Brock And Kolla - 09 - Spider Trap (14 page)

‘And we’ve got something for you, Bren.’ Brock told him about the betting slip and date.‘I’ll be releasing some of this to the press this afternoon. In the meantime, Kathy and I are going to start talking to people who knew Joseph.’

‘A photograph would be a help.’

‘And a surname.’

They walked back down Mafeking Road to the junction with Cockpit Lane. The Ship public house stood on the corner, as scruffy and unwelcoming as when Brock had gone there to meet Joseph twenty-four years before. They turned into Cockpit Lane, threading through the market crowd until they reached the pots and pans on the final stall.Winnie was there, George at her side. She saw them and made a face.

‘Oh no.What now.You want this boy again?’

‘Not this time,Winnie. It’s you we want to chat to. Nothing to worry about.’

‘I’ve heard dat before.You want a cup of tea? Come inside.’

As she led them through the shop door there was a loud clatter from the street behind them and Winnie yelled back over her shoulder,‘Clumsy boy!’She shook her head with disgust.‘He wears those thick gloves, so he drops things. I tell him he’s got to take the gloves off,but he complains,“Aw,Winnie,I’m so cold.I get frostbite.” He’s eighteen years old and he’s a baby, dat boy.’

They settled in the small kitchen at the rear. A shed had been built in the backyard right up against the window, and they could see racks and cardboard boxes piled inside.Winnie put the kettle on and they sat around the kitchen table.

‘You’ve heard that we’ve found some old human remains on the waste ground at the back here,beside the railway?’Brock asked.

‘The whole street’s talkin’about it.They say it’s a Yardie burial ground. Is dat fer true?’

‘We don’t know, Winnie, but you’ve been here a long time, and I wanted to tap your memory. Back to 1981, the time of the Brixton riots, remember that?’

Winnie nodded.‘I remember.’

‘I wanted to ask you about a nephew of yours—Joseph was his name. I used to see him in the Lane, all those years ago.’

‘Joseph?’ The old woman’s lined forehead wrinkled as she thought. ‘Yes, I remember Joseph. But . . .’ She looked horrified. ‘You don’t think dat’s him do you, lyin’ out there in the waste ground all that time?’

‘We’ve found a man who was tall, six foot two, and bowlegged from childhood rickets. He was about nineteen when he died, and he was black.’

Winnie put a hand to her mouth.‘Oh Lord above.’ She crossed herself quickly and felt in the pocket of her quilted coat for her rosary beads. ‘Was that 1981, when we met in dat pub in Angell Town?’

Brock nodded.‘You do remember. Did you ever hear of him again?’

‘No, I never did. I just assumed he’d gone back to the yard— to Jamaica—but I never knew for sure.’

‘The thing is,Winnie, there is a way we can be certain if it’s him. If you’re his aunt—his mother’s sister—and you allow us to do a small test . . .’ But Winnie was shaking her head.

‘No, I’m not his real auntie. Dat was just a figure of speech. I really don’t know who his baby mother was back there.’

‘Oh.Well, perhaps you could give us some details about him —his full name, his age, anything you know.’

‘But I don’t really know anything.When he arrived I gave him a room upstairs and some work on the stall, like George out dere. Just to get him started, you understand? I just always knew him as Joseph, dat’s all.’

‘The last time we saw him was the eleventh of April of that year.When did he arrive,exactly?’

She pondered. ‘It was before Christmas, I think.Yes, I’m sure he was here for Christmas . . . Unless I’m mixing him up with Bobby. He was next, I think. Oh dear, I’m not sure.’

‘So you think he was staying with you for four or five months? Something like that?’

‘Yes, I’d say so. Somethin’ like dat. I expect Father Maguire could tell you. He helped Joseph.’

‘Father Maguire?’

‘At St Barnabas, up the Lane, beyond the market. He’s been here nearly as long as me.’

She got up to make the tea, bringing the pot and cups and saucers to the table. ‘I’m afraid I can’t be very hospitable. I don’ have no cake. Maybe I can find some biscuits.’

‘Tea will be just fine,Winnie.What else can you tell us about Joseph?’Brock coaxed.‘What about his friends?’

‘Well, there was Paul, who sold shoes in the market. But he’s long gone. I’ve no idea where he is.’

‘You went to the Cat and Fiddle that night to give him money, do you remember? The message he asked you to pass on to me was that he was going to the Windsor Castle in Brixton to meet someone who could help him.His name was Walter.Did you know this Walter?’

Winnie seemed to draw her tough little body in upon itself, and not just from the effort of remembering, Kathy thought. She seemed troubled.

‘He was always gettin’ into hot water, dat Walter. He had a big mouth and never went to church. He came from a bad crowd in the Gardens.’

‘Covent Garden?’ Kathy asked, puzzled.

‘Tivoli Gardens, in Kingston. Dat’s where the Shower Posse hang out, you know? Walter and Joseph were both Garden boys.’

‘They were rudies, were they?’ Brock said. ‘With the Shower Posse? Is that why they had to leave Jamaica?’

‘Oh,dey weren’t serious gangstas,Mr Brock.Dey was what dey call “fryers”, at the bottom rank, but dey got in trouble with the police. When Joseph came here he tried to start a new life, but before too long Walter led him astray again. Dey called themselves the Tosh Posse, which was just stupid showing off to the girls at the club, and dey upset the Spangler boys across the railway line with their boasting about what big men dey’d been in the Gardens.’

‘Were they selling drugs?’

She flared.‘I wouldn’t have no drug dealers in my house! Joseph was a show-off and weak in the face of temptation, but he wasn’t really bad. Father Maguire had faith in him. But Walter . . .’

‘This Tosh Posse, who else was in it?’

‘I only remember one other boy with them. He was older than them, nice-looking boy. Don’t know the name.’

‘How old was Walter?’

‘He was a few years older than Joseph, I’d say. Dey made an odd pair, Joseph tall and so particular about his appearance, and Walter short and dirty.’

‘How short?’

‘Oh, shorter than her,’ she nodded at Kathy, ‘but not as short as me.’

‘Was Joseph left- or right-handed?’

‘How can I be expected—No, wait, he was right-handed. I remember watching him trying to write a Christmas card to someone back home. It was a struggle for him.’

‘And you say they upset people across the railway— Spanglers?’

‘Dat Shower and Spangler business was from the yard; it had no place here. But some of ’em brought it over with dem.’

‘Any names?’

Winnie shook her head.

‘When we met in that pub in Angell Town, you told me that Joseph had been frightened by two white men. They couldn’t be Spanglers, could they?’

‘Not if dey was white dey couldn’t.’

‘So who were they?’

Again,Winnie seemed to close in on herself.

‘You’d seen them before, hadn’t you? Come on,Winnie. Let’s have it.’

‘I wasn’t sure. At first I thought dey might be coppers, but then I thought dey might have been Mr Roach’s boys.’

‘Yes,’ Brock said quietly. He seemed to Kathy to relax, easing back in his chair as if finally satisfied.‘Did Joseph get on the wrong side of Mr Roach, do you know?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Dey seemed to get on just fine. Too fine, if you wan’ my opinion.’

‘You’ve been very helpful, and the tea was just what we needed.’ Brock got to his feet.‘Would you have a picture of Joseph or Walter?’

‘No, I don’t have no camera. I don’t know if Father Maguire might.’

‘We’ll ask him. If he doesn’t, I’d like you to help one of our computer people make a likeness of them and the third man. Would you do that for me?’

Winnie seemed quite taken with the idea as she bustled out with them to the street, where George was standing miserably stamping his feet.

ten

T
he sun had disappeared behind dark clouds and the threatened rain or snow seemed imminent as they made their way between the market stalls towards the church. There were few people around now, hoods and collars turned up against the sharp wind. The church was locked, and they knocked on the door of the presbytery next door. A housekeeper answered and told them that Father Maguire was at the hospital and would be back in an hour. Brock suggested they see if the Ship did lunches.

The pub had succumbed to TV, an absurdly large screen on one wall showing a game of American football. Otherwise it seemed little had changed. Lunch was limited to an assortment of greasy sausage rolls and meat pies in a hot cabinet. Brock ordered a couple, and a beer and a tonic water, and took them to Kathy, who’d found a small table as far as possible from the TV speakers. She thanked him for the tonic and unbuttoned her coat.

‘You need more than that,’ Brock said.

‘Had a big dinner last night.’

‘Ah yes, with Tom Reeves. So how is he these days?’

‘Fine.’She was going to leave it at that,then thought she should say more, for the purposes of barter. ‘He was called away over Christmas, so we’re just catching up again. Do you remember that other Branch bloke we worked with a couple of years back,Wayne O’Brien, who just disappeared one day? I thought the same had happened to Tom. They’re difficult people to keep track of.’

‘True enough. It’s the nature of the job. Not easy.’

‘He wants to transfer out. Anyway, he made a Jamaican dinner from stuff he bought here in the Lane—pot roast with Red Stripe beer. It was really good.You can get takeaway from the café, too.’ She described the other dishes.

‘I’ll have to try that. It’s ages since I tasted jerk.’

‘He said that’s next. Maybe we could do something together.’

Then,having prepared the ground,she said,‘How about you? Have you heard from Suzanne? I got a postcard from her from the Great Barrier Reef. Looked beautiful.’

He saw it coming, of course—but even so, the probe, gentle as it was, made him wince unexpectedly, like the slightest touch to an infected wound that doesn’t want to heal. The trouble was that he hadn’t been talking to anyone, so he hadn’t developed the protective form of words.And there was the other thing,too,which made it worse. In telling Kathy about 1981 he’d omitted the part about going home to the deserted house, but here he was back in Cockpit Lane again in much the same situation, twenty-four years later,locked into the same old patterns,as if nothing had progressed. He hadn’t got a postcard from the Great Barrier Reef, but he had received a Christmas card from Suzanne’s grandchildren in Hastings, back with their mother now, which had shaken him for a time.

‘No, no.We haven’t been in touch.’

‘It’s over then?’ It sounded too abrupt and she sensed Brock flinch, but she was suddenly irritated by this cocoon of silence on the subject of Suzanne; Bren whispering, his wife phoning up to casually inquire about the boss’s Christmas arrangements. She was also fairly certain that the old man wasn’t talking to anyone else.

‘I’m not sure, Kathy.’

‘I mean, I’d be very sorry because I like her so much and I think she’s great for you, but sometimes these things aren’t meant to be . . . as I’ve discovered on numerous occasions.’ She grinned and the sombre look on his face melted a little.

‘Several times I’ve got as far as the travel agent’s door,’ he confessed,‘but I never made it inside.’

‘Do you need a push? I’ll take care of everything if you want.’

‘Thanks. I know you would.We’ll see. Now . . .’ He addressed himself to the discouraging lump of pastry on his plate.‘. . . what have we got here?’

‘Are you going to tell me about the Roaches? You reacted to what Winnie said as if you’d been expecting it all along.’

He shot her a sideways glance as he chewed.‘You’re annoyed I haven’t been open with you?’

‘Well . . . I’ve been getting the feeling that you’ve had these ideas from the start that you’re not telling us about.’

‘Mm, rubbish. This pie, I mean. No, you’re right. From the beginning I’ve felt as if I were reliving the past with this one,which certainly suggested several possibilities, but I’ve been reluctant to . . .’ the image that came to his mind was of stepping back into a tangled thicket,‘. . .to jump to conclusions until I had a date for the murder, the race of the victims, and that comment from Winnie about who the two white men might have been.

‘So,Spider Roach.Spider was one of the most vicious and most successful crooks in South London. He started out as a very smart operator in long firm fraud—setting up wholesale companies to buy goods on credit, then selling them fast and going bust or disappearing without paying their debts.He found he could double his profits by combining long firm fraud with arson and insurance scams, burning down the companies’ premises and claiming for the goods, which had already been sold. Then, when he began to find it hard to get credit for his bogus companies, he discovered violence. He realised that he could persuade genuine companies, small family businesses usually, to act as the front for the fraud if only he could terrify their owners enough. The businesses were destroyed in the process, of course, and the owners usually ruined, but with sufficient violence—the threat of a brutal attack on the wife, perhaps, or on an elderly parent—they would keep quiet. He was a ruthless predator, and before long his violence escalated into murder. Spider was believed to be behind a number of particularly ugly unsolved killings in the seventies, but he was never arrested on any serious charge until 1980, when the supergrass Maxie Piggot named him for two murders. But by then juries and courts were getting wary of the evidence of supergrasses, and defence lawyers had had plenty of practice at discrediting them. The case against Spider collapsed.’