Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

He hurried on past kids smashing shop windows. A white woman with long fair hair was wielding a broom at the window of an off-licence, sending glass shards flying. Outside a jeweller’s shop, necklaces and watches were scattered across the pavement among the glass.A large crowd was milling outside the tube station.People were wide-eyed with excitement, some frightened, some laughing, exchanging stories.A line of uniforms was holding them back from entering Atlantic Road, where he wanted to go. He could see a police car down there in flames and the stench of burning petrol and rubber hung in the air. A fire engine stood by on this side of the police line, radio crackling, the crew waiting with arms folded. Familiar shop signs-Colliers, Boots, WH Smith-seemed oddly out of place, as if they’d been transposed to another place and time, St Petersburg in 1917 perhaps.

Brock decided to move on and try to approach the pub from another direction. He ran past the town hall and turned into a residential side street. Ahead of him he saw a group of people clustered at a front gate. Several black youths with bricks in their hands had cornered an astonished white man, while his terrified wife and two small children looked on from a car parked at the kerb. Brock moved to help but several other black men appeared and pulled their friends away, leaving the man unhurt. Brock could hear distant shouts ahead and the incomprehensible braying of a megaphone. The sky was darker here, twilight compounded by a pall of smoke, lit from below by a flickering orange glow.

He turned a corner and stumbled into a squad of police. They were sitting on the kerb and against a wall, their shields and visored helmets on the ground beside them. One looked up at him and he recognised a young PC from his own station, dabbing at blood on his forehead.

‘Hello, Stan,’ he said.‘You all right?’

The constable didn’t seem to recognise him. ‘Got me with a fucking brick, didn’t they? Bastards. They’re chucking fucking petrol bombs at us now. Can you believe that? Molotov cocktails in the streets of London.’

He moved on, sensing the heart of the storm ahead from the noises of battle, the rhythmic beating of batons against shields, the crashes of destruction, angry cries. Then at last he emerged into Railton Road. The street was littered with upturned and burning vehicles, broken bricks and glass. A fire engine stood abandoned, black smoke pouring from its cabin. Brock found himself behind a double police line facing a chanting crowd. A flaring petrol bomb arced through the smoke and smashed directly onto an upturned shield, spraying fire over several cops. There was a whoop from the crowd as the police line broke,a shower of bricks,and then the mob surged forward into the flailing batons.

Brock ran across to the far side of the street and kept going through the crowd, barging his way down a side street and into Mayall Road. There he stopped, transfixed by the sight. Ahead of him the Windsor Castle was in flames. He could hear the crash of exploding spirit bottles, and felt the billow of scorching heat as the ground-floor windows blew out. He leaned back against the brick wall, catching his breath as he watched the silhouettes of dancing figures against the blaze.

‘The Brixton riots,’ Kathy said.‘I’d forgotten.’

‘You’d be too young to remember.’ Brock heaved himself to his feet and got them both another coffee from the pot he kept brewing.

‘And you didn’t find Joseph?’

‘No. I never heard of him again. The following days and weeks were chaotic. I filed a report but didn’t have a chance to follow up. The next time I saw Paul and Winnie at the markets I asked them if they knew what had happened to him, and they hadn’t heard from him either. They guessed he’d gone back home to Jamaica. I thought that seemed likely.’

‘And now you think we’ve found him.’

Brock nodded. ‘The second body, Bravo, six foot two, age nineteen and bow-legged. Never collected on the race that Celia’s Dream was winning for him at exactly the time that the Windsor Castle was burning to the ground.’

‘Did you suspect this from the very beginning?’

‘It was a possibility.’

‘But I don’t understand the secrecy.Why couldn’t I tell anyone about Celia’s Dream?’

‘It gets more complicated, Kathy. Until I know exactly where we stand, I don’t want any more information leaking out than I can help.’

She’d encountered this secretiveness in him often enough before. It was a deeply ingrained instinct, formed by years of stalking dangerous people while working in an institution of ambitious gossips. And there was always a good reason for it.

‘You think Spider Roach killed them,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I couldn’t say that. But he’s an obvious candidate. We should go and talk to Winnie Wellington again. She was his aunt, and she was the last person to see Joseph that we know of.’

As she drove them across Westminster Bridge, the sweep of the river sparkling in the crisp morning light, Kathy said, ‘Winnie spoke of two white men following him.’

‘Yes, although when Joseph first called me I assumed he was talking about being in trouble with some other Jamaicans,Yardies. You know about the Yardies?’

‘I’m learning. Last night Tom Reeves told me something about them-he’s been to Jamaica with Special Branch, did you know?’

‘Really? No I didn’t.When was that?’

‘I’m not sure. He made a bet with me that if the three victims were black, then they were murdered after October 1980.’

‘Smart lad.What else did he tell you?’

‘About Jamaican food, mainly. And drink.’

‘Aha.’ Brock nodded sagely, as if that explained many things.

Kathy drove first to the warehouse in Mafeking Road, where they went inside to check on progress. Bren was there.

‘Weather’s holding up, and we’ve got something interesting, chief. Remains of a bullet.’

‘Where did they find it?’

‘That’s the interesting part.’ Bren led them over to the gridded site plan, now covered with numbered pins and scribbled annotations in a dozen different hands. ‘C6.’ He pointed to an empty grid square. ‘We’ve just started excavating it. The bullet was on its own, embedded in the ground about six inches down. It’s not in good shape. Probably won’t help us match the gun. But it confirms what we assumed from the spent cases, that the victims were shot here on the site, not somewhere else and brought here for burial. This one presumably exited from either Alpha or Charlie and ended up a good ten or fifteen yards away.’

‘And we’ve got something for you, Bren.’ Brock told him about the betting slip and date.‘I’ll be releasing some of this to the press this afternoon. In the meantime, Kathy and I are going to start talking to people who knew Joseph.’

‘A photograph would be a help.’

‘And a surname.’

They walked back down Mafeking Road to the junction with Cockpit Lane. The Ship public house stood on the corner, as scruffy and unwelcoming as when Brock had gone there to meet Joseph twenty-four years before. They turned into Cockpit Lane, threading through the market crowd until they reached the pots and pans on the final stall.Winnie was there, George at her side. She saw them and made a face.

‘Oh no.What now.You want this boy again?’

‘Not this time,Winnie. It’s you we want to chat to. Nothing to worry about.’

‘I’ve heard dat before.You want a cup of tea? Come inside.’

As she led them through the shop door there was a loud clatter from the street behind them and Winnie yelled back over her shoulder,‘Clumsy boy!’She shook her head with disgust.‘He wears those thick gloves, so he drops things. I tell him he’s got to take the gloves off,but he complains,“Aw,Winnie,I’m so cold.I get frostbite.” He’s eighteen years old and he’s a baby, dat boy.’