Soon after I had finished rigging it, Etty walked into the yard from her cottage for her usual last look round before going to bed, and the buzzer rasped out loud and clear. Too loud, I thought. A silent intruder might just hear it. I put a cushion over it, and the muffled buzz sounded like a bumble bee caught in a drawer.

I switched the noise off. When Etty left the yard it started again immediately. Hurrah for the Deputy Sales Manager, I thought, and slept in the owners' room with my head on the cushion.

No one came.

Stiffly at six o'clock I got up and rolled up the cable, and collected and stowed all the gear in a cupboard in the owners' room; and when the first of the lads ambled yawning into the yard, I headed directly to the coffee pot.

Tuesday night, no one came.

Wednesday, Margaret mentioned that Susie's friend had reported two Swiss phone calls, one outgoing by Alessandro, one incoming to the chauffeur.

Etty, more anxious than ever with the Lincoln only three days away, was snapping at the lads, and Alessandro stayed behind after second exercise and asked me if I had reconsidered and would put him up on Pease Pudding in place of Tommy Hoylake.

We were outside, in the yard, with the late morning bustle going on all around. Alessandro looked tense and hollow eyed.

'You must know I can't,' I said reasonably.

'My father says I am to tell you that you must.'

I slowly shook my head. 'For your own sake, you shouldn't. If you rode it, you would make a fool of yourself. Is that what your father wants?'

'He says I must insist.' He was adamant.

'O. K.,' I said. 'You've insisted. But Tommy Hoylake is going to ride.'

'But you must do what my father says,' he protested.

I smiled at him faintly, but didn't answer, and he did not seem to know what to say next.

'Next week, though,' I said matter-of-factly, 'You can ride Buckram in a race at Aintree. I entered him there especially for you. He won first time out last year, so he should have a fair chance again this time.'

He just stared; didn't even blink. If there was anything to be given away, he didn't give it.

At three o'clock Thursday morning the buzzer went off with enthusiasm three inches from my ear drum and I nearly fell off the sofa. I switched off the noise and got to my feet, and took a look into the yard through the owners' room window.

Moving quickly through the moonless night went one single small light, very faint, directed at the ground. Then, as I watched, it swung round, paused on some of the boxes in bay four, and settled inexorably on the one which housed Buckram.

Treacherous little bastard, I thought. Finding out which horse he could kill without the owner wailing a complaint; an uninsured horse, in order to kick Rowley Lodge the harder in the financial groin.

Telling him Buckram might win him a race hadn't stopped him. Treacherous, callous little bastard-

I was out through the ready left-ajar doors and down the yard, moving silently on rubber shoes. I heard the bolts drawn quietly back and the doors squeak in their hinges, and homed on the small flicking light with far from charitable intentions.

No point in wasting time. I swept my hand down on the switch and flooded Buckram's box with a hundred watts.

I took in at a glance the syringe held in a stunned second of suspended animation in the gloved hand, and noticed the truncheon lying on the straw just inside the door.

It wasn't Alessandro. Too heavy. Too tall. The figure turning purposefully towards me, dressed in black from neck to foot, was one of the rubber-faces.

In his rubber-face.

This time I didn't waste my precious advantage. I sprang straight at him and chopped with all my strength at the wrist of the hand that held the syringe.

A direct hit. The hand flew backwards, the fingers opened, and the syringe spun away through the air.

I kicked his shin and punched him in the stomach, and when his head came forward I grabbed hold of it and swung him with a crash against the wall.

Buckram kicked up a fuss and stamped around loose, as rubber-face had not attempted to put the headcollar on. When rubber-face rushed me with jabbing fists I caught hold of his clothes and threw him against Buckram, who snapped at him with his teeth.

A muffled sound came through the rubber, which I declined to interpret as an appeal for peace. Once away from the horse he came at me again, shoulders hunched, head down, arms stretching forwards. I stepped straight into his grasp, ignored a bash in my short ribs, put my arm tight round his neck, and banged his head on the nearest wall. The legs turned to latex to match the face, and the lids palely shut inside the eyeholes. I gave him another small crack against the wall to remove any lingering doubts, and stood back a pace. He lay feebly in the angle between floor and wall, one hand twisting slowly forwards and backwards across the straw.

I tied up Buckram, who by some miracle had not pushed his way out of the unbolted door and roused the neighbourhood, and in stepping away from the tethering ring nearly put my foot right down on the scattered syringe. It lay under the manger, in the straw, and had survived undamaged through the rumpus.

Picking it up I tossed it lightly in my hand and decided that the gifts of the gods should not be wasted. Pulling up the sleeve of rubber-face's black jersey, I pushed the needle firmly into his arm and gave him the benefit of half the contents. Prudence, not compassion, stopped me from squirting in the lot: it might be that what the syringe held was a flattener for a horse but curtains for a man, and murdering was not going to help.

I pulled off rubber-face's rubber face. Underneath it was Carlo. Surprise, surprise.

The prizes of war now amounted to one rubber mask, one half empty syringe, and one bone-breaking truncheon. After a slight pause for thought I wiped my fingerprints off the syringe, removed Carlo's gloves, and planted his all over it; both hands. A similar liberal sprinkling went on to the truncheon: then, using the gloves to hold them with, I took the two incriminating articles up to the house and hid them temporarily in a lacquered box under a dustsheet in one of the ten unused bedrooms.

From the window on the stairs on the way down I caught an impression of a large pale shape in the drive near the gate. Went to look, to make sure. No mistake; the Mercedes.

Back in Buckram's box, Carlo slept peacefully, totally out. I felt his pulse, which was slow but regular, and looked at my watch. Not yet three thirty. Extraordinary.

Carrying Carlo to the car looked too much of a chore, so I went and fetched the car to Carlo. The engine started with a click and a purr, and made too little noise in the yard even to disturb the horses. Leaving the engine running I opened both rear doors and lugged Carlo in backwards. I had intended to do him the courtesy of the back seat, since he had done as much for me, but he fell limply to the floor. I bent his knees up, as he lay on his back, and gently shut him in.

As far as I could tell no one saw our arrival at the Forbury Inn. I parked the Mercedes next to the other cars near the front door, switched off the engine and the side lights, and quietly went away.

By the time I had walked the near mile home, collected the rubber mask from Buckram's box and taken off his headcollar, and dismantled the electronic eye and stowed it in the cupboard, it was too late to bother with going to bed. I slept for an hour or so more on the sofa and woke up feeling dead tired and not a bit full of energy for the first day of the races.

Alessandro arrived late, on foot, and worried.

I watched him, first through the office window and then from the owners' room, as he made his way down into the yard. He hovered in indecision in bay four, and with curiosity overcoming caution, made a crablike traverse over to Buckram's box. He unbolted the top half of the door, looked inside, and then bolted the door again. Unable from a distance to read his reaction, I walked out of the house into his sight without appearing to take any notice of him.