Spider Trap Read online

  ‘You two having a cosy chat, or what?’ Mark said menacingly. ‘Who was she phoning, Martin?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Martin gabbled. ‘I’ve found out where he is. She was trying to get directions . . .’

  ‘Where is he then?’

  Kathy stared at Martin. He forced his eyes away, to the two men. ‘He’s gone to North Wales, to see Grant. He’s hiding up there.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ The brothers exchanged a calculating look, then one glanced back over his shoulder at a group coming down the footpath towards them, and said, ‘Let’s go into the car park.’ He took hold of Kathy’s arm and gripped tight. She tried to wrench free and he said, ‘Don’t be stupid or we’ll have to hurt you.’ His brother took the other arm and they frogmarched her towards the parking building, Martin tagging along behind.

  They walked up ramps and along aisles lined with deserted vehicles until they came to a black Mercedes luxury off-roader. Inside, Kathy made out the profile of Spider Roach, and saw him turn his cadaverous pale face towards them as they approached.

  ‘Now,’ Mark said as his brother pushed Kathy hard up against a concrete column. ‘What’s the story?’

  Kathy said nothing, and Martin immediately responded. ‘He left about three hours ago. The place is a cottage in the countryside. She doesn’t know the address, so I got her to phone the owner, a friend of Grant’s, but we couldn’t get through. He’s a builder and he’s been called out to a site. A supermarket, right, Kathy?’

  He looked at her, appealing with his eyes.

  ‘What are you doing, Martin?’ she said.

  ‘They’ve got Lynne, Kathy, my wife. I spoke to her, she’s hysterical. Vexx and Crocker have got her.’

  ‘We’re not too impressed with old Martin here at the moment,’ Mark said, and gave the solicitor a playful punch on the upper arm that made him shudder. ‘Sleeping with the enemy is what we hear.’ He pointed an accusing finger at Kathy. ‘That right, darling?’

  Kathy just stared back. She wondered if it was Tom who’d planted that little seed in their minds.

  ‘Tell them, Kathy!’ Martin begged. ‘Tell them it isn’t true!’

  ‘It isn’t true.’

  Mark gave a chuckle.

  ‘What do you want?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Dad wants to talk to Brock, about what happened to our brother. You too.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about her,’ Martin protested. ‘You said it was Brock you wanted.’

  ‘A supermarket, did you say?’ Mark mused.

  ‘That’ll be Ferguson,’ Ricky said. ‘The one we spoke to before. In Walworth.’

  Mark nodded and opened the vehicle door and got in beside his father. Kathy watched them talking, then turned back to Martin.

  ‘When did this happen, with Lynne?’

  ‘I was playing golf, not much more than an hour ago. I got this phone call. I had to drive over here. They . . .’ he glanced at Ricky, still gripping Kathy’s arm, so close to her that she could smell the fried onions on his breath and feel the hard lump of the gun under his jacket when he turned, ‘. . . they’d tried Brock’s house, but he wasn’t there. They wanted me to find him, and persuade him to come out to the car. They say they just want to talk . . .’

  Kathy stared at him and the words died in his throat.

  She turned to Ricky. ‘What happened to Ivor wasn’t Brock’s doing. We just wanted Tom Reeves back.’

  Ricky gave her a bleak look and said, ‘If you say another word I’ll smash your face in.’

  Mark got out of the car and came over. He took Kathy’s shoulder bag and searched her pockets, taking her mobile phone, which he switched off before throwing the lot into the boot of the Merc.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘get in.’

  ‘Hey, Mark,’ Martin protested, without much conviction. ‘You don’t need her. Let her go, eh?’

  They shouldered past him without replying, pushing Kathy into the back alongside Spider, with Ricky close behind. Mark turned back to Martin and pointed at his chest. ‘You—go home now and wait. Don’t do anything stupid and maybe, just maybe, our black brothers won’t be too rough with your missus, right?’

  Kathy caught a glimpse of him as the car reversed out and roared away, standing in the roadway, clutching his coat around him as if he were freezing to death.

  They drove through Saturday morning shopping streets, past mean brick terraces and concrete tower blocks. After a while, Spider spoke to Kathy for the first time. He didn’t change his posture, staring stiffly ahead, but growled, ‘Vexx told me what happened Thursday night. Now I want to hear your version.’

  Kathy told him, briefly, without elaboration.

  He nodded and said, ‘Now tell me what Adonia’s been telling you.’

  She told him some of it, omitting things that they hadn’t yet been able to follow up. The old man said no more.

  An ambulance was leaving as they swung into the lane leading to the building site. They spotted Wayne Ferguson climbing the steps into his site hut and Mark parked the car and got out. Ricky followed, pulling Kathy out. As she straightened, she found the nose of a gun in her face, Mark’s index finger curled around the trigger.

  ‘Behave,’ he said, ‘or people will get hurt.’ He pushed the gun hard into her side and together the two men steered her through the site gates and up to the foreman’s hut. As she stepped inside Wayne Ferguson turned and began a smile that froze as he took in the others at her back.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Ricky stayed with Kathy while Mark advanced on Ferguson, pointing the gun at his chest.

  ‘Jesus!’ The builder’s eyes widened.

  ‘You’re going to take us to your cottage, Wayne. Give me your mobile.’

  As Wayne reached into his pocket, Kathy said, ‘You don’t need him. Just get him to draw you a map.’

  ‘Don’t be soft.’ Mark kept his eyes on Wayne as he handed over the phone. ‘We might take a wrong turning, and anyway, we don’t want him talking to anybody once we’re gone, do we?’

  They made their way out of the hut, Mark taking up the rear. As they walked towards the gate a man in a hard hat and boots came hurrying up.

  ‘Oh, Mick,’ Wayne said, and Kathy felt herself and the two Roach brothers stiffen. ‘Will you be all right now? I have to go.’

  ‘That’s fine, Wayne. Everything’s sorted. See you tomorrow.’

  The man marched away and they continued to the Merc. Wayne was prodded into the front with Mark, Kathy as before in the back between Spider and Ricky.

  ‘So,’ Mark said, ‘M6 is it?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Wayne was chewing his lip, face taut.

  ‘Just relax, Wayne,’ Mark said soothingly. ‘Put your seatbelt on and relax. Everything’s going to be fine, as long as you two behave yourselves, okay?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Lovely day for a trip to the country, eh?’

  As they cleared London and headed north on the motorway, Mark switched on the radio, occasionally tapping his fingers on the wheel in time to the music. He showed no signs of being unduly distressed at having lost a brother, unlike Ricky, who seemed dangerously angry and morose. Mark made several calls on his mobile phone as he was driving, though Kathy couldn’t hear much of what was said. From time to time he would light a cigarette, and Kathy was reminded of family outings when she was small. Her father was a heavy smoker, and as soon as he lit up she would feel the nausea rise in her throat, as automatically as if someone had thrown a switch.

  Apart from Mark, hardly anyone spoke.

  ‘So what’s this place of yours like then, Wayne? Give us the picture.’

  Wayne had sunk into himself, and took a moment to answer.

  ‘It’s small—living room, kitchen, two bedrooms. Stone walls, with a slate roof, couple of hundred years old.’

  ‘Nice. Got a view, has it?’

  ‘Yes. It looks out to Moel Fammau.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

 
‘It’s a mountain, the highest point in the Clwydian Range. From the top you can see Snowdon.’

  ‘So it’s wild country? Neighbours?’

  ‘Not really. A couple of farms about a quarter mile in each direction along the lane. The village is half a mile away, down in the valley.’

  ‘Much traffic on the lane?’

  ‘None. It isn’t made up and doesn’t lead anywhere. It stops at the last farm, at the top of the hill.’

  ‘Sounds ideal,’ Mark said, but didn’t say what for.

  Wayne glanced back over his shoulder at Kathy and she understood the message in his eyes. She was the professional, wasn’t she? This was what she had been trained for. Why didn’t she do something? But she knew there was little she could do. The Roaches were watchful, and they had done this sort of thing before. Wayne and Kathy were following in the footsteps of the Brown Bread victims.

  The traffic grew heavy around Birmingham, and several times the motorway came to a total stop. Mark began to drum his fingers impatiently, and Kathy recalled Wayne’s comment to Brock about getting there before dark. With any luck, Brock would have left before they arrived.

  ‘How long’s this going to take?’ Ricky said. It was the first time anyone had asked, and when Wayne said, ‘Another two or three hours,’ Ricky said, ‘Fuck!’ with disgusted surprise, as if he’d imagined the rest of the UK as a narrow fringe just beyond the London boundary. Maybe they flew everywhere.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Ricky said. ‘When are we getting lunch?’

  Another echo of childhood, her final car journey doomed to be a dark reflection of her first.

  ‘Let’s stop at the next service station for a burger,’ Ricky said.

  Good idea, Kathy thought. She saw Wayne stir hopefully.

  ‘No way. We keep going,’ Mark said, but he was wrong, for his father made a rare sound. ‘I’ll need to pay a visit, son, and get a drink for my pills.’

  Mark grunted reluctantly. ‘Okay, Dad. There’s a place coming up soon, if this fucking traffic would get a move on.’

  They turned into the Birmingham North service area, and as soon as the car slowed to a crawl in the car park, Wayne Ferguson slipped his seatbelt, yanked at the door handle and threw himself against the door. Nothing happened. Mark laughed. He pulled to a stop.

  ‘Child-proof locks, old chum.’ He pulled the gun out of his pocket and pressed it into the other man’s side. Ricky did the same with Kathy.

  ‘Okay, Dad?’ Mark said, and released the locks. The old man got out stiffly and hobbled off, and the locks clicked again.

  ‘Actually, I need the toilet too,’ Kathy said. ‘Urgently.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Ricky hissed, as if he was desperate for an excuse to do something violent. Kathy shut up.

  Spider returned, got back into the car and handed chocolate bars and bottles of juice to his sons. They set off again, and as they moved north of the Black Country they came upon the first dustings of white over the fields on either side. By Newcastle-under-Lyme it was thick all around, great banks of brown snow piled on the motorway verges, and in the fields beyond black tree skeletons stood stark against dazzling white beneath a dull grey shroud of sky. It looked as if the falls had been very recent, and slush and grit was sprayed over them by the traffic they overtook as they sped up the outside lane.

  ‘When do we turn off?’ Mark demanded, and Wayne said, ‘Best to keep going until we reach the M56. That’s the quickest way.’

  Slowly, imperceptibly, the sky was getting darker, though whether this was due to bad weather ahead or the approach of evening was hard to tell. Everyone had headlights on.

  They reached the complicated spaghetti of the M56 junction at last, and turned westward, across the lowlands of the Mersey and Dee estuaries, skirting Chester, and then leaving the dual highways for a quieter country of bilingual signs and odd-sounding places—Gwernymynydd, Nercwys and Pant-y-mwyn. An ambulance coming the other way carried the slogan AMBIWLANS, and Mark snorted, ‘Can’t they fucking spell up here?’ Nobody laughed. He lit another cigarette, cracking his window open a fraction to let out the smoke.

  Wayne directed them onto ever-narrower roads, until at last they saw the dark spike of a church spire up ahead, and beyond it a tiny pub and a corner store.

  ‘This is the village,’ he said. He was looking anxiously at the heavily laden white roofs and hedgerows. ‘They’ve had fresh snow. Lots, by the look of it.’

  They slowed to a crawl until Wayne pointed to a break in the bank on the left. ‘That’s the lane.’

  ‘Blimey, just as well we got four-wheel drive.’

  Which Brock didn’t, Kathy thought in despair. In their headlights the lane climbed steeply up the hillside, hard to make out among the rolling white mounds of undisturbed snow. Nothing had been up or down this way since the last snowfall. Mark was swearing as he pushed the pitching vehicle through the drifts, trying to keep the momentum, speeding up over a sheltered stretch in the lee of a tall bank, then plunging into deep snow on the far side. They came upon a car abandoned beneath a tree, roof covered with snow, and Kathy recognised it as Brock’s. The lane got steeper, the snow deeper, and finally the front of the Merc lurched alarmingly up into space and came crashing down into a deep drift and stalled. Ahead of them, through the frantically thumping wipers, they could see a cottage, snuggling into the white folds of the hillside, flickering orange lights glowing from its two front windows like eyes, a pale column of smoke rising from its chimney. Beyond it, a dark ridge of woods was almost indistinguishable in the gloom of twilight.

  thirty-two

  ‘There it is,’ Wayne said, in a flat voice.

  ‘Right. In we go then. You two lead the way, and don’t try anything ’cos we’re right behind you. You want to stay here, Dad?’

  ‘No way,’ Spider growled. ‘I’ve got to be there.’

  The sudden shock of cold air stung their faces as they heaved the doors open against the snow. As she slid across the seat, Kathy reached into her pocket for her wallet, which she tucked into a corner of the upholstery. Then they were out in the snow, struggling in it up to their hips. Wayne, still in his site boots, was the only one remotely dressed for this, and they heaved and swore until they managed to clamber through to the shallower snow beyond the drift. The path to the front door gradually became easier, and they could make out signs of snow having been cleared around the cottage, and of human tracks leading to the back. There was some kind of outbuilding, and a mound of snow beneath which the wheel of another vehicle was visible.

  They trudged forward, the smell of wood smoke in their lungs, their panting breath forming clouds. As they approached the door, solid braced timber with iron bolts, it swung open, and for a moment the scene froze in the light spilling out of the room as Michael Grant took in the group in front of him. Then Wayne started forward at a run, as if to get into the shelter of the cottage. There was a sharp bang, and he staggered and fell forward into his friend’s arms. Mark shoved his way in after them, pushing them aside, while Ricky jabbed Kathy forward into the doorway. Ahead of her she could see Mark peering through a door on the far side of the room, waving his gun.

  ‘Where’s Brock?’ he was yelling. ‘Where the fuck is Brock?’

  Michael Grant was kneeling on the floor, Wayne prone in his arms, while Jennifer Grant sat stunned in an armchair beside the fire, eyes wide with fright. Mark marched across to her and pointed the gun at her head and bellowed at her husband.

  ‘Pay attention! Where is Brock? Tell me or I’ll blow her fucking head off!’

  Michael looked confused. He seemed transfixed by the blood on his hands, oozing over his jeans. He blinked rapidly, looking up and seeing the terror in his wife’s eyes.

  Kathy spoke, trying to sound calm. ‘Michael, is Brock not here?’

  He gulped at her, then stared at the empty door beyond Mark Roach, and said, ‘Er, no. He . . . went out.’

  ‘Out?’ Mark screamed. ‘Where?’

  ‘To .
. . to the village. The electricity failed.’

  Mark stared at him in disbelief, then turned to his father, who was shuffling towards the other armchair by the fire. The old man didn’t look well after his struggle through the snow, with Ricky half-carrying him much of the way. He slumped into the seat and swore under his breath.

  Mark pointed his gun at Kathy. ‘Close the door. Now, sit on the floor, over there.’ He pointed towards Michael and Wayne, who was feebly coughing up blood.

  Kathy did as he said.

  ‘Now,’ Mark went on, turning to his brother. ‘Have another look back there and make sure I didn’t miss anything. And get Dad some water.’

  Ricky nodded and went off, gun in hand.

  ‘Wayne . . .’ Michael said. ‘He needs help.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Mark’s scream, its message of violence barely contained, shocked Michael into silence. ‘Brock can’t have gone. We didn’t see any tracks in the lane coming up here. Where is he?’

  ‘There’s a path across the fields. It’s easier for walking, you don’t get the drifts like you do in the lane.’

  Mark narrowed his eyes at Michael, unsure whether to believe him. ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘About half an hour ago. He should be back soon.’

  ‘With people?’

  ‘No, alone. He went for more paraffin—for the lamps—and some wine for dinner.’

  Kathy reached across to get a better look at Wayne, but Mark yelled at her to stay still. As she straightened, her eyes met Michael’s, and for a moment his confused, frightened air was gone, and she thought she saw some message in the hard look he gave her.

  Ricky returned with a glass of water. ‘There’s no sign of him.’

  ‘Right. Then we wait. Which direction is the path?’

  Michael pointed to the side.

  ‘We’ll need someone out there to watch for him,’ Mark said. ‘That’s you, Ricky.’