Inside Straight Read Free

Kieran shifted his weight onto one leg and pouted. "I said stay on fifteen. You never said nowt."
    The inspector leaned in. "Did you say you wanted a card?"
    "Yes." The tension in the punter's voice spread to his shoulders. He had a single in his hand that looked as if it was one disagreeable word away from being snapped in half.
    "He never."
    I moved away from the pit desk. "How much did you have on the layout?"
    All eyes on me now. I glanced at the cash desk. Jacqui and Tintin had both stopped what they were doing. If my reputation had preceded me – and I didn't doubt that it had – then they were expecting the illustrated man over here to kick off.
    "Six."
    The truth, which meant he wouldn't take the mick when it came to the pay-out. I nodded at Kieran. "Go on. Pull the next card."
    Kieran looked at his inspector.
    "What're you looking at him for? Pull the card."
    He pulled the next card from the machine.
    A four.
    "Alright, give the gentleman his twelve quid."
    "Eh?" The bottom half of Kieran's face became loose.
    I leaned in, shifted the cards around so he had visual aids. "The gentleman is sitting with king-five, you showed a two. He asked for a card on fifteen—"
    "He never."
    "Nobody stays on fifteen, heads-up. Especially when you're sitting on a two." I tapped each card as I mentioned them. "So he asks for a card, you pull a six and put him to twenty-one. He stays on that. Flip your other, there's your three for five, pull the jack for fifteen and then a four for nineteen, you with me? Dealer stays on seventeen or over, so you're staying with nineteen, yes? Which then loses to the gentleman's twenty-one. Pay the man."
    Kieran blinked. He looked at his inspector again.
    "He's not going to tell you any different." I clipped two fivers and two singles from the float and spread them for the camera. Slipped them together and placed them in front of the punter before I brushed my hands and stepped away. "Sorry for the misunderstanding."
    The punter nodded. "No bother."
    I returned to the pit desk and double-checked my staff sheet, making a mental note to have a word with both dealer and inspector. The dealer needed to pace his game and the inspector needed to clip his yap. I shouldn't have had to throw my weight around on my first shift, but there you go. The place had been open a couple of months and the staff were already defined by their bad habits.
    Well, no more. Not on my shift, anyway. It was clear that this place needed all the experience and professionalism it could get. They needed a Palace man on the case.
    Then again, just one clear-eyed glance around the pit reminded me that I wasn't here to teach – this club was more cell than classroom. I was here to be punished, and when I locked eyes with the blackjack punter, he nodded in a way that made me think I'd done something wrong.
    So I turned back to the pit desk and performed a quick camera check, just to be on the safe side. You could never be too careful. There was always someone out there willing to take full advantage of a momentary lapse in judgement. And I wasn't going to let it happen twice.

2
     

    The rest of the shift was a slurred parade of penny-ante punters until the tables started to warm up at around half-seven. I had three roulettes open, each with a healthy game, and both card tables were ticking over nicely.
    This time of night it was mostly white punters, all dressed up and pretending to be sophisticates in a Ferrero Rocher ad. The men smelled of beer, the women of Glade plug-ins, and they engaged in the kind of lightly grinding chatter that was one rung up from small talk – jobs, houses, kids, weather, holidays. Most of this lot would play a few spins on the roulettes before they retired to the restaurant for an overpriced, gristly steak in peppercorn sauce and a couple of bottles of club plonk. They'd return later, flush-faced and reckless, itching to blow their fifty-to-a-hundred pound limit. Once they'd done their spuds, they'd