We went and sat in my car in the hotel car park.
I slotted the tape from my answering machine into the car tape player and let it run to the end of Huw’s second message. Carlisle pushed the rewind button and listened to it all through again.
‘You should have given this to me sooner,’ he said.
‘I only found it this morning.’ He looked at me in disbelief, which I suppose was fair enough.
‘Funny,’ he said, ‘I’d forgotten that he was Welsh. Makes him more of a man rather than just a body, if you know what I mean.’
I nodded.
Carlisle pushed the rewind button a second time and played the tape once more. I didn’t need to hear Huw’s voice. By now, I knew those messages by heart.
‘Hi, Sid. Bugger! I wish you were there. Anyway, I need to talk to you. I’m in a bit of trouble and I… I know this sounds daft but I’m frightened. Actually, Sid, no kidding, I’m really frightened. Someone called me on the phone and threatened to kill me. I thought they were bloody joking so I told them to eff off and put the phone down. But they rang back and it’s given me the willies. I thought it was all a bit of a lark but now I find that it ain’t. I need your bloody help this time, mate, and no mistake. Call me back. Please call me back.’
And the second one
‘Where are you when I need you, you bugger? Come on, pick up the bloody phone, you bastard! Can’t you tell when a mate’s in trouble? Just a few losers, they says, for a few hundred in readies, they says. OK, I says, but make it a few grand. Do as we tell you, they says, or the only grand you’ll see is the drop from the top of the effing grandstand. Should have bloody listened, shouldn’t I?’
‘When did he leave these messages?’ asked Carlisle.
‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ I said.
‘Didn’t your answering machine tell you?’ he asked.
‘No, it came out of the ark,’ I said, ‘but, as you heard, there was another message between the two from Huw. I found out from that caller that he telephoned just before eight in the evening the day before Huw died. So one of Huw’s calls was before eight p.m. and the other after.’
‘So you didn’t just find them this morning,’ he said.
‘Well, no, not exactly,’ I said, suitably chastised.
Carlisle ejected the tape and put it in his pocket. ‘I’ll take this, if you don’t mind,’ he said.
I was sure he would take it even if I did mind.
‘I’ll give you a receipt for it when we get back to the station.’
‘Doesn’t sound like someone frightened of being killed by a jilted husband,’ I said. ‘More to do with fixing races.’
‘Burton was arrested for that, too, remember.’
‘Do you have an answer for everything?’ I said.
‘You pays your money and makes your choice.’
I drove back to the police station and pulled up in front of the entrance.
‘Will you do me a favour?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘I asked the police inspector at Bill’s house this morning to make sure that his forensic team check whether Bill had actually fired the gun or not — you know, residue on the hands. He seemed convinced that it was suicide and… well, could you check that the test is done?’
He nodded. ‘Standard practice but I will ask.’
‘And will you tell me the result?’
‘Don’t push your luck, Mr Halley.’
Pushing my luck is what I was about to discover I needed.
CHAPTER 9
Impotence is frustrating.
I don’t mean physical impotence, although that too must be exasperating. My current frustration stemmed from my impotence to get on with my investigations into Huw’s death. I needed some Viagra for the mind.
I was also failing in my task for Archie Kirk, having done little to delve into the world of the internet gambler.
Today was now Friday, a whole week since the Gold Cup and two days since I had been to see Carlisle in Cheltenham. And there was still no word from him as to the result of the forensics.
I’d been to Sandown races the previous day and had spent a tedious time asking anyone and everyone why they thought Huw Walker had become a murder victim. Some suggested race fixing as a possible reason, most having seen the antics between Huw and Bill last week either live or on the television and misreading the cause, as I had done. No one had been able to suggest any names other than Bill Burton as the likely murderer, many easily believing that, by killing himself, Bill had as good as confessed. I spent the afternoon sowing seeds of doubt to this theory and spreading the word that Sid Halley, at least, believed that Bill had been murdered, too.
I sat in the little office in my flat playing with the make-a-wager.com website. Come on, I thought, how could this be a big earner for organised crime? Gambling had always attracted more than its fair share of dodgy characters and internet gambling was sure to be no exception.
There were two obvious ways for a bookmaker to separate honest men from their money fraudulently. First, to fix the result so that he can take bets in the sure knowledge that he cannot lose. And, secondly, to contrive to make people gamble on an event where the result is already known, but only to himself. Nowadays, with television pictures of every race beamed straight to the betting shops and to any home with a satellite dish, there is little scope for the second. In the good old days of the wire services, a couple of minutes’ delay was easy.
The surest way has always been to fix the result. Not such an easy task in a race with plenty of runners, not unless nearly every jockey is in on the fix, which is very doubtful since the penalties for such behaviour are harsh. To be ‘Warned Off Newmarket Heath’ means to lose one’s livelihood and to be banned not only from Newmarket Heath but also from all racecourses and all racing stables. It is quite a deterrent. Fixing races, if done at all, has to be subtle, but just a slight manipulation of the odds can pay huge dividends in the long run.
Suppose you knew that a well-fancied horse was definitely not going to win because you had paid the jockey to make sure it didn’t, then you could offer considerably longer odds on that horse than its form would justify. You could even offer slightly better odds on the other runners, just a tiny fraction, mind, to encourage people to bet with you rather than someone else. Your extra losses on the winner would be far outweighed by the extra gains from the sure loser.
But make-a-wager.com was not a normal bookmaker. As an ‘exchange’, it didn’t stand to lose if the punters won. As long as individuals were prepared to match bets, there would always be commissions to collect. Unless, of course, it was the site itself that was matching the bets, betting to win and betting to lose, especially betting to lose, laying the sure-fire loser with long odds to attract the market.
The internet sites all claim, of course, that they are squeaky clean and that their detailed computer credit card records make the system secure and foolproof. But organised crime is no fool. It’s true that the system would show up any unusual pattern of gambling by individuals or groups, but the computer records themselves are under the control of the websites.
With the right results and a creative approach to the digital paperwork, make-a-wager.com could become make-a-fortune.com.
So it always came back to fixing the races.
I knew that Huw had been involved in fixing races, his voice from beyond death had said so. ‘They’, he’d said. ‘Do as we tell you, they says.’ Who were ‘they’? He hadn’t specified that ‘they’ were internet sites. I was simply putting that into the mix because of Archie. ‘They’ could have been a bookmaking firm, or even a gambling syndicate determined to improve the odds in their favour.