The Madeiran Double Cross Read online

  “I’ve got my shopping to do,” she said.

  “Shops don’t close until seven. We’ll only be out for a couple of hours.”

  “You paid a day’s car hire for a two-hour run?”

  “Bloody hell, Elsie,” Mason protested, “you’ll spend more than that in your first ten minutes in the shops.”

  True – and it was not the money that was bothering her.

  She didn’t like Frank taking independent action, in case it became a habit.

  Mason moved over to the window. Elsie cocked her head to one side, and examined him closely, probably for the first time in months. He had that expression on his face that he always assumed when he was trying to hide something. Usually it was nothing more than a sordid little affair, like the one he was having now with that slag Linda. But there hadn’t been time for a woman that afternoon. Besides, how would that fit in with hiring the car?

  He wasn’t going to tell her, she could see that. He could be stubborn at times.

  Best to go along with him. He wouldn’t be able to keep his secret from her for more than a few minutes. He wasn’t bright enough for that.

  “Yes, all right,” she said. “Just give me a minute to finish off my make-up.”

  *

  The road from the hotel, past Santa Catalina Park, was relatively clear, but once they hit Avenida Arriaga, the going became slow. A cruise ship had docked earlier, and the passengers rushed in and out of gift shops with scant regard for the traffic, anxious to spend as much money as possible in the short time they had. Lorries trundled up and down the narrow cobbled streets, squeaking and snorting as they braked to avoid pedestrians, road-works or other parked vehicles.

  “Those lorries shouldn’t be allowed in the city centre,” Elsie said. “It’s not right.”

  “The drivers have got their job to do, like anybody else,” said Mason, who was already incorporating traffic flows into his plan.

  Elsie folded her arms, and glared with hatred at a tourist who was holding an expensive piece of embroidery up to the light.

  “Well,” she said, “I still don’t think it’s right. Somebody should do something about it.”

  The traffic thinned out as they turned on to the Rua 5 de Outubro, but by then they were being slowed down by the climb.

  Once out of the city, the surface deteriorated. The road was hacked out of the mountainside, and there was forest on their left and a steep drop on their right. Twice, they had to crawl behind ancient buses until there was an opportunity to overtake; three times Mason had to swerve to avoid trucks that were hurtling downhill.

  “Disgraceful, I call it,” Elsie said.

  Even when they had a clear road, the steepness and the twists made it impossible for them to increase their speed much – ten miles from Funchal, they had already climbed five thousand feet.

  There were a few side tracks leading up or down the hill, but Mason did not turn off until the road that led to the Pico do Arieiro.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Elsie demanded. “Or are you just guessing? Because if you think I want to be stuck …”

  “We’re going to the top of one of the peaks,” Mason answered. “It’s five thousand nine hundred feet above sea level.”

  “Five thousand nine hundred feet above sea level,” Elsie snorted, then added, with more interest, “in that case it should have a gift shop.”

  Mason risked a surreptitious look at his watch. Since they had left the town, they had managed to maintain an average speed of twenty miles an hour. In the early morning it should be quicker – but not that much quicker.

  Perfect!

  There were no other vehicles on the road to the pico, just sheep. They munched grass on the verges and crossed from side to side with the same lack of care the shoppers had shown in Funchal.

  The road came to an abrupt halt in front of a cafeteria. They got out of the car.

  “I’m going to look at the view,” Mason said. He pointed to the cafeteria. “Why don’t you go in there and see if they’ve got any souvenirs?”

  “Yes, I …” Elsie began. “No, I think I’ll come with you.”

  She doesn’t want to look at the scenery, Mason thought. It’s me she’s watching. I’ve only had the plan for a couple of hours, and already she’s suspicious.

  They stood for a while, Mason gazing down at the south side of the island and Elsie gazing up at him. The mountains gradually sloped down to green fields, and dotted between them were tiny hamlets in which the only buildings of any importance seemed to be the white-spired churches. The tourist brochure had called the island ‘a semi-tropical paradise’ and, for once, the copywriters hadn’t been exaggerating.

  You could pull a job in Manchester, Mason thought, and be on the M62 before the cops realized what had happened. And by the time the forces of law and order were properly organized, you would already be in your bolt hole – an out-of-the-way farmhouse on the Yorkshire Moors or a flat you’d rented beforehand in Leeds. Then all you had to do was lie low for a few days until the heat died down.

  But here?

  Even if you managed to make it along the twisty roads to the other side of the island, there’d be nowhere to hide. In any of these villages, a stranger would be noticed immediately.

  “Not a very big place, is it?” Elsie asked, sniffing.

  “Thirty-five miles by thirteen,” Mason answered automatically.

  “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  Elsie's voice was suddenly sharp – at least, sharper than usual. Mason cursed his carelessness.

  “I read a guidebook while I was waiting in the bank,” he said. “Let’s go and look at the other side.”

  A sharply stepped track ran from the cafeteria down the side of the mountain. It reached a dip and then began to climb again, disappearing around the corner, but Mason had done his homework before hiring the car, and knew where it went from there.

  It was the hikers’ trail, connecting the three highest peaks in Madeira, and ending up at Santana on the north coast. Looking into the distance, at the Pico Ruivo, he could just trace the trail’s continuation – a thin white band on the mountainside.

  He moved on until he could see the whole of the southern side of the island.

  To his left were the fishing villages, sloping sharply down to the sea.

  Directly in front of him was Funchal: the large hotels; the houses clinging to the hillside, each with its own banana plantation; the docks and the marina.

  And to his left, at the airport; a plane was just taking off, climbing sharply as it reached the edge of the short runway which stretched out into the sea.

  Robbing a bank in Madeira was a pushover, Mason thought. There was no security in the places themselves, and the police were totally unprepared. It was only a question of walking in and taking the money.

  Ah, but once you’d got the money in your hot little hand, what the hell did you do next?

  Going into hiding was impossible.

  Funchal wasn’t a city like Manchester or Leeds. You wouldn’t even call a big town, unless you were feeling particularly charitable. And what that meant was that it wouldn’t take the police – assisted by the army – too long to search every square inch of.

  Taking refuge in one of the villages would be an even bigger mistake – any foreigner would stick out like sore thumbs.

  So if you couldn’t lie low, your only possibility was to make an escape.

  But how could you escape?

  There were only two ways off the island, by air and by sea, and within a few minutes of the hold-up, both the harbour and the airport would be sealed off – and they’d stay sealed off until the robbers were caught.

  You couldn’t hide. You couldn’t escape. So it didn’t matter that it was easy to steal the money, because you’d never get away with it.

  Unless you had The Plan!

  It was a more complex and ingenious scheme than anything Elsie had ever devised – an elaborate interconnection o
f checks and balances, relying for its success not just on physical force and timing, but on the psychological reactions of the opposition. It was a thing of beauty, a work of art, and he knew that he, its creator, would never rest until it had been carried out.

  Even the money didn’t matter so much anymore. He just wanted to

  pull it off.

  TWO

  “Take a night flight, they said,” Elsie complained as they cleared customs. “So what happens? We’re two hours late taking off, and even when we get here the pilot keeps us circling for twenty-five minutes. It was twenty-five minutes,” she said, as if Mason were about to challenge her, “I timed it.”

  “And what would you like him to have done?” Mason asked silently. “Ignore the control tower and land anyway – and then plough straight into the arse of another jumbo jet?”

  Elsie always wanted things her own way – and she wanted them easy. He sometimes thought she saw it as a personal insult that the banks were making robbery so difficult.

  He penned a letter in his head.

  “Dear Sir, We are planning to rob your establishment next Friday, weather permitting. If it rains, we would be grateful if you would post one hundred thousand quid in used notes to the above address. Thanking you in advance, Elsie Mason.”

  They negotiated their way through the milling hoard of red-eyed travellers. The luggage trolley squeaked, and there was something wrong with one of the front wheels, so that every few feet, Mason had to jerk it violently to the right in order to keep it on a straight course. The cases were a bloody sight heavier coming back than they had been on the outward journey, too. Elsie had done herself proud in Madeira.

  They had almost reached the exit doors when they saw the young man watching their approach. He had short brown hair which was expertly cut so as to make the best of the handsome, young-Robert-Redford face that it crowned. Looking at his earnest, intelligent expression, a casual observer might have taken him for a rising young executive. But as the eyes travelled lower, to the body encased in an expensive blue striped suit, the impression would have been dispelled. The body was hard, far harder than it could ever have become from afternoon squash sessions with the district manager. And there was something about the poise – the stance of the man – that suggested menace.

  If Mason hadn’t known him, he might have mistaken him for the Old Bill – it would not have been the first time the police had followed him from the airport. As it was, he flung his arms around the young man in an affectionate – but definitely macho – embrace.

  “Tony,” he said, “what the bloody hell are you doing here at four o’clock in the morning? We could have got a taxi.”

  “Cab drivers around here are the biggest crooks in London,” Tony Horton grinned. “Besides, it’s always nice to have somebody welcome you home, isn’t it?”

  Mason noticed the look in Tony’s eyes, and felt the customary warm glow – followed by a stab of pain and disappointment.

  He had first seen that look seven years earlier, when he had recruited Horton, then a callow youth, to do some minor work for him. It had been pure and unadulterated hero-worship. And the look was still there, even though Tony was now his trusted lieutenant – because Mason was the toughest man Tony had ever met, and even in early middle age could still take on all comers.

  Mason was very fond of the younger man, too. Tony was his protégé, just as he himself had been Ted Sims’.

  He had wanted kids when he’d got married, but Elsie had said she couldn’t have any. He’d believed her at the time, but looking back on it, he was inclined to think that what she really meant was she didn’t want them, and her infertility was just a screen to hide from her father the fact that she was on the pill.

  But all that was water under the bridge now. He supposed – with no children of his own – he’d come to regard Tony as a substitute son, even though there were only fifteen years between them. And he did like being looked up to, only … only he sometimes wished it was for something other than his muscle.

  They walked between the rows of parked cars to where Horton had left his Porsche. The squeak of the trolley and click of Elsie’s heels were overlaid with the gushing of water outside.

  Raining again, Frank thought.

  Well, what the hell had he expected?

  Horton opened the back door for Elsie, and she climbed inside.

  “Thank you, Tony,” she said, just before he closed the door, “you’re always such a gentleman.”

  The men went to the back of the car, and Tony unlocked the boot.

  “If I was you,” he said in a low voice as he handed Mason one of the leather suitcases, “I’d give Linda a call first thing tomorrow. She’s been on the blower to me three times while you’ve been away. I think she’s a bit pissed off about having to stay in the Smoke while you’ve been living it up in the sun.”

  “Living it up?” Mason exclaimed, wondering why his life so dominated by demanding women. “I’ve been away with Elsie, for Christ’s sake! Anyway, I’ve not just been frying my brains in the sun – I’ve been planning a job.”

  Ever since The Plan had come to him, he had been savouring the moment when he would tell Tony about it. He knew this was the wrong time, but he could hold it in no longer.

  Tony chuckled.

  “That Elsie,” he said, with open admiration. “She never lets her mind rest for a …”

  “Not Elsie,” Mason said angrily. “Me!”

  He realized he had raised his voice, and looked round the side of the boot at the car. He could see the back of Elsie’s head, the tightly permed curls, the gold earrings. She was looking straight ahead.

  “I’ve been planning a job,” he repeated. “Elsie doesn’t know about it – so, for God’s sake, don’t mention it to her.”

  He saw the doubt on his lieutenant’s face. This was going to be even more difficult than he’d thought.

  *

  Linda Monk realized that she was fully awake, and no amount of fantasizing about how she could satisfy the entire Chelsea Football Club first team would send her off to sleep again. She sighed, switched on the bedside light, and reached for a cigarette. The smoke would probably irritate her husband and wake him up, but if he didn’t like her bedroom habits, he could always move into the spare room.

  Nigel grunted in his sleep, and she turned to look at him. The face, bathed in the pale yellow light, was that of a sandy-haired, weak-chinned boy. He hadn’t altered since their marriage. What had changed, Linda thought, were his circumstances. She blew two angry jets of smoke down her nose, directly at the sleeping man. Nigel stirred, groaned again, and looked at his watch.

  “It’s half-past four in the morning,” he said.

  “I know it’s half-past bloody four in the morning,” Linda snapped back, “and I can’t bloody sleep.”

  Nigel looked as if he were about to say something sharp, then a grin swept across his face.

  “Well then,” he said, squiggling his body so that he was closer to her, “since you can’t sleep, old girl, how about a bit of the old nookey?”

  His hand reached across for her breast, but she evaded him by slipping out of bed.

  “I’m going to make some tea,” she said.

  She had always used sex as a weapon with Nigel. In the early days of their courtship, although she was no virgin, she had held it out as a future reward for marrying her and lifting her out of her life of drudgery as a typist. Now she withheld it as a punishment for his failure to keep her in a lifestyle to which she had hoped to become accustomed.

  The pokiness of the kitchen only added fuel to her anger. Nigel had seemed so glamorous at first, an ex-public schoolboy living on a private income, with a yacht moored in the Isle of Wight. She remembered standing on the deck, the wind blowing through her long hair, the striped sailor's T-shirt tight across her firm breasts.

  She had been so clever to land him, so very clever. Except that soon after they were married, his father had died, leaving not
hing but debts. The boat had gone, the flat had been sold, and they had ended up living in this rat-trap.

  The kettle boiled and she poured the bubbling water on to the tea-bags.

  “I say, old girl,” Nigel called from the bedroom, “I wouldn’t mind a cup myself.”

  She shouldn’t have to do this sort of work. They should be able to afford a maid.

  “No chance,” she told herself bitterly.

  Nigel made a kind of living as a free-lance photographer – bits of glamour work, the occasional celebrity profile. And odd long-distance shots of gentlemen out on the town with ladies other than their wives – photographs, furthermore, which the gentlemen in question seemed inordinately keen to buy off him. He even dabbled in stolen property now and again, fixing up deals to shift hot goods or arranging for the delivery of unregistered handguns.

  But it was strictly small-time stuff.

  Not like Frank.

  Frank was into serious crime. He always had a lot of money – at least for the first few months after he’d pulled a job – and he was generous with it. She’d hidden all his expensive presents at first, but now she didn’t bother. Let Nigel think what he liked. Frank was twice the man he was, in and out of bed.

  “I said I wouldn’t mind a cup myself.”

  “Get stuffed!” Linda said, banging a cup down with such ferocity that it shattered.

  The brown liquid spilled on to the draining board, then trickled down to floor. She watched it, indifferently. She would clean it up in the morning. Or Nigel would.

  She didn’t love Frank. She wasn’t even sure that she liked him very much. But then men weren’t there to be liked – they were there to be used. And she wasn’t getting full value out of him – the jewellry and clothes were all very well, but they weren’t enough. She’d better start putting pressure on him to ditch Elsie and shack up with her. After all, he’d be burnt out in a few years, and she wanted to be sure she’d still have her looks when the time came to move on.

  *

  The Porsche moved speedily along the deserted London streets, through South Kensington and into Knightsbridge.