I was just giving Joe up when he came out of the gate and hailed me with no apology for his lateness. But I was not the only person to notice his arrival.

The tall dark Mr Tudor strode towards us.

'Nantwich, be so good as to give me a lift into Brighton, will you?' he said, authoritatively. 'As you can see, the taxis are out of action, and I have an important appointment in Brighton in twenty minutes.'

Joe looked at the taxi-drivers with vague eyes.

'What's happened?' he said.

'Never mind that now,' said Tudor impatiently. 'Where is your car?'

Joe looked at him blankly. His brain seemed to be working at half speed. He said, 'Oh – er – it isn't here, sir. I've got a lift.'

'With you?' said Tudor to me. I nodded. Joe, typically, had not introduced us.

'I'll be obliged if you will take me into Brighton,' said Tudor, briskly. 'I'll pay you the regular taxi fare.'

He was forceful and in a hurry. It would have been difficult to refuse to do him a favour so small to me, so clearly important to him.

'I'll take you for nothing,' I said, 'but you'll find it a bit of a squeeze. I have a two-seater sports car.'

'If it's too small for all of us, Nantwich can stay here and you can come back for him,' said Tudor in a firm voice. Joe showed no surprise, but I thought that the dark Mr Tudor was too practised at consulting no one's convenience but his own.

We skirted the groups of battered taxi-drivers, and threaded our way to my car. Tudor got in. He was so large that it was hopeless to try to wedge Joe in as well.

'I'll come back for you, Joe,' I said, stifling my irritation. 'Wait for me up on the main road.'

I climbed into the car, nosed slowly out of the car park, up the racecourse road, and turned out towards Brighton. There was too much traffic for the Lotus to show off the power of the purring Climax engine, and going along at a steady forty gave me time to concentrate on my puzzling passenger.

Glancing down as I changed gear, I saw his hand resting on his knees, the fingers spread and tense. And suddenly I knew where I had seen him before. It was his hand, darkly tanned, with the faint bluish tint under the finger-nails, that I knew.

He had been standing in the bar at Sandown with his back towards me and his hand resting flat on the counter beside him, next to his glass. He had been talking to Bill; and I had waited there, behind him, not wanting to interrupt their conversation. Then Tudor finished his drink and left, and I had talked with Bill.

Now I glanced at his face.

'It's a great shame about Bill Davidson,' I said.

The brown hand jumped slightly on his knee. He turned his head and looked at me while I drove.

'Yes, indeed it is.' He spoke slowly. 'I had been hoping he would ride a horse for me at Cheltenham.'

'A great horseman,' I said.

'Yes indeed.'

'I was just behind him when he fell,' I said, and on an impulse added, 'There are a great many questions to be asked about it.'

I felt Tudor's huge body shift beside me. I knew he was still looking at me, and I found his presence overpowering. 'I suppose so,' he said. He hesitated, but added nothing more. He looked at his watch.

'Take me to the Pavilion Plaza Hotel, if you please. I have to attend a business meeting there,' he said.

We drove for some miles in silence. My passenger sat apparently in deep thought. When we reached Brighton he told me the way to the hotel.

'Thank you,' he said, without warmth, as he lifted his bulk clumsily out of the low-slung car. He had an air of accepting considerable favours as merely his due, even when done him by complete strangers.

I went back to the racecourse.

Joe was waiting for me, sitting on the bank at the side of the road. He had some difficulty opening the car door, and he stumbled into his seat, muttering. I discovered that Joe Nantwich was drunk.

Joe was nursing a grievance. Everything which went wrong for Joe was someone else's fault, according to him. Barely twenty, he was a chronic grumbler. It was hard to know which was worse to put up with, his grousing or his bragging, and that he was treated with tolerance by the other jockeys said much for their good nature. Joe's saving grace was his undoubted ability as a jockey, but he had put that to bad use already by his 'stopping' activities, and now he was threatening it altogether by getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon.

'I would have won that race,' he whined.

'You're a fool to drink so much at the races,' I said.

'Owners won't put you on their horses if they see you getting drunk,' I said, feeling it was no business of mine, after all.

'I can win any race, drunk or not,' said Joe.

'Not many owners would believe it.'

'They know I'm good.'

'So you are, but you won't be if you go on like this,' I said.

'I can drink and I can ride and I can ride and I can drink. If I want to.'

'That bloody Sandy, he tipped me off. He bloody well tipped me off over the bloody rails. I'd have won that race as easy as kiss your hand and he knew it and tipped me off over the bloody rails.'

'Don't be silly, Joe.'

'You can't say I wouldn't have won the race,' said Joe argumentatively.

'And I can't say you would have won it,' I said. 'You fell at least a mile from home.'

'I didn't fall. I'm telling you, aren't I? Sandy bloody Mason tipped me off over the rails.'

'How?' I asked idly, concentrating on the road.

'He squeezed me against the rails. Then he tipped me over. He stuck his knee into me and gave a heave and off I went over the bloody rails.' His whining voice finished on a definite sob.

' Sandy wouldn't do a thing like that,' I said mildly.

'Oh yes he would. He told me he'd get even with me. He said I'd be sorry. But I couldn't help it, Alan, I really couldn't.'

I had no idea what he was talking about; but it began to look as though Sandy, if he had unseated him, had had his reasons.

Joe went on talking. 'You're always decent to me, Alan, you're not like the others. You're my friend-' He put his hand heavily on my arm leaning over towards me and giving me the benefit of the full force of his alcoholic breath.

I shook him off. 'For God's sake sit up, Joe, or you'll have us in the ditch,' I said.

But he was too immersed in his own troubles to hear me. He pulled my arm again. There was a lay-by just ahead. I slowed, turned into it, and stopped the car.

'If you don't sit up and leave me alone you can get out and walk,' I said, trying to get through to him with a rough tone.

But he was still on his own track, and weeping noisily now.

'You don't know what it's like to be in trouble,' he sobbed. I resigned myself to listen. The quicker he got his resentments off his chest, I thought, the quicker he would relax and go to sleep.

'What trouble?' I said. I was not in the least interested.

'Alan, I'll tell you because you're a pal, a decent pal.' He put his hand on my knee. I pushed it off.

'I was supposed to stop a horse and I didn't, and Sandy lost a lot of money and said he'd get even with me and he's been following me around saying that for days and days and I knew he'd do something awful and he has.' He paused for breath. 'Lucky for me I hit a soft patch or I might have broken my neck. It wasn't funny. And that bloody Sandy,' he choked on the name, 'was laughing. I'll make him laugh on the other side of his bloody face.

That last sentence made me smile. Joe with his baby face, strong of body perhaps, but weak of character, was no match for the tough, forceful Sandy, more than ten years older and incalculably more self-assured.

'What horse did you not stop?' I asked. 'And how did Sandy know you were supposed to be going to stop one?'

From the self-pitying, half incoherent voice I learned a sorry enough story. Reduced to essentials, it was this. Joe had been paid well for stopping horses on several occasions, two of which I had seen myself. But when David Stampe had told his father the Senior Steward about the last one, and Joe had nearly lost his licence, it gave him a steadying shock. The next time he was asked to stop a horse he said he would, but in the event, from understandable nerves, he had not done it thoroughly enough early in the race, and at the finish was faced with the plain knowledge that if he lost the race he would lose his licence as well. He won. This had happened ten days ago.