The Madeiran Double Cross

by Sally Spencer

  She hadn’t wanted to cry, but the tears had come anyway, and when she wouldn’t stop – couldn’t stop – he had almost been on the point of hitting her.

  “Where were you between half-past eight and half-past nine? What time did Horton leave? Did you see the gun? The ski-mask? Answer me, you little slag!”

  Every time she had seen the ugly mouth flap open and known that more poison was about to dribble out, she had wanted to scream out the answers he had asked for – just to make him go away.

  But she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t let Frank down, she just wouldn’t! Yet at the same time, she wished that neither he nor she were involved in any of this.

  *

  As they had marched him along the levada, two in front, one behind holding a rifle to his back, Pedro had thought only of his aching feet. On the truck journey back to Funchal, it had been his hunger pains that had been bothering him. Now, in Funchal Central Police Station, all thoughts of mere physical misery had been replaced by an all-consuming terror. Gower was here! Sitting opposite him!

  “We’ve got the whole gang, you know,” the Chief Super-intendant said conversationally. “Frank, Tony, Harry.”

  So the first part of the fail-safe had collapsed – they had discovered the gang wasn’t Portuguese and pulled them in. But there was still the second part. Pedro kept repeating Frank’s words over and over in his mind – a silent prayer.

  “They can’t prove a thing if they haven’t got the money. They can’t prove a thing if they haven’t got the money.”

  “What were you doing up there in the mountains, Pedro?” Gower demanded.

  “I go for a walk.”

  “All day?”

  “Yes. I start out before the bank robbery.”

  “What bank robbery?” Gower asked, pouncing like a cat on an unsuspecting sparrow. “How do you know anything about a bank robbery if you’ve been in the mountains all day?”

  “I meet some other walkers,” Pedro said, improvising. “They tell me about it.”

  “One of the policeman was killed,” Gower said. “A lot of witnesses think that you did it. On the other hand, Frank was standing next to you at the time. Perhaps we could produce some people who saw him do it – and forget all about the witnesses who think it was you. But we’ll do that if you’re prepared to co-operate.”

  Pedro licked his lips nervously. It was tempting. He would get a lighter sentence for robbery than he would for murder. And so what if Frankie was charged with killing the policeman? He was the leader of the gang, and the whole thing had been his idea.

  “I’d take the offer while it’s still on the table, Pedro,” Gower said.

  But maybe it wasn’t as open and shut as Gower was suggesting, Pedro thought. Maybe, if he held his nerve, he wouldn’t have to go to jail at all.

  They can’t prove a thing if they haven’t got the money.

  “You’re thinking about the money, aren’t you?” Gower said.

  Pedro jumped, horrified at Gower’s ability to see into his mind.

  “It’s a funny thing, your friend Frank seems to be preoccupied with the money too,” Gower told him.

  “What money, Mr. Gower?”

  The Chief Superintendent’s fist was almost a blur as flew across the table and slammed into Pedro’s stomach. The injured man slumped forward, his eyes watering, retching sounds coming from his throat. Through the wall of pain he heard Gower’s voice as if it were coming from a very long way away.

  “I’ll tell you what money, Pedro. The money you carried along the mountain track – not far, because it was heavy – until you found a good place to hide it. But there aren’t that many good places, Pedro, and we’ve got men out checking them all. We’ll have it by morning – at the latest.”

  If they found the money, Pedro thought as he clutched his stomach, it would be the end. If they found the money, he would make a deal with Gower. But he would hold off until then – because there was just a chance they wouldn’t find it.

  *

  There was still a light burning in Silva's office and the Inspector was at his desk, red-eyed, trembling, showing all the signs of imminent nervous collapse. When he heard the door open, he looked up hopefully.

  “Nothing yet,” Gower said. “But Snell will crack soon, even if Pedro doesn’t.”

  “Have they asked for lawyers?”

  “Yes,” Gower growled. “They’ve done practically nothing else – but they’re not bloody getting them.”

  “But they have a right to …”

  “They asked – but nobody heard them. When they’ve told us something useful, then our deafness might go away.”

  Silva fumbled nervously with the paper clips on his desk.

  “Ron,” he said, “I have had to lift the restrictions on the airport and the harbour.”

  “You’ve bloody what!”

  “The order came directly from Lisbon. And does it matter? We have the men, and tomorrow we will have the money.”

  “No,” Gower said tiredly. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. All right, Jose. I'm going to get three or four hours sleep now, then I’ll get back to it.”

  “What about the women?” Silva asked. “Can they leave?”

  “Until I get the truth,” Gower replied, “nobody leaves.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Head bowed, Frank Mason slowly climbs up the wooden steps to the gallows. He is wearing chains – thick, heavy chains that weigh down his body and crush his spirit.

  The executioner is standing by the gibbet. He has a black hood over his head, and through the two slits above the nose, a pair of red eyes glint.

  “It’s me!” Gower thinks, recognizing the strange mixture of anger and coldness which has so often stared at him from his bathroom mirror. “I’m the executioner.”

  He is not quite sure how he can be both standing on the scaffold and watching the scene from a distance, but he is far too busy savouring the moment to try and work it out now.

  A few more steps – that’s all it will be – and Mason will have the noose around his neck. Then the executioner – Chief Superintendent Ronald Gower! – will pull the handle, and the trapdoor to hell will open with a sudden and violent creak.

  Mason will fall, and as he falls, he will kick out wildly, searching for something solid to rest his feet on – to take the terrible strain off his neck. But there will be nothing, and slowly the struggling will stop, and the life will drain out of him.

  This is going to be real fun, Gower tells himself – this is going to be the best moment of my entire life!

  The condemned man reaches the top of the steps and then a strange, terrible thing happens.

  The executioner pulls off his hood to reveal that he is not Gower at all – but Tony Horton.

  Tony taps Mason’s fetters – ever so lightly – with his forefinger, and the heavy metal links came apart as if they were no more than paper chains.

  The two men jump off the platform and float gently down through the air, but the moment their feet hit the ground, they are off – running towards freedom.

  Gower wants to chase them but his legs will not move, however much he wills them to, however much he …

  *

  Gower awoke in a sweat. He never slept well during serious investigations, but nightmares like this one were entirely new to him.

  He reached for the bottle of Teacher’s whisky on the bedside table and poured himself a generous shot.

  The dream had been just that – a dream. In real life, Mason couldn’t get away – because he had him cold.

  Even without a confession – even without the money – there was nothing Tony Horton, or anyone else, could do to save him this time.

  Gower looked at his watch. It was time to go back to the police station and start putting the pressure on those bastards again. Maybe the money had turned up by now.

  *

  Private Henrique was pissed off. The previous afternoon it had all seemed like the start of a big adventure – bu
t things hadn’t turned out quite as he’d hoped. Other soldiers had caught the bank robber near Curral, and his squad – because they had been on the spot – had been lumbered with the job of looking for the robber’s rucksack.

  A rucksack!

  How exciting could that be, even if it was full of money?

  He stopped in front of a small niche in the cliff face, and aimed his torch into the fissure.

  “All right, Rucksack,” he called out, as the beam of light bounced off the rock, “I know you’re in there. You haven’t got a chance. Come out with your straps up.”

  He walked on until he reached the whitewash slash line that marked the end of the territory he had been assigned to search. Beyond that he could see other conscripts, sluggishly shining their torches and peering into cracks.

  “How many times have we been over the same ground?” asked his partner, Private Alves.

  Henrique shrugged. “Five? Six?”

  If they’d been their own masters, they would have abandoned their search long ago – like when they were kids and they’d lose their ball in the long grass, search for it maybe fifteen minutes, and then buy a new one.

  The problem was, they weren’t kids any longer. They were in the army now, and the sergeant had made it quite plain that until the rucksack was found, the search would continue – even if that meant searching right through Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day.

  Alves stopped at a fissure they had examined numerous times before, and peered in.

  “Hey,” he said, “I’ve found something!”

  Henrique felt a sudden surge of hope. If it was the bloody rucksack, they could all go home.

  “What have you found?” he asked.

  Alves turned around, and there was a broad grin on his face.

  “Rocks,” he replied. “Fancy finding rocks on a mountainside.”

  “Piss artist,” Henrique said.

  And they moved on – leaving the rucksack and kitbag where Pedro had hidden them.

  *

  Special flights had been lifting the tourists off the island all night, and by mid-morning there was no more than a three-hour delay. The unmarried teacher – who had only been able to get away on holiday because she’d faithfully promised her widowed mother that she’d have Christmas dinner with her – sighed with relief as she walked through passport control. The three women who had flown over to spend a few hours with their husbands after weeks of separation – and had ended up devoting more time to trying to sleep on the airport floor – followed her. At the back of the queue, the writer of pulp fiction glowered down at his portable typewriter and thought of the weeks of work he had put into the idea of an unprecedented robbery on Madeira, wasted now that some selfish bastards had actually pulled one.

  The authorities were still searching the passengers, just to be on the safe side, but not very thoroughly – a cursory glance through a suitcase was enough to tell whether or not it was crammed with thousand-escudo notes.

  *

  Things were returning to normal down by the sea, too.

  Utilitarian fishing boats were chugging out of the harbour with their cargoes of deep-sea sportsmen – each one quietly optimistic that today he would land a marlin so big that it would beat the island's record of 734 pounds – while sleeker, fancier craft were setting off for a day’s sailing, sunbathing and picnicking.

  Jack Sodbury, sitting cross-legged on the fore deck of the Seaspray, watched all the nautical manoeuvres with pleasure.

  There was a lot more to this sailing lark than first met the eye, he thought.

  There was a lot more to the Skipper too, he admitted, as he noticed the man in the striped jersey emerge from the harbour master’s office. Yes, the Skipper had seemed like a chinless wonder at first, but observing the way he’d handled this boat had been a real education.

  It was generally agreed by the sailing community that Vancouvers were difficult boats to manage, and thus needed to be manned by an experienced crew. Well, none of the Seaspray’s crew had any experience, but under the Skipper’s guidance they’d got here – and it hadn’t all been plain sailing by any means.

  He’d get a boat of his own when he got home, Jack decided. Not a big one like this, just something for pottering about in near the shore. Yes, there was certainly more to this lark than met the eye.

  The Skipper was level with the boat now.

  “Good news, Jack,” he shouted down. “I’ve talked to the harbour police, and they say we can leave any time we’re ready.”

  He descended the steps and placed his foot confidently on the deck.

  “A very nice off-shore wind,” he said. “Get Len and Phil up on deck. I think we’ll leave under sail. No real point in starting the engine, is there?”

  Sodbury smiled to himself again. It would have been easier to leave under engine-power, but not half as much fun.

  The wind was ahead of the beam. They raised the mainsail and released the shorelines. The boat drifted gently clear of the quay.

  “Trim the mainsail,” the Skipper ordered.

  A month ago, none of the crew would have known what he was talking about. Now, they executed his command with practiced efficiency.

  “Hoist the headsail.”

  Another smooth operation.

  “Trim the headsail.”

  The boat sailed out with stately grace. Sodbury looked back, watching the harbour get smaller, the Casino Park Hotel shrink until it was a tiny white box. What a lovely way to spend your time.

  “It’s a real pleasure sailing with you, Skipper,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Nigel Monk replied.

  *

  “We’ve found the money, Pedro,” Gower said. “And that means it’s all over, doesn’t it?”

  Pedro’s eyes, wide with fear, darted from one end of the interrogation room to the other.

  “What money, Mr. Gower?” he asked, when he made sure that there was no tell-tale rucksack lurking in the corner.

  He’s right, Gower thought to himself. If I had the money, it’d be on the table, right in front of him, where I could rub his bloody nose in it.

  “Don't give me that shit!” he said aloud. “You know what sodding money I mean. And you’d better tell me about it while you've got the chance.”

  “I want to see a lawyer,” Pedro said.

  “Take him back to his cell,” the chief superintendent instructed the police escort.

  Gower was tired, his back ached, and the tight band around his chest refused to let up. It was two thirty in the afternoon, he had been interrogating non-stop since eight o'clock that morning. And getting bloody nowhere!

  “I want to see a lawyer. I want to see a lawyer. I want to see a lawyer.”

  It was all the bastards ever said.

  And not only them. Silva was bleating the same thing with ever-increasing urgency and panic. So far, Gower had been able to hold him off by sheer force of personality, but they were rapidly reaching the point at which Silva would become more frightened of the consequences of not summoning lawyers than he was of his British colleague.

  “Charge them,” Gower said. “You’ve got enough evidence.”

  In fact, if he’d been in control – if this had been his patch – they would have been booked long ago.

  Silva flapped his arms like a broken windmill.

  “We don’t … I … if you could only get one of them to confess …”

  Bloody wimp!

  Pedro was frightened of them finding the money, so was Mason. If only that would turn up, one of them would crack – Gower was sure of it.

  He wanted to be out there himself, tearing the mountainside apart with his bare hands.

  *

  “Isn’t there a metal detector in the jeep?” Alves asked, scuffing the whitewashed line that marked the end of their territory with his boot.

  “Yes, there is,” Henrique replied. “So what?”

  “Why don't we use it?”

  Henrique took a last drag on
his cigarette and threw it over the railing. He watched it arc and then plunge downward in the direction of the valley. It was not even half way to the ground before he lost sight of it. He turned his mind to his friend’s suggestion.

  “Because, pea-brain,” he said, “we’re looking for paper money, not coins.”

  “I know,” Alves replied, “but the money was in a rucksack. True?”

  “True.”

  “And rucksacks have buckles and fastenings – which are made out of metal.”

  Henrique looked at his friend with new respect.

  “You’re right,” he said.

  They went over the trail again, running the metal detector along the cliff face. By the time they reached Pedro’s fissure, they had found a hundred escudos, a penknife and a lighter.

  The metal detector’s reading in the gap was not very high. Henrique reached down and was just able to touch the top rocks with his fingertips. To remove them, he would have to bend over almost double and, working in that cramped space, his knuckles would soon be grazed and bloody.

  “It’s probably just a beer can,” he said, listening again to the faint click of the detector. “Not worth the trouble.”

  They moved on again, the detector occasionally coming to life and leading them to minor, easily accessible treasures. They stopped at the white line and Alves added a second, more pensive scuff mark to his first.

  “Why would anybody pile a lot of rocks on top of a beer can?” he asked.

  The two young men sprinted back to the fissure, Henrique beating his partner by a short head. He crammed his body into the confined space and, ignoring the damage to his hands, scrabbled for a grip on the rocks, twisting his body to pass them, one at a time, to Alves. He had removed six or seven when his fingers came into contact with cloth.

  *

  Gower looked at the dirty, scuffed bags resting on Silva’s desk.

  They had been discovered at half-past five, just as Silva, finally pushed beyond the point of endurance, was about to call a lawyer. But even their recovery seemed to have done little to stiffen the Inspector’s spine. As he gazed at them now, his fingers played nervously with his droopy moustache.