The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming [78]
‘And Libra is a part of this?’ There was resignation in Mark’s voice, still a sickening loom in the stomach. ‘Tom’s been laundering through the club, hasn’t he?’
”Fraid so.’ Quinn lifted several pages from the file and scratched at his left ear. ‘Nightclubs make ideal cover. Again the high cash element, again the rapid turnover. You charge punters sixteen quid for a couple of gin and tonics with ice and lemon, you’re gonna make a lot of money very fast. Those invoices you’ve been signing off - most probably faked. Macklin has been doubling your weekly turnover for more than eighteen months, drawing up fake balance sheets, inventing staff and security personnel, saying he sold a hundred crates of Bacardi when he only sold fifty. That kind of thing.’
‘But I saw all of those,’ Mark insisted. ‘I see it all the time. Everything goes across my desk.’
‘You’ve been away a lot,’ Taploe said quickly, as if there were a way of letting Mark down gently. ‘Travelling overseas, delegating responsibility, seeing to your father’s probate…’
‘We also suspect that Macklin has other people working for him on the inside,’ Quinn continued. ‘But it’s too early to tell.’
‘Inside Libra?’ Mark stood up out of the sofa. The room was so small he barely had space to move. So much of his anger at Macklin and Roth had grown out of a conviction that they were in some way responsible for his father’s death. And yet the scale of the deception purely within Libra, the liberties Macklin had taken with Mark’s friendship and trust, momentarily seemed worse even than any involvement he or Roth might have had in the murder.
‘One of these is a former employee of yours,’ Taploe said. ‘Left the company some time ago. A Mr Philippe d’Erlanger.’
Mark looked up.
‘Philippe?’
‘He’s been running an Italian restaurant out of Covent Garden and - how can I put this? - assisting Mr Macklin with his business affairs.’
‘Assisting in what way?’
Taploe moved towards the window and pinched a clump of curtain fabric in his hand.
‘He’s one of the nominee directors of Pentagon, for a start. For the moment, however, what we’re most interested in is his rapid turnover of female staff.’
‘Rapid turnover of female staff,’ Mark repeated.
‘That’s right.’ Quinn now tookover. ‘Waitresses, bar staff, cloakroom attendants, the pretty girls on reception who smile at you when you walkin then don’t speakany English. Birds from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, the Balkans. They find jobs at the restaurant, then disappear when they’re offered more lucrative ways of making a living.’
‘You mean prostitution.’
‘I do mean prostitution, yes. We know that Kukushkin has control of a network of apartments all over London that are being used by call girls with connections to organized crime. We’ve had d’Erlanger under surveillance for some time, although at present his role seems to be limited.’
‘Limited to what?’
‘He simply acts as a middle man. The gangs organize to bring girls to the UK from locations right across central and eastern Europe, promising them jobs as au pairs, waitresses, dancers. D’Erlanger is one of several businessmen in London who offer them work so that they can remain in the country, then they run up debts, get their passports taken away by the gangs and discover that the only way to breakeven is spending fourteen hours a day sucking cocks in South Kensington. Maybe you’ve noticed this with staff at Libra - barmaids or girls in admin who were given workby Macklin and then farmed out to Vladimir Tamarov.’
‘Tamarov?’ Mark said. ‘The lawyer?’
‘For lawyer,