CHAPTER 19
It was the Italian connection that still intrigued Mark Dobson. Aware that it might just be false intuition, he called Coin Asher. By return Colin sent a copy of Eddie’s correspondence on the product called ‘Forever Youthful’.
The only reply Eddie had received had come from a law company called Studio Legale Marco Senini, Trieste. “Any further malicious accusations about our client’s products will be dealt with directly by our clients through the Italian courts,” was the somewhat threatening reply.
“I just checked a list of Trieste lawyers,” Colin said. “There isn’t one called Studio Legale Marco Senini.”
Mark put his intuition on hold and at 7pm, and with no contact from Ritchie, he walked east up the long Lat Krabang road to the night market to find something to eat.
To any outsider Ritchie and he did not know one another. Any phone calls between them were made and then deleted, but if either of them was detained or had a problem the procedure was to find a way to phone or text Colin Asher on a special number.
He had finished eating and had started checking his watch every few minutes. It was not a good sign. Sitting alone, eating rice, boiled chicken and soup in sticky heat and surrounded by the hubbub of the market, Mark Dobson’s concern was that they’d thrown this young and untested character from drama school straight into a serious international crime investigation with just a few days of training. Could he cope?
He’d been doing the sort of thing Ritchie was doing today far longer than he cared to remember and had survived - just. He’d been threatened, beaten up, followed, detained against his will and even shot at over the years, but he still wasn’t sure he’d convinced Ritchie how dangerous the job could be.
To Ritchie the job had looked glamorous and exciting and, of course, Colin and he had given him the run-around from his initial interview in Costa Coffee to the so-called training course. Despite leg-pulling bullshit, though, Ritchie would be well paid and taken care of if something happened, but nothing ever prepared you for the real thing. He needn’t have worried. Around 8pm his phone buzzed with a text from Colin to say it was safe to call Ritchie.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Sabaidee. Taking a shower. I stink of cigarette smoke.”
“I’m at the night market. Come and join me. Just make sure no-one’s following you. Keep to the training methods. Any doubts, return to the hotel and delete this call.
Ritchie arrived half an hour later looking fresh and alert. He sat down and pointed over his shoulder. “What’s with the six-year-old girl and her brother doing cabaret on the corner?”
It was true. On the corner of the street, a tiny girl of about six in a flowing pink dress, rouged cheeks and lipstick was singing songs to backing tracks from a portable machine operated by her slightly older brother. They were there almost every night. “I reckon she earns more than me,” Ritchie said.
“You’d struggle on the cuteness factor,” Mark replied. “Have you eaten?”
“At the Novotel. A room service club sandwich that came with a Russian flag on a cocktail stick.”
“Sabaidee Mansion dispensing machine not good enough for you?”
“I just had an audience with Blow Wave again and discussed my first deal, but there are hitches.”
“Don’t tell me. He wants payment up front?”
“How did you guess?”
“It was expected. What are the other hitches?”
“The rules and regulations. Five of them.”
“Tell me.”
Ritchie counted them off on his fingers. “One: Do what I’m told. Two: Trust no-one but the supplier – that’s Blow Wave. Three: Keep my mouth shut. Four: keep my eyes and ears open. Five: Never snitch. What’s snitch?”
“I’m surprised a Russian knew the word but it means don’t ever, ever think of running away or running to the police. I warned you about this business, Ritchie. Are you sure you’re dealing with Dimitri Medinski?”
“Ninety percent.”
“Why not a hundred?”
“Your photos aren’t good enough but Olga called him Dimi, probably by mistake.”
“Olga?”
“Olga in the scarf. She’s definitely a woman and definitely not a Moslem. Then I met the guy with two names - Sergei Mutko or could be Yuri Abisov.”
“You sure about all this?”
Ritchie nodded. “There’s a Thai fork lift driver in a surgical mask who called him Yuri but he never introduced himself properly. I asked several times. ‘Who am I dealing with? What’s your name?’ He ignored me saying Igor had sent me so I was dealing with Igor and only needed to know Igor.”
“OK. Start again from the beginning. You want a drink?
“That green fizzy stuff – Fanta, Est or whatever. I’ve got a taste for it.”
Dobson ordered two bottles and Ritchie described his day.
“The warehouse was full of cosmetics, sports drinks, energy drinks, bottles and boxes that look like the sort of thing you see in Holland and Barret. You know: health foods, vitamins, pills for this, capsules for that. Fancy Chinese labels, English labels, Italian labels, Arabic labels. Plastic bottles, cans, boxes of tea and coffee.”
“Tea and coffee? Did you see Red Power?” Dobson asked.
“Oh sure. Pallets and pallets of it with Chinese labels. They say I could get anything I wanted.”
“And the deal you were offered?”
“Not so fast, Mark,” Ritchie grimaced. “My stomach hurts.”
“It’s the drink. It’s too gassy. Don’t drink so fast, but what about the deal?”
Ritchie held his stomach and gave a long burp. “That’s better, but there might be another in a minute.”
“It’s tension and excitement, Ritchie. James Bond suffered from it but never on camera. Loud belching was a turn on for Pussy Galore.”
“Is that right? I never knew that.”
“What about the deal?”
“After the warehouse tour, Yuri made me wait outside his office. I heard him on the phone but I was glad of the fresh air. Then he called me in. ‘Black Magic,”’ he shouted. ‘Mister Black Magic. Where the fuck are you?’ Can you believe that, Mark? If someone called me that back home I’d gather a few mates around to deal with it.”
“Ignore it, Ritchie. Feel proud to be British.”
“Anyway: ‘What’s your main interest, Black Magic?’ he asked me. ‘Cosmetics or…’ Now I didn’t want to complicate things, Mark. The only health foods I know are Kellogg’s Bran Flakes so I jumped in and said cosmetics. ‘Face and hand lotions,’ I said, ‘And anti-wrinkle creams for decrepit old gits over forty.’”
“Did he think you were being insulting?”
“Did I care? ‘What I’m really hot on is perfumes,’ I said. ‘You got anything like my Eau de Toilette by Ritchie, nice underarm deodorants or air fresheners that’ll kill stale ciggie smoke?’ Yuri said anything was possible. It all depended on the quantity.”
“And you said?”
“I’d take 100,000 bottles of Eau de Toilette if the price was right and if they looked and smelled like Eau de Toilette by Ritchie of London because I’d already started free sampling around my customers. And I’d really like my own label, I said. I was desperate, I said. I had people lined up and ready to bite my hand off.”
“And then?”
“’No problem,’ Yuri said. ‘I’ll speak to Igor.’”
“And then?”
“Olga came back and told me to go outside to sit and wait. I then sat in that bloody warehouse from midday to three o’clock. The Thai fork lift driver brought me a bottle of water.”
“With all that stock of Red Power you only got water?”
“Terrible customer care, Mark. Then I was taken back to the Novotel in the Toyota.”
“In the dark glasses, again?”
“I couldn’t see a damned thing except when I knocked them off as the car came up the ramp into the street and had to pick them up off the floor. Olga panicked.”
“See anything?”
“Kodak Express, 7-Eleven and a sign that said On Nut Market.”
“On Nut? You sure?”
“On Nut Market. I thought of Eddie with his nuts. And I saw Soi 85.”
“Magic, Ritchie. Then what?”
“Back to the Novotel, up to the suite again and more waiting. Blow Wave wasn’t there so Olga made coffee and ordered the club sandwich with the flag sticking out. Bacon, tomato, lettuce and salad cream. Very nice but my nerves were starting up. How the hell could I afford to buy 100,000 bottles of Eau de Toilette? He’d probably demand cash.”
“But it didn’t work out like that?”
“No. Igor turned up.”
“Was he nice and friendly?”
“Neither. He invited me to sit around a big table. That top floor suite has two bathrooms. It’s like a penthouse apartment. One end is like an office that looks down on the top of indoor trees.”
“Just get on with it.”
“He offered to supply 100,000 bottles labelled Eau de Toilette by Ritchie of London smelling of Frangipani.”
“Go on.”
“But if I ditched by own Ritchie brand, he could do Calvin Klein, Christian Dior, Issey Miyake or a lovely Paco Rabanne.”
“What did you say/”
“It depended on the price.”
“And?”
“All were about $5 a bottle that I could sell direct for ten times that much in UK. On the other hand, if I took a smaller cut like a wholesaler, I could sell a lot more.”
“What did you say?”
“That I’d think about it. But then he got a bit unpleasant. His face went puce. Told me there was no time for thinking. Olga brought him a vodka. He started talking about trust and if the deal wasn’t right then if anyone got to hear about the offers he’d made he’d be very upset and there would be implications such as implementing one or more of the conditions. So, I said I thought it all looked very positive and that just looking around his warehouse had sparked new ideas. Then he started smiling again. Then came another proposal. “
“Go on.”
Ritchie swallowed the remaining half of his green drink and waited a moment to burp before continuing. “’How about becoming a proper partner in our business?’ Yuri suggested. They were looking for partners. They’d recently done the same thing in France and Holland with the friends I’d met last night but the star performer was an Italian business that was expanding into many other products besides cosmetics.”
Mark nodded. There it was again – an Italian link.
“And there were other opportunities, Blow Wave said. Partners were using the cosmetics and supplements business for other opportunities so I asked him what sort of opportunities and he got up and walked about. The room was big enough to hold Olympic sports like javelin throwing, Mark. Then he came back.”
“What other opportunities did he have in mind?”
“Invoicing opportunities, Mark. Help with getting stuff through customs, commissions, bonuses. The list went on.”
“Money laundering.”
“He didn’t say that. He called it financial opportunities, but he has this frightening grin that appears when he thinks he’s got a good idea. When he mentioned financial opportunities, he grinned from ear to ear.”
Ritchie burped one last time. “Did I do OK?”
Mark Dobson looked at the new Asher & Asher recruit with his wiry black hair topped with red dye and the single ear stud. He’d put the Star Wars baseball cap on the table by his empty bottle of Fanta. “Brilliant, Ritchie. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”
“You couldn’t have done it at all, Mark,” Ritchie grinned. “You’re too old.”
“Hah. Maybe.”
“Definitely,” Ritchie said with such certainty that Dobson changed the subject.
“Was anything said about product quality, certification, guarantees?”
“I’d asked Yuri and he’d shrugged so I asked Blow Wave. He told me to ask Yuri but that if things sold then they must be good. Then he laughed and Olga joined in. It was the first time I’d seen her laugh.”
“Any idea where everything is made?”
“I also asked that and Blow Wave waved his hands around. Here and there, he said. No need to know. That was their job. Then I told him that the one product that looked really interesting to me was Red Power. I saw it on the shelves, I said. Looks like Red Bull. I reckon it would be an easy sale, even to pound shops in UK. He hadn’t heard of pound or dollar shops so I explained and he listened without talking for the first time.”
Finally, both Mark and Ritchie sat back and looked at one another.
“So, tell me Mark, how am I going to pay for 100,000 bottles of stuff I don’t want?”
“How does he want paying?”
“Cash.”
“Half a million dollars?”
“Fifty percent deposit, fifty percent before shipping. That’s what he said. See what I mean?”
“In notes? Or paid into a bank account?”
“I thought I’d ask later. I’ve never handled more than about a hundred quid before.”
“Never throw away an opportunity, Ritchie. We’ll come up with a strategy. Why does he think you can afford half a million dollars?”
“I told him I’d just made half a million on some Samsung Smart TVs.”
“So, it’s all your fault, Ritchie. A trifle too bold, perhaps? What guarantee did he give that he wouldn’t just take your money and forget to send the goods?”
“None.”
They both sat back again, both watching a fly crawling around the remains of Mark’s chicken and rice. It landed on Ritchie’s baseball cap so Ritchie flicked it away.
“OK,” Mark said eventually, “I’ll talk to Colin. I’ve got an idea. I also need to borrow your baseball cap.”
Ritchie looked at him. “Why? You planning to go to the Peacock tonight because, believe me, it won’t suit you. Better you wear a shabby raincoat and a trilby with a feather. And it’s full of little girls not pretty little boys.”
“Don’t be so possessive, Ritchie. Everything you’re wearing was bought on an Asher & Asher credit card. Your hat is a company asset and I need to borrow it, OK? You’ll get it back tomorrow. Right now, I suggest you return to the Sabaidee and meet me here at 8am tomorrow morning after following the procedure for spotting and losing unwelcome followers. Better safe than sorry, Ritchie. Pleasant dreams.”
With Richie gone, Mark bought a bottle of water and sat, pondering on what to do. It was 9pm when he phoned Colin Asher again.
“How many Limited company names do we own that have never traded?”
“About six from memory,” he said.
“What names?”
“From memory? Butterwell Limited, Framelock Limited, Cashley Green, Smart Finance, Pollitop…….”
“That’s it,” Dobson interrupted. “Pollitop. Off the shelf company?”
“Yes, what’s up?”
“Activate it. Three directors. You, me and Ritchie but use his Michael John Parker pseudonym and any of the pseudonyms we use. Then open a genuine bank account with around one thousand pounds sterling Then I need a Pollitop bank statement showing four hundred thousand pounds on deposit.”
“Yikes! What sort of bank statement is that?”
“One created in the office, Colin. You know the sort.”
“I’ll need signatures “
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Colin?”
“OK. How soon?”
“By 10am Thai time tomorrow. That means you’ve got three hours before the bank closes and twelve in total.”
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t waste time with silly questions, Colin. Ask Ching to run down to Pret a Manger for your afternoon sandwich and start work immediately.”
Mark Dobson then picked up Ritchie’s Star Wars baseball cap and returned to the Sabaidee.