by the detection of EVA antibodies in blood.

Most infected horses, even those badly affected with the associated hives, conjunctivitis and swelling of the legs, made complete clinical recoveries in three to four weeks without any specific treatment other than rest.

I learned that, apart from the snotty discharge route, it could also be sexually transmitted from stallion to mare.

What’s more, the virus was able to remain permanently active in equine sperm, totally unaffected by the animal’s natural immune system. It seemed that this was because testicles, both equine and human, are strange organs in immunological terms insofar that they generate proteins that are not present at birth. Nature has had to develop a mechanism to prevent the body’s own immune system from reacting against these alien substances when puberty comes around.

And the same process that prevents the immune system from attacking sperm tissue also means that it can’t kill off any virus that settles in the testicles. Consequently, stallions that become infected continue to shed EVA virus in their ejaculate for the rest of their lives, whilst otherwise being entirely healthy.

The owner I had seen weeping behind the media tent at Churchill Downs was about to have a fresh reason to cry. His hoped-for future stud-fee gold mine had struck iron pyrite — fool’s gold.

Even if the three infected colts recovered sufficiently quickly from the disease itself to become champion racehorses, they would never be permitted to stand at stud for fear of infecting the mares they covered, often resulting in barren seasons or miscarriages.

I also discovered that a vaccine existed against EVA but it was not widely used in the United States or Europe unless there had been a specific outbreak.

The vaccine worked, as did most vaccines, by introducing a quantity of dead virus, which couldn’t infect the horse but nevertheless stimulated the production of antibodies in the blood. These antibodies would remain in the system and immediately kill off any live virus that might subsequently appear, so preventing infection.

Because the illness was relatively rare in Thoroughbreds and generally short-lived without any lasting complications, the racehorse population was not routinely vaccinated.

The only animals for which infection was a serious matter were stallions or sexually mature colts destined to be such. But there was an added problem. If vaccinated, a routine blood test of a colt would confirm EVA antibodies and it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prove that those antibodies were as a result of the vaccine rather than due to the live virus.

Would you then take the chance of breeding the stallion with your best mare?

Hence colts were also not normally vaccinated as a matter of course. It was only given to valuable stallions, when it could be categorically proven by every single test available that they were free of the virus prior to vaccination.

So where did that leave the seventeen other colts that had made it to the starting gate in Louisville the previous Saturday and, in particular, the winner? Any colt that won the Kentucky Derby would be expected to retire to a lucrative career at stud after his racing days were over.

It was now almost five days since the three horses had become ill. With an incubation period of up to two weeks, there were still another nervous nine illness-free days to go before it could be safe to assume that Fire Point and the others had not also contracted the disease.

I clicked off the website and erased the web history. I am sure that some computer whiz kid would have been able to find out precisely what I’d been browsing, and there would definitely be a record on the server, but no one here would casually be able to look.

Next I checked my emails.

Among the usual junk were several messages from work colleagues in London, most of which I was able to ignore.

But there was one from Nigel Green that caught my eye.

He reported that Jimmy Robinson, the jockey nicked for buying banned diuretics in the A34 lay-by, had since been sacked as stable jockey for a top Newmarket establishment. He may not have done anything against the law of the land but British racing valued its integrity.

‘Be warned though,’ Nigel wrote, ‘there’s a strong rumour he’s off to ride for a trainer called Sidney Austin in New York.’

Nigel was one of the very few people at the horseracing authority who knew where I was, and why. Most of the others believed I was on extended unpaid leave, visiting friends in the Far East and Australia.

I scanned again through the list of emails.

There was nothing from Henrietta.

I hadn’t really expected there to be and, strangely, I wasn’t sure if I was happy or sad by the omission.

However, there was one from Faye.

She said that her new course of chemotherapy had started and it was making her tired but, as always, she was positive about the outcome and didn’t complain — although, God knows, she had enough to complain about.

As usual, she was more concerned with me than herself, asking how I was doing and reminding me that I was to (a) get enough sleep, (b) eat healthily and (c) launder my clothes regularly.

I smiled. She couldn’t help herself. Faye had taken over the maternal role when I was eight and she’d been twenty, when our dear mother had died from cancer.

Here we were, twenty-five years later, and nothing had changed.

I wrote back sending her all my love and wishing her success with the treatment. She wouldn’t have wanted me to be too emotional about it, so I wasn’t. I knew she could just about hold everything together provided everyone else was not wailing and whining on her behalf. We all had to be strong individually and collectively.

I also assured her that I was doing all the things she asked, even though privately I thought that getting enough sleep might be a problem. Maria had already told me we had to be at work at 4.30 a.m. now that May was here.

It seemed that George Raworth liked the horses to go out for their exercise before the heat of the day became too great. I couldn’t think why. All the racing at Belmont in summer was in the afternoon when the mercury was at its highest. Surely part of the training should be to get the horses accustomed to running fast when it was hot.

But it had been made very clear to me by Charlie Hern that my place as a groom was not to question anything — it was only to do exactly as I was told.

Other than making calls and sending texts, my non-smart phone had one other function that was useful — it had an alarm, and it went off under my pillow at four o’clock in the morning.

The sky was still pitch-black but there was plenty of illumination coming into the room from the electric security lights that constantly lit up the whole barn area. The wafer-thin curtains didn’t stretch across the full width of the window and were obviously there more for decoration than to provide greater privacy or darkness.

I swung myself down to the floor from my top bunk.

The occupant of the lower was still out for the count and snoring gently. I was tempted to leave him sleeping — if he was late and got fired, I’d not have to put up with the flatulence. However, my good nature prevailed and I tried to rouse him by shaking his shoulder, but to little effect.

In the end I rolled him off the mattress onto the floor and forced him to sit up but, even then, I wasn’t quite sure if he was conscious in the normal sense of the word. I left him there and went down the corridor to the bathroom.

I was, therefore, quite surprised to find Rafael not only upright but dressed and ready for work when I returned, even if his eyes were rather bloodshot.

‘Lo siento,’ he said. ‘Bebido demasiado.’

I smiled at him. I knew siento meant sorry and that was enough. I didn’t expect him to be able to speak English with a hangover.

‘No late,’ I said, tapping my watch.

‘OK.’ He smiled back with his mostly toothless grin.

We went out together to the barn.

Charlie Hern was there ahead of us and he was barking out orders to the other grooms.

‘Paddy,’ he shouted at me.

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

‘All four of yours go out today in stall order. Paddleboat first at five-thirty. Have him ready.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said again. ‘Sure will.’

I turned and calmly walked away, but I was far from composed inside. I thought I’d done my homework about what being a groom involved but, quite suddenly, I felt I was in the deep end, and wearing lead boots.

I went in search of Maria and found her in the tack room.

‘Where are the saddles?’ I asked, looking around at walls draped only with bridles on numbered hooks. There were a few metal saddle racks but all but one were empty.

‘Exercise riders bring their own, stupid,’ Maria said. ‘Where you been?’

Stupid was the right word. I had really only spent any time at racing stables in England and, even then, only as a visitor or as an integrity inspector. The stable lads there not only looked after the horses’ needs in terms of bedding, feed and water, they generally rode them out to the gallops each morning as well. Hence the stable tack room had racks full of saddles, one for each of the lads plus a few spares.

But it was getting increasingly difficult to find good stable lads who could not only ride well, but were of the right size and weight. It wasn’t only jockeys like Jimmy Robinson for whom maintaining riding weight was a problem.

I knew that exercise riders were becoming more popular in the big English racing centres like Newmarket and Lambourn but in the United States, where the training barns were grouped together in clusters at the racetracks, the exercise riders had completely cornered the market. Here a groom could spend his whole life with racehorses and never once sit on one’s back.

Maria showed me which of the bridles I needed.

Each horse had his own bridle with the specific style of bit that the trainer had chosen as the most suitable. Most were simple snaffle bits, but a few were special with extended side pieces for controlling excess sideways motion of the head, or with added rings and straps that prevented the animal rearing.

I selected the correct bridle for Paddleboat and turned to leave.

‘Why you desert me last night?’ Maria asked in an aggrieved tone.

‘You seemed to be enjoying yourself with the others,’ I replied.

She laughed and batted her long eyelashes at me. ‘I only trying to make you jealous.’

Surprisingly, I now realised that she had.

Anchorage Bay ran second in race four, pushing the winner all the way to the line but failing to get up by a neck.

I was just glad he’d made it to the starting gate on time, and that I hadn’t somehow messed up.

George Raworth seemed to be fairly pleased with the outcome.

‘I reckon he’ll win next time out,’ I heard him tell the owner after the race. I was holding the horse’s head as he was unsaddled on the track in front of the grandstand. ‘And he wasn’t claimed so we still have him.’

The owner smiled wanly at his trainer but he was enviously eyeing those having their photographs taken in the winner’s circle. He had wanted to win this time.

‘Well done, Paddy,’ George said to me. ‘He looked nice.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, although the horse’s smart appearance had mostly been down to Maria.

She had come to my rescue again, showing me where the racing bridles were kept, how to prepare the horse to look his best, and when and where I had to take him. In fact, she had stayed by my side all afternoon, walking Anchorage Bay with me through the horse tunnel that ran from the barn area under the main-entrance roadway to the paddock. She also helped take him back to Raworth’s barn afterwards.

Even though there was no touching of hands, or lips, it was clear to both Maria and me that some sexual chemistry did exist between us. We laughed and joked as we washed Anchorage Bay, and she sprayed me playfully with the hose.

Don’t get involved — I kept telling myself. It was far too dangerous.

‘Stop it,’ I said seriously, cutting short her antics. ‘Let’s get the horse back in his stall.’

By which point it was four o’clock and time for evening stables.

I finally finished work at six having been on the go continuously for over thirteen hours. I was exhausted.

‘Do we get double-rate for overtime?’ I asked Charlie Hern as I collected the feed for my horses.

He laughed. ‘Be thankful you have a job in the first place.’

I took that to mean that no, we didn’t.

‘We’re classified as agricultural workers,’ said one of the other grooms who had overheard the exchange. ‘Overtime doesn’t apply until you’ve done more than sixty hours in a single week, and then they don’t count meal breaks or time spent waiting over at the track.’

The European Union Working Time Directive clearly didn’t apply here.

I acquired a new-found sense of admiration for the humble stable lad.

I had a restless night.

When my phone alarm went off at four, I’d already been awake for ages, and I was sore.

Even the slightest of movements sent shock waves down into my groin.

Gritting my teeth, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and lowered myself gently to the floor.

I dug into my plastic wash bag for a couple of painkillers and hoped they would work quickly. Next I walked gingerly along the corridor to the bathroom, feeling sick.

Using the cracked and tarnished mirror above the sink, I examined myself again as best I could. There was a slight darkening of the skin due to bruising but no major swelling and my pee was still clear of any blood.

I decided that I’d live.

In an ideal world I would have lain still on my bed for a day or two to allow the bruising to come out and for recovery to start. But I wasn’t currently living in an ideal world. I had to get to work, not least because I wasn’t prepared to give Diego the satisfaction of seeing that I was off sick.

As it was, I managed to get myself dressed and over to the barn by half past four. Not for the first time, I was glad that Raworth’s grooms didn’t have to ride the horses. That would have been a step too far for the throbbing orbs between my legs.

I readied my four horses for exercise and spent the entire morning moving slowly round with my knees slightly spread apart. Two more painkillers helped and, gradually, things started to return to normal.

I came upon Diego as we were both collecting feed from the store. He said nothing. Instead he repeated his finger-across-the-throat gesture. I just smiled at him but that made him angry and he tipped the feed bowl I was carrying out of my hands and into the dirt.

I sighed.

I could do without this difficulty. It wasn’t that I’d even made a hit on Maria; it was all the other way around.

I did my best to avoid her but she spent most of the morning walking hot horses round and round the shedrow, passing by the stalls where I was working every couple of minutes.

Finally, after I had ignored her for almost two hours, she came in.

‘What wrong with you today?’ she demanded, standing full square in the middle of Paddleboat’s stall.

‘Nothing,’ I said, not turning round and continuing to lay the straw bed for the horse.

‘I watching you,’ she said. ‘You move like Chuck.’

Chuck was the yard boy, eighty years old if he was a day, permanently shaking, and only kept moderately upright by his broom. The way I felt right now, I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with him — he’d have won easily.

‘I caught myself on the bedpost,’ I said, still not turning to face her. ‘I’ll be fine in a couple of days.’

‘You want me apply ice?’ she asked with a laugh.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’

But I couldn’t help smiling.

I let myself into the drug store using my lock picks. I’d already searched the office without turning up anything out of the ordinary.

Saturday evening stables had been brought forward from four o’clock to three, and everyone had worked extra fast so that we had finished everything by five, ready for the big race of the day, the half-million-dollar Man o’War Stakes. All Raworth’s staff not actively involved had rushed off to the recreation hall to view the race on the large-screen TV.

All of them except me. I had volunteered to keep an eye on the barn, plus its residents, while Keith went with Diego and Maria over to the track with our two runners.

I checked my watch — 5.07 p.m.

George Raworth and Charlie Hern would, right now, be readying the two horses in the saddling boxes next to the Belmont paddock.

The race was due off at 5.28.

I had asked Keith to leave the office unlocked so I could watch the race on the television, and he had readily agreed. Being allowed to be in the office meant that searching it was so much easier and far less stressful.

‘I reckon we have a good chance with both of ours,’ Keith had said before he left, hardly managing to control his excitement. ‘There’ll be a bonus for us all if we can win this.’

My bonus would have been to turn up something that would justify a FACSA raid but there was nothing incriminating in either the desk or the filing cabinet, only regular papers concerning such mundane matters as deliveries of feed or bedding, plus the personnel files for the stable staff, which included references and testimonials from previous employers.

I skimmed through them looking for anything from Adam Mitchell that might indicate a prior employment, but there was nothing.

I glanced at Maria’s file. She had been born Maria Isabella Quintero in San Juan City Hospital, Puerto Rico, some twenty-seven years ago, and this was her first job since coming to the United States the previous January. There was nothing particularly remarkable in that. However, the file for her cousin, Diego Ríos, was much more revealing.

Diego was two years older than Maria, and also hailed from San Juan. He had been a groom at Raworth’s barn for a little over a year but he had been in trouble on two occasions in the past four months, since Maria’s arrival. Both were for violence against other grooms, and the second had resulted in his arrest.

According to a letter in the file from Judge Davidson of the local district court, Diego Ríos was subject to something called an ‘adjournment in contemplation of dismissal’, an ACD.

It was a bit like a suspended sentence except that Diego had not yet been convicted of anything.

But he had been charged with one count of assault and the ACD simply meant that his trial had been deferred for six months. The letter went on to say that, provided Diego did not commit another offence of any kind in those six months, the case against him would be dismissed. However, if he did offend again in that time, Diego would go on trial for the assault and, if found guilty, would be jailed for up to one year at Rikers Island, the notorious New York prison.

The letter was dated April 4th. Just one month ago. And it had been sent to George Raworth as the ACD had needed the consent of Diego’s employer to give him ‘the benefit of the doubt’ and to continue with his employment.

So that was why they had to keep an eye on him.

They clearly didn’t give him that much benefit of the doubt, and for good reason. My sore groin was witness to the fact that he had not learned his lesson.

I glanced once more at my watch — 5.10. Eighteen minutes to the race.

The drug store was well ordered with packets of powders and bottles of pills in neat rows on the two upper shelves. Below that there was an open box of sterile needles along with small red-, green- and purple-capped glass Vacutainer test tubes used for taking blood. There was also a supply of multi-sized hypodermic syringes in sealed plastic packs.

Several brown clenbuterol syrup bottles were lined up next to them, and also some packs of stanozolol, the anabolic steroid that the FACSA vets had tested for at Hayden Ryder’s barn at Churchill Downs.

Was Raworth using them too close to a race, just as Ryder had been suspected of doing? Was that a good enough reason to raid the barn?

I had seen no sign of their illicit use, but I looked after only four of the twenty-eight horses. I was also confident that Fire Point hadn’t been on steroids as he’d been tested both before and after the Kentucky Derby and found to be completely clear of any banned substance.

Standing upright on the left-hand side of the second shelf was the stable drug register, a ledger in which all drugs given to all the horses in the barn had to be recorded. At least that is what the New York Racing Association demanded.

I flicked through the pages and looked at the entries for the past few days. The record showed the pre-race injections of Lasix given to Anchorage Bay on Thursday and Teetotal Tiger on Friday, plus the ones given today to the two runners in the Man o’War Stakes. It also recorded the sedatives, hyaluronic acid and Adequan injected into Paddleboat by the vet on Thursday morning. There was also a record of the clenbuterol being administered daily in Paddleboat’s feed.

I checked my watch again: 5.16. Twelve minutes to post-time.

Beneath the shelves of drugs were stacked several cardboard boxes and I briefly took a mental snapshot of their positions before looking in them. One had rolls of unused leg bandages, a second had spare saddle pads and a third was full with plastic containers of disinfectant.

Underneath the boxes, in the corner of the store, there sat what appeared at first to be a rather stumpy beer keg — a heavy metal cylinder about eighteen inches tall and a little over a foot in diameter, with two carrying handles welded to the top. I lifted out the cardboard boxes so I could see it more clearly.

The white cylinder had ‘CryoBank’ painted in blue letters on its side, and it certainly didn’t contain beer — far from it.

The lid was much smaller in width than the cylinder, similar in size and shape to the caps on those large bottles of water used in office drinking fountains, except that it was metal not plastic. There was a slight ‘pop’ sound as I removed it, as if a little pressure had been released. I tried to look in but couldn’t see anything due to a white fog that swirled about inside the container.

I’d seen something like this before, at the equine research hospital in Newmarket. This was a cryogenic flask used to store living cells at very low temperatures, immersed in liquid nitrogen. But what was it doing here?

I remembered asking the laboratory staff at the hospital how often the liquid nitrogen had to be replaced due to it evaporating into the air. Every two or three weeks, they had said, depending on how often the flask was opened and how much material was being stored.

So this flask, which clearly still had liquid nitrogen in it, must have been refilled fairly recently.

I glanced again at my watch: 5.20.

I had to get back to the office in time to watch the race. I needed to know what happened.

The flask had a metal rod clipped to the rim that went down into the tank beneath. I went to touch it but it had frost on the handle, so I folded one of the saddle pads from the box and used it as an insulating glove to lift the rod. On the end was a metal cup containing three straws, similar to plastic drinking straws but rather smaller in both length and diameter. Each of the three contained some deep-frozen material.

I would have loved to remove one of the straws for testing but, with only three there, I was worried it would be missed. But, if I couldn’t take the chance of taking a whole straw, how about if I took just a bit of one? Or would it then stand out as being shorter than the other two?

I went back into the feed store. Hanging on a hook were a pair of scissors used to open the feed bags. I fetched them and cut about half an inch off the bottom of each of the straws, making sure that the bits contained some of the frozen material. I carefully placed them into one of the red-capped Vacutainer test tubes, which I then slipped into my pocket.

5.23.

Time to go.

I returned the three straws to the metal cup, lowered it back into the liquid nitrogen and re-clipped it to the rim as before. Then I secured the lid, returned the saddle pad and restacked the cardboard boxes. I spent a moment checking they were back exactly as I had found them.

5.25.

Satisfied, I relocked the drug store, silently let myself out into the shedrow and went quickly back to the office.

The ten runners were at the start, still having their girths checked. The Man o’War Stakes was run on the turf course that sits inside the main dirt track. The race was over a mile and three furlongs so the starting gate was in front of the grandstand.

With one eye on the TV screen, and with the outer office door shut and locked, I used the picks to let myself into Keith’s bedroom. Maybe I was just naturally inquisitive, but it seemed a shame not to have a quick look in there while I had the opportunity. I might not get the chance again.

Not that there was much to see.

Keith appeared to have very few clothes, hardly enough to fill even half the available locker space. Indeed, he had more well-thumbed copies of hardcore girlie magazines than anything else, mostly spread across the floor under his bed.

Each to their own.

I went back into the office, locking the door to Keith’s bedroom behind me.

‘They’re in the gate,’ called the track announcer through the TV. ‘And they’re off and running in the Man o’War Stakes.’

‘It’s semen.’

‘What?’

‘Semen. Probably equine semen but more tests are needed to confirm it.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ I said.

‘Quite so,’ Tony agreed. ‘But that’s what it is, nevertheless. I dug a biochemistry professor at Columbia University out of bed early on Sunday morning to test it. He swears to me that the stuff you gave to Jim Bradley was semen. Some of the sperm in it were still swimming.’

It didn’t make any sense.

‘Why would a training stable need frozen semen?’ I said. ‘Artificial insemination is not even permissible in Thoroughbreds. All mating has to be done by live cover — the stallion has to physically mount the mare.’

‘Maybe George Raworth is collecting semen from his colts and freezing it to breed from later, even if it’s not permitted by the rules.’

‘I very much doubt that,’ I said. ‘It’s not all that easy to get semen in the first place, not unless you have a mare on heat to get the colt excited. You would also need specialist collecting equipment, and I saw none of that during my search. And what would be the point? He couldn’t use the semen for breeding, anyway. Nowadays, every Thoroughbred foal has to be DNA-tested to confirm its parentage before it can be registered into the stud book.’

‘Then your guess is as good as mine,’ Tony said.

It was Sunday afternoon and I was behind the track kitchen, talking on the telephone. I had purposefully chosen a wide-open space so that no one could creep up to listen to my conversation without being seen. It also had the added advantage that I would be able to see any potential attacker from afar.

I spun through 360 degrees.

No eavesdroppers. And no Diego.

‘So what do we do now?’ Tony asked. ‘Don’t you think we have enough for a raid?’

‘I think we should wait a while longer,’ I said.

‘What for?’

‘Two reasons. First, I am interested in finding out what the semen is used for, and second, I am off to Pimlico tomorrow. I’ll be down there until after the Preakness. There would be no point in planning a raid here at Belmont if I’m not around to see any reaction if Raworth is forewarned.’

‘Is his whole operation moving down to Pimlico?’ Tony asked. ‘We could mount the raid there.’

‘He’s sending only five horses down in a truck — three run in the Preakness itself, and the other two in different races. The rest of them stay here.’

‘How did you manage to get yourself included?’ Tony asked.

‘I was lucky. In the right place at the right time. Four of the staff are going, including me, plus George Raworth himself.’

‘Well, it’s your call,’ Tony said. ‘Can the British do without you for another week?’

‘Paul Maldini was not expecting me back for at least two weeks.’

‘But it has already been two weeks since I met you at Dulles.’

So it had. Somehow, it didn’t seem that long.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I need a bit longer.’

‘Shall you tell Paul or shall I?’ Tony asked.

‘It might be better if it came from you,’ I said. ‘Tell him that I’m not coming back just yet.’

‘How long shall I say you’ll be?’ Tony asked.

‘You said to me in London that you needed me to work for you for as long as it takes. Paul Maldini was at that meeting. He didn’t object.’

I reckoned Paul hadn’t objected because he knew I was contemplating leaving the BHA. He was aware of my unhappiness that I no longer had the opportunity to work undercover. Perhaps he thought it was better to lend me to Tony for as long as it took, and then have me back, than to lose me altogether.

‘Tell Paul that it might take a little longer, that’s all,’ I said. ‘When is the Belmont Stakes?’

‘Not for another four weeks,’ Tony said. ‘You’re surely not thinking of working as a groom until then?’

‘For as long as it takes,’ I said.

We stopped again briefly just outside Baltimore in order to team up with four motorcycles and two squad cars from the city police department, who traditionally escort the Kentucky Derby winner the last few miles to Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness.

It was not so much about ensuring the horse’s safe arrival as getting the event shown on the local TV news channels.

Marketing the race was the key.

It was hoped that in excess of 130,000 spectators would cram into the racecourse on Saturday to watch the big race, and that that one day would bankroll the track for the rest of the year.

With only twenty-eight racing days per year, compared to eighty or more at each of Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, Pimlico had become rather the poor relation of the Triple Crown venues. But it had a proud history, being the first of the three tracks to open in 1870.

The first running of the Preakness Stakes predated the inaugural Kentucky Derby by two years, with the first Belmont Stakes held at Belmont Park being some thirty years after that.

Several TV crews filmed our arrival and there was quite a crowd waiting, as the horse transport pulled up close to the Stakes Barn, which was situated behind the grandstand in a corner of the racecourse site. I did my best to keep out of camera shot, especially face-on. I had no wish to be recognised, not least by any of the FACSA team who might happen to see the transmission. After all, Baltimore was only some forty miles from the FACSA offices in Arlington.

I had been cultivating my beard now for almost two weeks and the growth was reasonably substantial, but it was always the eyes that would give me away. Consequently, I pulled the grubby LA Dodgers baseball cap lower, so the peak cast a deep shadow over my eyes in the afternoon sunshine.

The media lost interest as soon as Fire Point had walked the thirty yards from the trailer to Stall 40 in the Preakness Barn, the traditional Pimlico home of the Kentucky Derby winner.

Above and to the right of the door was a plaque showing the sixteen previous winners of the Preakness who had been accommodated in that particular stall, including the great sire Northern Dancer and Triple Crown champions Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

In truth, it was rather a basic space about twelve feet square with off-white walls and a dirt floor, no different from any of the other stalls in the barn. But traditions are traditions, even if some Derby-winning trainers have recently flouted the convention because they think that Stall 40 is too noisy.

Fire Point didn’t seem to mind, circling a couple of times to investigate his new environment before sticking his head out through the doorway to watch what else was going on.

Keith, Diego, Maria and I then unloaded all the kit plus the other four horses, putting them in their allocated stalls which were not all together, as the barn with Stall 40 was reserved only for those horses due to run in the Preakness itself.

Debenture and Ladybird were in the next barn along and I was told by Keith that I would be looking after them both, a situation that suited me fine as I thought it would keep me away from Diego, at least while we were working.

However, there would be no respite from him at night.

The grooms’ accommodation was up an outside staircase above the horses. As Keith had said, we had two rooms allocated, a small single for Maria, and another only a fraction larger for Keith, Diego and me, the metal bedsteads so close together that they would be considered inappropriate in an episode of I Love Lucy.

I bagged the bed in the corner furthest from the door and, fortunately, Keith took the middle one. The communal bathroom was three doors along the open-air balcony, and was shared with two other rooms, eight people in total.

George Raworth arrived in the white Jeep Cherokee about an hour after us. He parked his vehicle in a space next to the barns and then proceeded to conduct a tour of inspection of his horses to check they had settled into their temporary homes. While he was busy with Fire Point, I took the opportunity to have a quick look through the windows of the Jeep. The white cryogenic flask was there, still standing upright behind the passenger seat. But what was it for?

I went in search of George in the Preakness Barn.

With only five days to go before the big event, security at the barn was already pretty tight with a uniformed guard posted at either end.

‘ID?’ one asked as he blocked my path.

I showed him the groom’s pass hanging round my neck. He scrutinised the photo carefully before letting me through.

Ten horses were expected to contest the big race, making it about an average-sized field for recent times. Final declarations would be on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the draw for starting-gate positions, and all bar one of the ten were already in residence.

Even so, only about half of the barn was actually in use, with many empty spaces. The Raworth three were housed in stalls together down one end with Fire Point in the middle.

The fact that a single trainer had three horses in the field was unusual, but not unique. Nick Zito, Hall of Fame inductee who had worked his way up from hot-walker to become a racing legend, had three runners in the 2005 Preakness. They had finished fourth, sixth and tenth.

Could George Raworth’s trio do any better?

The Preakness post-position draw took place at five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon with all ten of the expected runners declared for the race.

Crackshot had been the last of the contestants to arrive at Pimlico, flying in from Florida only at lunchtime to join the other nine already in the Preakness Barn.

Fire Point had been installed as the favourite in the morning’s edition of the Daily Racing Form with Crackshot a whisker behind. All the others were outsiders in comparison.

Of the two, Fire Point certainly had the better draw. He would be out of trouble in Gate 8 while Crackshot was drawn next to the rail in Gate 1, with both Heartbeat and Classic Comic immediately outside him in Gates 2 and 3 respectively.

George Raworth was clearly delighted and had a smile on his face as big as the Grand Canyon as he was interviewed by the assembled media.

Suddenly, the Preakness roller coaster was under way and Pimlico Race Course was coming to life. Celebrities and politicians would be flying in to Baltimore from all over the country during the next two days in order to be here for the race.

It may not be quite as grand as the carnival that had surrounded the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, but it was big enough, especially on an otherwise quiet weekend for US sports.

And the weather was set fair. Indeed, it was getting hot, with afternoon highs in the mid- to upper-eighties Fahrenheit, dropping down only into the seventies at night. It was so hot, in fact, that Keith had installed two electric fans outside Stall 40 to keep Fire Point cool.

There were no such luxuries for the grooms.

Wednesday night was completely still without a trace of breeze. Even with the door and window of our bedroom wide open, the lack of air meant that getting to sleep was difficult, the situation not helped by having ten horses stabled beneath, pumping out energy from their massive bodies like fiery furnaces.

As I tossed and turned, Diego and Keith seemed untroubled by the heat and went back to their snoring games, which only made things worse.

Eventually, at ten minutes to midnight, and wearing only a T-shirt and my boxer shorts, I took my blanket down the outside staircase and lay on the neatly mown lawn in front of the barn, curling up on the ground as I’d done so often before in the army.

I’d had to cope with higher temperatures than this in the past. July in Kandahar had a daily average well into the nineties and here, at least, I wasn’t wearing full combat kit including body armour and helmet, plus a twenty-kilo backpack and as much again in weapon and ammunition.

Lying on the grass was surprisingly comfortable. I found myself a quiet, dark spot in the shadow of a tree and settled down.

I led Ladybird from the barn to the paddock about thirty minutes before the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and walked right past FACSA Special Agent Trudi Harding, the shooter of Hayden Ryder at Churchill Downs.

She ignored me, not giving me a first glance let alone a second. She was standing with Frank Bannister on a raised platform near the track entrance and they were too preoccupied scanning the faces of the large Friday crowd to notice the groom passing by right under their noses.

Uniquely in my experience, the paddock at Pimlico was indoors, and not at all what British racegoers would expect. Here, instead of being a parade ring where the horses would walk to be inspected, the paddock was an area where the horses stood to be saddled in numbered stalls that corresponded to their post-draw positions.

I held Ladybird’s head as George Raworth and Keith made her ready.

First they placed a thin chamois cloth onto the horse’s bare back to prevent slippage. That was followed by the saddle pad, weight cloth, numbered saddle cloth and finally the saddle, all of them held in place by a wide strap passed under the belly and secured tightly to buckles on either side of the saddle. Over the top of everything, for added safety, went a three-inch-wide webbing over-girth.

Satisfied, George gave Ladybird a friendly smack on her rump as Keith and I led her up the ramp under the jockeys’ room, back into the daylight, and onto the track. George issued jockey Jerry Fernando with some last-minute instructions and a leg-up into the saddle before I handed the horse over to one of the outriders.

Unlike in England, where a horse runs free to the start under the control of its jockey alone, those in the United States are led to the gate by an outrider on a ‘lead pony’, one pony to each runner.

Whereas a ‘pony’ is properly defined as a member of an equine breed in which normal mature horses stand less than fifty-eight inches tall at the withers, the lead ponies at racetracks are often retired Thoroughbred racehorses, and therefore are not ponies at all.

But no one seemed to care as the excitement built.

I watched on the big screen as the horses, plus the ponies, circled behind the starting gate that was situated right in front of the grandstand.

The crowd for the Preakness the following afternoon was expected to be three times bigger but, nevertheless, there was a loud cheer as the gates flew open and the nine runners in the feature race of the day surged forward.

Victor Gomez had been right.

Ladybird was good. Very good.

She led from start to finish, holding off a late challenge to win by a neck.

Understandably, George Raworth was delighted, coming out onto the track with me to lead the horse into the winner’s circle.

I could see both Bob Wade and Steffi Dean standing by the rail. I pulled the peak of my cap lower and kept my eyes down but I think the special agents were more interested in each other than in anyone else.

I had realised that being a groom was, in fact, a very good undercover persona. Grooms were invisible, even more so than waiters in restaurants. Anyone looking my way was staring into the eyes of the horse rather than into those of the man leading it.

I knew of one trainer in England who could readily identify every horse in his hundred-strong yard just by looking at it, even in the rain, but he couldn’t tell his stable staff apart, one from another. Irrespective of their real names, he simply called all his lads ‘John’.

While Ladybird’s owner, trainer and jockey were receiving their trophies from the star of a TV soap opera, Maria and I walked the horse from the winner’s circle to the post-race testing barn.

Here we waited with the horse for almost an hour, whistling and pouring water until Ladybird finally acquiesced and supplied the urine sample the testers required.

Maria was not her usual ebullient self, not speaking to me once during the wait.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ I said, but she didn’t understand the idiom. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked slowly instead.

She nodded. ‘OK.’

‘Then why don’t you say something?’

This time she shook her head. ‘No talk.’

I thought she almost seemed frightened.

‘What has Diego said to you?’ I asked.

‘No talk,’ she repeated. ‘Diego, he say no talk.’

‘Or what?’ I asked.

She definitely appeared frightened this time. She looked all around her with wide eyes and then whispered. ‘Diego say he cut me if I talk to you.’ She traced a fingernail down her cheek from a tearful right eye all the way to her chin.

Diego was getting to be more than just a nuisance. He had clearly decided that it was easier to intimidate his cousin than me, and he was probably right. The sooner he was dragged off in chains to Rikers Island the better.

George Raworth came into Ladybird’s stall when I was still brushing her down after washing away the sweat of her exertions.

‘Well done, my girl,’ George said, patting the horse on the neck in love and gratitude. ‘Great job, Paddy. Now for the Preakness tomorrow.’

He even patted me on the back as well.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope so.’

‘Hope doesn’t come into it,’ George said with a laugh. ‘I believe Fire Point is a sure thing.’

He should know, I thought.

Preakness morning dawned bright and warm without a cloud in the sky, not that I had waited for the sunrise before starting my day’s work. I’d been hard at it for two hours by the time the fiery globe made its appearance in the east.

I had risen earlier than usual to give Debenture his breakfast. His race, the Maryland Sprint Handicap, was due off at half past one in the afternoon and George Raworth had told me that he didn’t want the horse eating within eight hours of race time.

I arrived at the barn at 3.30 a.m. to find Debenture standing upright in the corner of the stall with his eyes closed, gently snoring. I stood silently watching him, marvelling at the fact that such a large bulk could be fast asleep and yet not fall over, especially as he was actually using only three of his legs to stand on, the fourth being slightly bent up with only the toe of the hoof resting on the floor.

Horses are not the only creatures able to sleep standing up. Elephants can also nap on their feet, and flamingos famously do it on only one leg.

In horses, it is due to what is called the ‘stay apparatus’, a natural locking of the limbs that keeps the animal upright while also allowing the muscles to relax. It is thought the ability evolved because early equines were prey, as zebras still are, and the time taken to get up from a lying position before running could mean the difference between life and death.

Not that horses always sleep standing up. They occasionally lie down for deep body sleep, so comfy bedding and enough space are essential.

I waited. I didn’t want to wake Debenture. He was going to have a tiring enough day as it was.

I knew that horses do not normally sleep for very long at a time. In all, they need only about three hours’ sleep in any twenty-four, mostly taken in short naps. And, sure enough, the horse soon woke on its own, snorting twice and shaking his head from side to side.

I gave him his regular breakfast of horse nuts plus feed supplements, and then refilled his bucket with fresh water.

Next I brushed Debenture’s coat, starting with a stiff dandy brush and then finishing with the softer body brush, working backwards and downwards from his head to his feet on each side until his hide was polished to perfection.

Over the past ten days, I had discovered that there was something quite therapeutic about grooming a horse. All of one’s troubles faded away with the strong rhythmic motion of the brushes over the animal’s skin. Even the horses seemed to love it.

I began to understand how a mother could spend so long brushing her daughter’s hair. It probably wasn’t so much for the shine it created but for the relaxing sensation the movement generated in herself.

For a while in the quiet I was even able to forget my ongoing troubles with Diego.

True, we hadn’t had a face-to-face confrontation since I’d spoken to him on Tuesday afternoon, but that hadn’t stopped him trying to disrupt my life at every available opportunity, sometimes in the most childish of ways. I had no proof, but I was quite certain that it had been he who had squeezed my toothpaste out of its tube and smeared it all over my bed.

Sadly, there was no lockable space in our cramped bedroom, so my phone and wallet never left my side, residing inside my boxers even when I was asleep.

The rest of the barn came to life about four-thirty as other grooms came to start work.

The Preakness Barn itself was already a hive of activity when I went over to collect some bedding. I took the chance to walk up the shedrow.

‘Morning, Tyler,’ I said. ‘How’s Crackshot today?’

‘Never better,’ he said, showing me the gold molars.

The big bay colt certainly looked fine, sticking his head out towards me with a sparkle in his eyes.

‘He’s eaten up really well,’ Tyler said. ‘I reckon he’ll win easy.’

Was I wrong about the EVA?

I thought back to Churchill Downs.

Three horses had become sick early on the morning of the Derby, with another showing signs of illness some five days later, most likely as a secondary infection.

If five days was the incubation period, and if Raworth had indeed squirted large quantities of the EVA virus up Crackshot’s nose only fifty or so hours ago, then it would be quite likely that the horse would still look healthy. Whether he would be able to run full pelt for a mile and three-sixteenths in fourteen hours’ time was quite a different matter.

I took the new bedding back to the other barn.

Debenture had also eaten up well, so I prepared him for his light exercise.

Jerry Fernando was due to ride the horse in the race that afternoon and he arrived to give Debenture a warm-up jog, once round the track with a lead pony in attendance. It was more to accustom the horse to his rider, and vice versa, than any serious training.

Ladybird, meanwhile, was having a day off after her efforts of the previous day. So I walked across and stood next to the track to watch the others at exercise.

Eight of the Preakness horses had opted to go out in what was an abbreviated training session. All of Raworth’s three were there, with Jerry Fernando having swapped his saddle from Debenture to Fire Point for a steady half-mile trot followed by a brisk but conservative gallop over three furlongs to open the pipes and expand the lungs.

Crackshot was noticeable by his absence, but there was nothing sinister in that. Some trainers chose not to give their horses track exercise on the morning of a race, wishing to keep them fresh for when it mattered later in the day, while others might be walked for an hour or so to loosen any stiffness in the legs.

Keith had told us that, for the walkover to the track before the big race, Diego and Charlie Hern would take Classic Comic, while I would be looking after Heartbeat, assisted by Maria. Keith himself would be with Fire Point, along with George Raworth.

Diego had scowled when Keith had allocated Heartbeat to me and Maria.

‘I don’t mind swapping,’ I’d said to him, but he had refused to answer. Diego clearly didn’t want me doing him any favours.

That suited me fine.

A mile and a half

Belmont Park, New York

Three weeks after the Preakness

Five weeks after the Kentucky Derby

The Triple Crown jamboree moved on from Baltimore to New York but, with three whole weeks between the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, there was a slight pause for everyone to draw breath.

Fire Point arrived back at Belmont Park on the day after his great success at Pimlico, returning to his stall like some victorious Roman general through a guard of honour provided by the racetrack grooms, not only those from George Raworth’s barn but seemingly from every other barn on the backside as well.

The signwriter had already added and the Preakness Stakes to the ‘Home of Fire Point. Winner of the Kentucky Derby’ board screwed to the outside wall.

The local TV news channels were there in force to cover the homecoming, something that would do no harm at all for the marketing of the final leg. A Triple Crown contender was guaranteed to add tens of thou- sands of extra spectators to the gate come race day.

For my part, I did not look forward to settling back into regular Belmont Park life after the excitement of the week at Pimlico. True, it was a huge improvement to be sleeping again in a room with only the regularly drunk and flatulent Rafael, rather than with both Diego and Keith trying to out-snore one another, but, somehow, the fun had gone out of this particular assignment.

I was beginning to find the daily drudgery of a groom rather monotonous. Perhaps my enthusiasm would return as the Belmont approached, but that still seemed like a long way off.

I suppose happiness in any job has a lot to do with one’s expectation.

For Rafael, working as a groom in a top horseracing barn in New York City, where he was occasionally given overall responsibility, was the pinnacle of his ambition. He had escaped from the dismal poverty, appalling criminality and deadly danger of a Mexican slum to share a room with what he thought was only one Irishman instead of his whole extended family. He was quite obviously a happy individual, even when he was inebriated, smiling and singing his way through each day without a care in the world or an ounce of desire to do any better.

Diego, in contrast, was an angry young man.

No doubt he had originally travelled to the United States from Puerto Rico to seek his fortune, arriving in New York with an expectation that the streets would be paved with gold, only to have his hopes dashed by the reality. In his eyes, ending up as a mere groom at Belmont Park was living his life as a failure. Consequently, there was not an ounce of happiness to be found anywhere in his body.

And, sadly, after a few quieter days at Pimlico on his own, he was again supported by his Puerto Rican compatriots and thus somewhat bolder. Ever since the truck had arrived through the gates, he had been mouthing at me what I presumed were Spanish obscenities, or threats. On the plus side, however, we had also returned to the jurisdiction of the New York courts, which meant that his trip to Rikers Island was very much back on the cards.

George Raworth arrived back at Belmont Park shortly after nine o’clock on Saturday evening.

I knew he was coming.

I had spoken to Tony after my supper on Friday and he’d told me that the Jeep was again on the move.

‘It is amazing how it can be tracked in real time,’ Tony said. ‘If Raworth were a terrorist they could call in a drone strike to take him out.’

He’d been watching too many movies, I thought. A drone strike directed at a vehicle on home soil might have raised a few awkward questions in the US Congress.

Tony gave me two other important pieces of information as well.

The first was that Debenture had indeed failed the drug test after the Maryland Sprint Handicap.

‘He had excess cobalt in his system,’ Tony said.

‘Cobalt?’

‘Just so. Not a huge amount, mind. The test found seventy-two parts per billion of cobalt while the permitted threshold level in Maryland is only fifty.’

I’d heard of the use of excess cobalt before, in particular in Australia where a trainer had been disqualified from racing for fifteen years for giving it to his horses, and I’d done some research on the subject in London.

Cobalt is a trace element needed by bacteria in the human digestive tract to produce the vitamin B12, which in turn is essential for the production of the hormone erythropoietin that stimulates bone marrow to produce red blood cells.

Erythropoietin is known as EPO for short; it was regular injections of a synthetic form of EPO that allowed the cyclist Lance Armstrong to win seven consecutive Tours de France. Attempts to cover up positive tests had been instrumental in triggering Armstrong’s dramatic fall from grace, an almost overnight transformation from sporting hero and cancer survivor into demonised cheat.

The injecting of cobalt is assumed to increase the amount of vitamin B12 produced, and hence the quantity of natural EPO in the blood. That, in turn, should increase the number of red blood cells created, and hence the amount of oxygen that could be delivered to the muscles, thus improving stamina and performance.

However, the jury was still out on whether it actually made any difference at all in horses.

Raworth had obviously been experimenting with a horse that he had not expected to win, and so he had not anticipated that it would be tested. The random selection had been his bad luck. And our good.

‘Has the Maryland Racing Commissioner agreed to sit tight on the findings?’

‘Reluctantly, for the time being,’ Tony said, ‘and only because the level is low. Some tests in the past have shown concentrations of many hundred parts per billion, even thousands.’

‘What’s the penalty for excess cobalt in Maryland?’

‘For a first offence, especially one this low, it is fifteen days’ suspension and a five-hundred-dollar fine, plus loss of purse money for the race.’

‘The horse finished second to last,’ I said, ‘so he didn’t win any purse money. And fifteen days hardly seems enough of a deterrent. That’s just a holiday, and five hundred dollars is mere peanuts in this sport. I want to get Raworth for far more than that.’

‘But the fifteen-day suspension might mean that he couldn’t act as the trainer of Fire Point for the Belmont Stakes.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ I said. ‘He would surely appeal and any suspension would be deferred until after it was heard.’

However, remarkable as all that was, it was Tony’s second piece of information that I found the more interesting.

His man in Colorado Springs had turned up a two-year-old insurance claim for a stallion infected during an outbreak of equine viral arteritis in American Quarter Horses at the Raworth family ranch, the Crazy R.

‘Why is it called the Crazy R?’ I asked. ‘Strange name for a farm.’

‘That’s their brand,’ Tony replied. ‘Crazy R means an upside-down R. They brand an inverted capital R into the hides of their cattle with a red-hot branding iron.’

‘Not these days, surely,’ I said.

‘Of course. It mattered more when stock ran free but, even now, it is still the best way of determining ownership — if an animal has your brand on it, then it’s yours, no more questions asked. It continues to be the most important tool we have in the fight against cattle rustling.’

‘I thought cattle rustling disappeared with the demise of the Wild West,’ I said with a slight laugh.

‘The West is still wild, let me tell you,’ Tony replied, ‘and cattle rustling is very much alive and well.’

‘But branding the skin with a red-hot iron sounds so cruel,’ I said. ‘There must be better modern methods of proving ownership. How about microchips?’

‘They’re slowly making inroads and hot branding will probably disappear eventually, but it remains a legal requirement in many states.’

‘Do people still brand their horses as well?’

‘Less so these days,’ Tony said. ‘There’s a new technique called freeze branding that’s becoming more common for horses. Instead of using a red-hot iron, an extremely cold one is held against the horse’s side. It is far less painful because instead of burning a vivid scar into the skin, the intense cold destroys the pigmentation cells, making the hairs grow totally white. That’s what provides the unique mark.’ He laughed. ‘Not much good though, I suppose, if you have a white horse to begin with.’

‘How cold does the branding iron have to be?’ I asked.

‘About minus three hundred degrees.’

‘How do they get it that cold?’

There was a long pause from the other end of the line.

‘With liquid nitrogen,’ Tony said.

Paddleboat finished fifth of the eight runners, which was an improvement by one position over his previous run.

And he was claimed.

I removed his race bridle and handed him over to a groom from his new barn. I had surprisingly grown quite attached to the horses in my care and, when I went back to the now empty Stall 1, it was with a heavy heart. But, I supposed, it was for the best. At least the horse hadn’t been injured or killed.

Pull yourself together, I told myself; it was only a horse, and a not very good horse at that.

I walked down the shedrow to the office to find Keith leaning back in the chair with his feet up on the desk watching a rerun of Friends on the TV.

‘Paddleboat was fifth,’ I said. ‘And he was claimed.’

He took his feet off the desk and sat forward, clapping his hands together. ‘Wow! Who by?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘I just handed him over to his new groom.’

‘That’s great news.’

‘Why is it?’ I asked. ‘Surely there is one less set of training fees coming in?’

Keith shook his head. ‘Paddleboat was owned by Mr Raworth. He claimed him in January at Aqueduct on behalf of an owner who then never paid up. We’ve been trying to get rid of him ever since. I wonder which mug claimed him.’

I turned to leave but Keith called me back.

‘Hold the fort a minute will you, Paddy, while I go to the john? Saves me locking up.’

‘Sure,’ I replied.

He dashed off out the door and down the shedrow to the WCs in the centre of the barn.

The stable drug register was lying closed on the desk.

I opened it and skimmed through the recent entries, in particular looking for the drugs given to Paddleboat and Debenture.

According to the records, Paddleboat had stopped receiving clenbuterol in his feed on the Thursday before I had left for Pimlico, seventeen days ago.

I knew that to be untrue, but how could I prove it?

And, from what I could see, there was no record of Debenture ever having being given any cobalt salts. But then there wouldn’t be, would there? Cobalt was a banned substance.

Keith returned to the office but I had already closed the register and made sure it was back exactly as I’d found it.

‘Thanks, Paddy,’ Keith said, settling down again in front of the TV.

‘No problem.’

I went off in search of a quiet corner to call Tony on the non-smart phones.

Tuesday morning dawned with a dark and menacing sky. The humidity was up in the 90 per cents and the temperature wasn’t far off the same in degrees.

‘We have storm,’ Rafael said as we walked to the barn from the bunkhouse.

I was sure he was right. One could almost feel the electricity in the air.

‘No horse exercise early,’ Rafael said. ‘They go later.’

He was almost right about that too.

‘It’s dark here today,’ Keith said, referring, not to the weather, but to the fact that there was no racing at Belmont Park on Tuesdays. ‘So the horses can go out later. The track is closed anyway until at least nine, when this storm is forecast to be through.’

The chance of anyone being struck by lightning was always slight but why take the risk? That was obviously the opinion of the Belmont track authorities; or, more likely, they didn’t want to get sued.

Some years ago, a 22-year-old Australian jockey had been hit when out riding morning exercise on a racecourse near Perth. He’d died instantly, along with the gelding he’d been on. The fact that the horse had been wearing metal shoes hadn’t helped.

There was a dazzling flash of lightning followed almost instantaneously by a deafening clap of thunder, and the heavens opened, huge drops of rain initially making dents in the dirt outside before everything was overwhelmed by the huge volume of water falling from above.

For the next three hours, the Raworth grooms, plus Maria, walked the horses in turn round and round the shedrow in order to give them at least some exercise. We did our best to keep the animals calm but the repeated flashes of electricity and accompanying crashes of thunder put them all on edge, and us too.

By eight o’clock we were hanging around outside the office waiting for the elements to improve. Rafael went up the ladder to the bedding store and tossed down half a dozen bales of straw for us all to sit on.

Diego sat facing me, watching my every move.

He had made no comment about his attempted attack. Indeed, he made no comment to me about anything, not that communication of any sort was easy due to the incessant hammering of the torrential downpour on the barn’s metal roof.

The previous evening, I had remained in the grandstand for almost three hours, until the very last possible moment before it was closed up for the night. I had taken the opportunity to have a good nose around all the hidden nooks and crannies, especially in the four separate kitchens, where I had conducted a fruitless search for some leftover food.

Still hungry, I had eventually made my way back to the bunkhouse using a roundabout route to avoid Diego and his henchmen.

He was a distraction I could have well done without.

I stayed close to Raworth’s barn right through until evening stables, waiting and watching, but nothing happened.

The horses spent the time in their stalls, alternately snoozing in the afternoon heat or munching from their haynets.

I wondered what dried grass tasted of, and how hungry a man would have to be to try it. I had certainly seen news items on the television where starving people had tried to sustain themselves by eating boiled leaves.

Thankfully, I wasn’t yet at that stage, although a dull ache of hunger had settled into the pit of my stomach and I was really looking forward to my supper.

At about three-thirty I stood up and stretched my legs, walking round the shedrow to stay in the shade. I could hear canned laughter from the office where Keith was again watching a comedy show on the TV.

I didn’t really want to have to chat to him so I avoided going past the open office door and retraced my steps down to the other end of the barn.

I tried the feed-store door.

It was locked. Of course it was locked.

The feed store was always kept locked except when Charlie Hern or Keith were actually issuing the horse nuts from the feed bins.

And the drug store within would also surely be locked, quite likely with frozen EVA-contaminated semen in the cryogenic flask hidden away in its bottom corner.

How I could have done with my lock picks to check.

Evening stables started at four o’clock under the close eye of Charlie Hern. With the departure from the barn of Paddleboat, I had been allocated another of the equine residents, a four-year-old gelding called Highlighter who was housed in Stall 15, close to the office and well away from my other three and, somewhat inconveniently, sandwiched between two horses cared for by Diego.

I had done my best all day to avoid him, but now I found myself right on his doorstep, even sharing a water tap at that end of the barn.

I left Highlighter right to the end in the hope that Diego would have given up waiting and gone to supper.

No such luck.

He came into Stall 15 after I had done the mucking out and just as I had finished brushing Highlighter’s coat to a nice shine. But he wasn’t intent, this time, on physical violence. Maybe that was because I was bigger than him, and he wasn’t accompanied by his back-up team. So, instead, he simply threw a full bucket of muddy water all over Highlighter’s back.

So juvenile, I thought.

Charlie Hern was already on his tour of inspection around the other side of the barn, and he certainly wouldn’t have been pleased to find one of the horses caked in mud. I didn’t have long enough to take Highlighter outside to the wash point, so I did my best to scrape the mud off his coat and out of his mane, brushing each vigorously with a stiff dandy brush. But, in spite of my efforts, the horse was still not looking very good by the time Charlie arrived.

‘Come on, Paddy,’ Charlie said, clearly irritated. ‘Get a move on. You know better than to present a horse to me in this state.’

‘Sorry, Mr Hern,’ I said meekly. ‘I’ll make sure he’s right before I go.’

‘Damn right you will,’ Charlie responded.

He felt down over the animal’s legs and tut-tutted under his breath, but not so quietly that I wouldn’t hear. Then he moved on to the next stall as I went back to my brushing.

‘Damn you, Diego, damn you,’ I repeated over and over in time with my brush strokes as I repaired his damage.

Consequently, I was the last in line as Charlie issued the correct quantity of concentrated feed for each horse.

‘Have you cleaned up Highlighter?’ he asked as he poured the feed into bowl 15.

‘Almost, sir,’ I said. ‘I just need to finish him off.’

‘Be sure you do,’ Charlie said sternly. ‘And check he eats up his supper.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, taking the bowl of feed and making my way back towards Stall 15.

I could do with eating up my supper as well.

‘Paddy,’ Keith said. ‘Debenture runs in the last today.’

It was five o’clock on Wednesday morning and he came into the stall when I was with the horse in question. ‘Mr Raworth confirmed to me last night that he’ll definitely run. Make sure he’s looking his best, the boss is quite keen that he should be claimed.’

‘OK,’ I said.

It wasn’t a surprise. Not after what I’d heard between trainer and assistant the previous afternoon, but it did present a considerable difficulty. How was I going to keep an eye on George Raworth all afternoon if I also had to look after Debenture?

Tony had decided that, whatever happened, this would be my last day as a groom.

I had called him again before I went to bed to discover the whereabouts and roster of his agents, and he had given me the news.

Whether we managed to catch the FACSA mole today or not, the local Nassau County Police would execute a search warrant at Raworth’s barn at seven o’clock on Wednesday evening, looking for the flask of frozen semen.

Tony had actually wanted to move in first thing this morning but I had managed to talk him into giving me until after the afternoon’s racing. I had wanted longer but he was adamant that the raid had to be today.

That was because he had learned that Amphibious, the colt from Santa Anita, would be arriving at New York by air from California early on Thursday and he wasn’t prepared to take the risk that he could purposely be infected with EVA.

I couldn’t really blame him. It would be indefensible to allow another horse, a hugely valuable potential stallion, to have a future stud career ruined when we already knew the mechanics of how it was done, and by whom.

Try explaining that to a congressional committee, or to the jury in the civil lawsuit.

‘I’m not feeling too good,’ I said to Keith.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘My stomach’s bad,’ I said, holding a hand to my abdomen and pulling a face. ‘It must be something I ate.’

‘Soldier on for the time being,’ Keith said, not displaying any sympathy whatsoever. ‘We’ll see if you’re better later.’

So I soldiered on, mucking out my four horses and getting them ready for morning exercise.

Twice I rushed off to the lavatory, both times when I knew Keith would see me, and did my absolute best to make myself appear sick.

I remembered reading the book Day of the Jackal, where the assassin chews on cordite to make his skin go grey and clammy, in order to fake illness. I had no cordite to hand but, after finishing my morning duties at nine, I ran on the spot very fast for five minutes, out of sight in one of the stalls, in order to make my face flush red and to produce some sweat.

Then I went to see Keith in the office.

‘I’m really not good,’ I said, again clutching my abdomen.

‘I can see that,’ he replied, standing up from his chair.

‘Feel my forehead,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve got a fever.’

From Keith’s reaction, you might think I’d asked him to put his hand into the open mouth of a starving lion. He shrank back against the far wall of the office, putting his arms up in front of his face.

‘But you might be infectious,’ he said nervously. ‘Stop by the track medical facility and get yourself checked out.’

‘What about Debenture?’ I said. ‘He runs later.’

‘I’ll tell Diego to deal with him.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll go see the medics right now.’

I walked out of the office and went back to the bunkhouse. I needed a few things from my locker.

The woman with the gun was now my target and I set off in pursuit as she moved swiftly up the concrete steps towards the grandstand, both the gun and the envelope having been stuffed into the bag she was holding.

I hadn’t seen her face, not even in profile, as she had a mass of long greying curls that hung down across both cheeks.

Wig, I thought, as I struggled to keep up.

The movement of her body was keen and athletic, not that of someone old enough to have grey hair.

My plan had been simply to watch and identify the mole, and then to report back to Tony Andretti. But now I was chasing her shadow, hoping to catch a glimpse of her eyes to make a positive identification.

She went through the doors into the grandstand and turned right towards the exit. I barged past the other spectators who were on their way from the paddock to watch the race.

‘Sorry,’ I shouted to one elderly man as I almost knocked him over, but I didn’t stop to help. Instead I rushed forward, trying to keep the grey curls in sight.

The woman didn’t make directly for the exit but veered off to the left in the main lobby and disappeared into the Ladies’. I didn’t know whether she was aware that I had been following her. Quite possibly. It had certainly not been up to my usual high standard of covert tailing, more akin to a bull rampaging through a china shop. I didn’t really care, but now I had a dilemma. Did I follow her into the Ladies’?

She was armed and might be waiting for me to appear. I had absolutely no intention of walking into a hail of.40 bullets, expanding or otherwise, but I was worried she might be escaping through a window.

The men’s room was immediately alongside and I quickly went in there. Logic dictated that, if there were windows in the Ladies’, there would also be some in the Gents’.

There were just solid walls and electric light, and not a pane of glass to be seen.

I went back out into the lobby and waited, finding a concrete pillar to lean against so that it wasn’t too obvious that I was waiting for someone to emerge from the toilets.

There were loudspeakers in the lobby and I listened to the racecourse commentator as he described the horses making their way to the starting gate for the eighth race. Soon this deserted lobby would be filling with those leaving before the last race, making an early dash for the exits in order to miss the traffic jams. Watching the Ladies’-room door might then prove more difficult and I didn’t want to lose our best lead yet to the mole.

I needed backup.

Tony had asked me earlier if I’d wanted some and I had foolishly said no, fearful that a cast of hovering hawks might have frightened away the prey.

I pulled the non-smart phone from my pocket and began to dial Tony’s number.

‘Turn it off,’ said a man’s voice close into my right ear. At the same time something hard was pressed into the small of my back.

I turned off the phone and the man reached forward over my shoulder to take it out of my hand.

‘Move,’ he ordered, pushing harder into my back.

I moved, walking forwards.

‘Go left,’ he said. ‘Towards the elevator.’

He nudged me in the back again so I went to my left, towards the elevator.

I wondered how this could be happening.

Maybe there wasn’t a crowd of nearly a hundred thousand as there would be in ten days’ time, but this was no dark alley in some run-down city centre. It was a busy racecourse in broad daylight with security personnel within view.

Should I shout out to them?

‘Don’t even think about calling for help,’ the man said as if he was reading my mind. ‘You’ll never live to receive it.’

I kept quiet and walked.

We arrived at the elevator. It had a For Stewards’ Use Only notice stuck to the doors.

‘ “Up” button,’ the man said.

I pushed it and I could hear the mechanism start whirring somewhere overhead.

‘What’s going on?’ It was a female voice. ‘Who’s he?’

‘He followed you,’ the man replied. ‘He was waiting for you outside the restrooms.’

Now I was in deeper trouble. I didn’t like the odds. Two against one was bad enough but they also had guns while I had nothing more than my bare hands.

I dared not turn round but didn’t actually need to. I could see them both reflected in the brushed-metal doors of the elevator. It was not a clear image but it was good enough.

Bob Wade and Steffi Dean.

The FACSA lovers.

Not one mole but two.

The elevator doors opened and a prod from behind implied I was to enter.

‘Keep your face to the wall,’ the man instructed.

If he thought it would stop me identifying them, then he was wrong. But maybe he didn’t know that. Perhaps it was safer for me if he thought I didn’t know them, so I went right in, almost pressing my nose up against the back wall.

It could also be that they hadn’t recognised me. If so, I’d like it to stay that way.

The two of them followed me into the lift and the doors closed behind them. We started to go up.

‘Did you get the cash?’ Bob asked.

‘Yes,’ Steffi replied. ‘Did you deal with the groom?’

‘All done.’

‘So what shall we do with this one?’

It was a question that I was quite interested to know the answer to as well.

‘What do you suggest?’ Bob said.

‘Waste him,’ Steffi replied.

That was not the answer I’d been hoping for.

‘Not here,’ Bob said.

The lift continued on its effortless way to the top of the grandstand.

I knew exactly where it was going.

I’d been up here before on Monday night when I’d been searching for food and avoiding the attentions of Diego and his chums. This was the lift used by the race stewards to make their way up to their exclusive viewing eyrie, which was attached precariously to the very front edge of the grandstand roof.

The lift stopped and the doors opened.

‘Back out,’ Bob said.

I did as I was told.

Where were the damn stewards when you needed them?

They were watching the last race, of course, looking for wrongdoing on the track when it was all taking place behind them.

What were my chances?

There was a little good news and plenty of bad news.

The good was what Tony had said about the accuracy of law-enforcement officers with their guns. He’d told me that the New York City Police hit barely a quarter of their human targets at distances up to six feet. However, the bad news was that he had also said that his special agents were trained to shoot multiple rounds to make up for that. And, at present, the distance between Bob’s gun and my back was a lot less than six feet, more like six inches. He was hardly likely to miss from there.

How could I make the distance greater?

Running away might help, but not if he shot me before I had taken enough steps.

‘Turn round,’ Bob said, holding my shoulder so that I turned with both he and Steffi always behind me. That was a good sign, I thought. They were still trying to make sure I didn’t see their faces.

‘Walk.’

We were in a corridor that ran the full width of the grandstand from the lift at the back to the stewards’ room at the very front. It had been built into the depth of the roof.

‘Where are we going?’ Steffi asked, a slight nervous timbre in her voice giving away her anxiety.

‘There’s a door into the roof space down here,’ Bob said. ‘We’ll put him in there.’

Dead or alive?

I could hear the commentator trying to engender some excitement as the last race of the day drew to a close and I wondered how Debenture was doing. The stewards would soon be coming along this corridor on their way down to ground level.

I walked a little slower but Bob wasn’t having it.

He prodded me in the back with his gun. ‘Faster.’

I speeded up fractionally. If the stewards did come the other way, he could hardly shoot them all.

Sadly, we arrived at a door on the left before there was any sign of departing officials.

‘Open it,’ Bob said from behind me.

I did as he instructed.

Through the door was a world that the racegoer usually never sees — the void between the upper and lower skins of the grandstand’s vast cantilevered roof.

I was expecting to find only the inside of the roof but there was far more than that. Apart from the vast labyrinth of steel girders that supported the huge structure, there was a maze of pipework providing drainage together with miles of wiring and a gigantic electrical switching box, similar to mine at home but about twenty times bigger.

Stretching away into the distance was a wooden walkway with metal-pipe handrails down either side. The walkway appeared to extend the full length of the grandstand and above it at about twenty-foot intervals were hung a series of naked light bulbs to provide illumination.

I started to move along the walkway and the two of them followed, closing the door to the corridor behind them.

‘Stop,’ Bob instructed. I stopped.

‘Waste him,’ Steffi said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Hold on a minute,’ Bob said. ‘Let’s find out who he is first.’

‘Why?’ Steffi said. ‘Just waste him.’

I heard an automatic being cocked behind me.

Was this the end of the road? Was it time to play the only remaining trump in my hand?

‘Tony Andretti and Norman Gibson know all about you two,’ I said. ‘You’re finished. You kill me and you’ll both be executed for killing a federal officer.’ It was the first time I’d spoken and I had dropped the Irish accent.

There was a silence that seemed to go on for ever.

Had I misjudged? Was I about to get a bullet in the back of my skull?

‘He’s bluffing,’ Bob said calmly into the stillness.

‘I’m not bluffing,’ I said quickly. ‘Your names are Bob Wade and Steffi Dean and the cops are already on their way.’

Bob grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me round to face him. He tore off the dark glasses I was still wearing and stared at me.

‘You?’ he said, clearly seeing straight through my disguise. ‘But you went back home to England.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been chasing your tails and now I’ve caught you.’

‘You seem to be forgetting something,’ Bob said, smiling and waving his silenced Glock 22C in my face.

‘Are you really going to kill a federal agent?’ I asked.

‘You’re not a federal agent,’ Steffi said.

‘As good as. I was invited here by your Deputy Director as a temporary member of FACSA. I am sure the jury will consider me as a federal agent when they choose to give you the death penalty.’ I hoped it was so, even though I doubted it. ‘Do they still electrocute murderers in New York?’

All the while I had been talking, I’d been moving myself further away from them, fraction by fraction, simply by rocking from foot to foot, shuffling an inch or so backwards each time.

‘The death penalty is abolished in New York State.’ Steffi sneered at me as she said it.

‘Not for federal crimes,’ I said. ‘Sizzle, sizzle.’

‘Shut up,’ Bob shouted in my face. Another inch away. ‘I tell you, he’s bluffing about the cops.’

‘And about the ten grand in Steffi’s purse?’ I said. ‘George Raworth has been most helpful.’

He wasn’t to know otherwise.

Another couple of inches away.

I looked at Steffi’s thick black hair, tied back in a ponytail. ‘They’ll shave all that lovely hair off your head,’ I said to her. ‘To make a better contact. The current will fry your brain inside your skull.’

I was quite certain that ‘Old Sparky’ had, in fact, long been consigned to history, replaced by the banality of a lethal injection. Equally as effective, no doubt, but far less dramatic. Nevertheless, Steffi was clearly rattled.

‘Shut him up,’ she demanded. ‘Or I’ll do it.’

She reached into her bag, presumably for her gun.

Bob Wade began as if to say something and he took his eyes off me as he, too, looked down towards Steffi’s bag. I didn’t need a second invitation.

I reached to my left and grabbed the handle on the front of the electrical switching box and rotated it a quarter-turn from ON to OFF.

With a loud clunk, all the lights went out.

I turned and ran down the walkway into the darkness as if my life depended on it, which it probably did, at the same time bending down to reduce my target size.

I didn’t hear any guns being fired behind me over the sound of my own footsteps, no doubt on account of the silencers, but I certainly heard the bullets as they whizzed past me before ricocheting off the steel roof girders.

I didn’t stop but bolted onward at full pelt, guiding myself by running my hands along the handrails on each side and praying that no one had left anything on the walkway that I would trip over.

I was still running at top speed when the lights came on again, just in time for me to see the walkway ahead take a sharp zigzag to the left round a large vertical pipe.

As I negotiated the turns, I glanced behind me.

I had run a good forty yards in the dark and neither Bob Wade nor Steffi Dean had followed. They were standing where I’d left them next to the switching box, and they were looking in my direction.

I hoped and half expected that they would give up and leave but they clearly had other ideas as they both started down the walkway towards me. Steffi fired at me, not that I heard the retort of the pistol, but the bullet zipped past somewhere close to my left arm and I heard that all right.

It was all the incentive I needed to keep going along the walkway deeper into the roof space.

I looked to both sides for some sort of weapon but the only thing movable I could find was a five-tread wooden stepladder, no doubt left behind by some idle workman who hadn’t returned it to its rightful storage place.

It was far too cumbersome to use as a club but I picked it up nevertheless and went on swiftly down the walkway using the ladder to break each light bulb above my head as I passed by. If they were going to find me, they would have to do so in the dark.

The walkway must go somewhere, I thought, as I continued to run down it. There surely had to be more than one way out of this roof.

I hurried on further, ever conscious that, as long as I stayed on the walkway, I was extremely vulnerable.

But dare I leave it? Was the skin of the roof below strong enough to take a man’s weight? It was a long way down to the viewing seats far below if I got it wrong.

My instinct was to stay as far away from the two special agents as I could. Distance between gun and target was my friend. All handguns have short barrels and are pretty inaccurate at anything over twenty-five yards, but these two were marksmen, Steffi had said so on my first day at the FACSA offices.

As if to confirm the fact, a bullet crashed into the ladder over my head, sending splinters into my hair. Too close. Much too close.

At last I came to the end of the walkway and that was all it was, a dead end. No door. Nothing. No way out. The walkway was only there to service the pipework and electrical fittings in the roof, not as an access to anywhere else.

I now had no choice other than to leave it but, before climbing over the handrail, I spent a second or two taking a mental image of the pattern of steel girders that held up the roof. Then I used the ladder to smash the last remaining light bulb, plunging the whole end of the roof space into near darkness.

I climbed away from the walkway using the girders like a climbing frame.

In a modern structure the steel beams would have had a circular cross section and be welded together like those visible in new airport terminals, but this roof had been constructed in the 1960s and was all made from H-beams held together with nuts and bolts, like a gigantic Meccano set.

But that was an advantage as it provided me with plenty of hand and foot holds as I quickly moved away from the walkway towards the back of the grandstand until I was up against the far edge of the roof.

The problem with the lack of light was that, even though Bob and Steffi were unable to see me, I couldn’t see them either.

So what was my plan?

Staying alive was uppermost, but I couldn’t stay here forever, waiting for them to find and shoot me. I had to get out.

I could hear the two of them talking but could snatch only the odd word.

I thought I heard something about a flashlight. That was not good news.

However, even with the broken bulbs, it was not totally black.

The lights were still on near the exit door, where I had run under them before finding the ladder. As far as I could tell, that was the only way out and my foes had clearly grasped that fact as well. In the pools of light beneath the remaining bulbs, I could see Steffi striding back along the walkway towards the exit door to cut off any escape bid.

Being as silent as possible, I started again climbing through the steelwork, also making my way back towards the door but keeping in the deep shadow close to the far edge, well away from the walkway. It was a dangerous strategy but I could see no alternative.

Where was Bob?

I looked back over my shoulder and strained my eyes looking for him in the gloom. I could just make out his shape on the walkway and he seemed to be standing on the stepladder that I had used to break the light bulbs.

A light came on above him. He had obviously moved an unbroken bulb from further along. I watched as he went back along the walkway, set up the stepladder and reached above his head to unscrew another, which went out. It came on again down the line.

At this rate, he would soon have enough light to see me, especially if he followed me into the girder maze. One advantage, however, was that with every bulb he moved, it got progressively dimmer near the door.

It began to rain. I could hear it beating on the upper skin of the roof.

It was quite clear that Bob Wade and Steffi Dean had no intention of giving up. They were determined to get me. Maybe I would have been too if I’d been in their shoes. Contrary to what I had told them, no one else knew. Silence me and they might very well get away completely undetected.

It was such a prospect that made me all the more resolute to get out of here alive. Of course I didn’t want them to kill me but I was absolutely damned if I would allow them to get away with it and to carry on undermining the work of their anti-corruption agency.

But how could I?

I edged closer to the door, making sure that I kept some of the larger girders between Steffi and me. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dimness and there was enough light for me to plot a route in my head for the quickest way to the exit.

‘I still can’t see him,’ Bob called out from the far end. ‘He must be down here somewhere.’

His voice was partly drowned out by the noise of the rain and Steffi moved three or four steps down towards him before replying.

‘Maybe he’s hiding under the walkway,’ she shouted back.

I had thought of that and now I was glad I’d rejected it.

‘I wish we had a damn flashlight,’ Bob said, almost to himself.

‘I can’t hear you,’ Steffi shouted.

She moved forward another five paces.

I had to move. Not only was it likely to be my only chance to get to the door but, if she took another stride or two, she would be able to see me clearly.

I eased myself around the girder I was clinging to, trying to keep the metal between us.

The rain got harder, and louder.

Steffi walked forward another few paces.

‘Do you need any help?’ she shouted.

There was no audible reply.

She went further down the walkway.

‘Do you need any help?’ she shouted again.

She was now some thirty or forty yards from the door. Indeed, I was already behind her. It had to be now or never.

Once I started there would be no going back. My rapid movement would give me away, even in this light.

I swallowed hard and tried to generate some moisture into my mouth. This was it, and I was scared, bloody terrified in fact, but I was not petrified by fear. Indeed, it was the fear that drove me on.

I almost ran across the roof grid, giving a good impression of a monkey as I swung from girder to girder in a straight line for the exit.

I was almost back at the walkway before Steffi realised. Only five yards to go.

I leaped over the handrail and fairly sprinted for the door, yanking it open.

Something punched me hard in the right arm, almost knocking me off my feet. I’d been shot.

But I could still run — out through the door, along the corridor and back towards the lift.

I could hear Steffi shouting behind me.

My arm hurt like hell and I was dripping blood from my fingers, but I found I was laughing. I was out of that damn roof and I was still alive.

I pushed the lift button but the doors didn’t open. The bloody thing was down the bottom and I didn’t have the time to wait for it.

I’d be dead before it arrived.

I dived through a door marked ‘Emergency Exit Only’.

This was an emergency.

I bounded down the stairs, but they didn’t go all the way to ground level, rather they exited through double doors into one of the restaurants in the closed-off section of the grandstand. It was deserted.

The restaurant exit was at the far end of the room and I could already hear footsteps on the stairs behind me. So I went through the door into the kitchen only to be confronted with a mass of stainless steel — half a dozen rows of chef workstations with long preparation worktops interspaced with gas hobs and ovens below and extraction hoods and open storage shelves above. Even the ceiling was lined with stainless steel.

But there were no chefs. No kitchen staff at all. And no obvious route to an exit.

Damn it.

I was leaving a trail of blood droplets, a dead giveaway to my whereabouts, so I grabbed an apron that was lying on a work surface and wrapped it round my hand. Maybe it wouldn’t stop the bleeding, but it should prevent the blood from dripping onto the floor, at least for a while.

I had a quick look at my upper arm. The bullet had missed the bone, slicing through the flesh about three inches above my elbow. It was very painful but, thankfully, I was still able to use it.

I looked around for a knife. This was a kitchen, right? There had to be knives, but all I could find was a small vegetable knife with a blade about three inches in length. I’d have much preferred a nice heavy meat cleaver, but three inches was better than nothing. At least it was sharp.

I saw the door begin to move so I ducked down beneath one of the worktops, many of which had stainless-steel cupboards beneath.

‘He’s in here,’ Steffi said. ‘There’s a blood trail.’

‘How could you have missed him?’ Bob said, breathing heavily.

‘I didn’t miss him,’ Steffi said, clearly pained. ‘Do you think he bled spontaneously? Of course I hit him.’

‘But you didn’t stop him though, did you? You let him get out.’ Bob was clearly in no mood to be kind to his lover. ‘I told you to guard the goddamn door. If you’d done what you were told, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

My eyes were down at floor level and I could see their feet under the cupboards, over by the door. I watched as Bob’s moved. He started walking slowly down the first line of workstations. I crawled the other way.

For some reason, it reminded me of the children hiding from the Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movie.

Who would be the T. rex that would come to my aid? No one. The racing was all over for the day, and everyone had gone home.

If Bob and Steffi had worked together as a team they would have caught me easily. But, they didn’t.

‘You stay by the door,’ Bob said sternly to Steffi. ‘And don’t move this time.’

‘All right.’ She sounded cross. ‘But there must be another way out of here. The door to the restaurant can’t be the only one. How do the staff get in and out?’

That was a good question, I thought. Could I find it?

There followed a game of cat and mouse, where I was definitely the mouse, scampering around on all fours.

Bob moved up and down the lines of chef workstations, slowly advancing across the room. I did the same on my hands and knees, always keeping at least one line ahead of him. But I was running out of space — and of time.

Whenever I crawled round one end or the other of the workstations, I looked for the exit. Get it wrong and I’d be finished. There would be no prizes for trying to escape into a dead end.

I took a big gamble and doubled back. Instead of crawling down the last line, I turned the other way and went back where Bob had just been. It was another dangerous strategy as it put me between the lovers, hence there was definitely now one of them between me and any exit. But the alternative was no more attractive — guessing where to go and ending up with a bullet in the head if I were wrong.

‘Where the hell is he?’ Bob said, sounding so close that it was as if he was standing on top of me.

‘He must have gone out another exit. He certainly didn’t come past here.’ There was something of a sarcastic edge to Steffi’s voice, as if she was still somewhat miffed by Bob’s earlier comments.

‘You wait here,’ Bob instructed. ‘I’ll go check.’

I heard Bob walk away, his shoes making a slight squeak on the scrubbed tile floor with each step. He soon returned.

‘The only other exit door is locked from the inside,’ he said. ‘He must still be in here.’

Bugger, I thought. This isn’t going well.

Where could I hide?

Nowhere.

Most of the worktops had cupboards beneath, which were all shut with sliding doors, and there was no way I could open one without Bob or Steffi hearing. But, at a few places, there was just a single shelf about six inches from the floor that stretched right through from one side of the worktop to the other. Most of them were covered in pots and pans, and there was no chance of moving those silently either.

However, on my crawling travels I remember spotting one empty shelf. It was where I had seen Bob not just from the ankles down but everything below his knees.

‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ Bob said.

‘But we need that extra money if you’re going to divorce Angie and marry me,’ Steffi said. ‘She’ll take you for everything she can.’

Good old Angie, I thought. I wished she’d take him right now.

‘I need to talk to you about that,’ Bob said.

‘About what?’ Steffi demanded.

‘Not now. We’ll talk later. Let’s find him first.’

‘Not changing your mind are you?’ Steffi was getting quite agitated.

‘No, of course not,’ Bob replied, but his tone suggested the completely opposite answer. He very clearly had changed his mind. ‘Come on. Let’s find him.’

‘What if he’s managed to escape?’ Steffi said, panic audibly rising in her voice. ‘Then we’re done for. You heard what he said about the death penalty.’

‘Shut up,’ Bob replied sharply. ‘He can’t have. He must be here. In one of these cupboards.’

I heard him slide open one of the cupboard doors.

‘But what if he has escaped?’ Steffi’s voice had risen so that it was little more than a squeak. She was now in full panic-attack mode.

‘Shut up, woman,’ Bob said angrily. ‘And help me find him.’

Perhaps he thought it was better for her to be occupied than standing by the door dissolving into jelly. But it was more bad news for me. With two of them looking, they were bound to find me now.

‘I think we should go,’ Steffi said suddenly. She hadn’t moved. I could still see her feet over by the door.

‘What do you mean, go?’

‘Go. Leave. Get out of here before the cops arrive.’ All her earlier bravado about wasting me seemed to have evaporated. My talk of electrocution and Bob’s change of heart over a divorce had clearly unnerved her.

Bob was far more relaxed. ‘If the cops were coming they’d have been here by now. He was lying about that, and about everything else.’

‘I still think we should leave, now,’ Steffi said determinedly.

Go on, Steffi, convince him.

‘No way,’ Bob said. ‘We finish this.’ I heard him slide open another cupboard door.

‘But I don’t want to get arrested for murder,’ Steffi said.

‘You won’t,’ Bob said. ‘He was lying, I tell you. We find him and kill him. And then we get out of here.’

All the while they had been talking, I had been crawling until I found the empty shelf.

Silently, I eased myself onto it so I was lying with my back to the metal, with my knees drawn up. Maybe Steffi would pass the end of the workstation and not see me. I would then be behind her again, and closer to the door into the restaurant.

My plan almost worked.

As I had hoped, she walked right past the end without spotting me.

Now all I had to do was roll off the shelf in the direction she had come from. Then I’d be behind her. Easy.

But it was at that point when things started to go badly wrong.

In Jurassic Park, it was a falling soup ladle that gave away the children’s position to the Velociraptors. In my case it was a large metal saucepan lid.

It had been standing vertically on its edge on the far side of the large saucepan to which it belonged. I only touched the pan fractionally with my foot as I manoeuvred myself back onto the floor but it was enough to upset the equilibrium.

I watched in horror as the lid rolled gently off the shelf away from me and clattered to the floor, going round and round like a coin dropped onto a granite top, only ten times louder.

‘Get him,’ shouted Bob.

I stood up and ran.

A bullet zinged off the extractor hood next to my ear causing me to duck involuntarily. I reached the end of the line to find Steffi, but she was facing away from me and towards where the noise of the lid had come from.

I grabbed her from behind, holding her tight to me with my left arm and placing the vegetable knife up against her windpipe with my right hand.

‘Drop it,’ I shouted into her ear.

She wriggled and squirmed so I cut her neck. Only a little cut but enough to draw blood. She gasped and went very still, dropping her gun with a clatter to the floor. I used my foot to slide it backwards but I had no chance of bending down to get it because Bob was standing right in front of us, about ten feet away.

‘Drop your gun,’ I shouted at him, ‘or I’ll slit her throat.’

He did nothing of the sort. Instead he took two steps closer and pointed the barrel straight at me, lining up his right eye with the sights.

Steffi was shorter than me by a couple of inches so I ducked my head down behind hers so as not to give him a clear target to shoot at.

‘I said drop your gun,’ I repeated. ‘I will cut her if you don’t.’

A strange look came over his face, almost one of indifference to the plight of his mistress. Was he thinking only of his own skin, or had he decided there was another way out of his matrimonial predicament?

He took another step forward and shot Steffi from no more than three feet away in the chest.

The force of the impact threw us both backwards off our feet, Steffi landing heavily on top of me.

My first instinct was that I had also been shot but my mind and body were still operating normally.

For some reason I remembered what Bob himself had said to me on that very first day in the FACSA offices in Arlington. Expanding bullets are less likely to pass right through suspects and into innocent bystanders behind them.

How right he was.

But I feared that my relief was likely to be short-lived. I would be next.

I realised that I had landed on Steffi’s gun. It was sticking into my back. I grabbed it and dived behind the next line of workstations. Now things were a little more even.

But why had he shot Steffi? It didn’t make any sense.

And there was little doubt in my mind that she was dead. She hadn’t been wearing her FACSA bulletproof vest and her chest had been ripped apart by the expanding bullet.

She lay there on the tile floor in front of me, a pool of bright-red blood spreading out beneath her, with non-seeing eyes still wide open as if in surprise.

I crouched behind the workstation, gun at the ready, watching for the moment that Bob appeared.

He didn’t.

Where was he?

I lowered my head down to the floor and looked under the cupboards. All I could see was his ankles and feet. He was standing just the other side of the worktop.

He was a professional marksman, regularly practised, and I had only fired a gun once since I’d left the army, many years before. However, one never forgets how to aim and pull a trigger.

I reached under the cupboard with my arms fully extended, holding the Glock 22C as still as I could. The end of the silencer was only twenty-four inches or so from Bob’s feet. Surely I couldn’t miss from here.

I closed my left eye, looked along the sights with my right, and squeezed the trigger as smoothly as I could manage.

The gun leaped in my hand with the recoil as the round went off. It all seemed a bit surreal without an accompanying deafening bang, the only sound being the mechanic clanging as the gun’s mechanism automatically ejected the empty cartridge and reloaded. However, the scream from Bob was amply loud enough to make up for it.

I hadn’t missed. The bullet appeared to have caught him square on the right ankle bone and its subsequent expansion had almost torn his foot clean off.

I didn’t go to his aid. He still had his gun and I was in no doubt that he’d use it.

Instead, I ran for the door to the restaurant before he too worked out he could also shoot me at floor level.

Logic told me that Bob couldn’t have run after me with only one functioning foot but, nevertheless, I sprinted across the deserted restaurant, through the empty cavernous betting hall beyond, and down the stairway towards the grandstand exits.

Indeed, I didn’t stop running until I reached a lone uniformed guard at the security desk in the main lobby.

‘Call the cops,’ I shouted at him. ‘There’s been a murder.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And the cops are already here investigating it.’

I stared at him. He knows? How does he know?

‘So where are they then?’

‘With the body,’ the guard said somewhat matter-of-factly.

‘Whose body?’

It was his turn to stare at me, as if I was the idiot.

‘The groom who was murdered. Over in the barns.’

Did you deal with the groom? Steffi had asked.

All done, Bob had replied.

‘No,’ I said to the security guard, finally understanding. ‘There’s been another murder. Here in the grandstand. In one of the kitchens. Call the cops again.’

Everything considered, it turned out to be quite a busy night for the Nassau County Police Department. Almost their total on-duty manpower ended up at Belmont Park for one reason or another.

There was considerable confusion and I seemed to be the cause of most of it.

Initially, in spite of my protestations that I was all right, I was dispatched by ambulance to the emergency room of a local hospital to have my arm dealt with. The bleeding had decreased to a mere ooze, but there was still a nasty gash that required treatment.

It was while a doctor was cleaning and stitching the wound under local anaesthetic that more police turned up at the hospital to arrest me for the murder of one federal special agent, namely Stephanie Dean, and for the grievous bodily harm of another, viz Robert Wade.

Try as I might to explain to them that it had been Robert Wade who had killed Stephanie and that I had been the one they had shot at first, I was eventually handcuffed and frogmarched out of the hospital and into a waiting squad car.

At the police station, I was photographed and fingerprinted, plus I had a swab taken of my saliva for DNA. However, it was the discovery in my pocket of a groom’s ID card in the name of Patrick Sean Murphy that caused the greatest excitement, and not only because the photograph on it didn’t resemble me as I now was.

It transpired that the said Patrick Sean Murphy, an Irishman, was being sought as the prime suspect in the murder of the dead groom.

My repeated pleas to the lead detective that I was, in fact, one Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley, an Englishman, on loan from the British Horseracing Authority to the Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency, fell on deaf ears.

‘Call the Deputy Director of the agency,’ I told him. ‘He’ll vouch for me.’

But the detective didn’t believe me and the discovery of an United States Permanent Resident Card in my wallet, also in the name of Patrick Sean Murphy and with my matching thumbprint, was all the proof he needed that I was lying.

He kept asking me the same questions over and over again, and I gave him the same answers on each occasion.

‘Why did you kill a federal law-enforcement officer?’

He clearly took a very dim view of that.

‘I didn’t.’

‘Why did you shoot at another?’

The police had already done a powder-residue test on my hands. I was sure it had registered positive. And my prints would be on Steffi’s gun.

‘Because he was trying to kill me.’

‘And why would that be? Was it because you had already killed his colleague?’

I told him the whole story from the beginning at least four times but it was quite clear he didn’t believe me. It sounded too improbable, even to my ears.

‘Go and look in the roof space,’ I said. ‘You’ll find the broken bulbs and a bullet hole in the stepladder. And who do you think shot me?’

I showed him the stitches in my arm, which were now hurting again as the local anaesthetic wore off.

The detective changed tactics.

‘Why did you kill the groom?’

‘I didn’t. I don’t even know which groom has been killed.’

The detective consulted his papers.

‘Mr Ríos, a US citizen from Puerto Rico. Diego Manuel Ríos.’

I stared at him.

‘His cousin, Miss Maria Quintero, says that you and Mr Ríos had an ongoing feud and she claims you killed him.’

She was right. I had killed him.

I had asked Tony to email his Deputy Director predecessor stating that he had a lead on how trainers were being tipped off: the groom who looked after Debenture was prepared to talk. That would normally have been me but, due to my feigned illness, Keith had detailed Diego to look after the horse instead.

And because of that, Bob Wade had killed Diego and not me.

‘Where was he found?’ I asked.

‘Where you left him — in a barn, with a pitchfork stuck deep in his chest.’

Bob Wade must have acquired that idea from Hayden Ryder, who had tried to do the same to him at Churchill Downs. But Diego hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest or a special agent badge as protection.

‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t see Diego Ríos at any time this afternoon. I was over at the racetrack, not at the barns.’

‘Can you prove that? Do you have any witnesses?’

No, of course I didn’t. I had spent the afternoon trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

‘So why did you kill him?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘The murder weapon has your fingerprints all over it.’

Hell, I thought. That wasn’t good.

‘All the grooms have used all the pitchforks at one time or another. They will have all our fingerprints on them.’

‘What was the feud between you and Mr Ríos all about?’

I was not going there. It would sound far too incriminating if I told him it was over advances I had made towards his cousin. It was not a feud anyway. A true feud needed animosity in both directions. Diego’s had all been one-way.

I decided it was time I asked for a lawyer. Probably well past time.

‘I want a lawyer,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘It is my right,’ I said.

‘Only guilty men ask for lawyers,’ he responded, and I’m sure he believed it. In his eyes, suspects were all guilty until proved not to be and, even then, he’d probably still have had his doubts.

‘I’d also like to make a phone call,’ I said, ignoring his remark. ‘I think I have a right to that as well.’

He obviously didn’t like it but he shrugged his shoulders in acceptance. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘One call.’

I made it to Tony Andretti.

‘Where are you?’ he asked angrily. ‘There’s been a disaster at the track.’

‘What sort of disaster?’

‘I’ve lost two of my best agents,’ he said gloomily. ‘One is dead and the other is currently in surgery to save his foot.’

‘They were your moles,’ I said to him. ‘Not one mole, but two. Both of them. Bob Wade and Steffi Dean.’

There was a long pause from the other end of the line.

‘Tony?’ I said eventually. ‘You still there?’

‘Yes,’ he replied slowly. ‘I’m still here.’ He sounded shocked. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

He was not happy. ‘I wanted you only to find our moles, not kill them.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Steffi Dean was shot dead by Bob Wade from a range of about three feet. She didn’t stand a chance.’

‘Bob Wade says an unknown assailant did it, a man with a black goatee.’

No wonder the cops had come looking for me at the hospital. They would have readily believed a federal special agent. Who wouldn’t?

‘Check the ballistics. The bullet that killed Steffi came from Bob’s gun.’

But I wondered if there would be enough of the expanded bullet remaining to test for barrel marks and scratches.

‘Can you get me out of here?’ I asked. ‘The Nassau County cops have arrested me for murder.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He didn’t sound too hopeful or, indeed, particularly eager.

What had he expected? Perhaps he’d thought that I would silently expose his mole, only then for the villain to be discreetly retired from the service, rather than to face the full force of the law. Something nice and quiet that would keep the reputation of his agency intact. Maybe even to accept the death of Jason Connor as the accident that the Maryland Medical Examiner believed it was.

What he clearly hadn’t intended was having to wash FACSA’s dirty laundry in public. For the Nassau County detectives to be investigating the violent death of a special agent under the intense scrutiny of the intimidating New York City media, hungry for another fatal-shooting story, especially one tinged with more than a whiff of official corruption.

‘Can you at least find me a decent lawyer?’ I asked.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he repeated, without giving me much confidence that it would happen.

The thought crossed my mind that maybe Tony Andretti would be perfectly happy leaving me to my own devices, at least for a while. The media scrutiny would then continue to be directed solely at me as the suspect in custody, rather than at him, asking difficult questions like, ‘Why had I been released without charge?’ and, if so, then, ‘Who really had shot Steffi Dean?’

Part of me even worried that he might be quite happy to sacrifice me permanently, for the good of the agency. Steffi was dead and Bob could be declared medically unfit to continue. The cancer would have been excised from the body and no one need be any the wiser that it had ever existed.

The only problem would be what to do with me.

After his magic trick in getting me a Green Card from the State Department within twenty-four hours, I’d put nothing past the resourceful Deputy Director of FACSA.

It wasn’t Diego who made the trip to Rikers Island in chains.

It was me, as Patrick Sean Murphy.

I spent a second night in custody, this time in what was appropriately named the ‘County Lockup’, a metal cage made of inch-thick steel bars solidly embedded into the concrete floor and the ceiling.

I had complained to Marty Mandalay, my so-called lawyer, that, in my opinion, his bizarre replies to the detective’s questions had done nothing but make it more likely I would be indicted for first-degree murder.

‘I thought lawyers were meant to help their clients,’ I’d said to him sarcastically.

‘Trust me,’ he had replied. And then he’d winked at me, leaving me totally confused. I now wondered if, far from trying to get me released, he had actually been doing his best to get me charged.

The time seemed to drag on for ever, not helped again by having the bright overhead light blazing away all night. There was an electric fan situated behind a grille in one corner of the cage but either it didn’t work or the staff refused to turn it on when I asked them to.

Probably the latter.

I was not the flavour of the month with the lockup staff. ‘Cop killer,’ I heard one of them say to a colleague, so I would clearly receive no acts of kindness from this lot.

When I’d first arrived from the police station, I had been issued with a faded orange boiler suit with ‘County Lockup’ stencilled on the back in large black letters. Then I had been made to strip naked in the centre of a room full of correctional staff, before being thoroughly examined by them to ensure that I had no drugs, mobile telephones or other contraband hidden in any of my bodily orifices.

If the process had been designed to totally humiliate the prisoner, then it had succeeded admirably.

How could this be happening to me? I kept asking myself. I had done nothing wrong. Yet everyone else seemed to think I had, apparently including Tony Andretti. Perhaps I should have used my one permitted telephone call to ring Paul Maldini in London rather than Tony. But the Nassau County cops probably wouldn’t have let me make an international call anyway.

Was Paul Maldini even aware, I wondered, that one of his senior integrity officers was currently locked up in a New York jail? Somehow I doubted it.

At around nine in the morning I was told I would be going to an arraignment hearing at the county courthouse.

I had to stand with my hands behind my back through a gap in the cage door while manacles were applied to my wrists. Then leg irons were placed around each ankle with only a short length of chain between them so I had to hobble.

‘Is this all really necessary?’ I asked the uniformed officer as he none-too-gently locked everything in place.

‘You’re a Category A prisoner,’ he answered, whatever that meant.

I suddenly realised that he was more frightened of me than I was of him. I jangled the manacles and made him jump backwards in alarm. It was a minor victory in an otherwise dire situation.

I was loaded into a prison van for the short journey from the lockup to the courthouse and then escorted by two burly correctional staff to a holding cell in the basement. Here, after about an hour, Marty Mandalay came to see me.

‘Just answer yes to your name when asked,’ he said.

‘Which name?’ I asked. ‘Patrick Murphy or Jeff Hinkley?’

‘Patrick Murphy,’ he said.

‘But…’

‘No buts. Do as I ask and you’ll be out by tonight. Or maybe tomorrow night.’

‘Tonight,’ I said firmly. ‘I can’t stand another night of this.’

‘I’ll try,’ he said, but I could tell he wasn’t very optimistic. ‘The judge will ask if you want to plead. Say nothing. I will do the talking.’

‘How about bail?’ I asked.

‘You won’t get it,’ Marty said. ‘Killing a federal law-enforcement officer is a capital offence. Add to that you’re a foreigner, so there’s absolutely no chance of bail and I won’t even ask for it. It will prevent the judge having to deny. Better not to have asked than have it denied.’

I had to trust his judgement. What else could I do?

How an hour can change a man’s life.

At three o’clock in the morning I had been in leg irons and manacles in one of the most intimidating places on earth yet, by four, I was stretched out in a luxurious leather armchair aboard a US government private jet, en route from LaGuardia Airport in New York to Andrews Base outside Washington, DC.

I had also swapped the prison-issue orange boilersuit for a check shirt, chinos and slip-on leather brogues that Tony had thoughtfully brought with him from my stash of clothes in his guest-room closet.

Tony clearly wasn’t eager to talk about the happenings in the grandstand on Wednesday evening. Twice he ignored my inquiry about ballistic tests on the bullet that had killed Steffi Dean. It was as if he was somehow embarrassed by it all.

So I asked him about the other events of the evening instead. ‘How was Diego Ríos found?’

‘The horse he was with never turned up at the paddock from the receiving barn.’

‘Debenture,’ I said.

‘Yes. That’s it. It seems George Raworth sent someone to find out where he was and they found Diego Ríos with a pitchfork through his heart, and the horse still in the stall. Needless to say, the race went ahead without Debenture.’

And I had wondered in the roof how the old horse was doing.

‘I’m surprised it went ahead at all.’

‘The others were at the gate before Ríos was found.’

‘Tell me about the raid on Raworth’s barn,’ I said.

‘It all went like clockwork,’ he replied, smiling broadly. ‘The Nassau County Police turned up with their search warrant and went straight to the barn drug store, as you had suggested. They bagged up everything including the cryo-flask. Raworth and his assistant…’

‘Charlie Hern?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘They were both arrested on suspicion of fraud, and of animal cruelty.’

‘Animal cruelty?’ I said. ‘That was imaginative.’

Tony laughed. ‘It was the best we could think of at the time.’

‘Unbelievably, I saw them at the Nassau County Courthouse yesterday morning. I was leaving my arraignment hearing as they were coming in for theirs. I presume they both got bail as neither went to Rikers with me.’

‘Indeed they did,’ Tony said. ‘A hundred-thousand-dollar bond each, plus a condition that they may not go within five hundred feet of any racetrack or any horse barn. NYRA have moved quickly to revoke his trainer’s licence so he can’t act as a trainer for the Belmont Stakes. His horses have already been transferred to other stables.’

‘Including Fire Point?’ I asked.

‘Especially Fire Point. He’s gone to another trainer at Belmont Park. Someone called Sidney Austin.’

I nodded. I’d heard of him.

I wondered about Raworth’s staff. He had three barns across the country but it was those at Belmont I was concerned about, in particular Keith, Victor, Rafael, Maria and Chuck, the yard boy. They would have lost not only their jobs, but their homes and keep as well.

I could only hope that, like the horses, they would soon be taken on by other trainers. I feared most for old Chuck and his trusty broom. I had been told by Keith that Raworth had acquired Chuck along with the barn when he’d first arrived at Belmont, but maybe his time would now be up.

There was nothing I could do for them but that didn’t stop me worrying.

Maybe Bert Squab would give them a meal or two for free.

But probably not.