Kent had taken charge of the situation. Despite all hisbravado, vowing to the local news crews that the perpetrators would be caught,his investigation went nowhere. Local enquiries revealed nothing and hisattempt at interrogating the shop manager in the hope of getting him to confessto being an inside man had been a disastrous waste of time. The man had been distressedenough by the incident as it was and Kent’s actions also led to an officialcomplaint being filed. It was just one more blot on his increasingly tarnished copybook.
A couple of days later, a stolen BMW from the local area wasfound abandoned on the South Coast, not far from Portsmouth. The car had beenreported missing on the same day as the robbery but Kent hadn’t made theconnection. In the boot of the car the Hampshire police had found the threeguns that had been used by the gang. All were subsequently revealed to havebeen fake replicas.
To say he hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory that day wouldhave been an understatement. To compound his misery, he had spent the wholemorning studying the form for the big race and had picked out Auroras Encore,one of the rank outsiders. He had been on his way to the betting shop to putthe bet on when he had got sidetracked in The Red Lion. In the aftermath of therobbery he had completely forgotten to put the bet on.
Later that day he had felt sick to the pit of his stomachwhen he saw that Auroras Encore had won at 66/1.
This time, everything was going to be different. If all wentaccording to plan, by the end of the day he would not only be a hero, but alsoa rich hero.
The first thing he needed to do was to get onto the computerand put some bets on. Kent enjoyed a flutter on the horses now and again but couldn’tbe seen to be doing it too often, at least not locally. It wasn’t good for thelocal head of police to be seen hanging around in betting shops. He preferred atrip to the races, which was an altogether more respectable way of placing abet. It was also one that Debs had less of a problem with, especially if itmeant she got a day out.
He was aware that a new, easy and most importantly anonymousway of placing a bet had sprung up in recent years. It was one that Kent wasyet to explore, even in 2018, but back in 2013 he had the ideal opportunity tomake it work for him. The newspaper was full of bookmakers advertising their websitebetting facilities, most of whom were pushing their lucrative offers for new accountholders.
“Open an account with us today, and we’ll match your firstbet up to a £50 limit,” screamed out one. “Best Odds Guaranteed,” said another.There were many more in a similar vein.
He remembered that his mate Nobby, from the pub, had beenextolling the virtues of online betting to him a few years ago during theCheltenham Festival. He had spent the whole of one evening in the pub badgeringKent about it.
“You should definitely open some betting accounts. You get amuch better deal online,” Nobby had claimed. “The shops are just for the mugpunters. And you can put some bets on for me.”
“Can’t you put your own bets on?” Kent had replied.
“Not anymore,” said Nobby. “They’ve closed or restricted allmy accounts. They don’t like winners, you see. If you open one and place a fewbets for me, I’ll see you alright out of the winnings.”
This had all sounded rather dodgy to Kent, so he haddeclined at the time. He’d lost count of the number of times Nobby had claimedto be a professional gambler. He certainly looked the part, always dressedimmaculately in a suit and studying the Racing Post. He also didn’t seemto have any sort of job.
Kent had historically been of the opinion that you never seea poor bookie. He was more than fed up with dealing with petty shopliftingthefts by addicted gamblers who had blown all their dole money on the roulettemachines in the betting shops. He conceded, though, having listened to Nobbywax lyrical on the subject, that if you knew what you were doing on the horsesand had inside information you probably could make it pay. He still hadn’t seenany real evidence of it in Nobby’s case, but then evidence had never been Kent’sstrong point.
Today, though, he couldn’t lose. He had the best inside informationthan anyone had ever had about any horse ever. All he had to do was figure outhow to navigate the bookmaker’s websites and get the money down. He wasn’t exceptionallysavvy when it came to computers, doing enough to get by at work and that wasabout it. Most of the technological advances of recent years had passed him by.
He was well aware of the world of social media. The stationhad had to deal with a number of cases in recent years where residents had claimedthey had been the victims of hate crimes on Facebook perpetrated by otherpeople in the town. It was nearly always over some petty squabble or other,which necessitated little more than a warning for the instigator, but Kent didn’thave a clue about how the whole thing worked. He just delegated any suchcomplaints down to Hannah and Adrian. They were younger and understood that sortof thing.
But he knew his way around a laptop well enough to find hisway onto the bookmaker’s betting sites, and when he got there he found themeasy enough to use. He spent the first part of the morning armed with his creditcard, registering with as many firms as he could and placing bets on AurorasEncore. He was delighted to find that although the horse had been 66/1 at theoff, many bookmakers were offering longer odds than that in the morning. He wasable to get a significant amount of his cash on at 100/1.
He was able to do this relatively undisturbed as he had toldDebs that he
