Cat O'Nine Tales (2006)

by Jeffrey Archer

  On Monday Mr. Cartwright rose early and drove to Fulham, not bothering to check in at the office. He parked his Skoda down a side street that allowed him a clear view of the entrance to Mario’s restaurant. He removed a notebook from an inside pocket and began to write down the names of every tradesman who visited the premises that morning.

  The first van to arrive and park on the double yellow line outside the restaurant’s front door was a well-known purveyor of vegetables, followed a few minutes later by a master butcher. Next to unload her wares was a fashionable florist, followed by a wine merchant, a fishmonger and finally the one vehicle Mr. Cartwright had been waiting for—a laundry van. Once the driver had unloaded three large crates, dumped them inside the restaurant and come back out, lugging three more crates, he drove away. Mr. Cartwright didn’t need to follow the van as the company’s name, address and telephone number were emblazoned across both sides of the vehicle.

  Mr. Cartwright returned to the office, and was seated behind his desk just before midday. He reported immediately to his supervisor, and sought his authority to make a spot-check on the company concerned. Mr. Buchanan again sanctioned his request, but on this occasion recommended caution. He advised Cartwright to carry out a routine inquiry, so that the company concerned would not work out what he was really looking for. “It may take a little longer,” Buchanan added, “but it will give us a far better chance of success in the long run. I’ll drop them a line today, and then you can fix up a meeting, at their convenience.”

  Dennis went along with his supervisor’s suggestion, which meant that he didn’t turn up at the offices of the Marco Polo laundry company for another three weeks. On arrival at the laundry, by appointment, he made it clear to the manager that his visit was nothing more than a routine check, and he wasn’t expecting to find any irregularities.

  Dennis spent the rest of the day checking through every one of their customers’ accounts, only stopping to make detailed notes whenever he came across an entry for Mario’s restaurant. By midday he had gathered all the evidence he needed, but he didn’t leave Marco Polo’s offices until five, so that no one would become suspicious. When Dennis departed for the day, he assured the manager that he was well satisfied with their bookkeeping, and there would be no follow-up. What he didn’t tell him was that one of their most important customers would be followed up.

  Mr. Cartwright was seated at his desk by eight o’clock the following morning, making sure his report was completed before his boss appeared.

  When Mr. Buchanan walked in at five to nine, Dennis leaped up from behind his desk, a look of triumph on his face. He was just about to pass on his news, when the supervisor placed a finger to his lips and indicated that he should follow him through to his office. Once the door was closed, Dennis placed the report on the table and took his boss through the details of his inquiries. He waited patiently while Mr. Buchanan studied the documents and considered their implications. He finally looked up, to indicate that Dennis could now speak.

  “This shows,” Dennis began, “that every day for the past twelve months Mr. Gambotti has sent out two hundred tablecloths and over five hundred napkins to the Marco Polo laundry. If you then look at this particular entry,” he added, pointing to an open ledger on the other side of the desk, “you will observe that Gambotti is only declaring a hundred and twenty bookings a day, for around three hundred customers.” Dennis paused before delivering his accountant’s coup de grace. “Why would you need a further three thousand tablecloths and forty-five thousand napkins to be laundered every year, unless you had another forty-five thousand customers?” he asked. He paused once again. “Because he’s laundering money,” said Dennis, clearly pleased with his little pun.

  “Well done, Dennis,” said the head of department. “Prepare a full report and I’ll see that it ends up on the desk of our fraud department.”

  Try as he might, Mario could not explain away 3,000 tablecloths and 45,000 napkins to Mr. Gerald Henderson, his cynical solicitor. The lawyer only had one piece of advice for his client, “Plead guilty, and I’ll see if I can make a deal.”

  The Inland Revenue successfully claimed back two million pounds in taxes from Mario’s restaurant, and the judge sent Mario Gambotti to prison for six months. He ended up only having to serve a four-week sentence—three months off for good behavior and, as it was his first offense, he was put on a tag for two months.

  Mr. Henderson, an astute lawyer, even managed to get the trial set in the court calendar for the last week in July. He explained to the presiding judge that it was the only time Mr. Gambotti’s eminent QC would be available to appear before his lordship. The date of 30 July was agreed by all parties.

  After a week spent in Belmarsh high-security prison in south London, Mario was transferred to North Sea Camp open prison in Lincolnshire, where he completed his sentence. Mario’s lawyer had selected the prison on the grounds that he was unlikely to meet up with many of his old customers deep in the fens of Lincolnshire.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the Gambotti family flew off to Florence for the month of August, not able fully to explain to the grandmothers why Mario couldn’t be with them on this occasion.

  Mario was released from North Sea Camp at nine o’clock on Monday, 1 September.

  As he walked out of the front gate, he found Tony seated behind the wheel of his Ferrari, waiting to pick his father up. Three hours later Mario was standing at the front door of his restaurant to greet the first customer. Several regulars commented on the fact that he appeared to have lost a few pounds while he’d been away on holiday, while others remarked on how tanned and fit he looked.

  Six months after Mario had been released, a newly promoted deputy supervisor decided to cany out another spot-check on Marco Polo’s laundry. This time Dennis turned up unannounced. He ran a practiced eye over the books, to find that Mario’s was now sending only 120 tablecloths to the laundry each day, along with 300 napkins, despite the fact that the restaurant appeared to be just as popular. How was he managing to get away with it this time?

  The following morning Dennis parked his Skoda down a side street off the Fulham Road once again, allowing him an uninterrupted view of Mario’s front door. He felt confident that Mr. Gambotti must now be using more than one laundry service, but to his disappointment the only van to appear and deposit and collect any laundry that day was Marco Polo’s.

  Mr. Cartwright drove back to Romford at eight that evening, completely baffled. Had he hung around until just after midnight, Dennis would have seen several waiters leaving the restaurant, carrying bulging sports bags with squash racquets poking out of the top. Do you know any Italian waiters who play squash?

  Mario’s staff were delighted that their wives could earn some extra cash by taking in a little laundry each day, especially as Mr. Gambotti had supplied each of them with a brand-new washing machine.

  I booked a table for lunch at Mario’s on the Friday after I had been released from prison. He was standing on the doorstep, waiting to greet me, and I was immediately ushered through to my usual table in the corner of the room by the window, as if I had never been away.

  Mario didn’t bother to offer me a menu because his wife appeared out of the kitchen carrying a large plate of spaghetti, which she placed on the table in front of me. Mario’s son Tony followed close behind with a steaming bowl of Bolognese sauce, and his daughter Maria with a large chunk of Parmesan cheese and a grater.

  “A bottle of Chianti classico?” suggested Mario, as he removed the cork. “On the house,” he insisted.

  “Thank you, Mario,” I said, and whispered, “by the way, the governor of North Sea Camp asked me to pass on his best wishes.”

  “Poor Michael,” Mario sighed, “what a sad existence. Can you begin to imagine a lifetime spent eating toad-in-the-hole, followed by semolina pudding?” He smiled as he poured me a glass of wine. “Still, maestro, you must have felt quite at home.”

  Don’t Drink

  the wate
r

  “If you want to murder someone,” said Karl, “don’t do Iit in England.”

  “Why not?” I asked innocently.

  “The odds are against you getting away with it,” my fellow inmate warned me, as we continued to walk round the exercise yard. “You’ve got a much better chance in Russia.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I assured him.

  “Mind you,” added Karl, “I knew a countryman of yours who did get away with murder, but at some cost.”

  It was Association, that welcome 45-minute break when you’re released from your cell. You can either spend your time on the ground floor, which is about the size of a basketball court, sitting around chatting, playing table tennis or watching television, or you can go out into the fresh air and stroll around the perimeter of the yard—about the size of a football pitch. Despite being surrounded by a twenty-foot-high concrete wall topped with razor wire, and with only the sky to look up at, this was, for me, the highlight of the day.

  While I was incarcerated at Belmarsh, a category A high-security prison in southeast London, I was locked in my cell for twenty-three hours a day (think about it). You are let out only to go to the canteen to pick up your lunch (five minutes), which you then eat in your cell. Five hours later you collect your supper (five more minutes), when they also hand you tomorrow’s breakfast in a plastic bag so that they don’t have to let you out again before lunch the following day. The only other blessed release is Association, and even that can be canceled if the prison is short-staffed (which happens about twice a week).

  I always used the 45-minute escape to power-walk, for two reasons: one, I needed the exercise because on the outside I attend a local gym five days a week, and, two, not many prisoners bothered to try and keep up with me. Karl was the exception.

  Karl was a Russian by birth who hailed from that beautiful city of St. Petersburg. He was a contract killer who had just begun a 22-year sentence for disposing of a fellow countryman who was proving tiresome to one of the Mafia gangs back home. He cut his victims up into small pieces, and put what was left of them into an incinerator. Incidentally, his fee—should you want someone disposed of—was five thousand pounds.

  Karl was a bear of a man, six foot two and built like a weight-lifter. He was covered in tattoos and never stopped talking. On balance, I didn’t consider it wise to interrupt his flow. Like so many prisoners, Karl didn’t talk about his own crime, and the golden rule—should you ever end up inside—is never ask what a prisoner is in for, unless they raise the subject. However, Karl did tell me a tale about an Englishman he’d come across in St. Petersburg, which he claimed to have witnessed in the days when he’d been a driver for a government minister.

  Although Karl and I were resident on different blocks, we met up regularly for Association. But it still took several perambulations of the yard before I squeezed out of him the story of Richard Barnsley.

  DON’T DRINK THE WATER. Richard Barnsley stared at the little plastic card that had been placed on the washbasin in his bathroom. Not the kind of warning you expect to find when you’re staying in a five-star hotel, unless, of course, you’re in St. Petersburg. By the side of the notice stood two bottles of Evian water. When Dick strolled back into his spacious bedroom, he found two more bottles had been placed on each side of the double bed, and another two on a table by the window. The management weren’t taking any chances.

  Dick had flown into St. Petersburg to close a deal with the Russians. His company had been selected to build a pipeline that would stretch from the Urals to the Red Sea, a project that several other, more established, companies had tendered for. Dicks firm had been awarded the contract, against considerable odds, but those odds had shortened once he guaranteed Anatol Chenkov, the Minister for Energy and close personal friend of the President, two million dollars a year for the rest of his life—the only currencies the Russians trade in are dollars and death—especially when the money is going to be deposited in a numbered account.

  Before Dick had started up his own company, Barnsley Construction, he had learned his trade working in Nigeria for Bechtel, in Brazil for McAlpine and in Saudi Arabia for Hanover, so along the way he had picked up a trick or two about bribery. Most international companies treat the practice simply as another form of tax, and make the necessary provision for it whenever they present their tender. The secret is always to know how much to offer the minister, and how little to dispose of among his acolytes.

  Anatol Chenkov, a Putin appointee, was a tough negotiator, but then under a former regime he had been a major in the KGB. However, when it came to setting up a bank account in Switzerland, the minister was clearly a novice. Dick took full advantage of this; after all, Chenkov had never traveled beyond the Russian border before he was appointed to the Politburo. Dick flew him to Geneva for the weekend, while he was on an official visit to London for trade talks. He opened a numbered account for him with Picket & Co, and deposited $100,000—seed money—but more than Chenkov had been paid in his lifetime. This sweetener was to ensure that the umbilical cord would last for the necessary nine months until the contract was signed; a contract that would allow Dick to retire—on far more than two million a year.

  Dick returned to the hotel that morning after his final meeting with the minister, having seen him every day for the past week, sometimes publicly, more often privately. It was no different when Chenkov visited London. Neither man trusted the other, but then Dick never felt at ease with anyone who was willing to take a bribe because there was always someone else happy to offer him another percentage point. However, Dick felt more confident this time, as both of them seemed to have signed up for the same retirement policy.

  Dick also helped to cement the relationship with a few added extras that Chenkov quickly became accustomed to. A Rolls-Royce would always pick him up at Heathrow and drive him to the Savoy Hotel. On arrival, he would be shown to his usual riverside suite, and women appeared every evening as regularly as the morning papers. He preferred two of both, one broadsheet, one tabloid.

  When Dick checked out of the St. Petersburg hotel half an hour later, the minister’s BMW was parked outside the front door waiting to take him to the airport. As he climbed into the back seat, he was surprised to find Chenkov waiting for him. They had parted after their morning meeting just an hour before.

  “Is there a problem, Anatol?” he asked anxiously.

  “On the contrary,” said Chenkov. “I have just had a call from the Kremlin which I didn’t feel we should discuss over the phone, or even in my office. The President will be visiting St. Petersburg on the sixteenth of May and has made it clear that he wishes to preside over the signing ceremony.”

  “But that gives us less than three weeks to complete the contract,” said Dick.

  “You assured me at our meeting this morning,” Chenkov reminded him, “that there were only a few is to dot and ts to cross—an expression I’d not come across before—before you’d be able to finalize the contract.” The minister paused and lit his first cigar of the day before adding, “With that in mind, my dear friend, I look forward to seeing you back in St. Petersburg in three weeks’ time.” Chenkov’s statement sounded casual, whereas, in truth, it had taken almost three years for the two men to reach this stage, and now it would only be another three weeks before the deal was finally sealed.

  Dick didn’t respond as he was already thinking about what needed to be done the moment his plane touched down at Heathrow.

  “What’s the first thing you’ll do after the deal has been signed?” asked Chenkov, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Put in a tender for the sanitation contract in this city, because whoever gets it would surely make an even larger fortune.”

  The minister looked round sharply. “Never raise that subject in public,” he said gravely. “It’s a very sensitive issue.”

  Dick remained silent.

  “And take my advice, don’t drink the water. Last year we lost countless numbers
of our citizens who contracted . . .” the minister hesitated, unwilling to add credence to a story that had been splashed across the front pages of every Western paper.

  “How many is countless?” inquired Dick.

  “None,” replied the minister. “Or at least that’s the official statistic released by the Ministry of Tourism,” he added as the car came to a halt on a double red line outside the entrance of Pulkovo II airport. He leaned forward. “Karl, take Mr. Barnsley’s bags to check-in, while I wait here.”

  Dick leaned across and shook hands with the minister for the second time that morning. “Thank you, Anatol, for everything,” he said. “See you in three weeks’ time.”

  “Long life and happiness, my friend,” said Chenkov as Dick stepped out of the car.

  Dick checked in at the departure desk an hour before boarding was scheduled for his flight to London.

  “This is the last call for Flight 902 to London Heathrow,” came crackling over the tannoy.

  “Is there another flight going to London right now?” asked Dick.

  “Yes,” replied the man behind the check-in desk. “Flight 902 has been delayed, but they’re just about to close the gate.”

  “Can you get me on it?” asked Dick, as he slid a thousand-rouble note across the counter.

  Dick’s plane touched down at Heathrow three and a half hours later. Once he’d retrieved his case from the carousel, he pushed his trolley through the Nothing to Declare channel and emerged into the arrivals hall.

  Stan, his driver, was already waiting among a group of chauffeurs, most of whom were holding up name cards. As soon as Stan spotted his boss, he walked quickly across and relieved him of his suitcase and overnight bag.

  “Home or the office?” Stan asked as they walked toward the short-stay carpark.

  Dick checked his watch: just after four. “Home,” he said. “I’ll work in the back of the car.”