‘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.’
Brock pushed his plate away with a grimace of distaste and took a quick pull of his beer. ‘Cockpit Lane was the heart of Spider’s web. He and his family lived just behind the Lane. The shop next door to us here was a pawnshop he owned.What’s now the cash and carry next to it was his funeral parlour.’
‘Funerals? Adonia and her father?’
‘That’s right. He owned the premises and the Despinides operated the business. What better way to get rid of unwanted bodies? We suspected that’s what they were doing,but we couldn’t catch them. After two unsuccessful exhumations the magistrates became reluctant to go on giving us permission to dig up the Despinides’ customers.’
Kathy thought of Adonia, in her cashmere and gold jewellery. ‘My God.’
‘Anyway,Spider flourished.I should say the Spider clan,because he had three sons who all followed him into the business. He got on well with the West Indians coming into the neighbourhood,and his long firm frauds were aimed at them, offloading the kind of things they wanted and would buy up quickly-cheap booze, bedding, thermal underwear, confectionery, toys, you name it.
‘When the Jamaican bad boys started arriving in ’80 and ’81, with their cocaine and their crack and their fancy guns,some of the established London gangs got a bit shirty, but not Spider. He had discovered drugs years before when he’d pressed a chemist into one of his scams, and he’d developed a local clientele in a small way, but now he saw a huge new opportunity. The drug gangs in Jamaica were making the island a staging post for Colombian cocaine on its way north, and Spider saw the chance to tap into that golden stream. He welcomed the former Garden boys and Spanglers and all the rest, and they became his partners.’
Brock stared morosely at the slimy sausage roll lying untouched on his plate. ‘I’m still hungry. I missed my dinner last night, and breakfast this morning.’ He picked it up and bit it.
Kathy watched, feeling queasy, as if Tom’s rum punch might still lurch up in her throat. She wondered whether she should try to pacify it with a hair of the dog.‘So you were involved in trying to catch Roach?’
‘Actually it’s not as bad as it looks.’ Brock took another bite. ‘Yes, very much so. This was my patch.We knew each other well. I’d bump into him and his sons in the market, in court, in here. He always had a leery smile for me. Sometimes I even suspected he felt a little sorry for me, getting nowhere. And I knew his victims, or the people they left behind, every one. Spider Roach was my big failure,Kathy.We all have them.He was mine.’
Kathy did feel sick. She got to her feet and said,‘Can I get you another beer?’
‘Shouldn’t really. Oh, what the hell.’
He handed her his empty glass and she went to the bar and ordered a rum and Coke for herself. When she returned he glanced at it and said, ‘Switched to Coke now? Not much nutrition in that either.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised. So, are you ready to share your theory?’
He sipped, wiped his beard and nodded. ‘Whatever Joseph planned to tell me when he first asked to see me, he couldn’t have realised it implicated Spider. If he had, he’d never have suggested meeting here, right on Spider’s doorstep. But then he must have realised. He was no longer safe in the Lane. He headed into the heart of Brixton to be among black folk, as Winnie told me. But Spider’s boys tracked him down.’
Kathy thought. ‘If they were Spider’s boys. Winnie’s first thought was that they were cops. Is that possible?’
‘I’ve wondered about that too. It was the time of the riots, maybe a time of settling old scores . . . But no. I’ve thought back over the people I knew then, and I’m sure there was nobody . . .’
‘Was Bob McCulloch here then?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘And Spider’s still alive?’
‘I believe so.He’d be in his late-seventies now.The last time our paths crossed was over ten years ago. I was investigating a murder in Epping. The victim turned out to be a drug dealer and the Drugs Desk got involved. Then the trail turned up a drug-smuggling route and Customs and Excise got in on the act, followed by the Fraud Squad and Special Branch. Before long we realised that Spider Roach was at the centre of it all, and a joint operation was mounted.It was a fiasco-too many cooks,all trying to outdo each other. The whole thing was so badly bungled that it led to a major review of joint operations. Several senior officers took early retirement. And once again Spider’s teflon magic had worked. By the end he was better off than ever-nobody wanted to know about him.’
‘I see. This is why you’ve been so cautious?’
Brock nodded.‘If we pursue him now we’ve got to be very sure of our ground,and we’ve got to keep it very quiet until we’re ready. In the meantime we’ll continue checking every detail of what Dana and Dee-Ann did when they came south of the river and who they met. I’m meeting DS McCulloch later this afternoon to work out how his team will help.’
He checked his watch.‘Come on, time we met the priest.’
Father Maguire offered them coffee in front of a gas fire in the sitting room of the presbytery.
‘The warmest room in the house,’ he said.‘It’s far too large this place,impossible to heat,but there you are.I bumped into Winnie on the way back just now, and she told me something of what you’re after.’
A vigorous elderly Irishman with rosy cheeks and given to explosive gestures with his hands to punctuate his words, he wasn’t much taller than Winnie. Kathy could picture the two of them together, a formidable pair.
‘Those poor souls. So you’re still trying to identify them?’