Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

She met Nicole for a quick lunch as arranged, but she too had been unable to find any references to Brown Bread. It seemed it existed only as an old piece of intelligence buried in the internal files of Special Branch. After some probing interrogation and advice from her friend, Kathy paid for the lunch and returned to the office, where she rang Tom’s mobile.

‘Hi, can you talk?’ she asked.

‘They’re halfway through a hugely expensive lunch at the Connaught, no doubt at British taxpayers’ expense.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘Not me. I’m sitting outside drinking a cup of coffee. How are you?’

‘Okay. What were you doing on the site at Mafeking Road yesterday?’

‘Looking for you,of course.Had to make do with Bren Gurney.’

‘And he told you about his theory of how the murders were committed, which you then told Amy.’

‘Ah. It’s a fair cop. Are you mad at us?’

‘Not really. I should have worked it out.’

‘Amy was nervous about meeting you, but she told me later that she liked you.’

‘Well, it looks like I owe her fifty pence. Now I wonder if I can ask a favour?’

‘Sure, go ahead.’

She told him about her difficulty in tracing the Brown Bread shootings, and he said he’d make some calls. He got back to her half an hour later with one name, Johnny Mulroy, a thief and police informant who had been murdered by Brown Bread in 1985. Tom said it would involve a lot more research to track down the other five shootings, but for Kathy that one was enough. She knew of the Johnny Mulroy case, because it was one of the two shootings that ballistics had tied to the cartridges on the railway land.

‘That’s great, Tom. Thank you. I owe you.’

‘How about a drink after work tonight?’ He mentioned a bar and she agreed, then went to see Brock and told him what she had.

He was very interested in Brown Bread now.‘We need those other five cases, Kathy. If we can tie the Roaches to any one of them, then we can tie them to our three corpses.’

‘It’ll mean a trawl through Special Branch files.’

He nodded.‘I’ll speak to them.’

She was the first to arrive at the bar that evening. She sat watching the door, and felt a warm buzz of pleasure when he appeared. Nicole was right, she decided, he was exactly what she needed.

He kissed her cheek, his face cool from the night air.‘Hi,’ he said, then stood back a moment and stared at her.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’he said.‘I came through the door there and saw the most beautiful girl in London sitting at the bar, and she was waiting for me.’

She laughed, pleased by his flattery. ‘I’m a cop, Tom, highly trained to detect bullshit.’

‘But I mean it.’ He ordered a drink and sat beside her. ‘How was your day?’

‘Good. Brock was very impressed with what you gave me. He said he’d speak to your people about searching out the other cases.’

‘Yes, he did it. I thought I was in trouble when my boss called me in and asked me how come I’d been giving information to Brock. But he seemed happy enough when I explained. He’s keen on interdepartmental cooperation. I think it’s in our mission statement somewhere. Anyway, it seems the colonel and his wife are heading back to Africa and no longer need me, thank goodness, so the boss offered my services to Brock to follow up on the Brown Bread cases. Good, eh? I’ll get to work with you.’

‘Oh . . . yes. That’s great, Tom.’

‘Yeah. I’m to report to Queen Anne’s Gate tomorrow at eight-thirty to brief Brock on what’s involved.’ He took a deep pull at his lager. ‘I must admit, it feels good to get involved with some real detective work again.’

The next morning, Kathy met Tom in the front lobby of the Queen Anne’s Gate offices and took him up through the labyrinth of corridors and staircases that had been knocked together from the original houses that made up the terrace.

When they reached the top floor she introduced him to Brock’s secretary Dot, and said, ‘Look in on me when you’re finished. I’ll be in the case room on the ground floor, down the corridor from the entrance.’

‘I think I’ll need Ariadne’s thread to find my way out again.’

‘Dot’ll show you the way, or she can give me a ring to come and get you.’

Kathy returned to the case room, where she settled at a computer and got back to trying to find references to a possible missing person called Walter.Around her other team members dribbled in, starting the day with cups of coffee and yawning accounts of what they’d done the previous night.

Tom appeared after half an hour, looking bouncy and cheerful. He said hello to Bren and the others, then Kathy walked with him to the front door.‘How did it go?’

‘Good,especially after I recognised the picture of Spider Roach on his wall.You didn’t mention that you were interested in him.’

‘No, I didn’t. How do you know him?’

‘We did a little bit of work on him, some time ago.We helped put a couple of his business buddies away. You should have mentioned it.’

‘I didn’t know we were working together then.’

‘He’s asked me to report back later this afternoon with whatever I’ve found,so maybe I’ll see you then.’He waved goodbye,and Kathy returned to her search.

It was frustrating work, and there were continual interruptions, so that she felt she’d achieved nothing by the time Tom returned. He, on the other hand, seemed to have done well. He was carrying a box of files and papers, and she showed him to a meeting room for his briefing, where they were joined by Brock and Bren.

He had been able to identify all six of the shootings referred to in the Special Branch memo. They comprised four murders, one attempted murder and one drive-by shooting. They included the two shootings that ballistics had linked to the railway land cartridges, and they had all occurred between 1981 and 1987. Tom had marked the pattern of their locations across a map of South London, like a cluster of hits on a target.

‘Interesting,’ Brock said, unfolding his half-lens glasses and peering at the map intently, as if he might decipher some hidden message. ‘You’ve pretty well exactly defined Spider Roach’s territory during the 1980s. It’s like the map of some lethal dog pissing on lampposts.’ He stuck a finger at Cockpit Lane at the centre.‘And that was his kennel.’

He sat back down with a look of satisfaction.

Tom went on to summarise what he knew about the victims. Apart from their own three corpses, there had been two West Indian, one South Asian and three white victims, all male. Two of them had criminal records-Johnny Mulroy, and a well-known Jamaican disc jockey whose charges of drug trafficking were pending at the time of his death. Three other men were local businessmen and the sixth appeared to be a chance victim caught up in a car theft.

‘Indiscriminate and non-racial,’ Brock said.‘That’s Spider.’

Kathy noticed Tom give a grudging nod of agreement, his theory of feuding Yardie gangsters apparently demolished.

‘What now?’ Brock asked.

‘We should reopen the files on the six cases. There may be witness statements describing the gunmen, maybe facial composites, fingerprints even.’

‘But all of these cases were unsolved, yes? And the matching gun was never found?’

‘That’s right. In most of the cases the ballistic evidence isn’t very helpful, which is why you didn’t get a match straight away. The name “Brown Bread” came from undercover sources. Apparently it was widely believed among young Jamaicans at the time that the disc jockey had been shot by a gun of that name, and that the gun had been used in a number of other shootings, which were narrowed down to those six.’