Cat O'Nine Tales: And Other Stories (7 page)

So it is left
to the Italians to sweep the board and gather up the crumbs.

They combine
the charm of the Irish, the culinary expertise of the French and the
thoroughness of the Swiss, and despite their ability to produce a bill that
never seems to add up, we allow them to go on fleecing us.

This was
certainly true of Mario
Gambotti
.

Mario came from
a long line of Florentines who could not sing, paint or play football, so he
happily joined his fellow exiles in London, where he began an apprenticeship in
the restaurant business.

Whenever I go
to his fashionable little restaurant in
Fulham
for
lunch, he somehow manages to hide his disapproval when I order minestrone soup,
spaghetti Bolognese and a bottle of Chianti
classico
.

“What an
excellent choice, maestro,” he declares, not bothering to scribble down my
order on his pad. Please note “maestro”: not my lord, which would be
sycophantic, not sir, which would be ridiculous after twenty years of
friendship, but maestro, a particularly flattering sobriquet, as I have it on
good authority (his wife) that he has never read one of my books.

When I was in
attendance at North Sea Camp open prison, Mario wrote to the governor and
suggested that he might be allowed to come down one Friday and cook lunch for
me. The governor was amused by the request, and wrote a formal reply,
explaining that should he grant the boon, it would not only break several penal
regulations, but undoubtedly stir the tabloids into a frenzy of headlines. When
the governor showed me a copy of his reply, I was surprised to see that he had
signed the letter,
yours
ever, Michael.

“Are you also a
customer of Mario’s?” I inquired.

“No,” replied
the governor, “but he has been a customer of mine.”

Mario’s can be
found on the
Fulham
Road in Chelsea, and the
restaurant’s popularity is due in no small part to his wife, Teresa, who runs
the kitchen. Mario always remains front of house. I regularly have lunch there
on a Friday, often accompanied by my two sons and their latest girlfriends, who
used to change more often than the menu.

Over the years
I have become aware that many of the customers are regulars, which leaves an
impression that we are all part of an exclusive club, in which it’s almost
impossible to book a table unless you are a member. However, the real proof of
Mario’s popularity is that the restaurant does not accept credit cards–checks,
cash and account-paying customers are all welcome, but
NO CREDIT CARDS
is printed in bold letters at the foot of every
menu.

During the
month of August the establishment is closed, in order for the
Gambotti
family to return to their native Florence and
reunite with all the other
Gambottis
.

Mario is
quintessentially Italian. His red Ferrari can be seen parked outside the
restaurant, his yacht–my son James assures me–is moored in Monte Carlo, and his
children, Tony, Maria and Roberto, are being educated at St. Paul’s, Cheltenham
and Summer Fields respectively. After all, it is important that they mix with
the sort of people they will be expected to fleece at some time in the future.
And whenever I see them at the opera–Verdi and Puccini, never Wagner or
Weber–they are always seated in their own box.

So, I hear you
ask, how did such a shrewd and intelligent man end up serving at Her Majesty’s
pleasure? Was he involved in some fracas following a football match between
Arsenal and
Fiorentina
? Did he drive over the speed
limit once too often in that Ferrari of his?

Perhaps he
forgot to pay his poll tax?

None of the above.
He broke an English law with an action
that in the land of his forefathers would be considered no more than an
acceptable part of everyday life.

Enter Mr.
Dennis Cartwright, who worked for another of Her Majesty’s establishments.

Mr. Cartwright
was an inspector with the Inland Revenue. He rarely ate out at a restaurant,
and certainly not one as exclusive as Mario’s. Whenever he and his wife Doris
“went Italian,” it was normally Pizza Express. However, he took a great
interest in Mr.
Gambotti
, and in how he could
possibly maintain such a lifestyle on the amount he was declaring to his local
tax office. After all, the restaurant was showing a profit of a mere £172,000,
on a turnover of just over two million. So, after tax, Mr.
Gambotti
was only taking home–Dennis carefully checked the figures–just over £100,000.
With a home in Chelsea, three children at private schools and a Ferrari to
maintain, not to mention the yacht moored in Monte Carlo, and heaven knows what
else in Florence, how did he manage it? Mr. Cartwright, a determined man, was
determined to find out.

The tax
inspector checked all the figures in Mario’s books, and he had to admit they
balanced and, what’s more, Mr.
Gambotti
always paid
his taxes on time.

However, Mr.
Cartwright wasn’t in any doubt that Mr.
Gambotti
had
to be siphoning off large sums of cash, but how?

He must have
missed something.

Cartwright
leaped up in the middle of the night and shouted out loud, “No
credit cards.”
He woke his wife.

The next
morning, Cartwright went over the books yet again; he was right.

There were no
credit-card entries. Although all the checks were properly accounted for, and
all the customers’ accounts tallied, when you considered that there were no
credit-card entries, the small amount of cash declared seemed completely out of
proportion to the overall takings.

Mr. Cartwright
didn’t need to be told that his masters would not allow him to waste much time
dining at Mario’s in order to resolve the mystery of how Mr.
Gambotti
was salting away such large sums of money. Mr.
Buchanan, his supervisor, reluctantly agreed to allow Dennis an advance of £200
to try to discover what was happening on the inside–every penny was to be
accounted for–and he only agreed to this after Dennis had pointed out that if
he was able to gather enough evidence to put Mr.
Gambotti
behind bars, imagine just how many other restaurateurs might feel obliged to
start declaring their true incomes.

Mr. Cartwright
was surprised that it took him a month to book a table at Mario’s, and it was
only after several calls, always made from home, that he finally was able to
secure a reservation. He asked his wife Doris to join him, hoping it would
appear less suspicious than if he was sitting on his own, compiling notes.

His supervisor
agreed with the ploy, but told Dermis that he would have to cover his wife’s
half of the bill, at his own expense.

“It never
crossed my mind to do otherwise,” Dennis assured his supervisor.

During a meal
of Tuscan bean soup and gnocchi–he was hoping to pay more than one visit to
Mario’s–Dennis kept a wary eye on his host as he circled the different tables,
making small talk and attending to his customers’ slightest
whims.
His wife couldn’t help but notice that Dennis seemed distracted, but she
decided not to comment, as it was a rare occurrence for her husband to invite
her out for a meal, other than on her birthday Mr. Cartwright began committing
to memory that there were thirty-nine tables dotted around the restaurant (he
double-checked) and roughly a hundred and twenty covers. He also observed, by taking
time over his coffee, that Mario managed two sittings on several of the tables.
He was impressed by how quickly three waiters could clear a table, replace the
cloth and napkins, and moments later make it appear as if no one had ever been
sitting there.

“What a lovely
meal,” commented his wife on their journey back to
Romford
.
“I do hope that we’ll be able to go there again some time.”

“We will,
Doris,” he promised her, “next week.” He paused.
“If I can
get a table.”

Mr. and Mrs.
Cartwright visited the restaurant again three weeks later, this time for
dinner. Dennis was impressed that Mario not only remembered his name, but even
seated him at the same table.

On this
occasion, Mr. Cartwright observed that Mario was able to fit in a
pretheater
booking–almost full; an evening sitting–packed
out; and a post-theater sitting–half full; while last orders were not taken
until eleven o’clock.

Mr. Cartwright
estimated that nearly three hundred and fifty customers passed through the
restaurant during the evening, and if you added that to the lunchtime
clientele, the total came to just over five hundred a day. He also calculated
that around half of them were paying cash, but he still had no way of proving
it.

Dennis’s dinner
bill came to £75 (it’s fascinating how restaurants appear to charge more in the
evening than they do for lunch, even when they serve exactly the same food).
Mr. Cartwright estimated that each customer was being charged between £25 and
£40, and that was probably on the conservative side. So in any given week,
Mario had to be serving at least three thousand customers, returning him an
income of around £90,000 a week, which was in excess of four million pounds a
year, even if you discounted the month of August.

When Mr.
Cartwright returned to his office the following morning, he once again went
over the restaurant’s books.

Mr.
Gambotti
was declaring a turnover of £2,120,000, and
showing, after outgoings, a profit of £172,000. So what was happening to the
other two million?

Mr. Cartwright
remained baffled. He took the ledgers home in the evening, and continued to
study the figures long into the night.

“Eureka,” he
declared just before putting on his pajamas. One of the outgoings didn’t add
up. The following morning he made an appointment to see his supervisor. “I’ll
need to get my hands on the details of these particular weekly numbers,” Dennis
told Mr. Buchanan, as he placed a forefinger on one of the items listed under
outgoings, “and more important,” he added, “without Mr.
Gambotti
realizing what I’m up to.” Mr. Buchanan sanctioned a request for him to be out
of the office, as long as it didn’t require any further visits to Mario’s.

Mr. Cartwright
spent most of the weekend refining his
plan,
aware
that just the slightest hint of what he was up to would allow Mr.
Gambotti
enough time to cover his tracks.

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.