Spider Trap

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Tom,’ he added, ‘you’ve been a great help with this, and I’m sure there’s more about Brown Bread and the Roach family tucked away in Branch files. Are you interested in spending a bit more time helping us?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  ‘Then, if you’re agreeable, I might ask your boss if you could be spared to work over here with us for, say, a couple of weeks. What do you think?’

  ‘I think he’ll probably be delighted,’ Tom grinned.

  He was right, apparently, and the next morning he arrived with several boxes of files, as well as a carrier bag containing assorted bits and pieces, including his coffee mug, as if he were moving in for the duration. Bren gave him a desk next to his own, and they settled down to work on the old case files. When Kathy later went to see what they were up to, she was surprised to find the two of them in the basement, in the Bride of Denmark, the curious little private snug bar which the previous owners, a publishing firm, had lovingly constructed out of bits retrieved from bombed and demolished London pubs. Bren and Tom were leaning on the ancient bar, beer bottles in hand, heads together as if they were old mates at their local. The Bride was, to say the least, an anachronism in a Scotland Yard office building, studiously overlooked by Admin, and only Brock had ever invited outsiders down there. Kathy had never seen any of the team take a drink except at Brock’s invitation. Bren knew this, of course, and there was an awkward moment as he saw Kathy stoop through the low vault to come in.

  ‘Kathy, hi. I was just showing Tom around. Would you, er, care for one?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Isn’t this just the most amazing place?’ Tom said. He waved the hand holding the bottle, almost empty. ‘The stuffed lion, the salmon, the mahogany. I mean, who would believe it?’

  ‘Well, just don’t go telling any of your mates at the Branch,’ Kathy said. ‘If head office hears we’re down here boozing all day they’ll have the wreckers over in no time.’

  ‘Relax, Kathy,’ Tom said expansively. ‘I’m not likely to let them in on this now, am I?’ As if he were no longer one of them. ‘And you know you’re partial to a drop now and again. I was telling Bren about Red Stripe. Maybe I’ll buy a case for the Bride next time I’m down Cockpit Lane.’

  Kathy frowned at Bren, who winced with embarrassment. ‘I just came down to see how you’re going with the case files.’

  ‘It’s coming along,’ Bren said. ‘Tom dug up a lot of useful stuff. How about you?’

  ‘Yes, making some progress. I’m going over to see the MP soon, to see what he’s come up with. Well, see you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bren hurriedly finished his bottle and began gathering up the bottle tops as if cleaning up a crime scene.

  Tom followed Kathy out. ‘Hey, you okay? You sound fed up.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Um, I’m going out with some of the blokes tonight to play squash, otherwise . . . You free tomorrow evening?’

  ‘No, I’m going to see some friends this weekend.’ It wasn’t quite true, but she suddenly felt she wanted a bit of time to herself.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not mad at me over something? Is it Amy, me springing her on you like that?’

  ‘No. I liked Amy.’

  ‘I’m glad. She’s been talking a lot about you. She had some idea you were taking her to a path lab, but I told her that wasn’t possible.’

  Kathy didn’t remember actually saying she’d take the girl to Dr Prior, but she said, ‘I may have mentioned something along those lines. Yes, I will try. When would she be free?’

  ‘Oh well, if you’re sure . . . any afternoon after school, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do, Tom. No promises.’

  She got on the phone when she returned to her desk. Dr Prior was cooperative.

  ‘Yes, no problem, but could you make it tonight? I’m off to a conference inGermany onMonday and I won’t be back for a while.’

  Kathy phoned Tom, who phoned Amy’s school (a small domestic emergency, he explained) to speak to Amy, and within twenty minutes it was arranged.

  Tom gave Kathy a lift to Michael Grant’s constituency office in Cockpit Lane in his Subaru, saying he would pick up his daughter while she was busy.

  ‘I really appreciate you doing this for Amy,’ he said. ‘She’s beside herself.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure.’ Kathy felt she’d maybe been too defensive about Tom moving into Queen Anne’s Gate. Perhaps things would be all right. ‘What do you think about Brock’s idea that the Roaches are behind all the killings?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t like it at first, though I could be convinced. But really, all we’ve got is a possible sighting of two white guys in a crowded pub, twenty-odd years ago. The witness could have got it completely wrong, you know how these things are. Maybe the two guys weren’t white, or maybe they had nothing to do with whatever was scaring Joseph.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t think Brock’s got himself a mission, do you, putting the past to rights? That’s worrying you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve doubted him before, don’t forget, on the Tracy Rudd case, and he was right then. I trust his instincts.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom said, as if to himself. ‘Loyal Kathy. I like that.’

  Tom turned into Cockpit Lane and pulled over to the kerb. ‘Half an hour?’

  ‘Fine. See you.’ Kathy watched the grin form in his mouth and around his eyes, and realised how much it was growing on her.

  A chill east wind buffeted her as she hurried forward. More snow was promised and the wind tasted of it. She noticed a slight, dark figure standing at a shop window filled with PlayStations and digital gear. The face was covered by the hood of a parka and she was almost past before she recognised the glint of Adam Nightingale’s glasses.

  ‘Hello, Adam. How are you?’

  He shrugged, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘Saw them packing up from the school window. Leaving are they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked forlorn, as if a moment of meaning or excitement in his life was coming to an end, and she felt sorry for him. ‘You’re interested in that forensic stuff, are you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Actually I’m on my way over to the laboratories where they’re working on the skeletons, reconstructing their faces.’

  ‘Wow. Cool. I wish . . .’ His sentence trailed off into inarticulate silence.

  ‘Well, I could probably arrange for you to come, but we’d have to get your mother’s permission.’

  ‘She’s at work.’ He whipped a mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and offered it to her. Kathy watched him press the keys, then she took the phone and spoke to his mother, who was delighted that someone was willing to take Adam off the streets for an hour or two.

  ‘Okay,’ Kathy said to the boy. ‘I’ve got some business to do. Be here in half an hour.’

  The shopfront next to the pub was plastered with pictures of the MP’s handsomely smiling face alongside public service posters reading, ‘Stop the Guns’, ‘Crack Kills’, ‘Let’s Work Together’. She pushed open the door and stepped into a fug of heat and clamour, Magic FM competing with clattering keyboards, a whistling kettle and a group of women arguing loudly over the messages on a noticeboard. An electrician stood on top of a stepladder fixing a light, and in the middle of it all, oblivious to the turmoil, Michael Grant posed for a photograph being taken by a reporter from the local paper. Grant was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the slogan OUR STRUGGLE and a clenched black fist.

  He caught sight of Kathy and clapped the reporter on the shoulder and swung over to her. ‘Hi! DS Kolla, right?’

  She shook his hand, unable to resist the dazzle of his smile. It wasn’t just the mouth; his whole face seemed animated by it, and as they spoke he focused on her as if nothing else in the world interested him. A politician’s trick perhaps, she thought, but he did it brilliantly.

  ‘Come through and meet Kerrie, my office manager.’ The
y manoeuvred around the stepladder and approached a young black woman sitting behind a desk, arguing with someone on the other end of the phone, smacking the file in front of her to emphasise her point. She put the phone down and nodded at Grant.

  ‘He’ll see you at noon tomorrow. I’ll line up the media.’

  ‘Well done, Kerrie! Didn’t think you’d do it. This is DS Kolla from Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Kathy.’

  ‘Hello. Yes, we’ve got one or two leads for you.’ She handed Grant a sheet of paper. ‘I’d better get on with organising things for tomorrow, Michael.’

  ‘You go ahead. I’ll take care of Kathy.’ He waved her through to a seat in a quieter area at the back of the shop and poured them both cups of coffee from a percolator.

  ‘It may not look like it, Kathy, but this is a war room. We’re involved in a life and death struggle, literally.’ He tapped the slogan on his chest. ‘This isn’t idle rhetoric. We have a three-pronged youth crisis here—unemployment, drugs and crime. My job is to motivate my community to action, to break the vicious circle. We’re on the same side, Kathy, and we’ll do anything we can to help you take the drug kings, the crime bosses, out of the picture.’

  ‘Right, I appreciate that, sir.’

  ‘Michael, please.’ He glanced at the sheet of paper. ‘These are people we’ve found who can remember Joseph. They’ve all expressed a willingness to help. To save you having to traipse all over the district, one of the girls on the front desk can set up times when they can come in here to talk with you, if that suits. I think they’d feel more comfortable here than at the police station.’

  Kathy scanned the list, half a dozen names and addresses. ‘That’s great. You’re doing my job for me.’

  ‘It’s a start.’

  ‘We’re making up posters of the three victims on the railway land. This is what we’ve got so far.’ Kathy handed him photographs of Dr Prior’s reconstructions. ‘Joseph Kidd and the one we believe was called Walter.’

  Grant gasped as he took in the lifelike images. ‘How on earth did you get these?’

  Kathy explained. ‘Do you recognise them?’

  ‘Yes . . . Well, Joseph, certainly. It’s very close. The other one looks familiar, but I’m not sure.’

  Kathy handed him the third image, based on Winnie’s sketchy memory of the other member of the Tosh Posse. ‘This is the one we have the least information about—no name and no skull to make a reconstruction from.’

  Grant stared for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. This means nothing to me. But once you have the posters we can put them in the front window here, and I’m sure we can persuade shopkeepers in the area to do the same.’

  ‘You’re being very helpful, Michael. Thank you.’

  They arranged for Grant’s office to set up interviews on the following Monday, and Kathy left. Adam was waiting outside.

  The Subaru drew up a few minutes later and Tom got out and spoke to Kathy and Adam while Amy waited in the car, watching. Kathy led the boy over to introduce him.

  ‘Adam, this is Inspector Reeves’s daughter Amy, who wants to be a forensic pathologist. Amy, this is Adam, who is helping us with our inquiries.’ She paused while Amy’s face froze at the form of words. ‘He’s coming with us.’

  ‘Coming with us?’ she whispered. ‘In our car?’

  ‘Yes, that’s all right, isn’t it?’ Then she added casually, ‘Adam was the one who found the skeletons.’

  ‘Oh! It was you? You got the electric shock? Everyone’s been talking about you at school.’

  Adam ducked his head, embarrassed and pleased. They all got into the car, Adam in the back with Amy, and drove off.

  Dr Prior was an excellent guide, explaining everything clearly and treating their questions seriously. The youngsters were captivated by the microscopes, the chemicals and the bones, but the high point was the computer imaging of Alpha and Bravo. The precise profiles of their skulls had been scanned, and then data for average Negroid soft tissue thicknesses all over the head had been applied to flesh them out. The resulting images could be rotated and viewed from any angle and with different hair and beard styles. The result for Bravo was startlingly similar to the photograph of Joseph that Father Maguire had provided, while the other was a reasonable match to the representation of Walter that Winnie had arrived at with the computer artist.

  While the other three played with the computer, experimenting with dreadlocks, glasses and various Rasta beards, the anthropologist had a quiet word with Kathy.

  ‘How’s the investigation going? Any suspects?’

  ‘Nothing definite, but we are looking at some possible white suspects.’

  ‘What did I tell you? A race crime.’

  ‘But we’re not clear about motive. It could simply have been a dispute over drugs or punishing an informer.’

  Dr Prior shook her head. ‘Look.’ She drew Kathy over to Bravo’s skull, mounted on a stand on the bench. Her finger traced around the bullet hole in the upper forehead. ‘This is a close-range shot.’ She pointed to diagrams and hard copies of computer images on the wall, tracing the probable angle of the bullet into the skull.

  ‘Get down on your knees,’ Dr Prior said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go on, I want to show you how it was.’

  Kathy’s smile faded as she saw how serious the other woman was. She knelt.

  ‘You’re Joseph Kidd—Bravo, right? Imagine it. Apart from soft tissue damage, we’ve just broken your right leg in the middle of the shin and crushed two of your fingers. We hit you on the left side of your head with maybe a hammer or a pickaxe handle, so hard that your skull is cracked. You’ve been unconscious for a time and you’re in deep shock. Now you find yourself on wasteland in the dark, your arms and legs are trussed with wire, you’re on your knees, there’s blood in your eyes and mouth. Imagine it.’

  Dr Prior reached for a test tube from a rack on the bench, and pressed the end hard against Kathy’s forehead. ‘This is a Browning automatic and now you’re going to die. We’re not doing this to make an example of you, because nobody will ever learn what happened to you. This isn’t business. We’re doing this because we want to. Understand? We’ve gone to a lot of trouble, hurting you, bringing you here, and now you will disappear. Die, you black bastard.’

  There was a deathly hush in the laboratory. Kathy blinked and for a moment she saw herself, not as Joseph, but as Dee-Ann kneeling on the hard concrete floor of the garage. Then the test tube was withdrawn and she realised the other three were staring at her.

  ‘Right,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘Very convincing.’

  At the end of the tour they thanked Dr Prior and returned Adam to his home behind Cockpit Lane. All the way back he and Amy were immersed in a hushed conversation, punctuated by little whistles and gasps. When the car pulled in to the kerb, Adam and Kathy got out. He thanked her awkwardly. ‘That was . . . really cool,’ he said, then, ‘I’m not the only one who’s been watching you, d’you know that?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a guy who’s been spying on you from behind the fences on the other side of the railway. I’ve seen him from the school window on the top floor.’

  ‘Probably a reporter.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t have a camera, just binoculars. Big ones with red lenses. He’s loosened some of the wooden palings of the fence so he can push them apart. You can’t see him, only the binoculars. He’s been there a lot, for whole days at a time. Must have warm clothes.’

  As they drove Amy to her mother’s home, the girl also seemed subdued by their trip. She thanked Kathy without any of the boldness of their previous meeting. Kathy put out her hand to shake, and when Amy did likewise the girl felt the fifty pence coin pressed into her palm.

  Kathy winked. ‘Don’t spend it all on chips.’

  She was silent as Tom drove her home. The odd little performance in the laboratory weighed on her. It wasn’t that it had told her anything new,
but that replaying the actions had given them a physical presence in her mind that hadn’t been there before. That had been Dr Prior’s point, of course.

  Tom broke into her thoughts, ‘Tired?’

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘You take work too seriously, you know that?’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes. I bought you a book to take your mind off things.’ He reached across to the glovebox and handed her a paper bag. ‘I think you’ll like it. It draws you in, makes you forget everything else. But a bit heavy for tonight, perhaps. You need something buoyant. A movie? Maybe an old favourite? What’s the best movie you’d like to see again?’

  She thought. ‘The Blues Brothers.’

  ‘Yes!’ He tapped the steering wheel. ‘Brilliant. And appropriate, too—1980.’

  ‘It’s not as old as that, is it?’

  ‘Want to bet?’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not making any more bets with you or your immediate family. Are you sure?’

  ‘Yep. I can remember seeing it on my first blind date. I was twelve. I had to borrow some money from my mum afterwards to buy the sunglasses. What do you say we get takeaway and The Blues Brothers.’

  ‘I thought you were playing squash tonight?’

  ‘I cancelled.’

  ‘Well, that sounds good, if I can fit in a bath somewhere.’

  And so it was. As she lay in her bath, aware of his presence in the room outside, she realised that she hadn’t felt so awkward about having him in her flat this time. He seemed to fit into the small space without intrusion, opening a bottle and following her instructions for a salad. It was a talent, she felt, for sympathetic manners, adjusting his dimensions (for he was actually quite a big bloke) to the available psychological space. Or maybe it was just part of Special Branch training, melting in, lulling the mark.