PI sleuth is on the job but Morrison panel faces tough deliberations

Having heard on Tuesday about disgruntled former employees, a fellow trainer with an axe to grind and what amounted to a plot to frame Hughie Morrison, the only thing this hearing needed to make it a proper pulp potboiler was the appearance of a hardboiled private investigator – and lo, on Wednesday the Our Little Sister case got its PI.

Engaged by Morrison, who has always vigorously protested his innocence over his filly's positive test for an anabolic steroid in January, our PI goes by the name of Sam Shovel – ah, just kidding, it's Neil Williams, recently retired detective chief inspector and, sadly, probably nothing like the hard-drinking, womanising anti-heroes of film noir imagination.

Yet, in a twist that would be right at home in a Raymond Chandler novel, Williams' investigations inadvertently created a spot of bother for his client. It emerged on Wednesday that one of the leads Williams followed up on Morrison's behalf was the one that involved a fellow trainer who, for legal reasons, I am obliged to refer to as Ms White.

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: probably nothing like private investigator Neil Williams

To recap, on Tuesday we heard that Morrison had been tipped off that Ms White threatened to nobble Our Little Sister based on a tenuous link between the filly and a third party with whom she had a dispute. Although Ms White was named by Graeme McPherson QC, Morrison's representative, as a person of interest, no evidence beyond this tip-off was presented to suggest it was Ms White with the syringe in the stable block who done it.

So it looked bad when it emerged our PI sent Ms White a letter this month, which the BHA's barrister Philip Evans read out when cross-examining Morrison.