Cat O'Nine Tales and Other Stories - Jeffrey Archer [56]
It took Mr. Cainen only a few minutes to catch up with Doug’s truck. He then followed the lorry at a safe distance for the next twenty miles before Doug pulled into another petrol station. Once Doug was back on the road a few minutes later, Mr. Cainen checked the pump—£34—only enough to cover another twenty miles. As Doug continued on his journey to Sleaford, the officer returned to Dover with a smile on his face.
When Doug was driving back from Marseilles the following week, he showed no concern when Mr. Cainen asked him to pull over and park his lorry in the customs shed. He knew that every crate on board was, as the manifest stated, full of bananas. However, the customs officer didn’t ask Doug to unlock the back door of the truck. He simply walked around the outside of the vehicle clutching a spanner as if it were a tuning fork while he tapped the massive fuel tanks. The officer was not surprised that the eighth tank rang out with a completely different timbre to the other seven. Doug sat around for hours while customs mechanics removed all eight fuel tanks from both sides of the lorry. Only one was half full of diesel, while the other seven contained over £100,000 worth of cigarettes.
On this occasion the judge was less lenient, and Doug was sent down for six years, even after his barrister pleaded that a second child was on the way.
Sally was horrified to discover that Doug had broken his word, and skeptical when he promised her never, ever, again. The moment her husband was locked up, she rented out the second vehicle and returned to her job as an estate agent.
A year later Sally was able to declare an increased income of just over £3,000, on top of her earnings as an estate agent.
Sally’s accountant advised her to buy the field next door to the cottage, where the lorries were always parked at night, as she could claim it against tax. “A carpark,” he explained, “would be a legitimate business expense.”
As Doug had just begun a six-year sentence and was back to earning £12.50 a week as the prison librarian, he was hardly in a position to offer an opinion. However, even he was impressed when, the following year, Sally declared an income of £37,000, which included her added sales bonuses. This time, the accountant advised her to purchase a third lorry.
Doug was eventually released from prison having only served half his sentence (three years). Sally was parked outside the prison gates in her Vauxhall, waiting to drive her husband home. His nine-year-old daughter, Kelly, was strapped into the back, next to her three-year-old sister Sam. Sally had not allowed either of the children to visit their father in prison, so when Doug took the little girl in his arms for the first time, Sam burst into tears. Sally explained to her that the strange man was her father.
Over a welcome breakfast of bacon and eggs, Sally was able to report that she had been advised by her accountant to form a limited company. Haslett Haulage had declared a profit of £21,600 in its first year, and she had added two more lorries to their growing fleet. Sally told her husband that she was thinking of giving up her job at the estate agent’s to become full-time chair of the new company.
“Chair?” said Doug. “What’s that?”
Doug was only too pleased to leave Sally to run the company, as long as he was allowed to take his place behind the wheel as one of her drivers. This state of affairs would have continued quite happily, if Doug had not once again been approached by the man from Marseilles—who never seemed to end up in jail—with what he confidently assured him was a fool-proof plan with no risks attached and, more important, this time his wife need never find out.
Doug resisted the Frenchman’s advances for several months, but after losing a rather large sum in a poker game, finally succumbed. Just one trip, he promised himself. The man from Marseilles smiled, as he handed over an envelope containing £12,500 in cash.
Under Sally’s chairmanship, the Haslett Haulage Company continued to grow, in both reputation and below