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However the thought of them definitely made me anxious. If there were cameras in there then it could only be bad news. The only question was the degree of trouble.
    My only protection was the baseball cap on my head and while that would help, it was hardly a disguise. One shot of me in the shop meant a link could be proven. No getting away from that. It would be a while yet before anything happened to Billy and it would mean someone checking through a lot of film but it could be done.
    Maybe Billy didn’t keep the film more than a day or two. Maybe Billy had cameras with no film in them. Maybe Billy had no camera. I didn’t like maybes. I needed certainties. Random only gets you so far.
    What was my take on Billy boy? He had money but not that much. The house was reasonably expensive but not that much. Semi. Semi-detached, semi-expensive. I’d looked at his shoes – a hundred quid a time with worn heels. He ate lasagne and chips but wore a watch that was either worth five hundred pounds or a tenner depending on whether it was legit or a snidey. He had a two quid haircut and two twenty-grand cars in his drive. He walked to the bank. Mrs nicotine skin and hard-worked hair carried Louis Vuitton handbags and went to bingo twice a week.
    My money was on Billy not having a camera. It was a big bet. Bigger than anything placed in Hutchison’s Independent Bookmakers. I figured that he wouldn’t want to spend the money. Figured he’d not want everything that happened in his shop to be recorded either. Figured he’d have a dummy camera at best.
    For figured, read hoped. For hoped, read prayed. Except I didn’t pray to God any more.
    I had finished my return walk and was outside the bookies. I didn’t hesitate even though I wanted to. I breathed deep and approached the door. Let there be no cameras. No cameras. No cameras. Keep saying it, make it so.
    I pushed through the frosted-glass door and went in, knowing that the last thing I should do was look for the last thing I wanted to see. Scanning the little shop for cameras would be like holding my hands up.
    There were newspapers pinned up on the far wall and I headed over to hide myself against them until I got my bearings. I made as if I was poring over the Sandown form. Made as if I knew what I was doing. Checked out the floor. Worn carpet. Rolled-up betting slips. Rogue ash showed someone was ignoring the smoking ban.
    The walls behind the pinned-up racing pages could have done with a lick of paint. There were chips out of the Formica tabletops and a loose wire sticking out below a light switch. Thoughts of electrocution strayed across my mind.
    I found a betting slip and wrote out a line. Fiver on the favourite in the second.
    Billy took the bet himself. There was just him and a slightly chubby twenty-something girl with dark hair behind the counter. He gave the slip the once-over before giving me some cheesy ‘last of the big spenders’ grin and clocked in my bet. He’d barely seen me although it didn’t matter if he did. Only mattered who else saw me. Billy wouldn’t be talking.
    He gave me my copy of the slip and turned to the next punter.
    I looked at him just a moment longer than I should have done. Imagining all kinds of things and thinking it odd that I was standing so close to him. I was stalling and it was stupid and yet I didn’t, couldn’t, pull away. The chubby girl was looking at me, her eyebrows knitted, about to ask if there was anything wrong. Sure, I thought, I am going to kill your boss and I’m having a good gawk at him first. You got a problem with that? Instead I made a show of checking my betting slip and nodding my head before sliding back into the cover of the punters.
    They were the usual mixed betting-shop crowd. Old guys shuffling a quid a day around Lucky 15s and Yankees at a few pence a line. Loud younger guys in football tops banging in single bets and claiming it is all fixed when they lose. Quiet types who slide their slips over the