5

Wednesday night, I got the call. I hadn't seen Beale in a couple of days, and neither had anyone at the office. He didn't give a shit about the seminars, didn't appear to give much of a shit about his job. His focus was the dealer game. Nothing else mattered.

I met him at the Commercial early on so we could get lubricated enough for the comp. Other than Beale's relentless chatter, it was quiet.

"Tell you, whoever decided to stick a casino in the middle of Salford needs their fuckin' head examined." Beale talked into his pint. "You know they keep tabs on the cars out there, see who's going in, who's coming out. It's a fuckin' racket. Security are no bastard good, either."

"Thanks, Les. Puts my mind at ease."

"You'll be safer leaving it in Miles Platting, I'm telling you. Scallies round here, they'd skin your granny and punt the hide back to you. I get all the stories."

"Stevie?"

"Yeah."

"Reliable, is he?"

"Oh, yeah. He'll shit it when he sees us tonight. Been telling him I don't go to the Riverside, so the little bastard thinks he's safe from us."

"You don't go to the Riverside."

"Not with you. You been in there?"

"No."

"Too fuckin' Disney for me. Nice big card room, mind." Beale let out a belch that meant he was off to the bar. I didn't need to tell him what I wanted. It was always the same again.

I stretched out a bit, propped my elbow on the back of the seat and looked out of the window, watching people dance around puddles as they headed to Deansgate. Rather them than me. For the time being, I was happy enough to be surrounded by the landlord's boxing memorabilia.

When I turned back, the dog was staring at me. Seen it before, but it'd never come this close. It was a large, black mongrel with a pensioner's eyes and lips like black rubber, the drool glistening on them like rain on a tyre.

"Don't mind him," said the landlord. "He won't bite."

I glanced at the landlord. He didn't sound serious, but he was. He sported a big battered grin and a semi-permanent wink, the remnants of a short-lived boxing career. It was supposed to put me at ease, but it did anything but.

"Okay," I said.

"He's dead friendly. You can pat him if you want."

"Nah, y'alright."

"Lennox, come on, son," said the landlord. "Leave the gentleman alone."

The dog didn't budge. It hadn't taken its eyes off me since I clocked it, just sat there panting and staring at me like I was the last Bonio on earth.

"Fuck off," I said under my breath. "Fuck off out of it."

Beale came back to the table and set the drinks down. He nodded at the dog. "You found a friend, then."

"Shut up and give us my whisky."

"Lennox," snapped the landlord. The dog turned its head both ways before it looked back at the landlord. "Come on, son."

Lennox took one last lingering look at me, then bounded to the bar.

I knocked back my whisky and reached for my pint. "We're going after this one, are we?"

"What's the hurry?"

"You want to get in while there's still places, don't you?" I watched the dog appear from behind the bar and felt myself tense. It padded over to a beanbag and turned three times before it got settled. "Besides, I've never been in the Riverside."

"Not my cup of tea, like."

"You said."

"Too many lights in there, looks like a fuckin' disco. You might like it, mind. Somewhere to take that bird of yours."

I frowned at him, then realised he meant Lucy. "No, I don't think so."

"Scared you'll bump into a regular?"

I glanced over the lip of my pint as I drank. "Yeah, something like that."

Scared we'd bump into Beale, more like. God knows what he'd have made of Lucy. One of the reasons I'd kept them apart all this time.

Turned out Beale wasn't too far off the mark about the Riverside. It was all sham. For a start, it wasn't even on a river's side – the closest it got to water was the Manchester Ship Canal. Second, if there hadn't been a sign saying CASINO in bright blue neon, six feet high on three sides of the building, you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between it and another branch of PC World. The flagship casino was stuck in a cookie-cutter orange brick industrial unit like some Brutalist Vegas. There were no Bond fantasies here, but then I got the feeling that James Bond was never the pitch. Inside, the blonde receptionist looked like a holiday rep and had the capped smile to prove it. She wore a purple mock-satin blouse that showed off nothing but broad shoulders. Security were ex-Army, emphasis on the ex, and were now fat and bored with a good line in sidelong evils. The fatter of the two clocked Beale the moment he came in and kept a close eye on him as he swiped himself and then signed me in. The receptionist pushed the pedal in the floor and the glass doors opened into a warehouse of a gaming space.

Beale's top lip curled. His moustache bunched up under one nostril. "See what I mean?"

Yeah, I did. This was the new breed of casino, where the only thing that mattered was cheap choice. Ten roulettes, probably starting at twenty-five pence and going up to a pound. Four blackjacks, three studs. Punco Banco, otherwise known as the idiot's baccarat. A mini craps table. Sweeping down the left-hand side of the place was a ramp that led to a large bar and restaurant. On the right was a dedicated slots area and a card room that must've sat about a hundred.

"A hundred and fifty, actually. Bit of a squeeze, but we all get in. Long as you don't mind being elbow-to-elbow with a fat, sweaty Scouser, you're alright."

The comp hadn't opened yet, so the card room was dotted with the backgammon boys, poker players who couldn't resist a pound a point before the big tournament, and a guy at the back preparing decks and chips for the night ahead. I didn't think he was a croup at first, but then I saw that all the dealers in here wore that same flat ruffled shirt, no dicky, no collar. Blue, like the carpet and walls, camouflage gear which gave the place a weird retro feel, like you were going to be dealt to by Dr Evil.

We went to the bar, got settled at one of the reflective tables overlooking the pit. The glare coming off the table top made us both squint.

"So what do you think?"

"I think it's a hole."

Beale nodded. "Should've been here opening night, mate. They had a camera crew in making one of them fly-on-the-walls. Like fuckin' Airport or something. Anyway, they had this music, that Tina Turner song, whatever it is, ‘Simply The Best', and then all the dealers came down the ramps."

"Stevie there?"

"Oh yeah, fuckin' hell, I thought I'd piss my pants laughing. You see that hatchet-faced bitch over there? That's Jacqui Prince. She's the GM. Proper cow, that one. You know she never even spun the first ball? She got her pit boss to do it for her."

"First ball?"

"Jesus, you never been to a casino opening?"

"Obviously not."

"Running with a fuckin' amateur here." Beale shifted in his seat, leaned forward. "When a casino opens, it's tradition for the general manager to be the first one in the pit to spin up. Whatever number comes up, that's supposed to be the lucky number for the casino. You never want to forget that number, mate. Swear to God, it never comes in."

"What number was it?"

"Fuck knows. I was arseholed. I managed to get a load of that free champers down my neck before the Chinese got their greasy little mitts on it. Honest, Alan, they get so much as a sniff of a freebie, they're round in coaches. Not like they come in here normally – which is the one fuckin' good thing about this place, actually. Too busy stuffing their guts with egg rolls down George Street."

From the pit came the skitter of a ball and the scream of a fish dealer: "No spin, nothing goes!"

"Never stick to their own." Beale sniffed and glanced over his shoulder. "I'm sure they're following us an' all."

"Us?"

"Me. I come out of a sit, right, the fuckers have keyed my car."

"Sure you just didn't prang it?"

"I'm telling you, they keyed it. They waited until I went in, and then they keyed it."

"That's the stress talking." I couldn't help but smile. "You want to watch that. It's a killer."

"Maybe." Beale burped. "But everywhere I go, there's some fuckin' Chink laughing at us."

"That's what's been holding you back all these years, Les – Triads trying to mess up your business."

"I'm serious."

"I know you are, mate."

"If it's not them, it's Henderson. Telling you, it's not a world of men anymore, Alan. It's a world of fuckin' bureaucrats ..."

"Right." I stood up and finished my pint. "Come on."

"What?"

"I'm not listening to this shit anymore. Come ahead and we'll do some money."

Beale didn't need telling twice. He went down to the nearest roulette and bought in for two stacks. I hung back, decided to watch for a while, study both the ball and Beale, see which came out on top. I wasn't going to stay like that, because I didn't want to look like a punter with a system. Any bloke who said he had a roulette system spent too much time in his own head. They were the non-gamblers, the penny-ante mugs who killed games by stuttering "hold on a second" before they placed a fifty-pence street bet that didn't come in. Not my style.

A skinny guy with a bleached streak ran up as the ball slowed and stuck two large column bets. The dealer gave him a foul look and called it in as the ball dropped squarely between the two bets. Any punter worth his salt would've kicked off, but the skinny guy was already off to the next table to do the same thing.

Beale was already down to a stack and a half and his face had pinched up. If he lost that other half, he'd take it out on the dealer. It spiced up the game for him, knowing he was pecking someone's head at the same time. If it wasn't the dealer, it'd be another punter.

I bought in for a stack of colour, flipped a couple of loose straight-ups across the layout as the dealer spun up.

A line of dealers and inspectors emerged from a side door, trooping back towards the pit. At the front of the line was Stevie. I nudged Beale. He grinned. The dealer spun up without Beale's bets.

It didn't matter. Stevie took off the current inspector. Beale kept his head down, and I realised that the rest of my chips were as good as lost because I wouldn't be able to keep track of the game now Beale had a sympatico inspector on the table. He started with the late bets, then moved on to announce bets that made no sense – a nine-ten split, a three-six corner – before muttering, stuttering and mumbling his way through the rest. When the dealer refused to take any more, Beale got clumsy, knocking chips from the numbers as he put his own bets on. So the dealer had to take the announce bets again, and they were always wrong because Beale never threw the right number of chips and if one of the numbers hit, then that was the one he always doubled up.

The dealer took it all in his stride, even though you could see he was boiling inside. He knew he didn't have Stevie for support after he was forced to put an even-number neighbours bet with seconds to go on the ball, so he used his own tricks to get back at Beale. First he pretended not to hear the announce bets until it was too late. Then he placed everyone else's bets before he took Beale's and stuck it on the wheel with a call. When Beale won, he passed weak-base stacks so they toppled when Beale touched them, and spun up as quickly as he could.

If I didn't know better, it looked as if the dealer came out victorious because Beale was the first to moan. "Jesus, Stephen, do you have any decent dealers in this place?"

Stephen – the name on Stevie's badge.

"Still cursed with the trainees."

The dealer flinched. He hadn't been a fish for a good few years, and these lads took pride in their work.

The ball hit twenty-two black. Beale had hammered twenty-one, but it was the opposite end of the row above. "Jesus fuckin' Christ, is there a dealer in here who can hit a simple fuckin' number?"

"Maybe you'll have better luck with the twenty-one over on the blackjack."

"Smart arse." Then, to the dealer, "Cash us in, fishy. I've had enough of amateur hour."

I cashed in at the same time. Over in the card room, it looked as if they were getting ready to take names for the comp. I nudged Beale.

"See you later, Stephen," he said.

"Not if I see you first."

And for a second there, he looked as if he meant it.