Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

‘We’ve been out together,Kathy,’Tom said.‘Tell Kathy where we’ve been, Amy.’

‘The London Dungeon,’ the girl said, still inspecting Kathy carefully.

‘Oh yes? Any good?’

‘Yes.’ Amy turned away as they moved off, wipers beating against the storm.‘It was all right.’

‘It was horrible,’ Tom said.‘I felt sick.’

Amy said flatly,‘He didn’t like the blood when they cut off the queen’s head.’

‘Too right. Not a good evening to be out on your site, Kathy.’

‘No, they were expecting this. It’ll be flooded.’

‘Is that the murder site?’ Amy asked.‘Can we go there?’

‘Not tonight, sweetheart,’ Tom said.

He dropped them at the door of the pizza restaurant while he tried to find a parking space, and Kathy and Amy hurried inside together. The place was bright, warm and busy, and they found a table and took off their coats. Looking around Kathy saw young women in studded belts, stretch jeans and pointy black boots, looking like refugees from the eighties. On the wall were framed posters for The Cure and Depeche Mode. It seemed that Brock wasn’t the only one having an eighties revival.

She noticed that Amy had been clutching a fat paperback under her raincoat.

‘You’re a reader, like your dad.’

‘Yes,’ Amy said, settling herself.‘We’re very alike.’ She glanced around at the other tables. ‘I shouldn’t really be here. I’m on the Atkins diet.’

Kathy looked at her in surprise.‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’She screwed her nose up at the menu.‘The most dangerous food additive on the planet is sugar, in all its forms.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes. How many bodies have you found so far?’

‘Three.’

‘Yuk, doughnuts, twenty-seven carbs.Were they all together?’

‘No, they were spaced apart.’

The precocious manner sat uncomfortably on the little girl and Kathy suspected that it was her form of protest at having to share her father with her.

‘Can you draw a plan?’

Kathy smiled at the girl’s serious expression, as if they were discussing a professional problem of great mutual concern. She took a pen from her bag and drew a diagram on a paper napkin with three crosses. ‘We call them Alpha, Bravo and Charlie.’

‘Hm . . . Doesn’t that mean they were shot separately? If they were shot at the same time you’d dig one big hole, not three little ones, wouldn’t you?’

‘Sounds reasonable.’

‘How did the murderers get onto the land?’

‘We think from here, a derelict warehouse.’

‘So this would have been the first grave . . .’ Amy pointed to Bravo,‘. . . followed by Alpha, then Charlie.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘Bravo is the closest to where they got in, right in the middle of the site, halfway to the railway. The next time they went past that spot to here, and the third time further again, to here. I bet you I’m right, fifty p.’

‘Okay, you’re on.You’re pretty smart. Do you want a Coke?’

‘I’m going to be a forensic pathologist. Forty-one carbs, no thanks. I’ll have a Diet Pepsi, zero carbs.’

‘You should meet our forensic anthropologist, Dr Prior.You’d like her. She worked out just about everything we know from their bones.’

‘Cool. If you’re going to have pizza, I’d advise the thin ’n crispy, and definitely not the Hawaiian.’

‘All right.’

Tom arrived, shaking off rainwater.‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine. Amy and I have just made our first bet. And here’s the fiver I owe you.’

They ordered, three thin ’n crispies, and chatted happily for an hour until Tom said he had to get Amy back to her mother’s. As she sat in the car, watching Tom and his daughter running to the front door beneath the umbrella, Kathy felt as if she’d been given another little glimpse into Tom’s life, and wondered if it had been as accidental as he’d made out. Afterwards they went for a drink, and he told her a little more about his ex-wife, divorced now for six years.

‘Amy seems very bright,’ Kathy said.

‘She’s like a sponge, soaks it all up.’

‘Isn’t she a bit young to be on a diet?’

He laughed.‘Is that what she told you?’

‘Yes, she’s very serious about it, telling me exactly how many carbs there were in everything on the menu.’

‘She was having you on, Kathy. That’s her mother, she’s obsessed by all that stuff. This afternoon Amy had, let’s see, one chocolate milkshake, two hot dogs, one sticky doughnut, two Cokes and a bowl of chips. All the stuff her mum tells her she can’t have.’

‘I see.’

‘What’s your bet about?’

‘She told me the order in which the bodies were buried, for fifty pence.’

‘Aha.’

Kathy saw the grin on Tom’s face.‘What’s the joke?’

‘Nothing. She’s smart all right.’

They both felt like an early night and Tom drove her home. They reached the forecourt of her building, the rain still pounding, and ran with the umbrella to the front door. Beneath its black canopy he kissed her cheek, then mouth.

‘You didn’t mind too much, me taking you out with Amy,

did you?’ ‘No, of course not. I was really pleased to meet her. It was fun.’ ‘Good. Oh, look, I forgot about that thing I’ve got for you.’

He patted his pocket.‘We really need some light.’ ‘Want to come up to the flat?’ ‘Maybe I should.’ As they went up in the lift Kathy realised that this was the first

time she’d brought a man up to her flat since Leon had lived there with her. She felt a little itch of disquiet, sharing her lift, her front door, her living room, with a man again.

‘Take your jacket off,’she said.‘It’s wet.Want a glass of wine?’ ‘Thanks. So are my trousers.’ ‘Feel free,’ she laughed, but he kept them on. In fact, he

seemed to sense her reserve about having him there, and sat quietly on the sofa.

She got a bottle of verdelho from the fridge and poured two glasses, giving him one. In return he handed her the envelope he’d taken from his jacket pocket. Inside she found a single sheet of paper with a short paragraph of print. She sipped her wine and read.

The Browning 9mm Hi-Power automatic pistol remains the weapon of choice among Yardie gang members. These guns are often difficult to trace as they are sold, exchanged and passed around between different users. On the other hand, tracking the use of the same weapon in various locations can be employed to reveal previously unknown connections between different groups (see ATF case study US/1/84). Sometimes individual guns acquire a reputation and a nickname, often playing on the Browning label,as in ‘Brown Maggie’,‘Big Brownie’and ‘Brown Bread’. The last, never traced, is believed to have been used in at least six separate shootings across South London in the 1980s.

She stared at it, surprised that he’d remembered. ‘Hell. Why didn’t we find this?’

‘It’s one of a series of Special Branch internal intelligence memos. I tracked it down this morning. I couldn’t find any other reference to the six shootings, but you’re bound to have that gun somewhere on your files, probably from the days before records were computerised.’

‘Yes, thank you, Tom. That’s terrific. Brock’ll be delighted.’ ‘As long as you are.’He hesitated,then said,‘If he needs more,

just let me know. I can maybe do some digging.’ ‘Okay. He’s interested in your having been to Jamaica.’ ‘Oh yes? Well, this should earn you a few Brownie points.’ She laughed.‘That’s right,and I got a few this morning when

I worked out the date of the shooting.’ ‘Yes, tell me about that.’ So she told him about her day, and then he told her about his,