Spider Trap bak-9

by Barry Maitiland

  Brock sat back, stunned.Was it really possible that one of the Roaches, after all this time, should return to the same old haunt and repeat his actions in almost the same place with the same gun? And if it were true, how must he now be feeling, reading the newspaper reports, realising that his latest handiwork had led, through the misadventures of a schoolboy, to the discovery of his old crimes?

  He tucked the report back into its pouch and picked up the phone again.

  He wanted a link, he told them after they’d broken off their weekend shopping, sport and family excursions and reassembled at Queen Anne’s Gate, a link between Shooters Hill and Cockpit Lane in the early morning hours of Friday the fourth of February.

  More specifically, between Mark, Ivor or Ricky Roach on the one hand, and Teddy Vexx, Dana and Dee-Ann on the other, at

  that critical period of time.

  Failing eyewitnesses and forensic traces they turned their attention to telephones and Rainbow. There had already been an attempt to trace Vexx’s phone calls on that night, frustrated by the discovery that he appeared to have access to a number of stolen phones and SIM cards. A check of phones registered to the Roach brothers yielded nothing promising. That left Rainbow.

  The London metropolitan area, the largest in Europe, sprawls blindly across some six thousand square miles of south-east England-blind,but not unseen.Its fourteen million inhabitants are observed as they move about its streets by tens of thousands of camera eyes. The eyes cluster along its major highways, its rail and underground stations, around the perimeter of the Central London congestion zone, the City of London’s ‘Ring of Steel’, the Docklands and the airports, and they spread out in a fine pattern wherever people transact business, cross each other’s paths and commit crimes. They are not uniformly intelligent, these eyes; some merely record what they see, others can read vehicle number plates, and some, the smartest of all, are said to recognise faces. Together they comprise the creature known as ‘Rainbow’,watched over by police Rainbow Coordinators in the borough commands.

  The team began contacting the coordinators, armed with numbers and descriptions of all the vehicles registered to the occupants of The Glebe.

  By Sunday evening Brock was forced to accept that they had found nothing.

  FOURTEEN

  Kerrie, with her fashionable shoes and hair pulled severely back, was a very efficient organiser, and when Kathy arrived at Cockpit Lane on Monday morning the first of her appointments was already waiting, sitting chatting to the women volunteers who always seemed to be present in Michael Grant’s office. Kerrie introduced Kathy to Mrs Parker and showed them to a quiet table at the back of the shop.

  ‘I remember when this was the pawnshop,’ the woman laughed.‘I had to use it once or twice,I’ve got to admit.’

  Middle-aged and smartly dressed, it didn’t look as if she had much need of pawnshops now. She must have caught Kathy looking at her large and expensive rings, because she fingered them and said, ‘I had cold feet about coming back to the old neighbourhood.You read these stories in the papers. But then I was curious, too. It’s years since I was here.’

  ‘Have you come far?’

  ‘Croydon. But I keep in touch with Michael, Christmas cards and that.Wonderful man.’

  ‘Well, I do appreciate you coming in.’

  ‘Oh, I was fascinated. Is it really Joseph you’ve found?’

  ‘Looks like it.’ Kathy showed her the three pictures.

  ‘That’s Joseph all right, and that’s Walter. But I don’t know who that is.’

  ‘How did you know them?’

  ‘We all used to go to Studio One, up on Maxfield Street. Oh, it was a terrible dive, a hellhole really.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘A dance and drinking club, a shebeen, down in the basement, always packed out on a Saturday night.We knew the DJs. And that music! The Pioneers, The Roots Radics, Rankin’ Dread-you remember “Hey Fatty Boom Boom”?’ She laughed. ‘No, course you don’t.Anyway,for a time there Joseph and me were,well,close.’

  ‘You went out with him?’

  ‘Yeah. I was really soft on him, but it was no use. All the girls went for Joseph, and he loved us all, young and old, black and white, but especially white, so I didn’t have much chance.’

  Kathy saw the wistful look in her eyes. ‘You still think of him, eh?’

  ‘Sometimes, I must admit.’

  ‘When did you go out?’

  ‘I was trying to remember that. He hadn’t been here long and he spoke with a really broad Jamaican accent. The weather was cool, not as cold as now, but I remember him complaining about how grey and cold it was.’

  ‘He came over towards the end of September.’

  ‘Yes, that would be right. I saw him around a few times, like in the market, then we got together one night at Studio One and bang, that was that. His mate Walter had a room in this squat and we hardly left it for a week. My mum and dad went spare. It was before Christmas, I think-yes, definitely before Christmas, because by then he’d moved on to other girls and I was sobbing into the mince pies.’

  ‘He was a bastard, was he?’

  ‘No! He was lovely, funny, sweet. He just couldn’t say no to girls. He loved it over here, said he was going to be rich, some hopes. There wasn’t a nasty bone in his body. Not like Walter. He could be very mean.’

  ‘Do you remember Walter’s surname?’

  ‘Yes, it came to me on the way over here. Isaacs, I think that was it,Walter Isaacs.’

  ‘Good. Did you see much of them after you broke up with Joseph?’

  ‘I stopped going to Studio One for a while after he dumped me, but it was hard not to catch sight of them, or hear from someone who’d seen him there with his latest flame.’

  ‘What about April of the next year, 1981, the time of the Brixton riots, do you remember that?’

  ‘Not in connection with Joseph.Was he involved in that?’

  ‘We think he was murdered that night, April the eleventh. He was seen at a pub in Angell Town, and said he was going to Brixton. He seemed to be running away from someone. Do you have any idea who that might have been?’

  ‘Not specifically. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d upset people. He would do things without thinking. Like I remember him telling me how he’d made the moves on this girl right after he arrived, and she was the girlfriend of one of the Spangler boys across the tracks. He was lucky to talk his way out of a knifing.’

  ‘Apart from girls, what else was he into?’

  Mrs Parker lowered her eyes, then nodded.‘Yes, they were into drugs. I don’t just mean ganja.When I was with him in Walter’s place I woke up one morning and the room was stinking of that horrible bitter smell of crack, the two of them smoking their first pipes before breakfast. It was Walter, I’m sure, got him into it. He was older and he’d been over here longer.’

  ‘And they dealt as well?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure they did. Joseph brought some cocaine with him when he came over, and Walter had some girls he called his “yard ants”, smuggling for him.’

  ‘Did they work with anyone else?’

  ‘There was a third guy they were friendly with, but he didn’t look like this picture here. Didn’t have a beard for a start.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Older than the other two, tougher, more serious. Made Joseph look like a little boy.’

  ‘How tall?’

  ‘Not quite as tall as Joseph; maybe six foot? Fit looking. He wore a black Kangol flat cap and plenty of gold cargo, oh and he had a gold tooth, too.’ She tapped one of her front teeth. ‘The three of them would greet each other that way, you know, like the ghetto kids, touching closed fists and saying “Hit me, star!” or some such.’

  ‘Did he have a name?’

  Mrs Parker pondered.‘Robert? Bobby? Robbie? Yes,that’s it, Robbie.’

  ‘Surname?’

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Did Joseph tell you anything else about himself that might help
us? Any plans he had, or people he knew?’

  The woman shrugged vaguely, and Kathy had the feeling that her store of memories-apart, perhaps, from some fondly remembered intimacies-was pretty much exhausted.

  ‘You mentioned the pawnbrokers that were here. I believe they were owned by a local family called Roach. Do you remember them at all?’

  She hesitated as if some faint memory stirred, but then shook her head.‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been very helpful, Mrs Parker. There is one more thing. I’d really appreciate it if you’d sit down with our computer artist to make a picture of this Robbie.Would you do that?’

  ‘Ooh, that sounds like fun, though I don’t know if I can do it after all this time.’

  Kathy got on the phone.When she’d made the arrangements she asked Mrs Parker one last question.‘Did they have guns,those boys?’

  The woman nodded sadly. ‘Oh yes. Look, when I think back it’s no wonder my parents were mad with worry about me. The things you do, eh, when you’re young and foolish? Joseph’s gun looked shiny and new. He was always stroking and cleaning it, like it was his pet. He even called it a name, Brown Bread. Is that stupid or what?’

  The next three women to see Kathy were all in their fifties and had some memory of Joseph. Two had worked in the market and could remember his good-natured cheek, and one had been a barmaid in the Ship and recalled Joseph drinking amicably with the Roach boys. The fourth visitor, also a woman, was older and had a far grimmer memory. Joseph had befriended her son, who used to walk through the market on his way home from school, and had given him his first taste of crack. Within six months of Joseph’s death the boy, too, was dead, thrown from the window of his home on the tenth floor of a council block by Yardies from whom he’d tried to steal drugs.

  None of the women were able to add anything concrete to Kathy’s search, and none remembered ‘Robbie’, although one thought that a girl called Rhonda may have gone out with someone of that name.

  The last person on the list was the only man and, according to Kerrie, the only white person, and he didn’t show up. Kerrie said he’d left a phone message that he couldn’t leave work at a building site about a mile away, where he was site manager, but that Kathy was welcome to call there for a quick chat. She thanked Kerrie and the other women and drove to the place, an extension to the rear of a supermarket. She parked nearby and made her way down a narrow back street, squeezing past two concrete trucks waiting outside the wire gates, where the site hut was pointed out to her. Inside she found the manager,Wayne Ferguson.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t get over,’ he said. ‘We decided to take a chance with the weather this morning and go ahead with the main concrete pour, and I had to be here. So, Michael said I might be able to help you.’ His attention shifted to the window, through which they could see men hosing concrete like porridge over a bed of steel mesh.

  ‘You knew Joseph, did you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Joseph Kidd, in 1981.’

  Ferguson looked blank and Kathy pushed the pictures in front of him, making him turn away from the window.

  ‘All the usual suspects, eh? No, don’t recall them.’

  ‘Well, I-’

  ‘I was on the bar at the Cat and Fiddle on the night of the riots. Part-time job.’

  ‘Ah. But you don’t remember seeing this one?’

  ‘No. It was packed out that night. The only ones I remembered-I told Michael-were the two Roach lads, the oldest one and one of the others.I knew them ’cause I’d seen all three of them come onto the site I was working on in my day job. I was an apprentice then. They were looking for somebody, and there was a bit of a barney with the boss, almost a fight. He told me afterwards who they were and to steer clear of them.When I saw those two come into the pub I thought there might be trouble.’

  ‘And was there?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. I lost sight of them after that. Don’t know what happened to them. Not a lot of use, is it? Sorry. I told Michael, but he said you might be interested anyway.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Thanks.’

  ‘Great feller, Michael.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘He used to be a union man, UCATT. That’s how he started to get noticed. He helped us sort out a few problems. His heart’s in the right place. There should be more like him in parliament.’

  Kathy thanked him and made her way back to her car,wondering how she was going to get the muck off her shoes. As she sat sideways in the driver’s seat, wiping her feet with tissues, she caught sight of a blue car sliding out of view at the end of the street.

  For the rest of that week, Kathy and three other detectives worked across the Borough of Lambeth, following up leads to people who might have been in the right place in 1981. Most were cooperative and interested, happy to nudge their memories back in their own ways. ‘Ricky Villa’s magic goal against Manchester City, remember that?’ ‘Sheena Easton, right? “My baby gets the morning train.” Loved that one.’ ‘I do remember hearing the news, that someone had shot the Pope.’ ‘Chariots of Fire, that was my favourite.’ But it was too long ago. If any of them had ever known anything useful, it had faded and gone.

  The other two teams were luckier. The search of old TV footage and newspaper archives had yielded two unpublished photos of the early stages of the fire at the Windsor Castle, before Brock had arrived. They clearly showed two white men in black jackets, frozen in the action of running towards a black man who was staring at the flicker of flames visible through the pub window. When enhanced, the faces made a convincing match with those of Mark and Ivor Roach, and Joseph Kidd.

  Bren and Tom’s team, meanwhile, going back through the Brown Bread shootings, had reinterviewed the Asian witness, Mr Singh, to the car theft outside his shop in 1986.

  ‘It was a beautiful car,’ he said, ‘a red Porsche 911, just like I used to dream about. A young blonde lady parked it right outside the shop. She was a looker, too, no mistake. She saw me standing in the shop doorway and gave me a lovely smile, then took off across the road to the hair salon over the way. Dad was in the back storeroom and he called out to me and I was about to go in when suddenly, quick as greased lightning, these two men appeared out of nowhere and went to the Porsche. One bent over the lock in the driver’s door and in two seconds he’d got it open. I was amazed, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. He got in, opened the passenger door, against the kerb, and the other man went to get in. I stepped forward and I said, quite politely,“Excuse me, sir. Is that your car?” The man was as close to me as you are, face plain as day, one foot still on the pavement. He looked at me for a moment, then at the shop behind me, then up and down the street, all very calm and deliberate, see? Then he took a gun out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at me, just like that . . .’ The man pointed his finger at Bren’s stomach. ‘I thought, I can’t believe this, it’s just like a film. Then he pressed the trigger. I didn’t feel the bullet go through me. I just passed out.’

  The man’s recollection was so fluent that Bren was sceptical. ‘You seem to have a very clear memory of this, Mr Singh. It happened a long time ago.’

  ‘Have you ever been shot, Inspector? It was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. I had to go over it again and again, for the police, for my friends, for the newspapers, and then, afterwards, in my head and in my dreams, again and again.’

  ‘And you helped the police make an image of the man.’ Bren showed him the drawing of a scowling face that could have been anyone.

  ‘Yes. The other one’s face was a blank, but this one was vivid in my mind-it still is.’

  ‘Still, nearly twenty years later?’

  ‘Oh yes.You see, I saw him again, about eight years ago.’

  ‘I don’t have a record of that.’

  ‘No.’ The man looked sheepish. ‘I never reported it. My dad decided he wanted to get himself a new Volvo, so I went with him around the showrooms.We’d just walked into this one when I saw h
im, sitting there at the manager’s desk in a smart suit and tie. It hit me like a blow. I managed to turn and run, and when I got outside I was sick, sick as a dog, in the gutter. My dad had to take me home. I couldn’t get out of bed for days. I couldn’t tell the coppers about it. This is the first time I’ve talked to anyone, apart from Mum and Dad.’

  ‘Where was this showroom?’

  ‘Eltham. Roach Motors.’

  Bren showed him a picture of Ricky Roach,son number three.

  ‘Oh my God. That’s him.’

  FIFTEEN

  Commander Sharpe was not comfortable. He twisted in his seat, twitched his narrow pointed nose, rubbed his long pianist’s fingers fretfully before he set Brock’s report back on the desk with care, as if it might draw blood.

  ‘You’re aware of the history of our dealings with Mr Roach, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Brock felt curiously free. The ship was now launched and others would want to have a hand in steering it. There was still much detective work to do, but others would have their say in that, too.

  ‘Looks fairly damning. Pretty obvious, I suppose, the Roaches. Cut-throat mob back then. Different story now, mind you. Penny bought her sports car at that showroom, dammit. Nearly had a fit when I saw the name on the invoice. Several of her smart friends buy their cars there, apparently. Action?’

  ‘We have no choice in the matter of Ricky Roach. A credible witness, a clear body of circumstantial evidence, a previous record.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘The same can be said of Mark and Ivor.We can place them in pursuit of Joseph Kidd on the night he was murdered. They have to be questioned.’

  ‘All a matter of identification, though, isn’t it? You say Mr Singh is credible?’

  ‘Credible but nervous. I’ve offered him protection, but he’s worried about his parents and his business. I’ve persuaded him that none of them will be safe until he helps us put Roach behind bars.’