by Joe McNally
‘Could it be a woman?’
‘If there were someone that capable, I’d probably know her.’
‘I always thought it was a rare talent at your level, but I didn’t want to seem sexist.’
‘I’d accuse you of many things, Eddie, but sexism wouldn’t be one.’
I picked up my pen again. ‘Right. Motive?’
‘Some degree of justice, or revenge, but the ringer scam brings us back to money. You said that all the betting intelligence, from here, the far east, wherever, says nothing unusual. What do they class as unusual?’
‘I’ll ask.’ I reached for my mobile.
‘The other one,’ Mave warned.
‘I know. I’m just getting Gerry’s number.’
I spent five minutes talking to Gerry Waldron. Mave didn’t have the patience to wait. She returned to her keyboard. When I said goodbye to Gerry, Mave stopped typing and turned to me. ‘Well?’
‘Gerry says there are patterns for different race types. A big Saturday handicap on TV, they’ll take plenty. There are always tips going around and three or four runners in these big races might be heavily supported, but the bookies check what all the tipping lines are giving out. If a constant stream of money was coming for a first-timer or a horse with little form, and it hadn’t been tipped by a pro, they’d be very suspicious.’
‘But the ringers were in these small midweek races, weren’t they?’
‘They were. And they calculate from data they have on past races how much they expect to be bet on each horse based on its price. If they suddenly start taking hundred quid bets on one when the normal stake is a fiver, they realize something’s up. The biggest bet they logged on any of the ringers was twenty five quid.’
‘What about the betting shops? Supposing he had hundreds of agents around the country placing bets of twenty quid a time to stay under the radar?’
I shook my head. ‘Nothing like that. Nearly all the tills in shops are computerized now so everything’s being logged online. Anyway, this guy looks a lone operator, doesn’t he? Maybe he has a surgeon doing implants for him and somebody turning out these bugs, but he’s not organizing betting on a grand scale. Somebody would have talked by now.’
Mave got up. ‘Let me open my mind map and we’ll get all your doodling on the one system.’
I followed her to the desk and her PC. On her screen was a picture resembling a subway map superimposed on itself a hundred times. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a simulation of the first section of the network he used to carry the recordings from the bugs.’
‘When you say first part, what fraction?’
‘Of the whole network? Maybe a tenth of a percent.’
‘And there’s no way the owners of these PCs could know this traffic was moving through them?’
‘Nope. He’ll have inserted a tiny bug in a mailing list and every email sent would spread the infection to the contacts list of the others.’
‘What about security software, antivirus?’
‘No good against this fella. He’d have passed the stage of breaking that years ago.’
‘So the last PC on the line is his?’
‘I doubt it. Might be, but I doubt it. He only needs access to the data on it and that would be dead easy.’
I looked at the diagram and tried to imagine it multiplied by a thousand. I reached for my phone and hit redial. ‘Gerry, what triggers the alerts in your tracking software, stakes or payout?’
‘Stakes. Too late by the time it comes to payout. We want to block the bets before the race or change the price.’
‘But suppose it was lots of small individual stakes being placed from different accounts. Is there a lower level where they’d be watching for those types of bets, where they’d maybe start aggregating the individual stakes?’
‘Good question. Can you hold a minute?’
‘Sure.’
Mave was watching me intently.
Gerry came back on, ‘A fiver.’
‘That low? You’re kidding?’
‘We don’t like taking chances.’
‘Thanks, Gerry.’
‘Anytime, my friend.’
I nodded toward the diagram. ‘Off the top of your head, how many PCs do you think he’s controlling?’
‘Twenty five thousand.’
‘Could he also have used them to open an account for each PC owner with a bookmaker?’
‘Easily.’
‘Without them knowing?’
‘He’d just channel all the communications from the bookmaker to a folder in the cloud somewhere that he could access.’
‘How about twenty five thousand bets at two quid each?’
Mave smiled.
49
‘Gerry, sorry to bother you for the third time in half an hour.’
‘No trouble, Eddie.’
‘Would you mind checking those races I listed for online bets under a fiver, especially from recently opened accounts?’
‘Sure. It will take a bit longer.’
It took almost an hour and Gerry apologized for the delay. ‘I could have got back to you sooner, but the shower of shit that’s now hit the fan is covering the whole industry. We reckon those horses have cost the major bookmakers, not just us, close to three million off the back of thousands of bets, all at four pounds stakes.’
By the time I got off the phone, Gerry had asked me to come and speak to the Association of British Bookmakers at a special meeting in his chairman’s house in Surrey the following evening.
Mave high-fived me. ‘I told you I’d supercharge your brain, didn’t I!’
‘You did, Mave. You’re a genius.’
Three million!’
‘Now they’re shitting themselves in case the news gets out. Their shareholders are going to be picking the heads that will roll furthest. Gerry wants me to meet the big chiefs tomorrow night.’
‘What for?’
‘To see how a lid can be kept on it, I suppose.’
‘So the BHA are running scared and now the bookmakers are with them.’
‘By the sound of things the bookies will be sprinting past them very shortly. At least the BHA don’t have shareholders to worry about.’
After another call to Gerry Waldron, we figured that the betting accounts had been opened alongside new accounts with a specialist online payment transfer company called PayPunter. The bets had been made and winnings withdrawn to thousands of PayPunter accounts to which only this guy had access. Gerry was going to try and find out where the funds from PayPunter had been transferred to.
‘The money will have gone to a handful of accounts which you’ll find are now closed,’ Mave said. ‘So we know the motive, we know the victims, we know how he did it all but we’re not one step nearer finding out who he is or where he is.’
‘The links are Watt and Kilberg and Jimmy. One of them, or all of them knew this guy.’
The phone rang, the landline. It was Mac. ‘Eddie, the autopsies on Watt and Kilberg show no cancer. No disease. Watt’s heart was slightly enlarged, otherwise he was fit and well although noticeably overweight.’
I looked at Mave and mouthed “No cancer.” ‘Thanks, Mac. What about the stomach wall for signs of cyanide residue?’
‘None found. The docs say that’s unusual. They’d have been dead by the time it had been fully dispersed, so some could have been expected to remain in the stomach. What are your thoughts on it?’
‘Just a hunch. It’s tied in with something else. Can you ask them to check for oestrogen in all three corpses?’
‘That’s a female hormone.’
‘It is. Trust me on this one, Mac. I’ll come and see you tomorrow and take you through how we see it.’
‘We?’
‘My friend, the genius.’ I smiled at Mave and she made a brave attempt at fluttering her eyelashes.
‘The one who helped with the bugs?’
‘The same.’
‘I’ll come back to you.
’
We moved to the Snug and I threw some logs on the stove while Mave poured whiskey over ice. I opened the curtains and we tried to look through the reflection of the room out into the darkness.
There was something I’d forgotten, and I couldn’t bring it to mind. I stared at the fire and listened to the crackling logs. ‘Where are you tomorrow?’ Mave asked.
‘Fontwell.’
‘For how many?’
‘Two.’
‘You do the weights okay?’
I held my whiskey glass up to the fire and filtered the view of the flames through the golden liquid. ‘Eleven two and eleven five. No sweat.’
‘Literally. Are you meeting McCarthy there?’
‘Probably.’
‘You going to tell him about the betting coup?’
‘Nope. I promised Gerry I’d say nothing until I meet his guys.’
‘And you’ve promised McCarthy you’ll say nothing to anyone about the ringer. Should be fun tomorrow night! What’s the point of going there and wriggling your way through questions?’
‘Because Gerry asked me as a favour. And I think I could raise a fighting fund to help us catch this guy.’
‘How much?’
‘How much do we need? Is there anything money can buy that would help untangle that mess of a diagram on your screen?’
‘Pointless, Eddie, even if they could. It won’t terminate at his PC, I’ll guarantee you that. What about trying to trace the horse, this Fruitless Spin or Fissure Splint or whatever the hell it’s called?’
‘Good idea. They’ll have plenty experts to call on who might recognize the horse.’
Mac rang back to say the oestrogen test would need to wait until tomorrow. We arranged to meet after racing.
50
Driving to Fontwell, I began obsessing about where this horse had gone, this Fruitless Spin or whatever it was called. Removing the horse from Watt’s place could only mean that this guy intended to find another trainer to put it with, a small trainer who could manage alone.
Nobody with full time staff could do what Bayley had done. A horse being boxed up and sent racing would be known to everybody in the yard. Regular name changes and the bleaching of body parts would soon be public knowledge outside of a one-man operation like Bayley Watt’s. Even he was supposed to have two stable staff registered with the BHA. One of those was Kilberg. I’d need to ask Mac who the other was. Probably someone fictitious.
My brain slowly churned through the small yards I knew of, the permit trainers. Tonight I’d make a proper list, and it would be pretty short. That cheered me.
But at the races, I couldn’t rest. Even when I wasn’t riding, I headed for the paddock to look at the runners, searching for the well-made bay gelding of around sixteen hands, with the athletic walk.
My booked mounts finished second and third. I picked up a spare in the last, but realized after two flights of hurdles that I’d better start trying to think of something positive to say to the losing owners.
Mac was waiting in his car, in the dusk. I’d showered and my hair was still wet and the wind chilled my head as I hurried through the car park.
‘You smell like a coconut,’ Mac said.
‘Shower gel. It is a bit sweet. Open a window.’
‘I’ll get used to it. What’s new?’
I told him about the theory of the oestrogen implants, then watched expectantly. Mac had always liked to build suspense when he knew something and he stared poker-faced for five seconds. ‘Watt and Kilberg had extremely high levels of oestrogen, way above normal. None was found in Jimmy Sherrick.’
I felt myself almost slump with relief getting the confirmation that Jimmy hadn’t been involved in paedophilia. ‘Levels way above normal,’ I said. ‘I thought levels would be zero. It’s a female hormone, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what I thought. The experts tell me every man has oestrogen, just as every woman has testosterone. How do you think he was topping up the hormone feed in Watt and Kilberg?’
‘I don’t know. I hadn’t got that far.’
‘The medics say the indications are that it’s completely natural in Watt and Kilberg. The oestrogen they found needed no synthesizing by the body.’
I looked at him.
‘They found another implant in both Watt and Kilberg, one that wasn’t present in Jimmy Sherrick. It was in the back of the neck, at the base of the skull under the hairline. They believe it was sending some kind of radio frequency signal to the brain.’
‘To encourage the production of oestrogen?’
‘That’s the way they’re thinking. More tests are planned for tomorrow.’
‘Mac, this guy is a genius.’
‘You tell me your friend’s a genius too. We’d best pray he’s a higher grade of genius than whoever’s done this.’
‘Let’s hope we get the chance to find out.’ I turned side on to look at him. It was almost dark outside. ‘You seem reasonably composed, Mac. Is there something else you’re not telling me?’
He shook his head. ‘You know all I know. I’m just relieved this hasn’t broken yet. I didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance of keeping it quiet. Every day that passes without it breaking makes it more likely we can keep it under wraps.’
‘Well, he’s got the horse back. He wouldn’t have risked taking it from Watt’s if he didn’t plan to try again.’
He turned to me. ‘That’s right, stoke my anxiety.’
‘It’s reality, Mac. But what we have on our side is that he can only pull this off using a very small yard, probably another permit trainer. There can’t be many?’
‘Off the top of my head, I don’t know.’
‘Well why don’t you find out and have your inspectors pay them all a little informal visit this week to let them see you’re on the ball?’
‘I might just do that.’
I told him I was heading off for a meeting with the bookmakers.
‘Why?’
‘We traced the betting angle. He was keeping stakes below their trigger limit of a fiver and placing thousands through hijacked PCs.’
Mac covered his face with his hands. ‘Mac, listen, the bookies will be as keen as you are to keep this ringer angle under wraps.’
He turned to me. ‘You can’t tell them about the ringer!’
‘They’ve laid the same horse at least three times! Maybe more, to the tune of three million in losses. Okay, the horse will be under different names on their records, but these guys are not stupid.’
‘Three million? It sounds like stupid is a reasonable term for them.’
‘And what does that make the BHA?’
‘Okay. Slag us off, as usual.’
‘Mac, what is the point in denying information to the bookies? They’ve got a thousand times the cash that the BHA has to throw at this and solve it. They’ll find this horse long before any of the rest of us will.’
He simmered, then cooled. ‘Can you get them to promise to keep it quiet?’
‘Yes.’
He leant back on the headrest and sighed. ‘Please God, why didn’t I take early retirement last year?’
51
From Fontwell, I drove thirty miles north to Shalford in Surrey for my meeting with the Association of British Bookmakers. The CEO of Betstore, one of the biggest chains, had offered to host it in his Georgian house. The butler led me through and announced me as he opened the door into a room the length of a bowling alley. The three floor to ceiling windows were big enough to be roadside poster sites.
Eight men and one woman took up a third of the table, chairs askew, drinks at hand and an atmosphere so relaxed it was bordering on jolly. I’d expected to be wading through tears and bitten fingernails.
My friend Gerry Waldron got up and came to welcome me. A handshake and a hug from this big grey-haired man with the kind eyes and genuine look. I felt I’d known him all my life. With an arm across my shoulder, he introduced me, pulled out a beautifully upholstered chair
and poured a whiskey and ice for me.
By the time I was ready to leave, two hours later, I had promised them silence on my part about their losses and they’d reciprocated on the news of the ringer. They had committed resources and cash to help find the horse and whoever had engineered the betting coups.
‘What about you, Eddie,’ asked the Betstore chairman, ‘what’s your fee?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘I feel more comfortable dealing with a man who knows what he’s worth.’
I looked at the faces, watching, waiting for an answer. I said, ‘The five companies here take how much betting turnover, percentage wise?’
The chairman glanced at the others and said, ‘About eighty percent of UK turnover.’
‘Okay. If I catch this guy, all five of you give a hundred grand each to cancer research.’
The expectant smiles of these professionals watching this amateur, faded quickly, though the chairman held steady, determined to appear unfazed. ‘I’m in,’ he said.
The rest quickly followed.
Mave was pleased to hear that Mac had confirmed the oestrogen theory, but she was concerned about the commitment to the bookies. ‘How are you going to keep these guys at bay?’ Mave asked, ‘At a hundred grand a time, they’ll want hourly reports on progress.’
‘They’ll disappear back to their offices now. Details won’t matter to them. They’ve appointed a project manager. I tell him what I want and he gets it done. No questions asked.’
‘They sound a dream to deal with compared to the BHA.’
‘Pragmatism versus paranoia. No contest.’
She turned back to the PC, and clicked to bring up two windows on screen and said, ‘Once you’ve made fresh coffee, I’m going to lay your doodle pad square on the desk and get you to link the latest theories of Maven Judge.’
I headed for the kitchen, walking and talking. ‘Mentioning yourself in the third person, Mave, rarely a good sign.’
‘You’re right, but, well it’s not…’
I filled the kettle, waiting for her to finish, but she didn’t. I called to her, ‘It’s not really you, was what you were going to say, wasn’t it? It was your alter-ego. What do they call it these days? Your avatar.’
