The Madeiran Double Cross

by Sally Spencer

  “You shouldn’t have spoken to her like that, Mr. Mason,” Susan said.

  Had it not been for the obvious concern in her voice, he would have told her that he knew he shouldn’t, but what the hell had it got to do with her.

  Instead, he just said, “You’re right, darlin’.”

  His hands were on the table, clasped together in a tight knot of frustration, anger and worry. She placed her own on top of them. Her fingers felt cool and reassuring.

  “You need to relax, Mr. Mason,” she said. “Try breathing deeply. That’s what I always got Mam to do when she was in pain.”

  He did it to humour her. As he breathed in and out, she stroked his hard knuckles, matching her rhythm to his. To his amazement he found that it was having an effect – that he was starting to feel better.

  “You’re a very nice girl, Susan,” he said, smiling.

  She smiled back at him.

  “I like you too,” she said.

  *

  “That will be fifteen thousand escudos’ deposit,” the fresh-faced youth at Avis said, “and we will deliver the car to your hotel by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Nobody was keeping to the script, Arnie thought.

  If Gower had been at breakfast the previous morning, he could have ad-libbed. But Gower hadn’t been, and he’d relaxed. Then, like the ghost of Hamlet's father coming on one scene too late, he had appeared that morning, and Arnie, unprepared, had panicked and practically run out of the dining room.

  And now this eager young man was saying that the car would be delivered to the Casino Park. Suppose the other two companies he still had to hire vehicles from insisted on the same thing.

  Three delivery men, three cars, all outside the hotel at the same time.

  How could he explain to them why he needed them all on the same day?

  It was worse than just having a bad script, Arnie decided. It was like knowing that however well you played your part, the slating reviews were already set up in typeface.

  “I’ll pick it up from here,” he said.

  “It will be a pleasure to deliver it to your hotel, senhor,” the youth said – and Arnie could have strangled him. “We are Avis. We try harder. And it may be a great inconvenience for you to come here. You see, although we say that you can have the car at nine thirty, that is only true if the last customer bring it back on time, and many of them, alas, do not.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Arnie said.

  “And sometimes the car is very dirty and we have to clean it well before we can hire it to you. So you may, perhaps, be waiting here for an hour. You would be much more comfortable at your hotel – and there is no extra charge for delivery.”

  How would Smiley have handled this one? Even the complexity and intrigue in the world of international espionage seemed simple in comparison to booking a car through harder-trying Avis.

  “It’s a surprise for my wife,” Arnie said desperately. “I don’t want her to know I’ve hired a car until I’m actually in it. It’s a … well, a surprise.”

  “Then we will park it by the side of the hotel and she will not see it until …”

  “No,” Arnie said. “I’ll pick it up here.”

  The smile disappeared from the boy’s face.

  “Very well, senhor,” he said coldly. “If that is what you wish.”

  Arnie’s lines were more polished by the time he booked the other cars – one from Hertz, one from Tower – and he received no more than mildly raised eyebrows for his eccentricity.

  It would all come out after the robbery, of course, and the police would be on the lookout for an Arthur Blake, who needed three cars in one day. But by then, Arnie the Actor hoped to be back in the Smoke, away from all the trouble.

  *

  Mason lay on his hotel bed, staring at the ceiling. Ceilings would become a familiar sight if the job went wrong. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to be locked in a room hour after hour, to walk in a high-walled yard where there were no trees, no flowers, no birds.

  Could he possibly endure that kind of existence?

  For the next twenty years?

  No, he knew he couldn’t. If they caught him this time, he would kill himself.

  It’s just nerves, he thought. It’s always like this just before I pull a job.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because normally the plan was not so intricate.

  Because normally there were not so many things that could go wrong.

  Yesterday had been the twentieth, today was the twenty-first. The job was planned for the twenty-third, and there was no way he could advance it, even if he wanted to. By now, the Spanish police would have realized that he was not returning to his hotel and would have begun to institute checks. He had covered his tracks as well as he could, but they would not be fooled forever.

  First they would find out about the car – if only he’d had time to ditch it at somewhere other than the airport! – then about the plane.

  If they discovered he was in Madeira before the twenty-third, all the planning would be wasted. Worse than that, Elsie would notice that their last few thousand had disappeared from the safety deposit box – and tell her father.

  Mason felt as if there were a pair of steel hands around his throat, their pressure slowly increasing, squeezing the life out of him. If only they would let just enough air get through to enable him to survive the next two days.

  ELEVEN

  It was just before a quarter to nine in the morning on the 22nd of December. The man in the business-suit walked with the swagger of one who has achieved relative eminence at a fairly early age. Outside the bank he stopped, looked up and down the street, and then inserted several keys in the door. He entered the bank, closing the door behind him.

  “He have the keys to the door,” Pedro, who was sitting in a parked car, said to himself, “but he don’t know how to open the safe.”

  He was thinking in English, because now he was a real London gangster.

  Over the next fifteen minutes, several other staff arrived and were admitted, but it was not until five to nine that the older man turned up.

  This is the manager, Pedro thought. He know how to get into the box.

  At exactly nine o’clock, the blind on the door was raised and a disembodied hand flipped the plastic sign to announce that the bank was open.

  Pedro waited for four minutes – “That's all we have,” Frankie had said, “four minutes” – then drove along the street and turned into a side road. He parked, timed another thirty seconds, and moved off again.

  It was important to simulate actual conditions, Frankie had said. Pedro rolled the words around in his mouth: “Simulate actual conditions!”

  Traffic was light in the town – Frankie had said that too, what a mind Frankie had! – and Pedro was soon on the road to the mountains.

  It was six kilometres out of Funchal, where the steep climb had begun in earnest, that he got his shock. By the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, was a wooden hut, and next to it was a long wooden pole on a metal swivel.

  A roads block?

  Pedro drove past it slowly and, when he was sure there was no one around, backed up again to take a closer look. A notice on the side of the hut announced that it belonged to the Policia Florestal – the Forest Police. The round metal sign on the pole contained the single word, ‘Stop!’

  It was a roads block!

  His immediate reaction was to turn around and drive back to Funchal, find Mason and tell him all about it. But Frankie had said there was to be no contact under any circumstances.

  “Is an emergency,” he told himself.

  He calmed down a little. The road was not closed today, the twenty-second, there was no reason why it should be closed on the twenty-third. He was simulating actual conditions and the actual condition was that the roadblock was unmanned.

  Besides, the Policia Florestal were not real police.

  “Tree police,” Pedro said
to himself. “Pretty flower police.”

  They would not stop a desperate gangster like him.

  He took the turn-off to the Pico do Arieiro, keeping his speed down to sixty kilometres an hour.

  “Drive carefully,” Frankie had said. “You’ve plenty of time and we don’t want any accidents.”

  Mist was rising from the fields and through it could be seen the vague shapes of sleepy sheep, nibbling lethargically at the grass. The cafeteria, where the road came to an end, was still closed.

  “The tour buses don’t start to arrive until ten,” Frankie had said. “By then, you’ll have got rid of the money, and can drive back to Funchal just like any other sightseer.”

  He was so bloody clever, that Frankie.

  Pedro parked the car and stood looking at the trail that hugged the mountainside, sometimes sweeping sharply down, sometimes disappearing into the clouds. He climbed down the roughly hewn steps into the dip, counting them as he went.

  Thirty … fifty… seventy … ninety …

  At the bottom, he began to climb again.

  Thirty … bastards-forty … bloody-bastards-fifty.

  He realized that city life had made him soft; that this walk, which would have meant nothing to him when he lived in the village, was making his calves ache.

  Sodding-bloody-bastards-seventy.

  But he did not really mind the pain. Frankie could have chosen Tony-Boy or Harry Smell to hide the money, and instead he had chosen him – Big-Time Pedro.

  “Is a great honour,” he said to himself.

  He turned the corner. Behind him, he heard the roar of a car engine, the staff of the cafeteria arriving for work, but turning round he found that he could not see the building itself. And that meant that the people there could not see him.

  Beautiful!

  He walked on another hundred meters and found what he was looking for – a deep fissure in the rock, just off the trail. He bent over it, tried to reach the bottom with his hand, and found that he could not.

  Perfect!

  He collected a number of smaller rocks and strewed them innocently around near the fissure for use the next day. Satisfied with his work, he walked back to the car park, picked up his vehicle, and drove back to Funchal as just an ordinary sightseer.

  *

  With three car firms to choose from, Arnie put his money on Hertz – and lost. The car was not there at ten, was not ready until ten thirty, and by the time he had parked it at the prearranged spot and got back to Avis, it was already eleven.

  “Good morning, senhor,” said the clerk disapprovingly, glancing at his watch as he did so.

  Hell hath no fury like a helpful young man scorned. “Good morning,” Arnie said. “Is my car ready?”

  “It is ready since ten, senhor.” The young man looked out of the window. “Soon, the mountains will be full of cloud, and you will have lost your view. Your wife will be very disappointed.” He paused, before delivering his final coup. “And because you said you would pick up the car at ten o’clock, we must charge you from ten o’clock, even though you have not used the car.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Arnie said.

  He still had one more car to collect – at Tower —and the later he got there, the more suspicious they were likely to be.

  The Avis clerk frowned. “What hotel did you say you were staying at, senhor?”

  “It’s in your records. The Casino Park.”

  “Please be so kind as to wait here.”

  “I’m in a hurry,” Arnie said.

  “You did not seem to be in a hurry earlier, senhor,” the clerk replied. “But I will not keep you long.”

  He disappeared into the back room.

  He’s calling the hotel, Arnie thought.

  He could picture the lobby in his mind, and Gower, just handing in his key as the call came through. He wouldn’t understand any of the conversation, but his ears would prick up when he heard Arnie’s assumed name.

  “Isn’t that the white-haired man I’ve seen in the dining room?” he’d ask, as soon as the receptionist had put the phone down.

  “Yes, senhor.”

  “He’s not in any trouble, I hope”'

  “No, it was just a car-hire firm, making sure that he is a resident of this hotel.”

  Gower would look at his watch.

  “Hiring a car so late in the morning,” he’d say to himself. “Unusual that … unless he’s hiring several cars at the same time.”

  Paranoid! Arnie thought. I’m getting paranoid.

  The Chief Superintendent probably didn’t even know his assumed name.

  But still, it was hard not to be paranoid. Ever since he had first seen Gower, his tough Smiley shell had been cracking, and any second now it would shatter completely, leaving the fluffy, yellow, little Arnie completely unprotected.

  The car hire clerk returned to the counter. “I will fill out the documents now, senhor,” he said.

  *

  Arnie’s one break of the day came at the Tower. The girl behind the counter was much more interested in polishing her nails than she was in his late arrival, and the documentation was completed with a minimum of fuss. By midday, the third car was in place.

  He had only two more tasks to complete, then he would be free of the island – free of Gower. He turned down the hill and headed for the sea front.

  *

  “Mason’s on the move, sir,” Scott said over the long-distance line. “He flew into Madrid the day before yesterday.”

  Gower felt a quick stabbing in his chest. Why did he have to be away when Frank was pulling something?

  “I want him watched twenty-four hours a day,” he said. “Get the top brass to put pressure on the dagoes.”

  “The Spanish police have already lost him, sir,” Scott said.

  “They’ve what?”

  The stabbing pain had settled into a tight, crushing band around Gower’s diaphragm.

  “There were two men following him,” Scott explained. “He lost one on the underground and the other in a big department store. They seem to think it was unintentional. You know what I mean? He wasn’t trying to throw them off, didn’t even know they were there – it just happened.”

  Stupid bloody wogs!

  “It didn’t just sodding happen,” Gower snapped, “not with our Frank. So what did the Spanish police do then?”

  “The hotel got a call from Mason. He said he suspected Linda of having a bit on the side, and he’d look for her all night if he had to. Anyway, they went up to his room, and all his clothes were still there, so they just sat back and waited.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Gower said.

  If he had useless dickheads like that working for him, he wouldn’t even trust them with directing the bastard traffic.

  “When he didn't turn up in the morning, they ran a check on airports and car-hire firms,’ Scott continued. “They drew a blank with the airports, but it seems that Mason hired a car the day before, and handed it in yesterday morning in Barcelona. So that’s where the Spanish police are concentrating their efforts now.”

  Even through the pain – which was now throbbing as well as pressing – Gower thought he saw it all.

  There was a good reason for recruiting a wally like Pedro – and that reason was that Mason was planning to pull a job in Portugal. Yet the Spanish police were asking him to believe that Frank had driven as far from the Portuguese border as it was possible to get and still be in Spain.

  “Did the description of the man who handed in the car match Mason’s?” he demanded.

  “They didn’t actually see him, sir. When the office is closed, customers just park the car on the forecourt and drop the key through the letterbox. They’re expecting him to turn up – they owe him quite a big refund – but he hasn’t yet. When he does, the car firm has instructions to stall him and phone the police.”

  “He won’t bloody turn up,” Gower said, “because he isn’t in bloody Barcelona. He didn’t drive that car – my g
uess is that Linda did. Get them to check the car firm again, and see if he hired a second car. And if he did, alert the Portuguese police and tell them to look out for it.”

  Frank would never have done a bunk from Madrid if he wasn’t going to pull a job soon.

  Gower wondered how long it would take him, if the need arose, to get a flight to the Portuguese mainland.

  *

  Arnie walked along the levada cut out of the hillside between Funchal to Amparo, a large canvas bag under his arm.

  Madeira has 2,150 kilometres of levadas – concrete water courses which start at high altitudes where the rainfall is heaviest, and flow, gently sloping downwards, all over the island. It is quite a remarkable number of irrigation channels for such a small place, but even if Arnie had known this, he would not have been impressed.

  The view of the town, the sea and the mountains, was breathtaking, but Arnie didn’t care about that either. He was no longer George Smiley, operating with cool assurance behind enemy lines. Now he was Hardy Kruger – The One Who Got Away.

  On either side of the levada were small banana plantations, nothing more than the backyards to numerous tiny houses. He reached a bend where the levada started to slope downhill. This was the place. The ground to his left was four or five feet lower than the water channel, so he jumped down. At the base of the nearest banana tree, he placed the canvas bag, then collected a few leaves that were lying on the ground and spread them over it. He looked at his work with satisfaction. The bag was invisible to the casual passer-by, but could easily be found by somebody who was looking for it.

  He checked his watch. It was time to get out. He did not want to meet the person who was due to collect the bag.

  *

  Pedro arrived ten minutes after Arnie had left. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that there was no one in sight, then dropped off the concrete walkway into the banana plantation. He knelt down beside the bag and his hand went longingly to the zip.

  “I don’t want any of you opening your bags until you get back to your hotels,” Frankie had said.

  But the temptation was too great. Pedro pulled on the zipper and revealed the treasures inside – black over-trousers, a black sweater, a ski-mask and the keys to a rental car. But best of all, there was a sawn-off shotgun.