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4.0 out of 5 stars
"The trouble is, it's all just too long ago, and the evidence to connect him just isn't out there anymore.", Dec 30 2007
Taking place a few months after Barry Maitland's previous book, No Trace, Spider Trap covers similar territory, taking place in the chilly environs of inner London. In this story much of the action is centered in the alleyways and backyards of the Cockpit Lane and its lively and colourful street market where the City's poor immigrant West Indian community have come to live and work.
It is also here that DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla of Scotland Yard's Serious Crimes Branch at Queen Anne's Gate are called upon to investigate the brutal murder of two young girls, fataly shot in the back of the head for seemingly no apparent reason. But what is even more sinister, is the discovery by a young and nurdish school boy Adam Nightingale of the skeletons of three young adult black males, executed in the same horrific way, all in their twenties and all lying perhaps for years in the same area.
As Brock and Kolla gather there team together, the clues begin to unravel and the investigation twists and shifts to arrive at the answer that Brock already seems to know applies both to the City and to himself. The answers to the case remain hidden in the events of 1981 when Brock was just a rookie during the Brixton race riots where the arrest of a black man led hundred of youths to go on a rampage throughout the streets of Brixton in south London, hurling petrol bombs at police, burning cars and looting shops in an outbreak of violence that lasted all night.
DI Bren Gurney arrvies to take charge of both crime scenes while at the same time as Detective Inspector Tom Reeves is loaned out from Special Branch to help Brock and Kolla gather the necessary evidence, his valuable skills as an undercover cop seen as an essential ingredient in cracking the case. From the first it becomes pretty clear that like the two girls, at least two of the boys were shot in the head, but the problem is that there is no one has any idea who they were and there are no missing persons that seem to fit the profile.
Soon enough everyone is realizing that something equally terrible had happened that cool April night back in 1981 and nobody had known, and the idea that these bodies had been waiting all this time for someone to find them and uncover their story gets to Kathy and Tom and even to Brock. Tom seems to think that the murders of the three black boys are perhaps reminsicent of a "Yardie" killing, West Indian gangs who immigrated to the Uk in the early 80's bringing their guns and their cocaine, and also their old rivalries, the groups ending up more lethal to each other than to anybody else.
While Brock traces back the events that lead to the Brixton riots in an effort to solve the murders, progess is being made by Kathy and Tom in unravelling who may have been behind the killings of the two girls. When traces of semen are found in one of the girl's mouths, it looks as though the case is solved, especially when they get a DNA match to local bad boy, Teddy Vexx. All they need is some forensic evidence to put Vexx in the building with the girls.
Brock is sure that Vexx and another local criminal Jay Cocker could be a possibility. Vexx is the current big shot of the neighborhood, a part owner of the local Jamaica Omnibus Club, he has long been suspected of selling drugs, recyling stolen cars, and maybe even running a crack laboratory from his other businesses. There is however, a far more sinister suspect who suddenly appears on the horizon in the form of Edward "Spider" Roach, once a powerful underworld figure and a baleful influence on many lives, his gang once holding a fierce iron grip on this part of London.
But now Roach is a changed man, a respectable businessman, and a great giver of charity, rarely seen in public except as a regular church goer. He's also known to be a generous doner to a variety of charitable and political organisations including the Catholic Church and the Conservative Party. Which begs the question: What is the link, if any, between these multiple murders in Cockpit Lane, committed twenty-four years apart?
Also, what part does local member of parliament Michael Grant play in all this? His office in Cockpit Lane helps Kathy track down the identity of the victims, and he's also a crusader against drugs and crime on his community. Grant is convinced the Roaches are still operating in partnership with local black gangs, but is he holding something back and not being totally honest with Brock?
Is Spider Roach somehow connected after all this time, returning to his same old haunts and repeating his actions in almost the same place? But how could wealthy and respectable man be physically involved in the murder of two kids? Suddenly the mystery intensifies and Brock, Kathy, and Tom find themselves caught up in both murder inquiries that approach a sort of turning point, the evidence beginning to swing their random searches into more deliberate directions.
Brock frantically searches for the meaning behind the phrase "brown bread;" it's what Adam Nightingale was looking for on the railway land when he found the bodies of the boys. Meanwhile, Cathy tries to unravel the mystery behind the sudden attack on Adonia the wife of Ivor Roach, Spider's second son. Cathy is certain that Adonia'a daughter Magdalen is holding something back about the murders as she stays sequested away intheir gated community of The Glebe, like a "fortified village trying to pretend it's just an ordinary bit of posh suburbia."
Author Barry Maitland delves deep into the rarified inner London world of guns, drugs, and oral rapists as he builds a subtle kind of suspense that gradually moves back in time as Brock and Kathy work to solve the two murder mysteries. This is a world where cops are in real danger of being blindsided by the machinations of a powerful family that have spent years using obstructive tactics by the best lawyers money can buy, along with intimidation of witnesses, fabricated alibis, and somehow obtaining inside information on police moves.
The middle-aged and rather tetchy Brock is certainly at his most vulnerable here as he tries to repair the damage with Suzanne, the love of his life, and he's certainly less open with Kathy about his feelings for Cockpit Lane, and is even somewhat startled by the intensity of the memories it evokes, these powerful feelings he'd long ago thought were locked up tight.
The author's foreshadowing of a violent act provides the climax to the story and it is indeed shocking as Maitland peels away the layers of duplicity of organised crime which now masqerades as apparently legitimate British businesses. In the end, Spider Trap delves deep into the dark underworld of this area of London, exploring long buried memories and the settling of old scores, along with portraying the fracturing of a community and the dramatic revelations of the powerless and vulnerable when they're ultimately faced with death. Mike Leonard December 07.
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