by David Leslie
That first day Hannah felt like a schoolgirl, excitedly wandering about shops and market stalls, stopping eventually for a cool drink in a bar just off one of the main roads leading to the beach. It was nearly deserted, most of the holidaymakers either in the sea or under beach umbrellas. She was content to sit alone until a voice in a familiar accent asked if she had just arrived.
The man seated at the next table was tall, with hair that appeared to have been turned near white by weeks in the sun, and she reckoned him to be in his mid-50s, although he had obviously looked after himself well. No beer gut hung over his trousers; there was no puffiness about his face. He wore light-coloured slacks, sandals and a white shirt open at the neck.
‘Yes, does it show?’ Hannah asked. ‘You surely haven’t just come today.’
‘No, I live here, at least most of the time. When the season ends, I go home for a break.’
‘And where is home?’
‘Glasgow.’
He told her he had run a pub in Shettleston in the east end of Glasgow, but a decade earlier had sold up and bought a bar in Malaga, hitching a ride on the package holiday boom, and as a result now owned a second. The man, who we shall call ‘James’, asked Hannah about herself and was surprised that her travelling companion had opted to remain indoors, although she had not revealed the reason why.
He pointed out the best shopping areas, the best eating places and who to go to if she wanted a prime spot on the beach, even when it was crowded. Eventually, she told him it was time to return to her hotel and he offered to walk with her in case she had lost her bearings. ‘If you’re on your own, just call back at the bar and ask for me,’ James said. ‘They’ll call me. I’m the owner.’
She sensed he was interested in her and began to regret that Mason had made the trip with her. Back at the hotel, the collector had still not arrived, so she wandered off once more, tempted to return to see James but deciding against doing so.
That evening, as they were dressing for dinner, there was a light knock on the door. Mason brought two men, neither of whom Hannah recognised, into a short hallway leading into the bedroom; Mason went to the wardrobe, handed over the carrier bag and was given an envelope in exchange. Hardly a word was spoken before the visitors left.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Mason. At the bar, she asked what the envelope contained. ‘It’s the money I forked out for the holiday,’ he told her. ‘There’s a bit extra. Let me know if you’re short.’
According to others in the smugglers’ gang, the envelope and subsequent envelopes contained £2,000 in cash. It was to repay what had been laid out for the holiday, with the remainder split between them. Mason maintains he gave her money, but her friends say Hannah told them a different version of events.
‘She was ripped off by him,’ said one. ‘He probably used his very sharpest sales patter to trick her out of what was rightfully hers. She had to use her money when they went for drinks or meals. Once when they went to a factory producing china ornaments – she paid for the coach journey there out of her own pocket – she spotted this magnificent coach with footmen and horses and absolutely fell in love with it. It was the sort of thing she could never have afforded in Scotland, but in Spain it was much cheaper and she set her heart on having it. Since she paid for the trip to the factory, she did not have enough for the ornament and asked Mason to help, but he turned her down. She’d have adored bringing it home and giving it as a gift to someone and told me she was so disappointed.’ During that first holiday Hannah did not bother to press the point over money.
The next morning, when she assumed Mason would be joining her on a walking tour of the town, she was surprised to hear him announcing he would be remaining at the hotel. ‘There’s no need,’ she protested. ‘They’ve collected the money. Come out and enjoy yourself.’
‘That’s what I intend doing by lazing around and having a few drinks,’ he told her.
So off she set again, searching for bargains and keepsakes and inevitably ending up in the same bar that she had stopped at the previous day. She did not ask for James, but hardly a quarter of an hour had gone by before he was there, placing another drink at her table and sitting next to her. She found him easy-going and could find no hidden agenda in his conversation. When he invited her to lunch she declined, excusing herself by saying she had arranged to meet up with her companion. But the next day, when the pattern was repeated, she agreed; he took her arm gently as they strolled inland to a restaurant tucked away in the backstreets, with wooden tables and seats and filled with locals.
As they talked, she almost forgot about Mason. When they had eaten, she asked James to set her on the road back to the hotel, where she found her partner happily seated in the shade, a glass in his hand.
‘Been shopping?’ he asked.
‘I don’t have any money,’ was the reply.
‘Remind me to give you some when we’re in the room,’ he told her. But she thought to ask would be to waste her breath.
The next day, the pattern was repeated again, but it was nearer to dinnertime when she arrived back. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought you’d got lost,’ Mason told her, as she opened the door of their bedroom.
‘Oh, I did. I went window shopping and lost track of time.’
In fact she had once again shared lunch with James, and when it was over he drove her inland, expertly manoeuvring his little car around tight winding corners to a roadside fruit shop that doubled as a bar, where they had a soft drink. On the journey back, he stopped and they kissed before he drove to the three-storey apartment block that he called home far from the beachfront. Inside the shutters were closed and the floor cool and smooth.
She sat on a settee while he made them coffee, then they each removed their clothes, lay on the floor and made love. If he noticed the signs of childbirth on her body, he said nothing. Afterwards, she showered and he drove her to within a hundred yards of the Hotel Alle. He begged her to meet him the following day.
That night after dinner, as she and Mason watched the never-ending procession of holidaymakers meandering along the seafront, she thought about James and wondered why life had been so cruel to her. It could have been her and James, Isobel and grandchildren strolling past, she mused.
They met each day for the remainder of the week but only once did they return to his apartment, as he had to help run one of his bars due to a staff illness. At their final meeting, he pressed into her hand a slip of paper with a telephone number written on it. ‘I want you to call me when you come back,’ he urged, but she wondered whether her heart could handle so much anticipation and sorrow at parting. There would be more visits to the Malaga area but not to the little bar off the main drag, or the apartment with the cool, smooth floor.
John Healy was clearly impressed when she and Mason called on their return to report that all had gone well. As soon as they were back at Thornliebank, she set about making up for the days she had lost, selling her catalogues with a gusto that surprised even her best friends. But then Hannah needed the car supplied by Kays and could not afford to lose it, even though she sometimes struggled to find money to put petrol in the tank.
Despite her lack of funds, she was a smart dresser, always looking businesslike and efficient, traits that Healy liked. One night, he asked her if they could have a word in private: he had a proposition for her. Among his assets was a grocery store to which was attached an off-licence. In order to sell drink, he needed a licence holder, someone whom a court and the licensing authorities would look on as being of good character. He wondered if she would be willing to go to court and apply on his behalf, adding that he would happily pay her to do so. Hannah agreed but insisted the reward was paid directly to her, although friends believed it was inadvertently given to Mason with a request for it to be handed on. By the time he did so, a ‘commission’ had been deducted.
There were more trips to Spain; in all, Hannah would make seven with Mason, carrying between them a total of around £1,050,0
00. Each time their cover – that it was a family holiday – had to be preserved. She realised through listening to conversations involving Mason, Healy and the collectors that others were doing similar work, but she had little concept of the sums involved overall. In fact, up to four couples were needed to carry sufficient cash to buy hash to fill the bus on each of its runs.
She more and more looked forward to the holidays, usually being given only a week’s notice, sometimes even less; on occasions they would arrive at Malaga Airport not knowing which hotel the tour company would take them to. Hannah had no qualms about carrying money: emerging through the arrivals door into the Spanish sunshine clutching a fortune gave her a thrill of near orgasmic sensation. Although once she did stop to think how close they could be to disaster.
They had been on a bus journey around Fuengirola when a man snatched her bag. Hannah leapt off the bus and ran after him screaming, ‘He’s got my bag!’ There were other people around who grabbed him and retrieved it, but the thief ran away. Hannah was asked if she wanted the police called, but she said no. As she got back in the bus, she realised how calamitous that incident might have been. If it had happened as they were arriving from the airport and the bag held the money, how would she have explained that to the people back in Glasgow, or to the Spanish police?
Mason, who had a long-standing heart problem, was not as confident as Hannah. ‘Sometimes the sweat lashed out of him,’ she confided later to a friend. ‘When we got there, he was in such a state he took to the bedroom and refused to come out until the money had been picked up, and that might not be done for two or three days. He was a nervous wreck, terrified in case something went wrong. I had to run up and down, getting his breakfast and taking drinks to him. Then I’d leave him on his own and go touring around the shops. Sometimes I’d have a quiet chuckle at the thought that there he was alone in the room, probably dehydrating and hungry, while I was out and about in the sunshine.
‘On one of the trips, we arrived at the hotel in the early evening and for once I took a drink. It knocked me out until the next morning, but when I woke up he was still lying on the bed, out for the count. He was snoring when I closed the door and went off for the day.’
Some among the smugglers were concerned that Mason might crack under the pressure of carrying so much cash and they didn’t really trust Hannah either, realising his verbosity would almost certainly have led him to reveal to her more details of the operation than she needed to be told. The organisers intended the plot to be run on a ‘need to know’ basis and there was no requirement for either of them to have all the details at their fingertips. One of the collectors was especially concerned. An Irishman, brought in from the Ulster troubles because of his ability to instil discipline and, if necessary, fear, was wary. He had been appalled to hear that money sometimes lay for days in hotel bedrooms before being picked up. In 1996, he was instructed to visit the couple at the Sunset Beach Club Hotel in Benalmádena and deliberately reached his destination early. He had been told that in order to add to the guise of it being a family trip, they had brought with them a young relative of Mason’s who was still at primary school. The Irishman hung about reception and heard the number of the room they were allocated. This is his account of what followed.
‘They had got into their room just seconds before I knocked on the door, although they had been warned I’d be turning up to collect the cash. We almost arrived simultaneously because they hadn’t even had time to turn on the bedroom light. The blinds were drawn to keep out the heat and make sure the room was cool.
‘Graeme said, “Are you the man for the collection?” and I could see the outline of a woman standing behind him. I realised that she was Hannah Martin, although I’d never met her or she me. She came forward and said, “I’ll turn on the lights,” but I told her not to.
‘“It’s OK,” I said, “I’m only here for the bag, no need to switch them on.”
‘At that point, she beckoned a third person to come forward – I hadn’t noticed there was anyone else in the room – and a boy stepped into the dim light. He had a bag on his back and Hannah helped him take it off. The boy had carried it all the way from Glasgow, taken it into the plane as hand luggage. It had been lying in the luggage locker with something like £150,000 in cash in it.
‘Hannah handed the bag to me and asked, “Do you want to count it?” The money, I knew, would be in sterling, in £10 and £20 notes, and counting it would take some time. I didn’t want to do it at the hotel, so I said, “No need, I know it will all be there. I’ll take the bag, but don’t switch on the lights.” I didn’t really want them to be able to recognise me and I them, so if something went wrong we could honestly say we’d never seen one another. It was so dark inside the room I didn’t even see Hannah’s face, I just heard her voice and saw her outline. She seemed to be the one in charge, the one making the decisions.
‘I met them once more, again in 1996, when they arrived in Benalmádena with another load of cash. I had a couple of other collections to make before reaching their hotel and by the time I did so they could only have been there an hour. I got reception to connect me to their room and Hannah answered. When I got to the door, she came and again I told her not to turn on the lights. I could see past her, Graeme lying flat out on the bed. “He’s drunk,” she said. “He gets in a helluva funk each time we do this. I don’t know what the fuss is all about.” I had the feeling she despised him for his weakness.
‘I wasn’t happy with the involvement of either of them, for different reasons. One pretended to be sharp but wasn’t sharp enough, while the other gave out the impression of taking nothing in but missed nothing.’
Graeme Mason, though, remembers the courier arrangements differently. ‘We went abroad with money seven times. It wasn’t my idea that Hannah should go as a courier, that suggestion came from somebody else. I was totally against her coming with me, but the man who gave the orders said she would have to go, and go she did. She had her holiday paid for and I gave her spending money, but we had very different ideas about how to spend the time once we were abroad.
‘To me, a holiday is a holiday. I like to relax and enjoy the sunshine. She wanted nothing more than to trek around markets and shops from morning to night. She knew how to spend money as well and was continually asking for more. We’d say goodbye in the morning outside the hotel and then meet up at night for dinner, each of us doing our own thing.
‘I told her nothing about the real reason why we were making these trips to Spain. But she missed nothing.’
TWENTY
THE SAFE HOUSE
Isobel’s recovery from serious illness was spurred when she met a young man who confronted her with the realisation that having stared at death she was now facing a new variety of life. She had known the love of a family, but her feelings for this newcomer produced an emotion she had neither experienced nor imagined could exist for her. It was a sensation she had read about in books and had watched being created on the cinema screen, where it was customarily accompanied by armies of violins, choirs of angels and gentle breezes. Now, she had discovered a love that drove her into a private cocoon outside of which no other existed.
The couple’s belief that one had been created solely to bring joy to the other was, she was convinced, wholly mutual. Each meeting was as if it was the first, each parting the beginning of despair until the hurt of separation should end. She did not ask for time to think it over when he proposed marriage because her thinking had been done long before and she knew the answer. The ceremony itself was, as far as she was concerned, the start not just of the rest of her life but of life itself, and when it was over she settled down to share love’s fruits with a man to whom she happily devoted her every waking second.
Just a few miles away, Hannah too was settling into a mould she could not have dreamed of in the recent past. Suddenly, she was involved in some major, even massive, crime. She knew it was against the law to carry such sums of cash abroad and realis
ed the magnitude of what she was doing by the very scale of the amounts. From time to time, Mason, for all his boasting, could become furtive and secretive. Hannah was curious by nature; quietly, she told herself to take note, listen and remember.
While Isobel was cementing her marriage, Hannah accepted, with regret, that her future lay not with James and the unknown in Malaga but as the mistress of Del Boy. In time she might become more than that, but for the present she decided to plough the weary furrow that had led her this far.
In John Healy she found a welcome ally. He had liked her from the start, not least because she showed her true colours and genuine links to the east end of Glasgow by pronouncing the heart of that area as ‘Brigton’, sidestepping the customary tendency of non-locals to use ‘Bridgeton’, as the spelling suggested. He had also been impressed by stories reaching him from others involved in the smuggling intrigue as to how calm and composed she was when gliding through Customs checks in Glasgow and Malaga, while her companion Mason was frequently seen in a profound sweat. Healy made a point of being polite and pleasant to her whenever they met. He found her never-ending slog about the streets selling catalogues both amusing and commendable, knowing how tough and unrewarding it could be. He was irritated a little by the lack of encouragement shown by her lover.
One night, she confided in him the details of a money-making idea she had. ‘I came across it when I was browsing around the stalls at the market in Benalmádena,’ she said. ‘You fill a little wicker basket with a variety of things that might include chocolates, a miniature bottle of wine and a glass, perfume maybe, or even an ornament and a little toy, a teddy bear perhaps. The punters love things like that. They make great presents, the sort you can give at any time of the year. I watched them at Benalmádena go like hot cakes and it was the tourists, especially the Scots, who snapped them up.’