Spider Trap

by Barry Maitland

  ‘Why would he spy on us? There wasn’t much to see.’

  ‘Once, when I asked him where he’d been, he said I wasn’t the only one prepared to pay for his services.’

  ‘Any idea who he’d be working for?’

  The old lady shrugged as if to suggest the worst. ‘All I can tell you is that one of my friends in the market said the other day that she’d seen him with some girl. Maybe he’s staying there. I don’t know. She lives over the laundrette in Cove Street, back of the tyre place, you know?’

  Kathy knew very well from their abortive raids on Mr Teddy Vexx. She hurried back to her car and drove to Cove Street, then turned into the laneway that led past the tyre yard. From there she could see the back of the block of shops and laundrette. Stairs led to an open access gallery to the flats above. There were lights on in one and Kathy was about to get out when its front door opened and a young woman, heavily wrapped against the cold, manoeuvred a child’s pushchair out onto the deck. She reached back into the flat to turn the light off, then carefully locked the front door with three separate keys before pushing the chair towards the stairs. Kathy guessed that there was no one left in the flat, and stayed where she was as the girl struggled down the stairs. Kathy realised why it was such an effort when she emerged into the lane and Kathy saw that the pushchair was a double one, with a pair of little pink hats visible under the hood. Kathy locked her car and followed.

  After a couple of blocks the woman slowed at a shopfront beside a bus stop. There was another struggle as someone on the inside opened both doors and helped lift the pushchair’s front wheels over the threshold. The sign stencilled on the front window read CAMBERWELL GUM CLINIC. Kathy continued walking towards it as the woman disappeared inside, and as she reached the front door it opened again and she saw into a room crowded with women. A smaller sign on the other window said GENITO-URINARY MEDICINE.

  Kathy guessed the woman was going to be there for a while, and picked up a paper at the corner shop before crossing to a café over the road, where she bought a mug of tea and a toasted sandwich.

  An hour and a half later the girl re-emerged. As soon as she was out on the footpath she lit a cigarette and blew a great puff of relief into the frosty air, then headed off again along the street, turning eventually into a grim little park where she released the tiny twins to totter around on the soggy ground while she sat on a bench and lit another cigarette. Kathy checked the name of the place, Tallow Square, then followed the narrow road around the edge, convinced now that she was wasting her time. The sky was growing darker and more threatening by the minute, and she was on the point of turning back when she noticed parked ahead of her a car that she recognised, an electric-blue Peugeot convertible. It looked remarkably pristine and sleek among the battered dustbins and graffiti-covered walls on this more derelict side of the park, as did the glossy red BMW sports car behind it. At that moment a man stepped from the mouth of a lane midway between Kathy and the cars.

  Kathy stopped dead, recognising George. The tree trunks behind her were as black as her coat, otherwise he would surely have noticed her. Instead, his attention was caught by the figures in the park. He gave a shout and trotted towards them, and at that moment the sky overhead flickered with light, followed almost immediately by a massive bang of thunder. Kathy came abreast of the lane from which George had appeared and caught an image of battered fences topped by barbed wire and a faded sign, REILLY’S USED CARS. She heard the savage howl of a dog, then the first heavy raindrops hit the ground.

  She hadn’t noticed cameras, but she kept her head down, shoulders hunched, and continued past the cars, noting the number of the BMW and of several other cars further up the street. The rain turned into a torrent and she broke into a run.

  When she got back to Queen Anne’s Gate she phoned DS McCulloch to see if he knew anything about George Murray, who didn’t have a police record. He said he’d check and get back to her. Then she decided to see how Tom was doing. She found him in a room in the basement where he had taken all the material they had accumulated on the Roach family. Cold and vaulted like a crypt, he called it The Roach Room, and had covered its walls with photos and diagrams.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he offered. ‘Your hair’s wet. Did you get caught in that downpour?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sniffed. ‘I think I’m getting a cold.’

  He plugged in the electric heater he’d brought down there and she moved closer to it, looking around at the images on the walls. ‘Why are they all dressed in black?’

  ‘The most recent pictures were taken at a funeral four years ago, when the whole family turned out to farewell Cyrus Despinides, who happened to be a friend of someone else Special Branch were interested in. Cyrus Despinides was an old business partner of Spider, and his daughter Adonia is married to Ivor Roach, the second son, the accountant.’ Tom pointed to a family tree diagram.

  ‘Yes, I’ve met Adonia, and her daughter Magdalen.’

  ‘How come?’

  Kathy explained.

  ‘So you’ve actually been inside the family compound, The Glebe?’ There was a plan and an aerial photograph among the pictures on the wall.

  ‘Yes, strange place, like a fortified village trying to pretend it’s just an ordinary bit of posh suburbia. But I suppose that’s what they mean by a gated community.’

  ‘It is a bit odd. They had it purpose-built for themselves. I mean, you’d have to think there was something a bit pathological about a family wanting to stick so close together. Imagine being one of the women, marrying into a deal like that. And they do stick together. Neither Spider nor any of the boys have divorced.’

  ‘The only other member of the family I’ve seen is the youngest son, Ricky, when we interviewed him.’

  ‘Right.’ Tom pointed to the pictures of the brothers. ‘They’re all in their fifties now. Mark, the eldest, the big-shot businessman, travels a lot, owns a lavish holiday villa on the north coast of Jamaica and an apartment in Hong Kong. He’s married with five children and three grandchildren. Ivor, the second son, is an accountant in his own practice, which is effectively dedicated to the Roach business operations. Ricky, number three, has the luxury car dealership in Eltham, wife and four kids.

  ‘And then there’s the old man, Edward “Spider” Roach. He was widowed eight years ago and had a brush with cancer shortly after. Since then rarely seen in public except as a regular churchgoer, but known to be a generous donor to a variety of charitable and political organisations, including the Catholic Church, Save the Children and the Conservative Party.’

  ‘So what are we looking for?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Points of weakness,’ Tom said. ‘I’m meeting Michael Grant’s researcher, Andrea, tomorrow. We’ll see what they’ve come up with.’

  That evening Kathy spoke to her friend Nicole, who mentioned that they’d received a request from Brock that day, to unearth old files relating to a surveillance operation back in the early eighties.

  ‘What kind of operation?’ Kathy asked, curious.

  ‘A funeral parlour,’ Nicole said, laughing. ‘Maybe he’s writing his memoirs. Anyway, how’s it going with Tom?’

  ‘All right. I’m just getting used to having him around the office all the time.’

  ‘Mm, but apart from that? You’re not seeing him tonight?’

  ‘No. It’s fine.’

  ‘He’s not being a bit slow, is he?’

  Kathy changed the subject, and they agreed to try to get together the coming weekend.

  eighteen

  There were two reports waiting for Kathy the following morning. One had arrived by fax during the night from the police in Kingston, Jamaica, regarding her inquiry about the three victims, Walter Isaacs, Joseph Kidd and Robbie X. From the details taken from their passports when they entered the UK, the JCF had been able to identify the first two. It seemed that both had died, Isaacs in 1970 and Kidd in 1976, long before they arrived in London.

  The second report was on her com
puter, a long string of vehicle numbers from the Rainbow Coordinator in Streatham. She poured a cup of coffee, pondered, and decided to begin with a shortlist of those that appeared more than once, on the basis that anyone visiting the Singhs would have first come, then gone. She set about comparing these with the list of numbers they’d compiled of cars known to belong to the Roach family.

  Towards noon, when Brock came by, she’d found no matches. She told him what she was doing and the result from Jamaica, and he just nodded, preoccupied.

  After he’d gone it occurred to her that the big point of all this wasn’t so much to prove that the Singhs had been intimidated by the Roaches—that probably wasn’t going to be possible. Rather, it was to prove that there was a continuing connection between the Roaches and the black gangsters of Cockpit Lane. She opened her notebook to the rain-wrinkled page where she’dwrittenthe numbers of the cars at the park the previous day, and started comparing them with the Streatham list. Disappointingly, neither Teddy Vexx’s Peugeot nor the red BMW came up, but then, just as she was checking her watch and deciding it was time to go, one of the other numbers on her screen showed a match. It was that of a Ford Mondeo parked further up the street. A minute later she had the name, Jay Crocker, known to them as an associate of Teddy Vexx. She reached for the phone to tell Brock but found that he had left the office.

  Martin Connell rose to his feet as she approached his table. The monitor hadn’t lied about the extra pounds, and there were other subtle signs of time passing about the corners of his eyes and mouth. She saw that he was making a similar appraisal of her. Ten years had put their mark on both of them. She hoped his success hadn’t made him pompous. Whatever else he’d been, he’d never been that.

  ‘Great view.’ She looked out at the sweep of water.

  ‘I hope it wasn’t too far.’

  ‘No.’ She’d been glad that the place he’d suggested was some way up-river from the office. ‘I’ve heard of this place, of course. But I’ve never been here.’ Not at these prices, she thought.

  ‘I’m very glad you’ve come. Really, I didn’t think you would.’

  The smile of course, racy and ironic like . . . well, Belmondo perhaps, or even Tom a little. She made a mental note to work that one out later. ‘I’m not sure why I did. I mean, we’re not interested in each other’s private lives, are we? And we can’t talk about work. Doesn’t leave much to fill in the odd hour.’

  He laughed. ‘We never had any trouble filling in the odd hour, Kathy. I did mean what I said on the phone. Since Daniel . . . Okay, you’re not interested, but I got to thinking, if it had been me instead of him, what would I look back to, most of all? And what came into my mind was you—no, don’t look at me like that, it’s true. You were very important to me. And I thought how sad it would be if we never had another chance to sit together at a fine white tablecloth with a glass of wine, and talk.’

  As he spoke, using that persuasive voice, Kathy realised that the differences she’d noticed in him had disappeared and he now seemed the same as he’d always been. Or perhaps he was a little more mellow, a little less obvious in making known what he wanted. He had no difficulty in finding funny, neutral things to amuse her with. The river was a cue for a story of an evening with fellow lawyers (no mention of wives) on an evening cruise, being serenaded by a famous operatic soprano, whose improvised stage at the stern had buckled under her considerable weight, almost tipping her into the river. The theme of punctured human dignity led on to a courtroom story from his early days, and then to a convoluted account of a meal with a senior Tory member of parliament (wives included this time), whose well-known habit of ending a good story with a flourish of his pocket handkerchief had come unstuck when the handkerchief, like a magician’s prop, had been followed by a pair of ladies’ black silk knickers—not, so his wife calmly observed, her own.

  The food was excellent too—French new wave, he said, as if he’d read her mind about Belmondo. An hour passed in no time, then another, before he looked regretfully at his watch and called for the bill.

  ‘You mentioned gossip on the phone,’ Kathy said.

  ‘Did I? Oh yes, there was something . . . But you were right, no shop. There is one thing I will say, though. It’s absolutely ridiculous that you’re still at the same rank as when we . . . as before. I mean, it just makes me angry, Brock keeping you tucked under his wing at DS when everybody knows you’re the best thing he’s got, far better than Gurney. I mean, he won’t be there forever, Kathy, and when he goes . . . It could be sooner than you think, they’ll move someone in, maybe already have . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the way big organisations work, Kathy. I know. You’ve got to look out for number one.’

  ‘You didn’t buy me lunch to give me a lecture on ambition, Martin. What is this all about, really?’

  ‘I told you what it was. I realised I was mortal, and couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing you one more time.’

  He gave her a lift back to the West End and left her, mystified. Altruism wasn’t Martin’s style, and though he’d always been generous, there was always a motive.

  Brock chose a spot towards the back of the waiting crowd and to one side, where he could see the arrivals without making himself obvious. One by one, then in a steady stream, they came around the corner, bent to their laden trolleys, eyes expectantly scanning the confusion of bobbing faces. Then she appeared.

  If he’d intended it as a test of his own feelings, it would have rated as a complete success. The sight of the familiar face, the intelligent searching eyes, the determined chin, instantly dispelled all the doubts that had haunted him these last months and sent a warm surge of blind relief and affection through him. He saw with concern the fatigue in the shadows around her eyes, and began to push towards the end of the railings so that he could wrap his arms around her and tell her that it was good, so very good, that she was home at last.

  Only she wasn’t pushing a trolley, and then he saw her face light up, not at him, but at someone on the far side of the crowd. Then he saw two children break out of the crush and run forward into her arms. Suzanne’s grandchildren, he realised, followed by a smiling woman he didn’t recognise. He watched Suzanne embrace her too, then turn to make a gesture of introduction to the man pushing the trolley behind her. He shook hands all round, grinning broadly; a tall man, tanned and good-looking, fitter and younger than Brock. The crowd shifted and surged and Brock lost sight of them, then he saw them off to the side, talking together in an excited cluster before moving together towards the exit doors, the woman explaining with hand signs where her car was parked.

  He stood for a while, a fixed point in the swirling mass, letting the bitter sick feeling subside, then he followed them out into the chilly afternoon.

  Kathy made her way to the office of the Streatham Rainbow Coordinator, who set her up in front of a monitor to watch the tapes of the junction at the end of the Singhs’ street. There was a gap of half an hour between the two appearances of the Mondeo, the second timed just a few minutes after the elder Singh had made the online plane bookings for his son and daughter-in-law. In both clips it was apparent that there were two occupants in the vehicle, bulky men who seemed to fill the car’s interior.

  On the way back to Queen Anne’s Gate, Kathy got a phone call from Tom. He sounded rushed and there was a lot of background noise, as if he was in a train station.

  ‘How’s it going, Kathy?’

  ‘Fine, I’m just heading back. I found one or two—’

  ‘Great, me too. Look, I’ve only got a minute . . . Oh, got to go. See you later.’

  ‘Where—?’ But he was gone.

  Back at the office, Kathy tapped on Brock’s door. He was at his desk, bent over a file, one of a stack of faded buff folders of a type she hadn’t seen in years.

  She sat down and told him what she’d learned and he listened in silence.

  ‘So Michael Grant is right,’ she said. ‘We
can show a connection between Roach and suspected drug dealers in Cockpit Lane. Should we tell Trident?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Brock murmured. He seemed still absorbed in whatever he’d been reading. ‘What other checks can you make on Vexx and his crew?’

  ‘Phone records, and I could speak to the lad, George Murray, try to find out why he was spying on us.’

  Brock nodded. ‘Yes, do that.’

  ‘What’s Tom up to, do you know?’

  ‘He’s been spending time with Grant’s research officer. Apparently they’ve got quite a lot of stuff—press cuttings, company information, things like that. But he’s not sure if any of it will help us.’

  She turned and left, thinking how tired and preoccupied he looked.

  There was a pile of material on Kathy’s desk relating to two other cases she’d put on hold. Now they needed urgent attention, a file report and preparation for a court appearance at the impending trial for another murder case, and several phone calls and a briefing document to the CPS in relation to a serial rapist. She sat down and worked through till almost nine before she headed home, picking up some Chinese on the way.

  She was sitting on her sofa in front of the TV when she jerked upright, conscious of having fallen asleep. The empty plate was on the coffee table in front of her, a subtitled movie playing on the screen. Then a rap on the door. She assumed that was what had woken her. She got up stiffly and looked through the spy hole to see Tom’s face grinning back at her.

  ‘Saw your light on from the street,’ he said, bringing a gust of cold outdoors and other smells in with him. There was a bottle in his hand and his voice sounded loud and cheerful. He gave her a kiss. ‘Someone let me through the front door.’

  ‘Oh . . . I fell asleep in front of the box. What time is it?’

  “ ’Round Midnight”. You know that one? Thelonious Monk. Classic.’ He was searching for glasses, humming to himself.