Barry Maitland - Spider Trap

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PRAISE FOR BARRY MAITLANDS BROCK AND KOLLA SERIES

There is no doubt about it, if you are a serious lover of crime fiction, ensure Maitlands Brock and Kolla series takes pride of place in your collection. Weekend Australian

Barry Maitland is one of Australias finest crime writers. The Sunday Tasmanian

Comparable to the psychological crime novelists, such as Ruth Rendell... tight plots, great dialogue, very atmospheric. Sydney Morning Herald

Maitland is a consummate plotter, steadily complicating an already complex narrative while artfully managing the relationships of his characters. The Age

Perfect for a night at home severing red herrings from clues, sorting outright lies from half-truths and separating suspicious felons from felonious suspects. Herald Sun

A leading practitioner of the detective writers craft. Canberra Times

Maitland does a masterly job keeping so many balls in the air while sustaining an atmosphere of genuine intrigue, suspense and, ultimately, dread. He is right up there with Ruth Rendell. Australian Book Review

Forget the stamps, start collecting Maitlands now. Morning Star

Maitland gets better and better, and Brock and Kolla are an impressive team who deserve to become household names. Publishing News

Maitland stacks his characters in interesting piles, and lets his mystery burn busily and bright. Courier-Mail

Also by Barry Maitland

The Marx Sisters The Malcontenta All My Enemies The Chalon Heads Silvermeadow Babel The Verge Practice No Trace

BARRY

MAITLAND

spider trap

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

First published in 2006

Copyright Barry Maitland 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia

Phone:	(61 2) 8425 0100
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Maitland, Barry. Spider trap.

ISBN 978 1 74114 816 9.

ISBN 1 74114 816 2.

1. Brock, David (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Kolla, Kathy (Fictitious character)Fiction. 3. Murder Fiction. I. Title.

823.914

Set in 12/16 pt Bembo by Asset Typesetting Pty Ltd Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Good stories need good sources. For inspiration, information and wise counsel I am indebted to many, including Pauline Edwards and her moving memoir of growing up in Jamaica, Trench Town , Dai Havard MP, Dr Tim Lyons, Andrew Harrison, Scott Farrow and the crew at Southwark OCU, Lyn and Kirsten Tranter, Annette Barlow, Christa Munns and Ali Lavau, and especially my wife Margaret.

one

S now began to fall over the city late on Thursday night, in mean little flakes at first, but then in plump silent gobbets. By dawn, when the security guard reached the school at the end of Cockpit Lane, the whole of London lay under a muffling blanket of white. As he checked the gates and fences he noticed what looked like a fresh trail leading through the snow beside the empty garage building next door, as if something had been dragged from its rear door. He was very much inclined to ignore it, but the garage was technically part of the school premises, and there had been a spate of fires recently. Investigating, he found the door slightly ajar. Inside, his flashlight picked out two figures curled up together on the bare concrete floor. He took them for children and might have said they were asleep, except that it was far too cold to be lying like that without blankets. They didnt respond to his challenge, and he noticed a spatter of dark stains all around them on the floor. When he moved closer he made out plastic tape binding their wrists, and then the shocking wounds in the backs of their heads.

The murders in Cockpit Lane might have passed without much public notice except that the victims were two young girls, only sixteen years old, both shot through the head. They had also died in the constituency of Michael Grant, Member of Parliament for Lambeth North and a vigorous campaigner against crime in his inner South London community. The youngest black member of the House of Commons, Grant was a charismatic speaker whose compelling voice and handsome face were soon all over the media, describing the Cockpit Lane girls, Dana and Dee-Ann, as only the latest in a long series of tragic victims of,as he put it,an evil alliance of poverty, drugs, guns and criminal business interests operating in the district.

The press immediately dubbed the shootings a Yardie massacre, despite police reservations about the use of the term, which implied the involvement of Jamaican immigrants. To the press it was Yardie because it was violent, guns and drugs were involved (crack cocaine was found in the girls pockets), and both the victims and just about everyone else in the neighbourhood were of West Indian origin.

By late afternoon, media interest in the tragedy had risen to such a pitch that Scotland Yard announced the formation of a Major Inquiry Team, led by Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and officers from Homicide Command, together with local detectives. They would be supported by members of the Operation Trident squad,which had been established some years earlier to combat gun crime in Londons black communities.

Beyond the hissing radiators, through the tall windows of the upstairs classroom, Adam Nightingale could see over the back wall of the school playground to the dazzling white wasteland beyond, across which the thin black lines of the railway tracks traced a sweeping curve. On seeing the snow, his mothers first words that morning had been,Thats it, Adam, were goin back to Jamaica. They wouldnt, of course. She always said that when it snowed, but he thought it was magic.

The class was unsettled, whispering and passing notes. When theyd arrived for school that morning theyd been met by the sight of ambulances and police cars blocking the Lane. Theyd stood in huddled groups, lit by the strobing lights, straining to catch the squawk of the police radios. Gradually a little information had rippled through the excited mob, just enough to breed rumours and questions. Were the girls from Camberwell Secondary? Had they been raped? Throughout the morning, classes had been distracted by the sirens and the helicopters. When the bell rang for their lunchbreak, theyd rushed out into the street, hung around the police barrier and pestered the cops asking questions in the Cockpit Lane street market and searching the alleyways and backyards.

There were many empty seats when school started again in the afternoon,and the teachers struggled against the mood of distracted restlessness. Adam felt the horrible excitement more than anyone. It ate away at him and made him feel almost physically ill. He had his own ideas about what had really happened, but as usual no one was interested in what he had to say. It was the guns that fascinated them most and there had been much technical discussion about Uzis and Mach 10s, Brownings and Glocks, but the others only scoffed when he offered his opinions. He felt as if he might literally explode with frustration at the familiar sense of insignificance, of being excluded.