Cat O'Nine Tales: And Other Stories (8 page)

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
highsecurity
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
spotcheck
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.”

“I
f
you want to murder someone,” said Karl, “don’t do it 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.