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So my friend (the one who had his car stolen) just found this taped to his door. I can't help thinking that it's related. What do you think?

enter image description here

Here is the text of the note:

I just simply cannot believe that this badger just ate like 8 great big steaming Sausage rolls, what an animal

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    $\begingroup$ Honest question: is this the kind of puzzle people are looking for on Puzzling? For me, deciphering the meaning of the image in the question was a puzzle; but getting from there to the location of the stolen car is just a pile of procedural de-obfuscation. $\endgroup$
    – JakeRobb
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 18:40
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    $\begingroup$ @JakeRobb from the feedback I've got, the answer is kinda sorta. Some obfuscation is ok, but not too much. I went overboard basically. BeastlyGerbil said "Don't have massively lengthy strings of binary or stuff which we need to transcribe, and try not to use the same cipher twice or have too many ciphers. Mix things up like you did in the first puzzle" and the final puzzle (actually finding the car) will hopefully reflect that $\endgroup$
    – CalvT
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 18:54
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    $\begingroup$ @JakeRobb From the little I've seen on here, a +/- 5 letter alphanumeric string is always put into Imgur as part of the puzzling procedure, as so many questions creators do it. $\endgroup$
    – Stephen S
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 19:43
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    $\begingroup$ It's not about being overwhelming. It's about it being detective work. Personally, I come to Puzzling for brainteasers (including rebus types), logic puzzles, and the like. I wasn't familiar with the imgur-maze tag, nor does this puzzle have it -- but as there's apparently a significant subset of the community who enjoys imgur mazes, that's fine. I think adding that tag that would help here. $\endgroup$
    – JakeRobb
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 20:42
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    $\begingroup$ One more thing -- I feel fairly strongly that puzzles should not assume that everyone is familiar with the norms of the community. I participate in several other SE sites, and this is the first time I've encountered such a thing. Perhaps this is just a consequence of Puzzling's slight mismatch with SE's standard Q&A model. $\endgroup$
    – JakeRobb
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 20:44

1 Answer 1

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1

A golf shout is "fore", and the second image represents a key (going into a lock).
Clarification From OP: The two images represent "The Key Is Four". The key is for all of the puzzle

2

Taking every fourth word's first letter gives us 5 characters (cb8Sa) of an Imgur URL, leading to a message: enter image description here

3

That message can be decoded as base64, leading to http://jsfiddle.net/86s8kzm8/.
Clarification from OP: The fourth message is "Zlad from TBL". Zlad is an anagram of "Ladz" and "TBL" could be "The Bad Ladz" which is the name of the gang.

enter image description here

4

The fourth message has suspicious capitalization. enter image description here
Taking the first letter of each line gives another Imgur URL:
https://i.sstatic.net/hgpKr.jpg
enter image description here

whose text is 01010111 01000110 01101000 01110011 00100000 01010001 00111001 01110111 01100111 00100000 01010111 01000010 01110010 01101000 00100000 01001101 01010100 01001001 01110101 00100000 01010011 01000001 01010010 01000111 00001010 01110011 01100100 01000110 01000010 00100000 01100111 01001000 01100111 00110100 00100000 01001111 01000100 01000101 00110000 00100000 01110111 01000010 01110010 01010100 00100000 01100010 00111001 01110000 01010111 00001010 01110001 01011001 01110010 00111001 00100000 01001110 01000100 01000101 00110100 00100000 01110111 00111001 01000111 01101000 00100000 01000101 01001001 01110010 01101000 00100000 01000111 00110000 01110111 00110010 00001010 01000011 01101001 00110000 01110111 00100000 01000101 01010010 01001000 01100111 00100000 01001010 00111001 00110010 00110100 00100000 00111000 01011001 01101000 00111001 00100000 01001100 01101010 01001001 01111001 00001010 01110111 01001111 01001000 01000010 00100000 00110100 01010111 01001111 00110101 00100000 00111000 01110111 01010011 01000100 00100000 01001110 01000100 01010001 00110100 00100000 00111001 01000111 01001000 00110010 00001010 00111001 01000111 00110100 01101000 00100000 01001001 01000010 01010010 01110111 00100000 01000011 01101100 01001010 01110110 00100000 01010110 01010111 01110010 00111001 00100000 00110101 01110100 00111000 01000101 00001010 01010110 01001000 01010111 01000101 00100000 01100010 00110010 00110000 00110101 00100000 01100110 01100010 01100100 01101000 00100000 01010111 01001111 01000101 01110101 00100000 01001000 01010110 01110100 00110010.

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Decoding as binary, we can see that the message is split up into groups of four alphanumeric characters. Taking every fourth chunk, then decoding as base64 gives:
12.814418 -0.22448 Room9

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Multiplying those coordinates by 4 gives us:
51.257672 -0.8992 Room 36
Finding their location on the map gives: enter image description here
They are in the Four Seasons Hotel in Hampshire, in Room 36

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    $\begingroup$ HHmmmm, I dont know..... You think they put his car in a hotel room? $\endgroup$
    – Andrew Koroluk
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 14:27
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah if this gang stole my car I'd never get it back $\endgroup$
    – Allison
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 14:56
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    $\begingroup$ OP confirmed in chat it is actually in room 36 (9*4) $\endgroup$
    – Beastly Gerbil
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 15:04
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    $\begingroup$ The puzzle is just a distraction to get the car dismantled then sold as parts! :O $\endgroup$
    – Totumus Maximus
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 15:27
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    $\begingroup$ I feel like there's enough evidence here that the car was stolen that the insurance company should pay out and we can just drop this whole business. ;) $\endgroup$
    – Ian MacDonald
    Commented May 12, 2017 at 17:35

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