‘So you had a visitor last night.’ ‘As to that, sir, I cannot say.’ ‘Thank you, Mr Singh. How long does your son intend to stay
in India?’ ‘Hard to say. There are many relatives. It may be a long trip.’
Later that evening, on the insistence of Virginia Ashe, the charges against Ricky Roach were dropped and he was released from custody.At about the same time,Kathy took a call from the builder, Wayne Ferguson. He just thought he should let her know that, although he was absolutely clear in his identification of the two Roach brothers at the line-up, because of course he had seen them before, he was less sure now about whether it was actually that particular night that he’d seen them in the Cat and Fiddle. It was such a long time ago, and if he were put under cross-examination he couldn’t honestly swear that it couldn’t have been some other night.
‘Has somebody been talking to you, Mr Ferguson?’ Kathy asked.
‘No!’ He sounded offended. ‘Certainly not, no way,’ he protested, too much.
She called Brock, on his way back down the motorway. He sounded tired and flat, as they all did.
When he got back to London,Brock spent a couple of hours in his office dealing with urgent paperwork. A note from Dot told him that a meeting with Commander Sharpe had been scheduled for first thing the following morning. He put a sheaf of signed documents on her desk and left the building. It was a cold but dry night, and he walked the length of Whitehall to Charing Cross station, stopping on the way for a glass of whisky at the Red Lion, a stone’s throw from Big Ben.He caught his train home and walked from his station to the high street, where an archway gave access into the cobbled courtyard that led to the lane in which his house stood. In the far corner, at the beginning of the lane, stood a large horse chestnut tree, its black skeleton silhouetted against the dim clouds. A man was standing motionless beneath its branches, watching him approach.Brock looked around and was able to make out a second figure in the darkness against the wall of the old warehouse.
Brock walked on. The man under the tree had both hands in the pockets of a long coat, a scarf around his neck, face hidden in the shadow of the brim of a hat, and it wasn’t until he cleared his throat with a spittly grunt that Brock realised, with a surge of heat to his face, who it was.
‘Mr Brock.’
‘Spider Roach.’
‘You remember me, then? Course you do. Thought we should talk.’
The voice was weaker, hoarser, but still with something of its old menace. And as the man moved Brock recognised, even muffled by the winter clothing, the angular frame, all elbows and knees, with its stealthy stretching and sudden pouncing gestures, that was the source of his nickname.
‘That business today, with Ricky, what was the point of it?’
‘Solving crimes is what I’m paid to do.’
‘Settling old scores, more like.Your recent visits to Cockpit Lane must have stirred up old memories, eh? Put you in mind of old times. But it’s a mistake to look back, Mr Brock. That way you trip over what’s bang in front of you.’
‘You’re bang in front of me, Spider.’
‘Times have changed.Me and my sons are respectable businessmen.You’ll find that out if you do your homework properly.You and I are very different people now, older and wiser, I hope. I have ten grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, imagine that. What about yourself? That attractive wife of yours still around?’
‘She found someone better a long time ago.’
‘Too bad. And no new wife waiting for you at home, no children, no grandchildren . . .’ It wasn’t a question, Brock realised. Spider Roach had always been careful to keep himself well informed about the opposition.‘Pity,they put things in perspective. Without a family to give him a sense of proportion, a man can get obsessive about things that don’t really matter. Still, there must be other attachments, people you care for. Everyone has those.’
‘It’s cold out here, Spider. Too cold to listen to the ramblings of an old man.What do you want?’
‘What I want …’the voice was suddenly hard,‘…is to never hear of you again. Make an effort to see that happens, eh? Make an old man happy.’
Spider Roach strode past him towards the archway, the other shadow falling in behind. Brock followed them, watching them get into a black Mercedes four-wheel drive. The interior light showed him the face of Mark Roach, the eldest son, getting in behind the wheel. As they drove away, Brock turned and walked home, thinking over Spider’s words. Inside he went from room to room, but found no signs that they had been there. He poured himself a whisky and sat down. The conversation had brought back two distinctive things about the way Spider used to work. He always took a lot of trouble to gather information about his victims, so that by the time he pounced he would know all about their family and business networks. Brock had no doubt that Spider had brought himself up to date on his situation. The other distinctive thing about Spider was the way he exerted pressure, by threatening someone close to the target, leaving them no choice. He pondered on that, and the throwaway comment about ‘other attachments, people you care for’, and the more he turned the phrase over in his mind, the more uneasy he became.
He made a list of people he cared enough about to interest Spider. It was very short, mostly connected with work. He began by phoning Kathy, then continued through the names. No one had heard from the Roaches. Finally, there was just one name left.
He hesitated, poured another drink, thumbed through his address book and dialled a long number.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, is that Doug?’
‘Speaking.’
‘This is David Brock, Doug, in London. Suzanne’s friend.’ Was that the best choice of words?
‘Oh …well,well.Hello,David.What can I do for you?’
‘Is Suzanne there?’
‘No, I’m afraid she’s not with us any more.’
‘What?’ Brock gripped the phone more tightly. ‘What happened?’
‘We put her on a plane last night. Ironic, isn’t it? After all this time, and you miss her by a few hours. She’s on her way home.’
‘Oh . . .’ He let out his suspended breath.‘Is she all right?’
‘Yes, fine. She’s having a couple of day’s stopover in Tokyo on the way back. Do you want to know when she gets in to Heathrow? I’ve got it here somewhere.’
Brock waited, feeling his heart rate subside. Doug came back on the line with the information.‘Better make it a big one,mate,’ he added.
‘What?’
‘The bunch of roses.You’re not exactly flavour of the month.’
‘No, I can imagine. Thanks.’ He hung up and sipped at the Scotch.
Even if Roach’s words had been meant as a threat, there was no possibility, surely, that he would have known of Brock’s friendship with Suzanne.Coming upon him like that,the silent figure waiting in the dark, the familiar features, the toneless voice, Brock had been abruptly transported back two decades, and the experience had unsettled him more than he’d have thought possible. He remembered another winter’s night,long ago,when he had gone to see a snout who provided regular low-level gossip and rumour about the gangs. As usual, they were to meet beneath a spreading plane tree on the edge of a local park. As he approached, Brock could see the man standing there, moonlight casting shadow stripes across his pale anorak, but there was something odd about his posture, the tilt of his head. Closer still and he made out the taut vertical of a rope connecting the man’s throat to the heavy branch above.Brock’s foot crunched on gravel and the figure twitched and gave a hoarse cry.
‘Help me!’
They had made him stand on tiptoe on a brick set on its edge, and had pulled the rope so tight that if he’d lost his footing he’d have been finished. When Brock found him he’d been standing there for twenty minutes and was on the point of passing out. He refused to say who’d done it, but the style was obvious to Brock- the grim joke, choking off the talker, and the indifference as to whether he lived or died.The man never spoke to the police again.
Brock recalled that the last bit of information the man had given Brock at their previous meeting was that the Roaches employed children to take down the numbers of cars driving in and out of the secure yards of local police stations, and now had a comprehensive list of unmarked police cars operating in the area. Spider’s intelligence had always been depressingly good. And still was, obviously. They had known about Singh and Ferguson before Brock
