Читать книгу The Pilot Who Wore a Dress: And Other Dastardly Lateral Thinking Mysteries - Tom Cutler, Tom Cutler - Страница 19

The mystery

The Sting is a 1973 film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It covers the ups and downs of two confidence tricksters as they try their hand at everything from racing scams to cheating at cards. There are several other successful films on the same subject, which makes you wonder what it is about conmen and card-sharps that provides this mysterious allure.

The most polished card cheats are very skilled and slick. You’ve got the ‘mechanics’, who use sleight of hand such as second dealing, whereby the top card is retained on the pack by the thumb while the second card is invisibly slipped out under it in the process of the deal. Then there are the ‘stackers’, who can arrange the cards in a useful order while shuffling. There are the ‘paper players’, who use marked cards, and there are ‘hand muckers’, who cleverly conceal cards in their palms and switch them for other less useful cards during play.

Most amateur cheats keep things simple, using less complicated methods such as ‘shorting the pot’ (quietly putting in less money for their bet than they say) or peeking at other players’ cards. The benefit of the simple approach is deniability.

A fine example of suspected cheating of the sophisticated sort came one chilly December day in 2011 at a roadside café near Newcastle, where a group of lorry drivers had finished their egg and chips and were playing a game of poker.

The game had been going some time and the pot was huge. The card players were all experienced, and very good at what they were doing. There was no chat and the focus was on the game. Cards were held close to chests and mugs of tea were going cold. Glances passed back and forth, but the stony poker faces gave nothing away.

Several players clearly thought they had good hands, and betting was serious. A great wad of money had built up in the centre of the table. Then came the moment. The dealer laid down, in dramatic fashion, one card at a time, a perfect royal flush in Spades: Ten, Jack, Queen, King and Ace, the strongest possible poker hand, and an unlikely one.

For a moment a hush fell upon the group. The dealer’s face showed no emotion. Outside, the engines of arriving vehicles appeared to fall silent. Then one of the men, large and broad-shouldered, stood up, knocking his metal chair onto the tile floor. ‘You’re a cheat!’ he announced determinedly, aiming a stout forefinger at the dealer. ‘And I can prove it.’ The dealer didn’t speak but instead, in front of a whole table of witnesses, silently drew a long knife and stabbed the man through the chest, killing him on the spot.

The café owner locked himself into his room and immediately called the police, who arrived quickly. As a trickle of blood continued to run from the table into the spreading red pool on the floor they interviewed all the lorry drivers and also the café owner. All the men agreed on the dealer’s guilt and even the dealer admitted the stabbing, though not the cheating.

But, after hours of questioning, a confession, and clear evidence that the dealer was guilty of the murder of an innocent card player, not a single man was arrested – not even for illegal gambling – and every one of them was allowed to walk free and drive his lorry home.

The problem

Why, when the police had the dealer’s confession and the agreement of everyone around the table on the dealer’s guilt, did the police let every single man off scot-free?

Tap here for the solution.