Spider Trap

by Barry Maitland

  Brock and Michael both looked up to the figure standing silhouetted in the headlights of the newly arrived car, the bulky outline unmistakably that of Mr Teddy Vexx. From his right hand dangled the strap of the machine pistol he was carrying.

  ‘About bloody time,’ Ricky gasped. ‘Kill these bastards for me, will you, please?’

  ‘My pleasure, Ricky,’ Vexx growled. He stepped forward and raised the gun.

  There was a single loud report, and Vexx hesitated, then slowly turned. He looked blankly around him for a moment, then toppled backwards into the snow.

  In the open doorway of the cottage Kathy lay prone upon the floor, Mark Roach’s silver pistol gripped in her hands. She got slowly to her feet, keeping the gun trained on the motionless figure of Vexx. As she came close, she saw his startled expression, eyes open, but moving not a muscle. She thought of the final scene of Breathless, Jean-Paul Belmondo lying just like that, flat out on his back in the street after being shot by the cops. Jean Seberg looks down at him and he opens his mouth and a curl of cigarette smoke rises into the air and he says . . .

  ‘Bitch,’ Vexx murmured.

  Startled, Kathy stared down at him. Had he seen the movie too?

  She put her mouth closer to his ear and said, ‘That’s for Dana and Dee-Ann.’

  Vexx’s glazed eyes focused momentarily on Kathy and he whispered, ‘. . . still don’t get it.’ Then he closed his eyes and died.

  thirty-three

  It had been intended as a very low-key affair, a quiet homecoming for Michael Grant to mark his return to normal life and, perhaps, the start of his rehabilitation as a public figure, but it had turned into a great party. As Kathy squeezed through the crowd crammed into his constituency office in Cockpit Lane, she saw that his popularity had only been enhanced by what had happened, and his supporters (more women than men, it had to be said) were there in force. Not that his rehabilitation was being delayed, from what she’d heard. The Jamaican police had confirmed that they had no outstanding warrants or interest in either Michael Grant or Billy Forrest, while the British government had an amnesty on passport irregularities over twenty years old. Although Michael’s resignation had been accepted and he had said he would begin a new career in journalism, the strength of support among his constituents was so great that the party machine was urging a rethink.

  A jolly woman thrust a plate of food under Kathy’s nose. She realised it was codfish fritters—stamp and go— and she felt a stab of regret as she thought of Tom. He wasn’t there, although he had been invited. As soon as the hospital had discharged him, legs more or less intact, he’d taken off on his crutches to stay with old friends in Scotland. On her last visit to his bedside they had both felt the sad inevitability of their final parting.

  Almost everyone else seemed to be there, though: Bren and Brock, McCulloch and Savage, Winnie Wellington and Abigail Lavender, and from the far end of the room came the sound of music played by Elizabeth Grant together with George Murray, tilting his one good ear to his keyboard.

  The noise level was rising steadily. Everyone seemed so happy, Kathy thought, catching a glimpse of Andrea waving her hand to make a point to Brock. He was subtly different since Suzanne had come back, she realised, more open and expansive, and she was glad. She, too, had reason to feel content, since her promotion to inspector had finally been confirmed. She knew that Brock had forced the issue, taking advantage of the hiatus after the business in North Wales to get it through. So, like him, she had come to Cockpit Lane a sergeant and left an inspector. But then, history had done a lot of repeating and echoing over the past weeks, and her pleasure in the evening was spoilt by the uneasy suspicion— no, more than that, a haunting certainty—that it wasn’t finished with them yet.

  Teddy Vexx’s dying words had never left her. She had repeated them over and over in her mind, trying to squeeze every trace of meaning out of them. What had he really meant? That he still didn’t get it? Or that she didn’t? Neither seemed to make sense. And who was the ‘bitch’ he’d referred to in his Belmondo moment? She’d assumed it was herself, yet she vividly recalled the look of surprise in his eyes when he’d then focused on her. But how rational was a human brain in terminal shock? How much meaning could one expect to find in those last whispers really, especially by her—traumatised, according to the staff counsellor, by feelings of guilt towards her victim?

  The more she’d worried at it, the more convinced she’d become that things were not right. That was the phrase that kept forming in her mind: things weren’t right. She’d tried to talk it through with Brock, and he had been enormously patient and supportive, but she could sense his underlying conviction that it was she that wasn’t quite right. ‘It’s a terrible thing to kill someone, Kathy,’ he’d said, very gently, ‘even when it’s unavoidable and necessary, as it was in this case. I know, I understand. You must go through the process. Let them help you.’

  She’d become obsessed by Vexx’s dying words, she realised that, and accepted that this might be a coping mechanism, concentrating on one little detail to avoid thinking about the big fact that she’d shot and killed a man. But obsession brought other things to the surface: she’d be driving along, noticing the mess in her car, when some thought would strike her and she would have to pull in to the kerb to pester someone over the phone. Or she would wake up in the middle of the night with a forensic image vivid in her mind, and phone Sundeep at his home over breakfast for an explanation. If it had been anyone else, he said, he’d have created merry hell, spoiling his boiled egg like a Bombay telemarketer, but for her he was happy to oblige. Afterwards, he would phone Brock to say he was worried about her.

  And this party was more than a welcome home to Michael Grant, she realised. It was also the end of the story, the end of Dee-Ann and Dana’s story. She felt suddenly unbearably hot and breathless, and turned towards the shopfront facing out to the Lane. A small boy was standing outside, face pressed so close to the glass that his spectacles were tipped up on his nose. For a moment they stared at each other. Then, as she made towards the door, Adam jumped away and began to run, leaving the marks of his nose and hands on the window. He had been the snowball, she thought, that started an avalanche. If he hadn’t made his mad expedition across the railway line, none of this might have happened. As she watched him scampering away she imagined herself returning, like Brock, in twenty-four years’ time, and wondered what he would have become. Another Michael Grant? Or the next Spider Roach?

  ‘You look sad.’

  Kathy turned to find George standing at her side.

  ‘I’m sad about what happened to you, George,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ll be all right. Anyway, you took care of Teddy Vexx.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked away.

  ‘You should feel good about that. I wanted to tell you what I saw that night the girls died, but I couldn’t. Nobody’s that brave or stupid, leastwise, I’m not.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘About one o’clock, I was coming back to Winnie’s after practising with the group. I saw his Peugeot standing outside the school and I wondered what it was doing there.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You’re mad at me, yeah?’

  ‘No. What else did you see?’

  ‘Mm?’ George looked at his feet.

  ‘The other car.’

  He shrugged, keeping mum.

  Kathy said, ‘It’s all right, George. I’d worked it out.’ It was why they had been unable to connect Ivor Roach to the crime scene. They’d been looking for the wrong car on the CCTV footage.

  ‘I’d better get back to do our next number,’ George said.

  ‘Sure.’ Kathy watched him shuffle back into the crowd, then retrieved her coat from the pegs behind the door and left.

  She pulled her car in at the gates and spoke into the intercom. Magdalen answered.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is your mother with you, Magdalen?’ Adonia was on bail, Kat
hy knew, while the CPS negotiated with the family lawyers (no longer Martin Connell, of course) over questions of murder and voluntary manslaughter.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d like to see you both, if I may.’

  ‘Mum can’t speak to anyone without her lawyers present.’

  ‘I appreciate that, but this isn’t about Ivor’s death. I’m on leave at the moment, not on duty. There’s something I need to clear up for my own peace of mind. I know it’s an imposition, but it shouldn’t take long.’

  There was silence, and Kathy was on the point of turning away, but then at last the gates clicked and swung open. She drove to the house and saw Magdalen waiting at the front door. The young woman looked fragile and weightless as she led her silently into the living room, where her mother sat beneath the chandelier. Even before they spoke Kathy saw a marked difference in them both. Adonia sat upright, pale but alert and determined, and all signs of her earlier assault, the bruises and bandages, were gone. Her daughter, on the other hand, seemed utterly exhausted and diminished by what they’d been through.

  Adonia spoke first, her voice firm. ‘I don’t think we should be talking to you. We’re both very tired. I think you should come back another day.’

  For the second time, Kathy almost left. She really did want to leave, and she felt an awful hollowness in the pit of her stomach, not unlike that she had felt lying on the floor of the cottage, training the pistol on Teddy Vexx.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m sorry. This is a terrible time for both of you. But I have to ask you this.’

  Again she hesitated, and again Adonia said impatiently, ‘Well?’

  ‘When your car was stolen, Mrs Roach, you told me that your pendant was also taken, and you later found it on the floor of the car. Is that right?’

  Adonia looked astonished by the question. The mention of the pendant threw her for a moment. ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Where exactly did you find it?’

  ‘I can’t remember. What is this?’

  ‘You see,’ Kathy went on, ‘we checked with the people who examined your car when it was recovered. They said they searched it very thoroughly. It would be impossible for them to have missed something like that.’

  Adonia stared at her, then said, ‘No, you’re right of course. It was Ivor who returned it to me. He told me to say I’d found it in the car, but I don’t need to lie for him any more.’ Then she added, ‘You said you’re no longer on duty. Is it because you killed that man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So we’re both the same, you and I. Why are you asking these questions?’

  Kathy hesitated, gazing helplessly at one woman, then the other. ‘I’m sorry. I have to know. You see we couldn’t connect Ivor to Teddy Vexx or Cockpit Lane that night. That was because we were checking the wrong phone records, looking for the wrong car. It wasn’t Ivor that got the pendant back, was it, Magdalen? It was you.’

  The young woman shuddered suddenly, hugging her arms around herself as if against the cold. ‘That bloody pendant,’ she said, and began to sob, big tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Stop it!’ her mother said sharply. ‘Don’t say another word.’

  ‘You got it from Dee-Ann’s neck. You pulled it off so hard it left a small lesion.’

  ‘Yes.’ Magdalen bowed her head, her whole body rocking back and forth. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

  Adonia turned on Kathy. ‘Get out! Get out this minute!’

  ‘Vexx phoned Magdalen that night,’ Kathy said. ‘I’ve traced the call. And there are CCTV pictures.’

  Adonia fell silent, staring in horror at Kathy.

  And there would be other evidence, Kathy guessed. It had been so cold the night the girls died, and Magdalen would have worn gloves, which now would carry microscopic traces of barium, lead and antimony from the firing of Brown Bread.

  ‘I asked Teddy Vexx to find out who’d hurt Mum and stolen her pendant.’ Magdalen spoke in a gulping rush, as if wanting to bring up something unpleasant she’d swallowed. ‘The pendant that meant so much to her.’ She gave a bitter shake of her head. ‘He phoned me late Thursday night to say he and Jay had found them. I drove to the place they said, next to the school on Cockpit Lane. I took a gun I got from Grandpa’s cabinet. I didn’t even know if it was loaded, but I wanted to frighten them. I was very angry at what they’d done to Mum. I wanted to scare them to death. Teddy and Vexx had them on their knees. I was shocked when I saw they were girls, but still . . .’

  Adonia moved to her daughter’s side and put an arm around her. It was the same protective gesture that Magdalen had made to comfort her mother, Kathy remembered, that first time she had spoken to them in this room. ‘That’s enough, darling,’ Adonia said, but Magdalen continued.

  ‘Teddy had found Mum’s bag there in the squat, but not the pendant, and the girls refused to say where it was. I screamed at them, but they just sort of laughed, even when Teddy smacked them. So I took out the gun. I had no idea how to cock it and Teddy had to show me what to do. I pointed it to the head of the bigger one. My hand was shaking. But she wouldn’t tell me where it was.’ Magdalen stared at Kathy as if she still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘They didn’t care, you see. They really didn’t care what I did. My finger pressed on the trigger, and then suddenly there was this huge bang and the girl fell over. The other one started screaming, and Teddy took the gun out of my hand. He said he’d have to finish her off too. It was only later that he found the pendant under the scarf around her neck, and he pulled it off for me.’

  ‘Did you tell Ivor?’

  ‘Teddy did. He said he’d contact Da—Ivor the next day and explain what had happened. He said I had to get rid of the gun, and told me a place in Deptford, on the way home, to throw it in the river. But I was so shaken up I forgot, and when I got home I hid it in my cupboard. The next day Ivor went berserk when he heard from Teddy. I was scared and told him I’d got rid of the gun, and he calmed down a bit. Then you started digging up the bodies on the railway land and he started on at me again. I didn’t understand why. Later he told me I had to do that stuff with Tom to put things right. That’s the truth.’

  Kathy didn’t doubt it. It had always seemed so implausible for Ivor or his brothers to have risked so much, at that stage in their negotiations with the authorities, by becoming involved in the girls’ murders, far less to have failed afterwards to dispose of the gun and then to have left it lying around where Adonia could find it.

  ‘You knew all this, Adonia?’ Kathy asked.

  The woman nodded. ‘I heard Ivor shouting at Magdalen the day after it happened. Of course, I didn’t understand all the implications that he saw. It was a judgement on him, a judgement on us all . . . But it was an accident, what Magdalen did. You heard her . . .’

  Magdalen had turned into her mother’s arms. ‘I can’t think any more,’ she mumbled. ‘I just want to sleep.’

  ‘You will,’ Kathy said. ‘It’ll be much easier when all this is out in the open.’

  It was the only lie she’d told that evening, Kathy thought. They sat there in silence for a while, the three of them under the chandelier, weighed down by the burden that the past had placed on them. Finally, Kathy roused herself. She cautioned Magdalen and led the two women out to her car.