Spider Trap bak-9

by Barry Maitiland

  How had they found him? He tried to think of the possibilities, but could only come up with Wayne Ferguson. No one else knew both that he’d be here and how to find the place.Was Ferguson the fourth man? And willingly or not? He crouched and moved carefully forward into sight of the cottage, and was alarmed to see no lights at the windows. Perhaps they’d closed the shutters, or put out the lamps. He kept absolutely still, taking shallow breaths, and finally heard the crump of a boot on snow.To the left of the cottage, he thought,and stared into the darkness until his eyes seemed to see movement everywhere. He blinked, turned away then back, and made out the shape of a dark figure against the stone corner of the building.

  He badly wanted to get up to the cottage to see what was going on, and tried to picture its layout. The back door was a possibility, but then an image came into his mind of Michael sliding a bolt after they’d brought in the last armful of wood for the fire. The direct route to the cottage, by way of the drive curving around on the right, provided no cover, and he doubted that he could reach it without being seen or heard by the man on the outside.He needed an edge, some help. He assumed they wouldn’t have been stupid enough to leave any weapons in the car, but it was worth a look.

  He noticed a hazel tree forming part of the hedge alongside the car. Its shoots grew long and straight from the stumps of earlier prunings, and he selected one and very slowly and carefully bent it until it split off with barely a whisper.At the driver’s door he fed the thin branch through the window and manoeuvred its end towards the light switch.He knew he had to get it just right-too big a push and the switch would go to the on position and light up the car even with the door closed. He was sweating despite the cold, and when the trembling sapling stick failed for the third time to connect with its target he wondered whether this was going to be possible. Then there was a click. He froze, but nothing happened. He eased the door open. No light came on and he slid inside.

  He reached to the back and his hand connected with the dark rectangle he’d spotted on the seat, and he held the wallet up to his face. Careless, he thought, then opened it and stiffened as he recognised the familiar outline of the Metropolitan Police card and, even in the dim light reflected from the snow, Kathy’s picture.

  He thought he understood now. Spider Roach had lost a son, and now he was going to wipe the slate clean. He only hoped that Kathy and Ferguson had made the journey alive.

  Brock felt beneath the seats and in the side pockets, but came up with nothing. He reached for the glove compartment handle and opened it, then shut it sharply again as its light came on, but not before he’d seen a small box inside with the symbol of a bullet printed on it. He thought, then eased his coat off, draped it over the dash and glove box and opened the door, feeling inside. No gun, only books and the heavy little box, which he pulled out and pocketed.

  He hauled his coat back on and tried his mobile again-still no signal. This was a time for cool, rational thought, but he didn’t feel cool or rational. Perhaps the sensible thing would be to run back down the lane and rouse Mrs Hughes, and use her phone to call for help. But where would help come from-Chester? Ruthin? It might take an hour, more. And what might happen in the meantime? No, their help was here. He was it. He got out of the car and recovered the plastic bag, pulling out the can of paraffin and the matches. He took them back to the car and began sprinkling the fluid over the beautiful leather seats, the dashboard, the thick carpets, ending with a trickle over the door ledge. He lit a match in his cupped hands and touched it to the sill, and a blue flame caught, then rippled brightly across the floor. Brock turned and started plunging through the thick snow to the left, partly screened from the cottage by the mounds of snow-covered bushes that surrounded a wide circular patch of clear flat snow, like a lawn, lying directly before the front door. His heart was pounding from the exertion as he strained to hear the reaction.

  It didn’t take long. There was a shout-‘Hey, who’s there?’- and then a muffled exclamation and a hammering at the front door.Another yell:‘Mark,the car,the fucking car’s on fire!’Brock dropped to his knees behind a snow-mound.

  The front door was thrown open, and he saw that the lights inside the cottage had been doused, although there was still the flicker of firelight. Mark said something in an angry rush and started running down the drive to the right, towards the car, gun in hand, leaving Ricky hovering around the open front door. Brock waited a moment, then rose to his feet and stepped though a patch of bracken with a loud crunch. Ricky saw him, and stepped forward, peering at his shape in the gloom.

  ‘You-stay where you are!’ Ricky was hurrying forward, brandishing his pistol at Brock who stood quite still. About a third of the way across the clear space between them there was a dull splintering sound as Ricky’s boot crunched down into the snow.

  His next step produced a louder crack, and then he abruptly dropped, disappearing up to his chest through the snow. He gave a loud shriek as freezing water hit his skin. Ricky had discovered the pond.

  Brock turned and plunged on around the perimeter of the pond towards the open front door while the Roach brothers bellowed at each other behind him.He reached it and was inside as the first shot banged into the stone wall beside his shoulder. He slammed the heavy door shut and a second shot thumped into it, but didn’t penetrate through. He slid the bolts home on the door and turned,gasping for breath,to scan the room.He saw four figures huddled on the floor to the left, a fifth rising out of a chair by the fire to the right. He recognised Spider, angular and gaunt, waving a fist at him and spluttering,‘You! . . .You!’, but apparently unarmed.

  He ran across to the other group,against the wall in the shadow of the sideboard, and felt a jolt of relief to see movement and hear muffled sounds. He recognised Kathy’s blonde hair and as he bent closer saw a patch of brown adhesive bandage across her mouth.He stripped it off and she gulped air.

  ‘Spider . . .’ she gasped, and he turned to see the old man at the door, struggling to release the bolts. He ran back and tussled with him, dragging him bodily back to the other group.

  Ricky had had trouble finding anything to tie up their prisoners with, and had made do with a length of electrical cable and some bandages and tape from a first-aid kit. Kathy and Michael were already untangling themselves and helping Jennifer. Brock was feeling for a pulse at Wayne Ferguson’s throat. He shook his head.‘Dead.’

  ‘That’s what you’ll be, Brock!’ Spider rasped, chest heaving.

  Brock got up from Wayne’s body and went to search Spider’s pockets. He found nothing of use. ‘Kathy, see if you can tie him up before he does any more mischief.’ He started searching through the drawers of the sideboard, pulling out a carving set,

  some glasses, a wooden breadboard.

  ‘What else have we got in here?’ he urged Michael Grant.

  ‘There are more knives in the kitchen, and some tools. Not much else. The axe is in the shed. There’s no gun.’

  ‘All I have is what I found in their car.’ Brock pulled out the box of ammunition.

  Kathy had taken Spider to a chair and tied his hands behind him, then gone to one of the shuttered windows.‘Ricky’s on his hands and knees. Mark’s with him.What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Soaking wet and frozen,’ Brock replied from the kitchen, where he and Michael were frantically searching cupboards. ‘He went through the ice on the pond, like I almost did this afternoon. It won’t be long before they come for us.’

  He and Michael returned from the kitchen, carrying a box of tools.

  ‘They won’t save you,’ Spider said.

  Kathy slammed the shutter closed. ‘Mark and Ricky are coming.’

  There was a hammering at the door, a shout to open up.

  ‘Better do as they say,’ Spider went on. ‘It’s you we came for, Brock.You can save your friends. Do what the boys tell you.’

  ‘The way you saved Wayne Ferguson?’

  ‘You’ll burn in hell for what you did to my Ivor,’ Spider
spat at him furiously. ‘I should have done for you years ago, when I chased that wife of yours away.’

  Brock broke off his search of the toolbox and turned to stare at the old man.

  ‘That’s right,’Spider sneered at him,‘chased her out of town I did. Scared the living daylights out of her.’ He put on a pathetic whimper,‘ “Don’t touch me.You mustn’t hurt my baby.”Did you know she was pregnant, Brock? Eh? Eh?’

  Michael Grant broke in, ‘Perhaps I can negotiate with them. After all, we’ve got a stalemate here.’

  Spider cackled.‘Not for long.You can’t keep my boys out of here. Open the door now and beg for mercy. I’ll put in a good word for you . . . For some of you.’

  Brock turned to Michael. ‘I think right now we need less of the MP and more of the boy from the Dungle.’

  Michael stared at him, then nodded. ‘You’re right.’ His eyes dropped to the open toolbox.‘I remember a story my brother told me when I was a kid, about the boy who didn’t have a gun.’

  There was renewed hammering on the door and angry shouts.

  Kathy, peering through the crack in the window shutter to the left,said,‘I can see headlights.Someone else is coming.’

  Brock hurried over to Kathy’s side and peered out. ‘You’re right. There’s another vehicle out there, turning into the drive.’

  ‘It’ll be the farmer up the hill,’ Michael said. He had pulled a cordless drill out of the toolbox and was groping through a case of drill bits, his fingers fumbling in his haste.

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Almost seventy, about five foot six.’

  ‘Will he have a shotgun?’

  ‘They’ve just been to Liverpool, shopping,’ Michael said.

  Brock groaned.‘My God, it’ll be a massacre.’

  He heard the whine of the electric motor and turned to see Michael drilling a hole in the wooden breadboard, cursing under his breath about the battery not being charged. Brock hadn’t the faintest idea what he was trying to do, and the image was so bizarre that he called out,‘Michael,for God’s sake,this is no time for woodwork.’

  Grant glanced at him with a tight smile, withdrew the drill, and reached for one of the bullets from the box. He lifted the board onto its edge and slid the bullet into the nine-millimetre

  hole he’d drilled.

  ‘Ah.’ Brock looked doubtful.‘Was it a true story?’

  Michael met his eye and said,‘I have no idea.’

  Just then there was an explosion of shattering glass and splintering timber. They must have found tools, Brock thought- a tyre lever, the axe, a length of wood-whatever it was, they were using it to demolish the other window. Its wooden shutters were shivering and bulging as they worked outside. Brock and Kathy grabbed knives and a monkey wrench and stood each side of it, while Michael called his wife over to hold the breadboard upright on the table while he selected a hammer and a screwdriver from the toolbox.

  The shutters burst open with a crash, and the figure of Mark Roach reared up into the void where the window had been. His feet were on the sill,one hand groping the side frame and the other waving his silver pistol. Behind him his brother was pushing him forward, screaming furiously. Brock and Kathy had been forced back by the swinging shutters, and Mark’s blazing eyes focused on Michael Grant and his wife directly in front of him. He gave a roar and lifted his gun. Brock watched helplessly as Michael held the point of the screwdriver against the back of the bullet in the board and smacked it with the hammer,like the firing pin of a gun.There was a loud explosion, but not from Mark Roach’s gun, which wavered for moment, then dropped as Mark toppled forward into the room. Michael gave a loud whoop, scrambled over him and launched himself through the window at Ricky,the hammer still in his hand.

  Brock threw himself at the front door, heaved back the bolts, and ran outside.Michael and Ricky were struggling on the ground, and Brock jumped on Roach, pinning down his right arm while Michael held his left. Ricky squirmed under them, twisting his head from side to side. Then he suddenly stopped struggling. ‘Teddy,’ he said.

  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 i
t? 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?