'Yes, Etty. I'm very sorry.'

'And does your father know about it?'

'Of course,' I said.

'Oh well, then.' She shrugged. 'If your father wants it, I suppose we must make the best of it. But it won't be at all good for discipline.'

The lads will be used to him within a week.'

'They won't like it if he looks like getting any chance in races which they think should be theirs.'

'The season doesn't start for a month,' I said soothingly. 'Let's see how he makes out, shall we?'

And put off the day when he got the chances however bad he was, and however much they should have gone to someone else.

Etty put him on a quiet four-year-old mare which didn't please him but was a decided step up from old Indigo. He had received with unyielding scorn my request that he should stop staring so disquietingly at Etty, and sneered at my suggestion that he should let it be understood that his father was paying for him to be there.

'It is not true,' he said superciliously.

'Believe me,' I said with feeling, 'if it were true, you wouldn't be here tomorrow. Not if he paid a pound a minute.'

'Why not?'

'Because you are upsetting Miss Craig and upsetting the other lads, and a stable seething with resentment is not going to do its best by its horses. In fact, if you want the horses here to win races for you, you'll do your best to get along without arousing ill-feeling in the staff.'

He had given me the black stare and hadn't answered, but I noticed that he looked steadfastly at the ground when Etty detailed him to the mare. He rode her quietly along towards the back of the string and completed his allotted half-speed four-furlong canter without incident. On our return to the yard George met him and took the mare away to the box, and Alessandro without a backward glance walked into his Mercedes and was driven away.

The truce lasted for two more mornings. On each of them Alessandro arrived punctually for the first exercise, disappeared presumably for breakfast, came back for the second lot, and departed for the rest of the day. Etty gave him middling horses to ride, all of which he did adequately enough to wring from her the grudging comment: 'If he doesn't give us any more trouble, I suppose it could be worse.'

But on his fourth morning, which was Saturday, the defiant attitude was not only back but reinforced. We survived through both lots without a direct confrontation between him and Etty only because I purposely kept parting them. For a second lot, in fact, I insisted on taking him with me and a party of two-year-olds along to the special two-year-old training ground while Etty led the bulk of the string over to Warren Hill.

We got back before Etty so that he should be gone before she returned, but instead of striding away to his Mercedes he followed me to the office door.

'Griffon,' he said behind me.

I turned; regarded him. The arrogant stare was much in evidence. His eyes were blacker than space.

'I have been to see my father,' he said. 'He says that you should be treating me with deference. He says I should not take orders from a woman and that you must arrange that I do not. If necessary, Miss Craig must leave. He says I must be given better horses to ride, and in particular, Archangel. He says that if you do not see to these things immediately, he will show you that he meant what he said. And he told me to give you this. He said it was a promise of what he could do.'

He produced a flat tin box from an inner pocket of his anorak, and held it out to me.

I took it. I said, 'Do you know what it contains?'

He shook his head, but I was sure he did know.

'Alessandro,' I said, 'Whatever your father threatens, or whatever he does, your only chance of success is to leave the stable unharmed. If your father destroys it, there will be nothing for you to ride.'

'He will make another trainer take me,' he asserted.

'He will not,' I said flatly, 'Because should he destroy this stable I will put all the facts in front of the Jockey Club and they will take away your licence and stop you riding in any races whatsoever.'

'He would kill you,' he said matter-of-factly. The thought of it did not surprise or appal him.

'I have already lodged with my solicitor a full account of my interview with your father. Should he kill me, they will open that letter. He could find himself in great trouble. And you, of course, would be barred for life from racing anywhere in the world.'

A lot of the starch had turned to frustration. 'He will have to talk to you himself,' he said. 'You do not behave as he tells me you will. You confuse me- He will talk to you himself.'

He turned on his heel and took himself stiffly away to the attendant Mercedes. He climbed into the back, and the patient chauffeur, who waited always in the car all the time that his passenger was on the horses, started the purring engine and with a scrunch of his Michelins, carried him away.

I took the flat tin with me into the house, through into the oak-panelled room, and opened it there on the desk.

Between the layers of cotton wool it contained a small carved wooden model of a horse. Round its neck was tied a label, and on the label was written one word: Moonrock.

I picked the little horse out of the tin. It was necessary to lift it out in two pieces, because the off-hind leg was snapped through at the hock.

I sat for quite a long time turning the little model over in my hands, and its significance over in my mind, wondering whether Enso Rivera could possibly have organised the breaking of Moonrock's leg, or whether he was simply pretending that what had been a true accident was all his own work.

I did not on the whole believe that he had destroyed Moonrock. What did become instantly ominous, though, was his repeated choice of that word, destroy.

Almost every horse which broke a leg had to be destroyed, as only in exceptional cases was mending them practicable. Horses could not be kept in bed. They would scarcely ever even lie down. To take a horse's weight off a leg meant supporting him in slings. Supporting him in slings for the number of weeks that it took a major bone to mend incurred debility and gut troubles. Racehorses, always delicate creatures, could die of the inactivity, and if they survived were never as good afterwards; and only in the case of valuable stallions and brood mares was any attempt normally made to keep them alive.

If Enso Rivera broke a horse's leg, it would have to be destroyed. If he broke enough of them, the owners would remove their survivors in a panic, and the stable itself would be destroyed.

Alessandro had said his father had sent the tin as a promise of what he could do.

If he could break horses' legs, he could indeed destroy the stable.

But it wasn't as easy as all that, to break a horse's leg.

Fact or bluff.

I fingered the little maimed horse. I didn't know, and couldn't decide, which it represented. But I did decide at least to turn a bit of my own bluff into fact.

I wrote a full account of the abduction, embellished with every detail I could remember. I packed the little wooden horse back into its tin and wrote a short explanation of its possible significance. Then I enclosed everything in a strong manilla envelope, wrote on it the time honoured words, To be opened in the event of my death', put it into a larger envelope with a covering letter and posted it to my London solicitor from the main post office in Newmarket.

'You've done what? my father exclaimed.

Taken on a new apprentice.'

He looked in fury at all the junk anchoring him to his bed. Only the fact that he was tied down prevented him from hitting the ceiling.

'It isn't up to you to take on new apprentices. You are not to do it. Do you hear?'