Barry Maitiland: Spider Trap

‘So I’m told.’

‘It makes no sense,’ Savage went on.‘What would be in it for the Jamaicans? They’ve got their own network of mules bringing the cocaine in, their own crack factories to process it, and their own dealers. That’s how it works.’

‘I know of the Roach family,’ Brock said. ‘They were very active around here years ago, but I haven’t heard anything recently. You, Bob?’

McCulloch shook his head.

‘All right,’ Brock went on, ‘let’s deal with immediate things. What were those girls doing around here for the past two or three weeks? They must have left tracks.’

‘The JOS club?’

‘Yes. And if they were there on two consecutive Saturdays then tonight is the best time to talk to its patrons.’

‘And that’s in Cove Street too?’ Savage said.

McCulloch nodded.‘Just up the street from the laundrette.’

‘Why don’t Bob and I go and take a look?’ Savage suggested. ‘You can give me a tour of the neighbourhood, Bob.’

Brock nodded and watched them go, rubbing the side of his beard thoughtfully,and said to Kathy,‘Too many speculations,too few facts.’ Then, as if in response, his mobile rang. It was Dr Mehta, the forensic pathologist. Brock listened, then got to his feet.‘Come on, Sundeep wants to see us.’

Dr Mehta was standing beside the stainless-steel table on which his assistant was working on Dee-Ann’s corpse, swiftly sewing the flaps of skin together again. Behind him, Dana lay on another table.

‘You don’t look happy, Sundeep,’ Brock said.

‘I’ll tell you, Brock, I have a bad feeling about this one.’ He looked down at the girl’s face as the technician eased it back into position over her skull.‘There are bruises all over her,and look at her knees . . .’

They looked, the skin grazed and torn.

‘I noticed that the knees of their jeans were caked with dust,’ Kathy said.

‘That’s right. It looks as if they were made to crawl around.’

Kathy had never seen Dr Mehta so agitated about one of his ‘clients’, as he sometimes called them. She had never previously seen him show any distress at all.

‘I noticed traces of adhesive around their mouths, and two balled-up pieces of tape were found near them,the same tape as was used to tie their wrists, so I assume they were gagged at first, then at some point the gags were ripped off.’He went over to a side bench.

‘Adhering to one of the pieces of tape I found this . . .’

He held up a test tube in which lay a single coiled black hair.

‘It’s not theirs. I also found traces of semen on the tape. I’ve taken swabs of both of their mouths and faces, but I think only one of them was assaulted. This one . . .’ He pointed at Dee-Ann. ‘He forced her to perform oral sex on him before he killed her, Brock. That’s what I’m concluding.’

There was silence for a moment,then Brock said,‘Make sure, Sundeep. I want his DNA. As soon as you can.’

‘Is there someone we should be looking to match it to?’

‘Possibly.We should have his profile on record. I’ll get it sent to you.’

‘Oh,’Mehta called after them as they made to leave.‘I’m told you’re interested in this.’ He pointed to another table on which lay an assortment of grubby bones.

‘The schoolboy’s find?’

‘That’s it. The jaw belongs with the skull, all right.’

‘Can you tell us anything?’

‘Adult victim, single shot to the head, probably nine millimetre too, like the girls, but long, long ago. Lots of tests to do, but I’d guess it’s been there at least ten years. They’re finding bits all the time. Maybe tell you more on Monday.’

‘Many thanks.’

They returned to Lambeth police station to find Savage and McCulloch sticking photographs on the wall. Others had been pinning up maps and aerial photographs of the area around Cockpit Lane and Cove Street.When Savage spoke he seemed enthusiastic.

‘The tyre yard looks abandoned-’, he pointed to photos of an archway formed from old truck tyres and a faded sign, PART WORN TYRES, ‘but the building behind has had a lot of recent work: razor ribbon along the eaves . . . security cameras . . . heavy steel doors.Whatever they’re doing in there is obviously worth a heap of protection. This is the laundrette, a unit in a row of shops with flats above. And this is the house, two streets away, where Vexx lives with his mother.’

McCulloch pointed to a photo of Vexx himself. ‘A mean-looking bastard, six-two, eighteen stone, a serious bodybuilder with a taste for violence.’

The picture reminded Kathy of the thick brown arm at the window of the blue Peugeot she’d seen cruising past Winnie Wellington’s stall.

‘What I’m thinking,’ Savage came in,‘is that we could use an information-gathering exercise at the JOS club, as Brock suggested, as a cover to put people in position for a raid on Vexx’s properties in the early hours tonight.’

There was a surprised silence, then several people began speaking at once. The difficulties of mounting an effective operation at such short notice bothered some, especially Savage’s own Trident team, who were accustomed to working with detailed intelligence and painstaking planning.

‘Will we get a warrant?’ one asked, and Savage replied grimly, ‘Leave that to me.’

‘We need to place Vexx in the vicinity of the murders on that night,’ someone else suggested.‘We need to find witnesses.’

‘And by the time we’ve done that he’ll know we’re onto him,’ Savage countered.‘We’ve got to move fast, hit hard.’

Brock spoke. ‘There is another possibility,’ he said, and told them what the pathologist had discovered. ‘Dr Mehta should be able to tell us if we have a match by Monday,’ Brock said. ‘We should wait till we have that before we move on Vexx.’

‘You heard Michael Grant, Brock,’ Savage snapped back. ‘People want action and Saturday night is the best time. As you said yourself, that’s when the girls visited the JOS.’

He read the doubt on Brock’s face and added, ‘If you prefer, we can mount this as a separate Trident operation.’

Kathy caught a small smile on McCulloch’s mouth and remembered his comment when she first met him, about politics.

Brock said firmly, ‘No, we won’t split our forces. If we do it, we do it together. Let’s take a closer look.’

They gathered round and began to see how it might be done, and gradually it did begin to seem not only possible but even necessary, to break the silence surrounding Vexx’s activities and the deaths of the two girls. Then McCulloch took a call from one of his detectives. There were no CCTV cameras in Cockpit Lane itself, but a traffic camera on the main road two hundred yards away had recorded a Peugeot registered to Vexx at twelve forty-eight a.m. on Friday morning.

‘Gotcha,’ said Savage.

Once the decision was taken, things happened quickly and comparatively smoothly. More people were drafted in, the team broken down into task groups, detailed maps and photos assembled and observers sent out to watch and report on the various locations. By evening, enough had been achieved for most people to be sent home for a few hours’ break. Kathy caught the tube to Finchley Central and walked back through the cold streets to her flat, where she ran a bath and defrosted a lasagne from the freezer. Later, she looked out from her twelfth-floor window at the headlights on the streets below, people heading for a Saturday night out, and remembered Tom Reeves. She didn’t call, but watched TV for a while, then pulled on her coat, feeling the knot of anticipation in her stomach.

She joined the others arriving at the station just before midnight, greeting each other with croaky murmurs and wintry coughs.After she’d changed into overalls and boots and a protective vest, she took her place in the queue to be issued with her Glock pistol.With mugs of tea and chocolate bars they assembled for their final briefing from Brock and Savage, both of them precise, confident and apparently relaxed. There had been no sign of activity at the tyre yard or repair shop,the laundrette had now closed for the night,and Vexx’s mother was said to have watched TV alone in the living room of her house until ten, when she’d gone to bed. Vexx had been seen at the JOS club, where he usually spent his Saturday nights, but had just been reported as having left and gone home, unaccompanied.