The Madeiran Double Cross

by Sally Spencer

  Not all the kids were intent on their game. The biggest, a lad of twenty-two or twenty-three, was watching him – and had been ever since Greasy had said his name.

  Mason took the break, and left a shot on. Tony potted four reds, three blacks and yellow before his inexperience began to tell and he found that not only had he set nothing up for himself, but he was in danger of leaving the game wide open for his opponent. He tried a snooker, and it didn’t work.

  “Don’t worry about it, my son,” Mason said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You haven’t had the practice, that’s all. That’s the big disadvantage of a privileged upbringing. Right?”

  He was a good player, and Tony had made it easy for him. He potted the reds with style and assurance. It was only when he reached the colours that he realized he was the only one playing. The boys on the other table had given up their own game and were standing by the left-hand top pocket, watching him.

  Everything went smoothly until the pink, then he miscalculated the angle and was left with the cue ball lying wrongly. He could still pot the black, but it would be awkward – off the side cushion and into the top right-hand pocket. Thinking about the shot, he slowly chalked his cue.

  “Ooo,” a mock-pansy voice called out, “he’s putting on his mascara.”

  Mason bent over the table, lined up the black and took the shot. The cue ball struck and stopped almost dead, as he’d intended it to. The black hit the cushion and rebounded. It slowed as it approached the pocket – he’d had to do it that way – teetered on the lip, and then fell in. It was a good shot and Mason was proud of it.

  “Bloody rubbish!” said the same voice as before, but this time with a vicious edge to it.

  Mason placed the balls back on the table and began to fit the reds into their wooden frame. A pair of strong hands, palms down, appeared on the table. Mason's eyes travelled up thick, tattooed arms, past broad shoulders, to a face. The lips were thick, the teeth badly cared for; the nose had once been broken and the eyes blazed with anger.

  “So you’re Frank Mason,” said the young man who had been looking at him earlier.

  “That’s right, son,” Mason said easily. “Now if you’ll take your arms off this table, we can carry on with our game.”

  “Big tough Frank Mason,” the other man sneered – then he reached across, lifted the wooden triangle, and scattered the balls all over the table.

  Mason had met this before, local hard-cases wanting to chance their arms against the famous gangster. He understood it. A reputation was all they could hope for, their only ticket to self-respect. He had been like that himself.

  Had been?

  The boy with the broken nose was less than three feet away from him. Mason didn’t look, but he knew – because that was how he had survived so long – that the other four had not moved from their position near the top left-hand pocket. But they wouldn’t stay there for long – not if there was trouble.

  “What’s your name, son?” he asked.

  “Denny,” the broken-nosed boy said, sounding surprised.

  “Well look, Denny,” Mason said, “I don’t want any trouble. I just want a quiet game of snooker. Why don’t you walk away, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”

  “Better do what he says,” Greasy called out nervously from the safety of his counter.

  Denny backed away a little.

  “Big tough Frank Mason,” he said again. He seemed to like the line.

  He was fast, but crude. By the time his right arm was in the air, his body had already signalled to Mason exactly what to expect. Frank blocked the blow, jabbing forward with his own right at the same time.

  Denny was in shape, but it would have taken a brick wall to resist the force of Mason’s fist. He started to slump forward, the air making a whooshing sound as it was forced out of his mouth. His knees had hardly had a chance to bend when Mason followed through to his chin, and his neck whip-lashed back. His body hung there uncertainly, not knowing which way to fall – which of the blows to react to. Mason helped it make a decision by kicking him in the crotch – because, with four more to deal with, there was no time for niceties.

  Well before Denny had hit the ground, Mason was ready for the next attack. The louts had split up, two going for Tony over by the scoreboard, two for him.

  Tony waited until the first of his attackers was almost in range, then swung his cue. It whistled through the air in a tight arc, catching the boy in the throat. His eyes were suddenly wider, his tongue hung out, and, gurgling, he sank to his knees.

  One of Mason’s attackers was coming around the table, the other across it. The one on the baize would get there first. He ducked his head to avoid the heavy overhead light cover just a split second after Mason had swung it. The edge caught the side of his skull, there was a loud crack, and he somersaulted backwards.

  The second boy, covering the distance by a longer but safer route, was almost there. He feinted a kick and brought his head down to butt Mason. But his target had already moved, and his head cut through empty air, only stopping when his nose was cracked by Mason’s upswinging fist.

  Mason went in low, grabbing with one hand the collar of his tee shirt, with the other his testicles, and lifting him off the ground.

  “Me balls!” the boy screamed. “Leggo of me balls!”

  He got his wish. Mason flung him down again on the still-recumbent Denny.

  Frank turned his attention to Tony’s problems. The boy he had hit with his cue was still down. The other, his face covered with blood, was cowering against the wall while Tony systematically pounded at him.

  “Enough!” Mason shouted to his lieutenant

  Tony stopped immediately, and the boy collapsed.

  Mason bent down, searching among the tangled arms and legs for Denny’s head. The young thug had lost a couple of teeth, his mouth and nose were bleeding, and one eye was already puffing up.

  “Can you hear me, son?” Mason asked.

  Denny nodded his head.

  “If I was you,” Mason said softly, “I’d take my mates and get out of here as soon as possible.”

  The boy groaned.

  “Yes sir, Mr. Mason,” he finally managed to utter, “I’ll do that.”

  It was five minutes before they were in any state to leave, then they hobbled out, supporting each other as best they could. Mason watched their progress with sorrowful eyes —sorrow for them, sorrow for himself. It was always going to be like this, there’d always be someone who wanted to challenge tough Frank Mason.

  Except that, as the years went by, he’d find it harder and harder to live up to his reputation.

  The Madeiran job just had to work!

  *

  Each step on the stairway up to the bed-sit in Matlock Road had seemed a mile high, but coming down again, a few minutes later, Portuguese Pedro felt like he was floating.

  This was how he had imagined it would be in the old days, back in his home village in the mountains near the Spanish frontier. Week after week, he had sat in the cinema with the other farm boys, smelling of cow dung no matter how hard they scrubbed themselves, and marvelled at the life led by gangsters in London and Chicago – the cars, the women, the money. If only he could get there, he had told himself, he would soon be king of the underworld.

  And so, one night when his parents were sleeping, he had crept quietly into their room, reached under the bed, extracted the box that contained their life savings, and left the village for ever.

  It had not been long before harsh reality had forced him to realize that he was strictly small fry, a robber of sub-post-offices and mugger of old-age pensioners. But he had never stopped yearning for what might have been, if he’d had the chances – if he’d been an entirely different person.

  When Arnie the Actor had told him that Frank Mason wanted to see him, his first instinct had been to run.

  What could a man like Mason want with him?

  What had he done to offend someone so powerful?

&
nbsp; And with that on his mind, he had entered the bed-sit like a nervous dormouse.

  Now, their discussion over, he reached the bottom of the stairs, opened the door, and stepped out into Matlock Road. The air, for once, tasted wonderful. The chirping of the birds was a symphony of triumph.

  He could remember every word that Mason had said to him.

  “We’ve been watching you very carefully, Pedro, and we think you’re ready for the big time. We’re going to pull a bank job and we need a key man. Are you interested?”

  Interested? Pedro had nearly fallen to the ground and kissed Mason’s shoes. Frank Mason was offering him a place on his team! He’d have done the job for nothing.

  “The job will be in two or three months. I can’t give any details yet – not even to you, Pedro.”

  Not even to you, Pedro!

  Wonderful words!

  Intoxicating words!

  Pedro strutted along the pavement. A middle-aged black woman, heavily laden with supermarket carrier bags, was approaching him. Pedro kept straight on course, and the woman stepped to one side.

  He had only been on Mason’s team for ten minutes, and already people could sense his power!

  Mason watched him from the upstairs window.

  “‘Where we do it, Meester Mason?’” he mimicked. “‘When we do it, Meester Mason?’ He’s just like a kid queuing outside a strip show and pretending he’s not got a hard-on. ‘You won’ regret it, Meester Mason. I do a good job, Meester Mason’.”

  “What a wally,” Tony Horton said.

  *

  The pub on Kilburn Lane was what Mason called an ODB – ordinary decent boozer. The bar was doglegged and a brass railing ran round the bottom of it, because – as every competent landlord knows – it is impossible to drink a pint properly unless one foot is four inches higher off the ground than the other. The barmaid was red-haired and freckled, with the kind of smile that almost forces men to tell her that their wives don’t understand them. The canned music sounded like American Country and Western, although the singer kept repeating that he wished he ‘was back in Oireland’.

  The frosted door swung open, and Linda entered. She was wearing a white dress that contrasted perfectly with the gold of her skin – and there was a lot of that on view. The dress looked new, and probably was. Mason supposed he could charge it to expenses when they divided the loot.

  She smiled at her lover, then looked around in disgust.

  Mason grinned. This wasn’t her sort of place at all, she was more at home in bars with subdued lighting, where they served peculiar-coloured drinks with little paper umbrellas sticking out of them.

  He led her to a table in the corner, far enough away from the other drinkers to avoid being heard.

  “Gin and tonic?” he asked.

  Linda grimaced. “Madeira.”

  Silly cow! The pub didn’t have it, of course, and she settled – rather ungraciously – for a sweet sherry.

  “So how did you make out?” Mason wanted to know.

  “I had a really good time,” Linda said.

  She was teasing him, like she did in bed. But that was a good sign, because when the teasing was over, she always delivered the goods. He sat back and waited.

  “I was very clever,” she continued. “I told them in the hotel that I wanted to make a money transfer, and asked which bank I should go to. They said the hotel uses the Banco de Lisboa.”

  It was in the Rua do Aljube.

  Mason remembered it well. Black, smoked-glass windows, door in the middle of the frontage.

  One-way street.

  Narrow lanes running off every hundred yards or so.

  “But do the other hotels use it?” he asked.

  The job would be expensive to set up in the first place, and his share of the haul had to be enough to last him for ever. The bank they hit had to be a big one.

  “I'm coming to that,” said Linda the teaser. “I went down to the bank, and I made a real mess of cashing my traveller’s checks. At first I couldn’t find them, then I dropped them on the floor, then I signed them in the wrong place.”

  “Get on with it,” Mason snapped.

  But Linda only smiled.

  “By this time, there was a big queue behind me, and the cashier told me to hurry up,’ she continued. “That was what I was waiting for. I screamed the place down, said I’d never been so insulted in my life, and demanded to see the manager.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, but I got to see the Chief Cashier, which was better.”

  “Why?” Mason asked.

  “Well, I expect the manager would have been a grey-haired old man, but the Chief Cashier was still quite young. And you know I get on better with younger men, Frank. Anyway, he took me out for a coffee, and within five minutes he was telling me all about the bank.”

  “You didn’t ask too many questions, did you?” Mason asked anxiously. “I don’t want them getting suspicious.”

  Linda crossed her legs and leant forward. The front of her dress pulled tightly against her breasts, fighting hard to hold them in. For a moment, it seemed like it would lose.

  “I didn’t ask him any questions,” she said. “He just came out with it all. I think he wanted to impress me. And Frank, listen. Not all hotels bank with the Lisboa, but most of the big ones do. So do a lot of the other businesses in Funchal, gift shops, restaurants, places like that.”

  “You seem to have learned a lot over one cup of coffee,” Mason said.

  Linda looked vaguely uncomfortable.

  “Well no, actually,” she said. "Most of it came out later. He invited me out to dinner, you see. That’s when he told me.”

  Mason didn’t believe her. That kind of indiscreet bragging was more common in bedrooms than restaurants.

  He should be angry, he told himself. He should feel betrayed. But he was honest enough to admit that he’d sent Linda rather than Tony because he knew she’d use her charms to get the information. It was her uninhibited sexuality that was her main appeal – and you couldn’t expect a racehorse not to run when it had the chance.

  “And what have you been doing while I was away?” Linda asked, getting off the subject. “Seen Nigel yet?”

  “No,” Mason said. “I haven’t had time to get round to it.”

  Linda’s eyes narrowed. “You never did say exactly what you wanted him to do, did you?”

  “No,” Mason said. “I didn’t. But I’ve told you it’s nothing to do with the operation.” He was not a very good liar, not with Linda, and he knew it. “And I don’t want you talking to him about it,” he continued. “You just keep your mind on the Madeira job.”

  His voice was low, but the threat was still there – even though he knew it was a waste of time.

  He could intimidate almost any man in London just by looking at him, but he had no idea how to handle women.

  *

  “Give most sods an office and a secretary,” Gower said, “and they soon forget what it’s like to work at street level. Well, I bloody haven’t.” He glared round at the dozen detective sergeants he had collected together in Interview Room B. “Fear,” he continued, “that’s the key. You keep the villains shit-scared of you, I’ll keep you shit-scared of me, and we’ll have a workable system.”

  There was no wonder they called him Toad behind his back, Scott thought. He looked like one: big, gleaming eyes, squat, powerful body – and poisonous. There were those who said that Chief Superintendent Ronald Gower was a good cop, and those who said he was a bad one. It depended on how you defined your terms. He was unquestionably financially honest – but his methods were sometimes dirty. He had a good arrest record – but it was not always the right man who got sent away. The two things everybody agreed on were that he was totally dedicated to his job – and that he was a right proper bastard.

  “Don’t think I don’t know that your Chief Inspectors bitch to each other – and to you – about these meetings,” Gower said. “Not correct proced
ure, is it? Well, the next time they start whining, tell them from me that if they don’t like it, all they have to do is get off their fat arses and start doing their jobs properly.”

  As Gower shuffled through the crime sheets, the sergeants sat in silence, each trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. The Chief Superintendent pulled one sheet out and smoothed it on the desk. The waiting men sank lower into their chairs. Gower’s glassy eyes scoured the room, finally settling on a middle-aged sergeant with a perpetually worried look.

  “These lorry hijackings, Sergeant Waters,” Gower said. “What have you got?”

  Waters cleared his throat. “We …er … believe Manchester Mike Swanson is behind them, sir,” he said, “but we’ve nothing we can pin on him at the moment.”

  “Seven lorries in two months, and no arrest. It’s a big black stain on your record,” Gower snarled. “You’d better find something – and quick – unless you fancy ending your career as Constable Waters.”

  Gower’s jaw suddenly clenched and his eyes seemed to burn with new fire.

  Scott knew what that expression meant. Talk of failure almost invariably brought his mind round to his own bête noire, the man he had pulled in five or six times and hadn’t been able to hold – the man they knew was responsible for countless robberies but who had done time only once, before Gower was even posted to the Met. Scott sighed, and waited for the inevitable attack.

  “Sergeant Scott,” Gower rasped. “you’re supposed to be our resident expert on the subject – what’s Frank Mason up to these days?”

  “Very quiet, sir,” Scott said. “That job at the Midland Bank in Cheltenham last October had his MO all over it, but since then there hasn’t been a whisper.”

  “How much did that job net?” Gower demanded.

  “One hundred and thirty thousand, sir.”

  “One hundred and thirty thousand, six hundred and twenty-five,” Gower corrected him. “Split four ways – and with Elsie’s talent for spending – most of that must have gone by now. He’ll be planning something new, and I want to know what it is. Top priority on this. Put pressure on your grasses, call in favours, let a few of the smaller fish off scot free if they come up with anything useful. It’s three years to my retirement,” he glared at all the seated sergeants, “and if I don’t get Frank Mason by the time I pick up my gold watch, some bastard’s going to suffer.”