Cat O'Nine Tales (2006) Read online

  She took her time paying the cab driver before she climbed out and followed her quarry into the casino. She filled in a temporary membership form, as she didn’t want anyone to realize that she was on duty.

  DS Seaton strolled onto the floor and glanced around the gaming tables. It only took her a few moments before she spotted her man seated next to one of the roulette wheels. She took a step closer and joined a group of onlookers who formed a horseshoe around the table. The detective sergeant made sure that she remained some distance away from her quarry because, dressed in a long blue silk gown more appropriate for a ball, he might spot her and even wonder if she had followed him from Bebbington Hall.

  For the next hour she watched the man remove wads of cash from his bag at regular intervals, then exchange them for chips. An hour later the bag was clearly empty because he left the table with a glum look on his face, and made his way toward the bar.

  DS Seaton had cracked it. The anonymous man was siphoning off money from the evening events in order to finance his gambling habit, but she still couldn’t be sure if Angela was involved.

  The detective slipped behind a marble pillar as the man climbed onto a stool next to a lady in a blue suit with a short skirt.

  Did he have enough money over to pay for a prostitute? The detective stepped out from behind the pillar to take a closer look, and nearly bumped into Henry as he began walking back toward the exit. Later, much later, DS Seaton thought it strange that he had left the bar without having a drink. Perhaps the woman on the stool had rejected him.

  Henry stepped out onto the pavement and hailed a taxi. The detective grabbed the next one. She followed his cab as it made its way across Putney Bridge and continued its journey along the south side of the river. The taxi finally came to a halt outside a block of flats in Wandsworth. DS Seaton made a note of the address and decided that she had earned a taxi ride home.

  The following morning, DS Seaton placed her report on the chief inspector’s desk. He read it, smiled, left his office and walked down the corridor to brief the chief superintendent, who in turn phoned the chief constable. The chief decided not to mention it to the chairman of the watch committee until after an arrest had been made, as he wanted to present Sir David with an open-and-shut case, one that a jury could not fail to convict on.

  Henry deposited the cash from the Butterfly Ball in the overnight vault of Lloyds TSB just a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel where the Masons were holding their annual dinner. He must have walked about another thirty yards before a police car drew up beside him. There wouldn’t have been much point in making a dash for it, as Henry wasn’t built for a change of gear. And in any case he had already planned for this moment, right down to the last detail. Henry was arrested and charged two days before the watch committee was due to meet.

  Henry selected Mr. Clifton-Smyth to represent him, a solicitor whose accounts he had handled for the past twenty years.

  Mr. Clifton-Smyth listened carefully to his client’s defense, making copious notes, but when Henry finally came to the end of his tale, the lawyer only had one piece of advice to offer him: plead guilty.

  “I will of course,” added the lawyer, “brief counsel of any mitigating circumstances.”

  Henry accepted his solicitor’s advice; after all, Mr. Clifton-Smyth had never once, in the past two decades, questioned his judgment.

  Henry made no attempt to contact Angela during the run-up to the trial, and although the police felt fairly confident that she was playing Bonnie to his Clyde, they quickly worked out that they shouldn’t have arrested him until he’d gone to the casino a second time. Who was the woman seated at the bar? Had she been waiting for him? The Special Crime Unit spent weeks collecting bank stubs from casinos right across London, but they couldn’t find a single check made out to a Ms. Angela Forster, and even more puzzling, they didn’t come up with one for a Mr. Henry Preston. Did he always lose?

  When they checked Angela’s events book, they discovered that Henry had always taken responsibility for counting the cash, and signed the receipt. Her bank account was then picked over by a bunch of treasury vultures, and found to be only £11,318 in credit, a sum that had showed very little movement either way for the past five years. When DS Seaton reported back to Miss Blenkinsopp, she seemed quite content to believe that the right man had been apprehended. After all, she told the detective, a St. Catherine’s gal couldn’t possibly be involved in that sort of thing.

  With the murder hunt still in progress, and the drugs stash not yet unearthed, the chief superintendent sent down an instruction to close the St. Catherine’s file. They’d made an arrest, and that was all that would matter when they reported their annual crime statistics.

  Once the Treasury solicitors had accepted that they couldn’t trace any of the missing money, Henry’s solicitor managed to broker a deal with the CPS. If he pleaded guilty to the theft of £130,000, and was willing to return the full amount to the injured parties concerned, they would recommend a reduced sentence.

  “And no doubt there are mitigating circumstances in this case that you wish to bring to my attention, Mr. Cameron?” suggested the judge as he stared down from the bench at Henry’s Silk.

  “There most certainly are, m’lord,” replied Mr. Alex Cameron QC as he rose slowly from his place. “My client,” he began, “makes no secret of his unfortunate addiction to gambling, which has been the cause of his tragic downfall. However,” Mr. Cameron continued, “I feel confident that your lordship will take into account that this is my client’s first offense, and until this sad lapse of judgment he had been a pillar of the community with an unblemished reputation. Indeed, my client has given years of selfless service to his local church as its honorary treasurer, to which you will recall, m’lord, the vicar bore witness.”

  Mr. Cameron cleared his throat before continuing. “M’lord, you see before you a broken and penniless man, who has nothing to look forward to except long lonely years of retirement. He has even,” added Mr. Cameron, tugging at his lapels, “had to sell his flat in Wandsworth in order to repay his creditors.” He paused. “Perhaps you might feel, in the circumstances, m’lord, that my client has suffered quite enough and should therefore be treated leniently.” Mr. Cameron smiled hopefully at the judge, and resumed his seat.

  The judge looked down at Henry’s advocate, and returned his smile. “Not quite enough, Mr. Cameron. Try not to forget that Mr. Preston was a professional man who violated a position of trust. But first let me remind your client,” said the judge, turning his attention to Henry, “that gambling is a sickness, and the defendant should seek some help for his malady the moment he is released from prison.” Henry braced himself as he waited to learn how long his sentence would be.

  The judge paused for what seemed an eternity, as he continued to stare at Henry. “I sentence you to three years,” he said, before adding, “take the prisoner down.”

  Henry was shipped off to Ford open prison. No one noticed him come and no one noticed him go. He led just as anonymous an existence on the inside as he had outside. He received no mail, made no phone calls and entertained no visitors. When they released him eighteen months later, having completed half his sentence, there was no one waiting at the barrier to greet him.

  Henry Preston accepted his £45 discharge pay, and was last seen heading toward the local railway station, carrying a Gladstone bag containing only his personal belongings.

  Mr. and Mrs. Graham Richards enjoy a pleasant, if somewhat uneventful retirement on the island of Majorca. They have a small, front-line villa overlooking the Bay of Palma, and both of them are proving to be popular with the local community.

  The chairman of the Royal Overseas Club in Palma reported to the AGM that he considered he’d pulled off quite a coup, convincing the former finance director of the Nigerian National Oil Company to become the club’s honorary treasurer. Nods, hear-hears and a sprinkling of applause followed. The chairman went on to suggest that the secretary