Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

He caught sight of Kathy and clapped the reporter on the shoulder and swung over to her.‘Hi! DS Kolla,right?’

She shook his hand, unable to resist the dazzle of his smile. It wasn’t just the mouth; his whole face seemed animated by it, and as they spoke he focused on her as if nothing else in the world interested him. A politician’s trick perhaps, she thought, but he did it brilliantly.

‘Come through and meet Kerrie, my office manager.’ They manoeuvred around the stepladder and approached a young black woman sitting behind a desk, arguing with someone on the other end of the phone, smacking the file in front of her to emphasise her point. She put the phone down and nodded at Grant.

‘He’ll see you at noon tomorrow. I’ll line up the media.’

‘Well done, Kerrie! Didn’t think you’d do it. This is DS Kolla from Scotland Yard.’

‘Kathy.’

‘Hello.Yes, we’ve got one or two leads for you.’ She handed Grant a sheet of paper.‘I’d better get on with organising things for tomorrow, Michael.’

‘You go ahead. I’ll take care of Kathy.’ He waved her through to a seat in a quieter area at the back of the shop and poured them both cups of coffee from a percolator.

‘It may not look like it, Kathy, but this is a war room. We’re involved in a life and death struggle, literally.’ He tapped the slogan on his chest. ‘This isn’t idle rhetoric. We have a three-pronged youth crisis here-unemployment, drugs and crime. My job is to motivate my community to action, to break the vicious circle. We’re on the same side, Kathy, and we’ll do anything we can to help you take the drug kings, the crime bosses, out of the picture.’

‘Right, I appreciate that, sir.’

‘Michael, please.’ He glanced at the sheet of paper.‘These are people we’ve found who can remember Joseph. They’ve all expressed a willingness to help. To save you having to traipse all over the district, one of the girls on the front desk can set up times when they can come in here to talk with you, if that suits. I think they’d feel more comfortable here than at the police station.’

Kathy scanned the list, half a dozen names and addresses. ‘That’s great.You’re doing my job for me.’

‘It’s a start.’

‘We’re making up posters of the three victims on the railway land. This is what we’ve got so far.’ Kathy handed him photographs of Dr Prior’s reconstructions.‘Joseph Kidd and the one we believe was called Walter.’

Grant gasped as he took in the lifelike images.‘How on earth did you get these?’

Kathy explained.‘Do you recognise them?’

‘Yes . . .Well, Joseph, certainly. It’s very close. The other one looks familiar, but I’m not sure.’

Kathy handed him the third image, based on Winnie’s sketchy memory of the other member of the Tosh Posse.‘This is the one we have the least information about-no name and no skull to make a reconstruction from.’

Grant stared for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. This means nothing to me. But once you have the posters we can put them in the front window here, and I’m sure we can persuade shopkeepers in the area to do the same.’

‘You’re being very helpful, Michael. Thank you.’

They arranged for Grant’s office to set up interviews on the following Monday, and Kathy left. Adam was waiting outside.

The Subaru drew up a few minutes later and Tom got out and spoke to Kathy and Adam while Amy waited in the car, watching. Kathy led the boy over to introduce him.

‘Adam, this is Inspector Reeves’s daughter Amy, who wants to be a forensic pathologist. Amy, this is Adam, who is helping us with our inquiries.’ She paused while Amy’s face froze at the form of words.‘He’s coming with us.’

‘Coming with us?’ she whispered.‘In our car?’

‘Yes, that’s all right, isn’t it?’ Then she added casually, ‘Adam was the one who found the skeletons.’

‘Oh! It was you? You got the electric shock? Everyone’s been talking about you at school.’

Adam ducked his head, embarrassed and pleased. They all got into the car, Adam in the back with Amy, and drove off.

Dr Prior was an excellent guide, explaining everything clearly and treating their questions seriously. The youngsters were captivated by the microscopes, the chemicals and the bones, but the high point was the computer imaging of Alpha and Bravo. The precise profiles of their skulls had been scanned, and then data for average Negroid soft tissue thicknesses all over the head had been applied to flesh them out. The resulting images could be rotated and viewed from any angle and with different hair and beard styles. The result for Bravo was startlingly similar to the photograph of Joseph that Father Maguire had provided, while the other was a reasonable match to the representation of Walter that Winnie had arrived at with the computer artist.

While the other three played with the computer, experimenting with dreadlocks, glasses and various Rasta beards, the anthropologist had a quiet word with Kathy.

‘How’s the investigation going? Any suspects?’

‘Nothing definite, but we are looking at some possible white suspects.’

‘What did I tell you? A race crime.’

‘But we’re not clear about motive. It could simply have been a dispute over drugs or punishing an informer.’

Dr Prior shook her head. ‘Look.’ She drew Kathy over to Bravo’s skull, mounted on a stand on the bench. Her finger traced around the bullet hole in the upper forehead.‘This is a close-range shot.’ She pointed to diagrams and hard copies of computer images on the wall, tracing the probable angle of the bullet into the skull.

‘Get down on your knees,’ Dr Prior said.

‘What?’

‘Go on, I want to show you how it was.’

Kathy’s smile faded as she saw how serious the other woman was. She knelt.

‘You’re Joseph Kidd-Bravo, right? Imagine it. Apart from soft tissue damage, we’ve just broken your right leg in the middle of the shin and crushed two of your fingers.We hit you on the left side of your head with maybe a hammer or a pickaxe handle, so hard that your skull is cracked.You’ve been unconscious for a time and you’re in deep shock. Now you find yourself on wasteland in the dark, your arms and legs are trussed with wire, you’re on your knees, there’s blood in your eyes and mouth. Imagine it.’

Dr Prior reached for a test tube from a rack on the bench, and pressed the end hard against Kathy’s forehead.‘This is a Browning automatic and now you’re going to die. We’re not doing this to make an example of you, because nobody will ever learn what happened to you. This isn’t business.We’re doing this because we want to. Understand? We’ve gone to a lot of trouble, hurting you, bringing you here, and now you will disappear. Die, you black bastard.’

There was a deathly hush in the laboratory. Kathy blinked and for a moment she saw herself, not as Joseph, but as Dee-Ann kneeling on the hard concrete floor of the garage. Then the test tube was withdrawn and she realised the other three children were staring at her.

‘Right,’she said,getting to her feet.‘Very convincing.’

At the end of the tour they thanked Dr Prior and returned Adam to his home behind Cockpit Lane. All the way back he and Amy were immersed in a hushed conversation, punctuated by little whistles and gasps.When the car pulled in to the kerb,Adam and Kathy got out. He thanked her awkwardly. ‘That was . . . really cool,’ he said, then, ‘I’m not the only one who’s been watching you, d’you know that?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘There’s a guy who’s been spying on you from behind the fences on the other side of the railway. I’ve seen him from the school window on the top floor.’