I raised my eyes from the source of these unprofitable thoughts and met the unwinking gaze of its owner. He was obscurely amused, enjoying the effect his pet had had on me. I had never as far as I knew met an assassin before; but without any doubt, I knew then.

'Walk along there,' Enso said, pointing with his pistol up the walking ground. So I walked, thinking that a Lee Enfield made a lot of noise, and that someone would hear, if they shot me with it. The only thing was, the bullet travelled one and a half times as fast as sound, so that you'd be dead before you heard the bang.

Cal had calmly put the big gun under the long raincoat and was carrying it upright with his hand through what was clearly a slit, not a pocket. From even a very short distance away, one would not have known he had it with him.

Not that there was anyone to see. My gloomiest assessments were quite right: we emerged from the little wood on to the narrow end of the Railway Land, and there wasn't a horse or a rider in sight.

Across the field, alongside the railway, there was a fence made of wooden posts with a wooden top rail and plain wire strands below. There were a few bushes bursting green round about, and a calm peaceful late spring evening sunshine touching everything with red gold.

When we reached the fence, Enso said to stop.

I stopped.

'Fasten him up,' he said to Carlo and Cal; and he himself stayed quietly pointing his pistol at me while Cal laid his deadly treasure flat on the ground and Carlo unzipped the canvas hold-all.

From it he produced nothing more forbidding than two narrow leather belts, with buckles. He gave one of them to Cal, and without allowing me the slightest hope of escape, they turned my back towards the fence and each fastened one of my wrists to the top wooden rail.

It didn't seem much. It wasn't even uncomfortable, as the rail was barely more than waist high. It just seemed professional, as I couldn't even turn my hands inside the straps, let alone slide them out.

They stepped away, behind Enso, and the sunlight threw my shadow on the ground in front of me- Just a man leaning against a fence on an evening stroll.

Away in the distance on my left I could see the cars going over the railway bridge on the Norwich road, and further still, down towards Newmarket on my right, there were glimpses of the traffic in and out of the town.

The town, the whole area, was bursting with thousands of visitors to the Guineas meeting. They might as well have been at the South Pole. From where I stood, there wasn't a soul within screaming distance.

Just Enso and Carlo and Cal.

I had watched Cal in his efforts on my right wrist, but it seemed to me shortly after they had finished that it was Carlo who had been rougher.

I turned my head and understood why I thought so. He had somehow turned my arm over the top of the rail and strapped it so that my palm was half facing backwards. I could feel the strain taking shape right up through my shoulder and I thought at first he had done it by accident.

Then with unwelcome clarity I remembered what Dainsee had said: the easiest way to break a bone is to twist it, to put it under stress.

Oh, Christ, I thought: and my mind cringed.

I said, 'I thought this sort of thing went out with the Middle Ages.'

Enso was not in the mood for flippant comment.

Enso was stoking himself up into a proper fury.

'I hear everywhere today on the racecourse that Tommy Hoylake is going to win the Two Thousand Guineas on Archangel. Everywhere, Tommy Hoylake, Tommy Hoylake.'

I said nothing.

'You will correct that. You will tell the newspapers that it is to be Alessandro. You will let Alessandro ride Archangel on Saturday.'

Slowly I said, 'Even if I wanted to, I could not put Alessandro on the horse. The owner will not have it.'

'You must find a way,' Enso said. 'There is to be no more of this blocking of my orders, no more of these tactics of producing unsurmountable reasons why you are not able to do as I say. This time, you will do it. This time you will work out how you can do it, not how you cannot.'

I was silent.

Enso warmed to his subject.

'Also you will not entice my son away from me.'

'I have not.'

'Liar.' The hatred flared up like magnesium and his voice rose half an octave. 'Everything Alessandro says is Neil Griffon this and Neil Griffon that and Neil Griffon says, and I have heard your name so much that I could cut- your- throat.' He was almost shouting as he bit out the last three words. His hands were shaking, and the gun barrel wavered round its target. I could feel the muscles tighten involuntarily in my stomach, and my wrists jump uselessly against the straps.

He took a step nearer and his voice was loud and high.

'What my son wants, I will give him. I- I- will give him. I will give him what he wants.'

'I see,' I said, and reflected that comprehending the situation went no way at all towards getting me out of it.

'There is no one who does not do as I say,' he shouted. 'No one. When Enso Rivera tells people to do things, they do them.'

Whatever I said was as likely to enrage as to calm him, so I said nothing at all. He took a further step near me, until I could see the glint of gold-capped back teeth and smell the sweet heavy scent of his after-shave.

'You too,' he said. 'You too will do what I say. 'There is no one who can boast he disobeyed Enso Rivera. There is no one alive who has disobeyed Enso Rivera.' The pistol moved in his grasp and Cal picked up his Lee Enfield, and it was quite clear what had become of the disobedient.

'You would be dead now,' he said. 'And I want to kill you.' He thrust his head forward on his short neck, the strong nose standing out like a beak and the black eyes as dangerous as napalm. 'But my son- my son says he will hate me for ever if I kill you- And for that I want to kill you more than I have ever wanted to kill anyone-'

He took another step and rested the silencer against my thin wool sweater shirt, with my heart thumping away only a couple of inches below it. I was afraid he would risk it, afraid he would calculate that Alessandro would in time get over the loss of his racing career, afraid he would believe that things would somehow go back and be the same as on the day his son casually said, 'I want to ride Archangel in the Derby.'

I was afraid.

But Enso didn't pull the trigger. He said, as if the one followed inexorably from the other, as I suppose in a way it did, 'So I will not kill you- but I will make you do what I say. I cannot afford for you not to do what I say. I am going to make you-'

I didn't ask how. Some questions are so silly they are better unsaid. I could feel the sweat prickling out on my body and I was sure he could read the apprehension on my face: and he had done nothing at all yet, nothing but threaten.

'Alessandro will ride Archangel,' he said. 'The day after tomorrow. In the Two Thousand Guineas.'

His face was close enough for me to see the blackheads in the unhealthy putty skin.

I said nothing. He wasn't asking for a promise. He was telling me.

He took a pace backwards and nodded his head at Carlo. Carlo picked up the hold-all and produced from it a truncheon very like the one I had removed from him in Buckram's box.

Promazine first?

No promazine.

They didn't mess around making things easy, as they had for the horses. Carlo simply walked straight up to me, lifted his right arm with truncheon attached, and brought it down with as much force as he could manage. He seemed to be taking a pride in his work. He concentrated on getting the direction just right. And it wasn't any of the fearsome things like my twisted elbow that he hit, but my collar-bone.