The New Collected Short Stories (37 page)

‘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 grâce. ‘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 behaviour and, as it was his first offence, 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 carry out another spot-check on Marco Polo’s laundry. This time Dennis turned up unannounced. He ran a practised 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 south-east 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 cancelled 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 weightlifter. 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. Dick’s 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 learnt 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 travelled 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.