Cat O'Nine Tales: And Other Stories by Jeffrey Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
     
    When Mario presented Mr. Cartwright with his bill, he paid in cash and insisted
on a receipt. When they left the restaurant, Doris drove them both home, which
allowed Dennis to write down all the relevant figures in his little book while
they still remained fresh in his memory.
    “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