Dead Tomorrow

for the winning ones, paying the biggest first, while the tall man kept his eye on his bundle of notes.
    Then the croupier took the bundle and counted the cash with practised hands. He almost did not need to, as he had done it countless times before and knew exactly how much it would be. ‘Ten thousand pounds,’ he said clearly, for the benefit of the punter and for the voice-recording equipment. The Chinese woman, who was in her fifties, gave the tall man a respectful glance. This was big money by this casino’s standards. The croupier stacked up his chips.
    He took them and began toplay immediately, rapidly covering the twelve numbers of the Tier, as well as placing some on the outside of the layout on Odd, but the majority he put down on the previous six winning numbers as displayed on the electronic board by the wheel. He covered the numbers straight up as well as all splits and corners. In moments his chips covered large areas of the board, like pins marking conquered territory on a map. As the croupier moved to spin the wheel–he was under a direction to spin it every ninety seconds–the others scrambled to place their bets too, stretching across the table, stacking up their chips on top of those of other players.
    The croupier gave the wheel a gentle spin and flicked the ball into play.
    Down on the floor below, the report from the CCTV room operator was brief and clear in Campbell Macaulay’s earpiece.
    ‘Clint is here.’
    ‘Usual place?’ the casino director murmured, his lips barely moving.
    ‘Table Four.’
    Casinos had been Campbell Macaulay’s world all his working life. He had risen up through the ranks, from croupier to pit boss to manager, eventually running them. He loved the hours, the atmosphere, the calm and the energy that coexisted inside all casinos, and he also liked the whole business side of it. Punters might have the occasional big win, just as they had the occasional big loss, but in the long term the business model was remarkably steady.
    There were really only two things he disliked about his job. The first was having to deal with the compulsive gamblers who financially ruined themselves in his–and other–casinos. Ultimately, they didthe industry no good. And equally he disliked the phone calls waking him in the middle of the night in his time off to tell him that a regular small-time player, or a complete stranger, had just put a huge bet–maybe £60,000–on a table, because that was the kind of thing that occurred when you were becoming the victim of a gaming scam. Which was why anyone suspicious was carefully watched.
    If you were a good gambler, and you understood everything about the game you were playing, you could greatly reduce the amounts you lost. In blackjack and in craps, gamblers who knew what they were doing could make it close to a level playing field between themselves and the casino. But most people did not have the knowledge, or the patience, which had the result of pushing the casino’s profit margin from just the few percentage points of its advantage on most of the gaming tables, to an average 20 per cent of the amount a punter played with.
    Immaculately coiffed, and dressed as he was every day and night in a quiet, dark suit, perfectly laundered shirt, elegant silk tie and gleaming black Oxfords, Macaulay glided almost unseen through the downstairs poker room of the Rendezvous Casino. This space was busy tonight, with one of the regular tournaments they held. Five tables, occupied by ten players each, just off the main room. The players were a shabby, slovenly bunch, wearing everything from jumpers and jeans to baseball caps and trainers. But they were all local people of substance and paid good entrance money.
    When he had started his career, twenty-seven years earlier, most casinos had a smart dress code and he regretted the lack of elegance he saw today. But, in order to attract the punters, he understood the necessity of moving with the times. If the Rendezvous didnot want these high-rollers, plenty of other casinos in the city would welcome them.
    He took a brief walk through the busy, gleaming kitchen, nodding at the head chef and some of his underlings, watching a tray of prawn cocktail and smoked salmon platters heading out to the dining room, then went through into the main downstairs gambling room.
    It was filling up. He cast his eye across the slots and it looked as if about two-thirds of them were busy. All the blackjack tables, the