Barry Maitiland - Spider Trap

‘It is very good,’ Brock conceded, handing her his empty plate with only a token show of resistance.

‘You haven’t been eatin’ well lately, have you? I can see you’re lookin’ peaky. Another cuppa to go with it?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Anyway, what chance did a poor boy have of growing up straight in such a place? Some ran away to Bull Bay to become Rastas, reading the Scriptures and praising Jah and Selassie with the older dreads. Some were rescued by the likes of Father Guzowski or Monsignor Albert. Some joined the police force or the army. Some escaped overseas. But most joined the gangs and posses and got themselves a gun.’

‘Which did Billy do?’

‘Oh, he was one of Father Guzowski’s boys, no mistake about that. That’s what made it so unfair, what happened.’

There had been a spate of particularly violent murders in Jones Town during that August, Abigail said, and on this particular night the police had finally been prodded into action, sending patrols out looking for the perpetrators. They were nervous, the police, grabbing anyone they didn’t like the look of until they had a full quota to take back to the station.Billy was unlucky to be in the area that hot night, coming back from a visit to a relative in Kingston Public Hospital. He was arrested and taken in for questioning. It was chaotic at the police station, with young men being bundled into crowded cells to await their turn. Billy got talking to another prisoner, called Earl, a bit older than himself, who seemed to know the ropes and took Billy under his wing.

The police officers who questioned Billy seemed uninterested in his story of visiting the hospital, and kept trying to get him to admit that he had been in Jones Town the previous night,which he had not.Their interrogation techniques were rough,and he was returned to his cell with two thick ears and a bloody nose.There Earl went over with him what had happened and explained where he’d gonewrong,arguingwithhisquestioners.Whentheytookhim away for a second time he followed Earl’s advice and came back without much further damage. Earl, on the other hand, returned from his session badly beaten,with a missing tooth and what later turned out to be two cracked ribs. He explained that someone in their cell had recognised him as a Shower Posse soldier and therefore a JLP supporter and had told the police, who were in the PNP camp.

It was late in the night when Billy and Earl were finally released. By way of a final insult, the cops drove the two of them and a third prisoner into the heart of a Spangler-controlled area and kicked them out, confident that they would be identified as the enemy and treated accordingly. They were saved by an old woman, who, in an extraordinary act of charity, realised their danger and took them into her home.

The next morning they set off together for the relative safety of Tivoli Gardens, where Earl lived, but on the way a car overtook them and stopped in the street ahead. Two men got out holding guns and began firing at them. Their companion was hit immediately in the head, clearly a fatal wound, while Billy and Earl jumped over a fence and ran, pursued by the gunmen. Trapped in a small yard, they grabbed whatever lay to hand and waited for the men to pass by. They heard one run past, but then the second stopped and came into their hiding place. Earl hit him with the stick he’d picked up, but it was rotten and snapped across the man’s shoulder without doing any damage. The man turned to shoot and Billy, behind him, hit him on the head with the brick he’d found. The man fell, and Earl picked up his gun and fired it at the second gunman,who had heard the commotion.He ran back to his car and fled. The man on the ground was dead. When Earl emptied his wallet he found a police badge.

They knew that they wouldn’t be safe now in Tivoli Gardens, and Billy persuaded Earl to come with him to Riverton City. They caught a bus and went straight to Father Guzowski and told him their story. He hid them for several weeks until he was able to put them both on a plane to London.

‘That’s the truth,’ she said with a sigh.

Brock didn’t doubt it. Like everyone else, he had been tempted by the notion that Michael Grant’s fall had been well deserved, that someone who had been just too good to be true had been exposed as a huge fraud. All of the newspapers had accepted this line, whether guardedly or with vicious relish, but it had never squared with Brock’s own assessment of the man,despite the fact that Grant had lied to him about not knowing Joseph Kidd in Jamaica.

‘I know that’s how it happened because his grandmother got her friend to write to tell me the whole story, and to ask me to look out for him if he got to London. Then Father Maguire told me he was coming and I said we’d take him in, despite . . . well, despite experience.’

Brock gave her a quizzical smile over the rim of his teacup.

‘We’d already had dealings with the Forrest family comin’ over here that weren’t so happy, but I thought I knew my little Billy, and I wasn’t wrong.’

‘There are other Forrests here?’

‘Just the one, Billy’s older brother, or half-brother you would say-same mother, but who knows who their fathers were? Sailors passing through. He was quite a bit older than Billy, closer to my age, and he came over a couple of years after we did.’

Abigail had become reluctant and subdued in telling this part of her story, and Brock said,‘Trouble, was he?’

She nodded.‘Good-looking boy,and a great one for the ladies. He even . . . well, I was an attractive woman in those days. Mr Lavender had to tell him to get out. But it wasn’t just the flirting. He brought his bad ways over with him, the drugs, and got in with a bad crowd. It was on account of him that Mr Lavender got hurt. When he fell out with him, my husband threatened to go to the police about his drug dealing,and he told his friends,who came and beat Mr Lavender up bad.’

‘The Roaches?’

‘Mr Lavender never said a word, not even to me, but I’d seen Billy’s brother hanging around with them. I didn’t want to see Billy-Michael, as he now was-goin’ the same way. It tells you what a good man my husband was that he agreed to take him in, God bless his soul.’

‘What happened to this brother?’

‘I don’t know. He moved on, thank goodness, and Michael fulfilled all my hopes for him.’

‘What was the brother’s name?’

‘Robbie, Robbie Forrest. He was a rascal, that one.’ She shook her head, but the memory stirred something warmer than disapproval, and she smiled to herself. ‘He had one gold tooth.’ She tapped one of her front teeth.‘Lost it in a fight back home, he said, and forced the man who’d knocked it out to give him a new one, in gold. The man with the golden kiss, he used to say. I sometimes wonder what ever became of him.’

‘So where is Michael now, Abigail?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘I can understand your reluctance, but I may be able to help him.’

‘But it’s true, I don’t know.’ She hesitated. ‘He did phone me on Monday evening. He said that things were impossible and he couldn’t go home. He said that he and Jennifer were goin’ away for a while, till things settled down. He didn’t say where . . .’

Brock nodded patiently.‘But?’

‘Well, they’ve been away before, when Michael said he couldn’t stand London any more and wanted to “go to ground”- that’s what he called it. A cottage that belongs to a friend of his. I don’t know if that’s where he’s gone, but it’s possible.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Somewhere in the country.’

‘Didn’t he mention where it was, or send you a postcard?’

‘No.’ She saw the frustration on Brock’s face and added,‘The friend who owned it was someone he knew from his days in the