Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

‘Did he have a name?’

Mrs Parker pondered.‘Robert? Bobby? Robbie? Yes,that’s it, Robbie.’

‘Surname?’

‘No, sorry.’

‘Did Joseph tell you anything else about himself that might help us? Any plans he had, or people he knew?’

The woman shrugged vaguely, and Kathy had the feeling that her store of memories-apart, perhaps, from some fondly remembered intimacies-was pretty much exhausted.

‘You mentioned the pawnbrokers that were here. I believe they were owned by a local family called Roach. Do you remember them at all?’

She hesitated as if some faint memory stirred, but then shook her head.‘Sorry, no.’

‘Well, you’ve been very helpful, Mrs Parker. There is one more thing. I’d really appreciate it if you’d sit down with our computer artist to make a picture of this Robbie.Would you do that?’

‘Ooh, that sounds like fun, though I don’t know if I can do it after all this time.’

Kathy got on the phone.When she’d made the arrangements she asked Mrs Parker one last question.‘Did they have guns,those boys?’

The woman nodded sadly. ‘Oh yes. Look, when I think back it’s no wonder my parents were mad with worry about me. The things you do, eh, when you’re young and foolish? Joseph’s gun looked shiny and new. He was always stroking and cleaning it, like it was his pet. He even called it a name, Brown Bread. Is that stupid or what?’

The next three women to see Kathy were all in their fifties and had some memory of Joseph. Two had worked in the market and could remember his good-natured cheek, and one had been a barmaid in the Ship and recalled Joseph drinking amicably with the Roach boys. The fourth visitor, also a woman, was older and had a far grimmer memory. Joseph had befriended her son, who used to walk through the market on his way home from school, and had given him his first taste of crack. Within six months of Joseph’s death the boy, too, was dead, thrown from the window of his home on the tenth floor of a council block by Yardies from whom he’d tried to steal drugs.

None of the women were able to add anything concrete to Kathy’s search, and none remembered ‘Robbie’, although one thought that a girl called Rhonda may have gone out with someone of that name.

The last person on the list was the only man and, according to Kerrie, the only white person, and he didn’t show up. Kerrie said he’d left a phone message that he couldn’t leave work at a building site about a mile away, where he was site manager, but that Kathy was welcome to call there for a quick chat. She thanked Kerrie and the other women and drove to the place, an extension to the rear of a supermarket. She parked nearby and made her way down a narrow back street, squeezing past two concrete trucks waiting outside the wire gates, where the site hut was pointed out to her. Inside she found the manager,Wayne Ferguson.

‘Sorry I couldn’t get over,’ he said. ‘We decided to take a chance with the weather this morning and go ahead with the main concrete pour, and I had to be here. So, Michael said I might be able to help you.’ His attention shifted to the window, through which they could see men hosing concrete like porridge over a bed of steel mesh.

‘You knew Joseph, did you?’

‘Who?’

‘Joseph Kidd, in 1981.’

Ferguson looked blank and Kathy pushed the pictures in front of him, making him turn away from the window.

‘All the usual suspects, eh? No, don’t recall them.’

‘Well, I-’

‘I was on the bar at the Cat and Fiddle on the night of the riots. Part-time job.’

‘Ah. But you don’t remember seeing this one?’

‘No. It was packed out that night. The only ones I remembered-I told Michael-were the two Roach lads, the oldest one and one of the others.I knew them ’cause I’d seen all three of them come onto the site I was working on in my day job. I was an apprentice then. They were looking for somebody, and there was a bit of a barney with the boss, almost a fight. He told me afterwards who they were and to steer clear of them.When I saw those two come into the pub I thought there might be trouble.’

‘And was there?’

‘Not as far as I know. I lost sight of them after that. Don’t know what happened to them. Not a lot of use, is it? Sorry. I told Michael, but he said you might be interested anyway.’

‘Yes, I am. Thanks.’

‘Great feller, Michael.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘He used to be a union man, UCATT. That’s how he started to get noticed. He helped us sort out a few problems. His heart’s in the right place. There should be more like him in parliament.’

Kathy thanked him and made her way back to her car,wondering how she was going to get the muck off her shoes. As she sat sideways in the driver’s seat, wiping her feet with tissues, she caught sight of a blue car sliding out of view at the end of the street.

For the rest of that week, Kathy and three other detectives worked across the Borough of Lambeth, following up leads to people who might have been in the right place in 1981. Most were cooperative and interested, happy to nudge their memories back in their own ways. ‘Ricky Villa’s magic goal against Manchester City, remember that?’ ‘Sheena Easton, right? “My baby gets the morning train.” Loved that one.’ ‘I do remember hearing the news, that someone had shot the Pope.’ ‘ Chariots of Fire , that was my favourite.’ But it was too long ago. If any of them had ever known anything useful, it had faded and gone.

The other two teams were luckier. The search of old TV footage and newspaper archives had yielded two unpublished photos of the early stages of the fire at the Windsor Castle, before Brock had arrived. They clearly showed two white men in black jackets, frozen in the action of running towards a black man who was staring at the flicker of flames visible through the pub window. When enhanced, the faces made a convincing match with those of Mark and Ivor Roach, and Joseph Kidd.

Bren and Tom’s team, meanwhile, going back through the Brown Bread shootings, had reinterviewed the Asian witness, Mr Singh, to the car theft outside his shop in 1986.

‘It was a beautiful car,’ he said, ‘a red Porsche 911, just like I used to dream about. A young blonde lady parked it right outside the shop. She was a looker, too, no mistake. She saw me standing in the shop doorway and gave me a lovely smile, then took off across the road to the hair salon over the way. Dad was in the back storeroom and he called out to me and I was about to go in when suddenly, quick as greased lightning, these two men appeared out of nowhere and went to the Porsche. One bent over the lock in the driver’s door and in two seconds he’d got it open. I was amazed, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. He got in, opened the passenger door, against the kerb, and the other man went to get in. I stepped forward and I said, quite politely,“Excuse me, sir. Is that your car?” The man was as close to me as you are, face plain as day, one foot still on the pavement. He looked at me for a moment, then at the shop behind me, then up and down the street, all very calm and deliberate, see? Then he took a gun out of his jacket pocket and pointed it at me, just like that . . .’ The man pointed his finger at Bren’s stomach. ‘I thought, I can’t believe this, it’s just like a film. Then he pressed the trigger. I didn’t feel the bullet go through me. I just passed out.’

The man’s recollection was so fluent that Bren was sceptical. ‘You seem to have a very clear memory of this, Mr Singh. It happened a long time ago.’

‘Have you ever been shot, Inspector? It was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. I had to go over it again and again, for the police, for my friends, for the newspapers, and then, afterwards, in my head and in my dreams, again and again.’