‘Really?’ I said. ‘And did you give them his name?’
‘I couldn’t remember it.’ He laughed. ‘So I made another one up. Rodney is now Professor Aubrey Winterton, retired from the University of Bulawayo — I could remember that bit.’
Aubrey Winterton/Reginald Culpepper, it didn’t matter so long as no one was able to show that he didn’t exist.
‘And did this individual have an Irish accent?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Charles, ‘he did not.’
‘I wonder who he was.’
‘I dialled 1471 to get his number and then I phoned back,’ said Charles.
‘And?’
‘The number was for The Pump. I got through to the switchboard.’
‘Thank you, Charles.’ I was impressed. ‘If you need a job, you can be my new assistant.’
‘No thanks,’ said Charles. ‘I like to give orders, not take them.’
‘Be my boss then.’
He laughed and disconnected.
Good old Paddy, I thought. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist telling.
Bejesus, dat was his nature.
I spent the morning writing a preliminary report for Archie Kirk.
I hadn’t actually discovered any link between internet gambling and organised crime but I reported that I did believe there was potential for the craze of gambling on-line, and especially on-line gaming, to be abused by criminals.
The end user of the service, that is the gambler logged on to sites with his or her home computer, is placing a large amount of trust in the website operators to run their service properly and fairly.
For example, a game of roulette conducted on-line requires the player to place stakes on a regular roulette table pattern: numbers 1-36, 0 and 00, red and black, odd and even, and so on. The wheel, however, is a creation of the computer and does not actually exist, and neither does the ball. How can the player be sure that the computer-generated ‘ball’ will move randomly to fill one of the slots on the computer-generated ‘wheel’? It would seem that without this trust between player and wheel the game would not profit, but players of current sites seem to accept this trust without question. I knew that the computers used were extremely powerful machines and, no doubt, they could be used to calculate, as the ‘ball’ was rolling, which number would provide for the lowest payout by the ‘house’ and ensure that the ‘ball’ finished there.
Similarly, in all games of dice or cards, the ‘roll’ of the ‘dice’ or the ‘deal’ of the ‘cards’ are computer images and consequently have the potential to be controlled by a computer and not be as random as the players might hope and expect.
I concluded that, as many of these operations are run from overseas territories, it remained to be seen if regulations there were sufficient. I believed that the current trend for self-regulation left much to be desired.
As to the question of internet ‘exchanges’, as used for betting on horse racing and other sports, I concluded that the scope for criminal activity was no more prevalent than that which existed in regular bookmaker-based gambling. The significant difference was that, whereas in the past only licensed bookmakers were effectively betting on a horse to lose, anyone could now do so by ‘laying’ a horse on the exchanges. It was potentially easier to ensure a horse lost a race than won it. Over-training it too close to a race or simply by keeping it thirsty for a while and then giving it a bellyful of water just before the off, were both sure ways to slow an animal down. Speeding it up was far more difficult, and far more risky.
The Jockey Club and the new Horseracing Regulatory Authority have rules forbidding those intimately connected with horses to ‘lay’ on the exchanges. However, I knew from Bill that ‘there were ways’, even though I had not yet found out how he had layed Candlestick in the Triumph Hurdle. Some trusty friend was all he had needed. Even untrustworthy friends would do it for a cut of the winnings.
The commission-based exchanges appeared to be such high-profit businesses, without there being any risk of ‘losing’ on a big gamble, that the temptation for them to meddle with results, and hence punter confidence, seemed to be minimal. But regulator vigilance was essential as there would always be those who would try to beat the system unfairly.
I finished the report by saying that my investigations of individual on-line gambling operations would continue and a further report would be prepared in due course.
I was reading it through when the phone rang.
‘Is that Sid Halley?’ asked a Welsh voice.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Good. This is Evan Walker here, see.’
‘Ah, Mr Walker,’ I said. ‘How are things?’
‘Not good, not good at all.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
‘Did Bill Burton kill my son?’
‘No, I don’t believe so, but I’m still trying to find out who did.’
‘They won’t let me have Huw’s body for burial. Say they need it until after the inquest. I asked them when that would be and they said it could be months.’ He sounded distraught. ‘Can’t stop thinking of him in some cold refrigerator.’
I wondered whether it was worse than thinking of him in the cold ground.
‘I’ll have a word with the policeman in the case,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he can give me a better idea of when you can have a funeral.’
‘Thank you. Please phone me as soon as you find who killed him.’
I assured him that I would. And I’d shout it from the roof-tops, too.
I arrived to pick up Marina from Lincoln’s Inn Fields at half past five.
I’d spent the afternoon doing chores around the flat and getting my hair cut around the corner. Such was my desperation to move my investigation forward that I had a crazy idea of collecting hair off the floor of all the barbers in London to test for a DNA match with Marina’s attacker. Then I had remembered that Marina had said I would need the follicles too so cut hair was no good. Back to square one.
I had called Chief Inspector Carlisle at the Cheltenham police station but he was unavailable so I left him a message asking him to call me on my mobile, and he did so as I waited outside the Research Institute for Marina to appear.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but we can’t release Walker’s body for a while longer in case we need to do more tests.’
‘What tests?’ I asked him. ‘Surely you’ve done all you need in nearly two weeks?’
‘It’s not actually up to us. It’s the coroner who makes the decision when to release a body.’
‘But I bet he’s swayed by the police.’
‘The problem is that in murder cases there have to be extra tests done by independent pathologists in case there’s a court case and the defence require further examination of the body. In the past, bodies have sometimes had to be exhumed for defence tests.’ He made it sound like a conspiracy.
‘But you might not have a court case for months or even years.’
‘The coroner has to make a judgement call and two weeks is definitely on the short side.’
‘But surely there’s no doubt as to the cause of Huw Walker’s death?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Carlisle. ‘I’ve known defence lawyers insisting that the victim died of natural causes just before he was shot, stabbed or strangled by the defendant. If it was up to me, I’d sentence some lawyers to the same term as their clients. Conniving bastards.’
I was somewhat amused by his opinion of the English legal profession but I supposed, in his job, all trials came down to conflicts of us versus them, with truth and justice as secondary considerations.