The three-mile steeplechase on rock-hard going had attracted a paltry field of just three, in pursuit of a prize put up by a well-known Midlands building company. It was not the lovely summer’s day that the firm’s directors would have hoped for to entertain their clients when they had handed over their sponsorship check to the racetrack. Two small groups of their guests stood around under company-logo-printed umbrellas, watching the horses in the parade ring and trying unsuccessfully to look happy. Then they scuttled off back to their private box in the grandstand to dry off and to sip another glass of bubbly.

In the betting ring there was noticeably more activity than for the first couple of races, though that was due not to an increase in the number of punters braving the conditions but to the fact that several “suits” from the big outfits had turned up. They stood around getting wet, scrutinizing the prices on our boards more closely than a stamp collector studying a Penny Black.

Nothing untoward occurred, of course, but I caught a brief glimpse of Luca and Larry Porter having a secret smile at each other. Just how long, I thought, would it be before they couldn’t resist trying it again?

The race itself could hardly be described as exciting. The short-priced favorite, the only decent horse of the three, jumped off in front at the start and led the other two around and around the course by an ever-increasing margin, winning by a distance, almost at the trot. One of the remaining two slipped over at the last fence to leave the other to finish second, but so far behind the winner that the stands had emptied long before.

To add insult to injury, the stewards decided to abandon the rest of the day’s racing, citing the hazardous nature of the course. It seemed that the heavy rain, coming down as it had on the rock-hard ground, was causing the top surface of the grass to skid off the underlying dry, compacted soil, making the going treacherous.

Personally, I thought the stewards had done everyone a favor, and we gratefully packed up our stuff and made our way to the parking lots.

“Are you still OK for Leicester tomorrow evening without me?” I asked Luca.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Looking forward to it.” He smiled at me. I stopped pulling the trolley. “OK, OK,” he said. “I know. No funny business. I promise.”

“Let’s talk at the weekend,” I said.

“Fine,” he replied. “I want to talk things through with Betsy anyway.”

Betsy had appeared from the bar and had helped us to pack away the last few things. I was never quite sure what was going on in her head, and that day she had been more obtuse than ever. She had said hardly a word to me since a brief “Hello” when she and Luca arrived.

We loaded the equipment in the trunk of his car while Betsy simply sat inside it in the passenger seat. She didn’t say good-bye to me.

“Have a good day tomorrow,” said Luca. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope it all goes well.”

Sophie was due to have an assessment with a consultant psychiatrist from a different hospital. It was the final hurdle for her pass in order to be able to come home. Just as there needed to be agreement between two psychiatrists for her to be sectioned in the first place, there was also a need for such agreement for her to be “released back into the community,” as they put it.

The stress of an assessment was, paradoxically, bad for her condition, so I always tried to be on hand to provide her with reassurance and comfort between the sessions.

I wasn’t at all sure whether it was a good idea to leave Luca and Betsy to go to Leicester together without me, and without the services of one of the freelance bookmaker’s assistants. It was an evening meeting with the first race at twenty to seven. I supposed I might have been able to get there after spending the day at the hospital. Hemel Hempstead to Leicester was just a quick trip up the M1 highway.

“Betsy and I will be fine,” Luca said, clearly reading the dilemma in my face. “I promised, didn’t I?”

I must have still looked doubtful.

“Look,” he said. “We will be doing the best for the business in every respect. No point in fouling it all up if you’re thinking of offering me a partnership, is there?” He smiled at me.

“OK,” I said. “But…”

“Do you trust me or not?” he said, interrupting me.

“Yes, of course,” I said, hoping it was true.

“Then leave it,” he said seriously. “I’ll do tomorrow evening with Betsy, on our own. Like you said, we’ll talk at the weekend.”

He then climbed into the car next to Betsy and drove away, with me standing there watching them and wondering if life could ever be the same again.

The rain had thankfully eased a little as we had packed up the stuff, but now it began again in earnest, drumming noisily on the roofs of the cars around me.

I threw my umbrella in the back of my car, jumped in the front and started the engine. I was about to drive away when the passenger door suddenly opened and a man in a blue gabardine mackintosh climbed in beside me.

“Can you give me a lift?” he asked.

I looked at him in amazement, but he just stared forwards through the windshield, ignoring me.

“Where to?” I said finally. “The local police station?”

“I’d really rather not, if you don’t mind,” said the man.“Couldn’t you just drive for a bit?”

“And what makes you think I’d want to do that?” I asked him icily.

He turned towards me. “I thought you might want to talk.”

My audacious hitchhiker was the fourth stranger from the inquest, my unwanted nocturnal visitor of the previous night, complete with fresh plaster cast on his right arm.

“OK,” I said. “You talk and I’ll listen.”

I put the car into gear.

Well?” I said. “Talk to me.” I drove along the Stratford-to-Warwick road.

“Why didn’t you call the police?” he said.

“How do you know I didn’t?” I glanced across at him.

“I stayed to watch. No one came.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t call them.”

“I watched you through the window,” he said. “You vacuumed up the mess I left, and no one does that if he’s called the police.”

I felt uneasy at the thought of him being outside my home, watching me. “How long did you wait?” I asked him.

“Not long,” he said. “My arm hurt too much.”

“Serves you right.”

“You broke my wrist.”

“Good.”

We sat in silence for a while.

“Who the hell are you anyway?” I asked him.

“Just call me John,” he said.

“John who?”

“Just John.”

“And what do you want?” I asked him again.

“The microcoder,” he said. “Like I told you last night.”

“What makes you think that I’ve got it?”

“Where else would it be?”

“It could be anywhere,” I said.

“You have it,” he said with finality.

“Even if I did have it-and I don’t-what right do you think you have breaking into my house to look for it?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said. “And I didn’t break in. You left a window open. You were just asking to be burgled.”

“So that’s what you are, is it?” I said. “A burglar.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.

I looked across at him. “I’m not the one with a broken wrist.”

“OK,” he said, “I agree. That wasn’t so clever.”

Again I drove in silence.

“Where to, then?” I asked.

“To wherever the microcoder is.”

“I told you, I don’t have it.”

“And I told you, I don’t believe you.” He turned in his seat and looked at me. “For a start, if you didn’t know what I was talking about, then you would surely have telephoned the police last night. And second, we know it was you that retrieved your father’s rucksack from the hotel in Paddington.”

“What rucksack?” I said, trying to keep my voice as level and calm as possible and wondering, once more, if this John fellow and Shifty-eyes were working together. He had said “we.” Was I, after all, on my way to meet again the man with the twelve-centimeter knife?