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.
I used the internet to look up make-a-wager.com on the Companies House website. All UK companies have to be registered with Companies House and every year they have to submit their accounts. This information is in the public domain. So, as a member of the public, I downloaded it.
I discovered that make-a-wager.com was the internet site for Make A Wager Ltd, company number 07887551. I downloaded all the information I could find, including the annual accounts for the previous year. The company was doing very nicely, thank you, with a turnover in excess of a hundred million with a hefty operating profit of fifteen million. The increase over the previous year was staggering with more than a doubling of turnover and a trebling of profit. There was big money to be had in this business.
George Lochs was not listed as one of the five directors of the company but Clarence Lochstein was. So George/Clarence had never officially changed his name. But it was one of the non-executive directors listed that really caught my eye — John William Enstone.
I did another search and found that Jonny Enstone was quite a busy chap, with no less than fourteen different companies listed of which he was or had been a director. J. W. Best Ltd, his construction company, was there as expected, as was Make A Wager Ltd. I hadn’t heard of the others but, nevertheless, I downloaded the list and saved it on my computer.
Marina called my mobile and said that she would be home a little late that evening. A colleague, she explained, was leaving to work in America, and she and others were giving her a farewell drink.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘I’ll be here.’
I made myself some scrambled eggs for lunch and ate them with a spoon straight out of the saucepan. Such decadence! My dear mother would have had a fit.
I spent the afternoon doing reference checks on four short-listed candidates for the post of manager of a smallish educational charity. Such checks were the bread and butter of my one-man business. As Carlisle had correctly said, I had a reputation for sorting the wheat from the chaff. Fortunately, the reputation was self- perpetuating as referees seemed reluctant to give me wrong or misleading information in case I were asked to do a reference on them at a later date.
There are two reasons for giving someone a glowing testimonial. One, because they actually are that good and, two, because they are useless and their current employer is trying to offload them on to someone else and thinks that a good reference will help. I knew that it was common practice for poor employees to be given a flattering reference on condition they looked for a new job.
On this occasion, in each of their three written references, all four of the candidates were described as hard working, reliable, loyal and as honest as the day is long. It was my usual practice to call the third listed referee first as I had found that this would often be the weak link if deceit were afoot. By the end of the day I had discovered that only one of the four candidates was as sound as his references would imply. Even he was not squeaky clean, having had to leave his present employment reluctantly due to a minor assignation of the heart with the wife of a senior colleague. Of the others, one was just about all right while the other two had serious honesty problems. One of these was suspected of theft from other staff but the evidence was circumstantial, and the other had threatened to sue her boss for sexual harassment unless she was given a good reference.
I would write my report and leave the charity to make its own decision.
*
It was almost eight o’clock by the time I printed out the report for the charity and shut down my computer. Typing one-handed, indeed with only one finger, was one of the many annoyances of having a false hand. Not being able to massage the typing-induced ache in my right wrist was another.
I thought about food and decided that as soon as Marina arrived home we’d go out for a local Chinese. Meanwhile, I opened a bottle of red wine and flicked on the television.
I was gently snoozing in front of some magnificent wildlife images of life on the Nile when the buzzer from the front desk woke me.
‘Yes,’ I said, picking up the intercom phone from the wall next to the kitchen door.
‘You had better come down here, Mr Halley, at once,’ said Derek.
There was something about the tone of his voice that made me drop the intercom phone and rush for my door. I charged down the flights of concrete stairs to the lobby and was met there not by a complete disaster but by a pretty scary sight, nevertheless.
A very pale-looking Marina was half-sitting, half-lying on the sofa in the lobby, bleeding. She was wearing the light fawn suede coat I had given her for Christmas and it was never going to be the same again. The front was covered in red splodges.
‘Derek,’ I said, ‘go up to my flat, the door’s open, and fetch me a large bath towel from one of the bathrooms. Wet it first.’
He hesitated for a second.
‘Do it, please, Derek.’ The urgency in my voice cut through his indecision and he went up in the lift.
I sat down beside Marina who was staring at me with wide frightened eyes.
‘Fine mess you’ve got yourself into,’ I said with a smile.
‘Just the usual for a Friday night.’ She smiled back and I knew that she was fine on the inside. She was tough
