Death Trap (29 page)

All six people in the room seemed to let out a sigh at the same time and a silence fell.

‘Oh, no,' Kate said at last as she felt Nelson and Evelina's hearts break and the younger boy burst into sobs.

Barnard looked at Nelson bleakly. ‘You know what I have to do? I've no choice.'

Nelson nodded.

‘Do you want to come with us?' Barnard asked, and to his surprise Nelson Mackintosh shook his head.

‘I'll contact my lawyer,' he said. ‘We'll be there shortly.'

Barnard did not look at Kate as he took Ben Mackintosh's arm and urged him up from the sofa and towards the door. ‘Do you want to come with me and wait in the car?' he asked Kate. ‘Or stay here with Evelina?'

Kate shook her head. There was nothing she could say to Evelina any more, she thought, no comfort she could offer. The enormity of what the boy had done to her and her friends overwhelmed her. ‘I'll come with you,' she whispered and followed Barnard and the boy out of the room.

Abraham Righton and the customers in the cafe watched in a brooding silence as the trio made their way out of the cafe to Barnard's car parked outside. Kate glanced at Barnard as he put the boy in the back and slipped into the driving seat himself. He did not look at her as she got in beside him and she thought that this was a man she did not really know, and her heart froze.

Barnard told Kate curtly to wait in the car before hustling Ben Mackintosh into Notting Hill police station. At the desk he explained to the uniformed sergeant who he was and that DS Eddie Lamb would want to talk to his prisoner. The boy said nothing as they waited for Lamb to appear and looked resolutely into the distance as Barnard explained to his colleague what Ben had admitted to his parents.

‘Nelson Mackintosh is arranging for his lawyer, Manley, to come down,' he said.

‘Par for the course,' Lamb said. ‘Makes you laugh, doesn't it? We let the father out and get the son instead. He still reeks of petrol.'

‘Go easy. He's only a kid,' Barnard said quietly. ‘I think you'll find Devine is behind it.'

‘Or your big mate Robertson,' Lamb said. ‘Don't leave him out of account. We've already got your word for him getting involved round here.' Barnard said nothing, though he doubted that setting an entire house ablaze was Robertson's style. But what did he know any more, he wondered.

‘Did you find the landlord of ninety-five Argyll Gardens?' he asked Lamb when he had finished cautioning Ben.

‘The plods are on the case,' Lamb said. ‘I've not heard anything back yet. The fire brigade are still down there.'

‘I'll take Kate down to see if anything can be salvaged from the flat,' Barnard said.

‘Right, you little firebug,' Lamb said to Ben, taking his arm so fiercely that he winced. ‘Let's get you processed.'

Wondering how the boy would survive what lay ahead of him, Barnard spun on his heel and pushed the swing doors angrily, open only to find himself face-to-face with a tall black man he guessed must be Robert Manley.

‘Are you CID? You seem quite determined to persecute the Mackintoshes,' Manley said with some venom as their paths crossed.

‘This time there's no doubt,' Barnard said mildly. ‘Ben's admitted setting a house on fire, pouring petrol into the hallway. He's lucky he's not facing a murder charge.'

‘We'll see about that,' Manley said, pushing past Barnard and into the police station.

Barnard turned away and went back to his car where Kate was waiting, her face pale.

She nodded in the direction of a dark, stocky man in a smart suit with incongruously dirty hands and face. ‘That's the new landlord,' Kate said.

Barnard glanced across and caught Roman's eye. ‘Of course, it is,' he said. ‘We've already met. Just let me have a word.'

He crossed the road to where Roman was standing looking thoughtfully at the police station.

‘Mr Roman,' he said. ‘I'm sorry about the fire. You look as though you've been inspecting the damage. My colleagues in there are quite anxious to talk to you about it.'

Roman looked Barnard up and down without enthusiasm. ‘They were not so anxious when I talked to them about harassment before,' he said. ‘People seeking protection money, they call it. What are the police doing about that? That must be why my new house was set alight, so will it be different now? Will they help me now? And are your colleagues going to help me get my money back?' he said.

‘You did buy the Argyll Gardens house then?'

‘It was a good investment,' Roman said. ‘So I believed. I signed the contract two days ago and now it seems Mr Beauchamp did not even own it. I was robbed.'

‘How did you pay Beauchamp?'

‘Cash. He wanted cash. I expected he did not want to pay tax. I was not too worried about that. I had to go to some trouble to get hold of such a large sum in cash, but I paid him two days ago, signed the contract and he gave me the deeds. Or what I believed were the deeds. Maybe they were a fake. It all seemed in order. But soon after that, I had a call from a solicitor to tell me he did not own the house. He had not inherited it from his mother, as he told me, and it was not his to sell. And of course, when I went to his address he had gone. How do you say it? The bird had flown. It was all a fraud. Will your colleagues help me find Mr Beauchamp and get my money back? I suspect not. His friend who came to see me may know where he is. A Mr Nicholas Carey.'

‘Do you know where he lives, sir?' Barnard asked.

Roman reached into a waistcoat pocket and handed the sergeant a card. ‘He left me his details. At the beginning he seemed to be acting for his friend.'

Barnard took the card, which gave an address in Oxfordshire for Carey, a suitable place for Beauchamp himself to lie low, maybe. ‘If you talk to Sergeant Lamb, and give him this address, I'm sure they'll do their best for you, sir,' Barnard said, without very much more confidence than Roman himself had that they would make much of an effort on his behalf. He would have to make sure that the information he had already passed to the Yard about Cecily Beauchamp's mysteriously disappearing insulin supply was followed up too. Here in Notting Hill, Lamb and his colleagues would be much more enthusiastic about banging up Nelson Mackintosh's son for as long as possible than pursuing someone who had ripped off a foreigner in a dubious property transaction. Roman, he thought, was on a hiding to nothing as far as the ruins of 95 Argyll Gardens were concerned, unless the tenuous evidence that Beauchamp had killed his mother stood up and some of that was probably buried in the ruins of her house. When push came to shove, he had no great faith in local police re-investigating the death of the old lady.

‘You might be better going straight to Scotland Yard with your complaint,' he said. ‘But I wouldn't waste any time. Miles Beauchamp may be buying his plane tickets as we speak.' He went back to the car as Roman made his way slowly into the police station to unload his woes.

‘Can we go back to see Ben's mother?' Kate asked as he revved the engine. ‘I feel we should have done more to help. Tess will be heartbroken about Ben.'

‘It's not your fault, Kate,' Barnard said. ‘You mustn't blame yourself. Round here, boys like Ben get sucked into all sorts of mischief. It goes with the turf, and the colour of their skin. It's not just houses they can't get but jobs as well.'

‘But his father worked so hard to help him,' Kate objected. ‘Tess said he wasn't just any boy. He was bright and ambitious, doing well at school  . . .'

‘So if anyone's to blame it's DCI Hickman and the local cops who banged up his father, you know that,' Barnard said bitterly. ‘I'm sure his lawyer won't let them off the hook when it comes to court, though how far he'll get is anyone's guess.'

‘Maybe,' Kate said.

Barnard slammed the car into gear angrily and surged back past the market to Poor Man's Corner where a small crowd of West Indians had gathered outside the cafe.

Abraham Righton spotted the red car as it drew up outside and he pushed through the melee to the driver's window. ‘Nelson has gone down Notting Dale to talk to Devine,' he said. ‘But I don't think it's just talking he's thinking on.'

‘Christ,' Barnard said. ‘Dial nine-nine-nine and get the local police down there. I'll see what we can do, but Devine's well protected. It's more likely to be Mackintosh who gets hurt.'

He pulled the car away again and drove quickly towards King Devine's club. It was too early in the day for it to be functioning but as they approached they could see another small crowd gathered on the pavement outside.

‘What's happening?' Barnard demanded of the onlookers as he leapt out of the car with Kate close behind him. Outside the door they found the doorman sitting on the ground with blood streaming down his arm from a gash above the elbow.

‘He's got a machete,' he groaned as Barnard approached. ‘He's gone mad. He's looking for the King waving a machete.'

‘Is Devine in there?' Barnard asked, and the injured man nodded.

‘He's in there having a business meeting,' he said.

Barnard glanced at Kate who was still close behind him. ‘Stay here,' he said, making for the open door, but she shook her head.

‘Nelson might listen to me,' she said.

‘And he might not,' Barnard said running a desperate hand through his hair. He pushed through the inner door cautiously and looked round the dimly lit and, as far as he could see, empty room beyond. Suddenly the door to Devine's inner sanctum at the far end of the room burst open and a furiously battling group of men emerged, black and white, with, at the centre, the tall figure of Devine himself locked in a fierce embrace with Nelson Mackintosh. Suddenly they broke apart and the King swayed and fell to his knees clutching his neck as Mackintosh let him go and stood, machete in hand, watching his opponent sink to the floor with blood gushing from a wound to his neck which looked as though it had almost severed his head.

The whole group stood in silence for a moment, watching the rush of blood gather in a widening pool on the wooden floor as Devine's life visibly drained away. Barnard recognised Ray Robertson and Fred Bettany amongst the stunned group of men but Mackintosh's still-raised machete deterred anyone from trying to disarm him or even trying to help Devine, who lay limp now at his feet.

Mackintosh eventually noticed Barnard and Kate and shrugged slightly, licking dry lips as if unable to speak.

‘Put the blade down, Nelson, or someone else will get hurt,' Barnard said.

No one seemed to breathe while Mackintosh considered this and then slowly put the machete on the floor as uniformed police began to stream in the door behind Barnard. He was not surprised to notice that Ray Robertson and Fred Bettany were no longer in the room.

It was two weeks later that Harry Barnard delivered Kate O'Donnell and her friend Tess to a tall Victorian house in Goldhawk Road, just to the south of Shepherds Bush. They had at last found a small flat that they could afford and that was in a reasonably decent condition.

‘So there you are, girls,' Barnard said, dropping the last of their bags and suitcases in the living room.'

Kate kissed him on the cheek. She knew only too well that he was disappointed that his efforts to persuade her to stay in Highgate with him had failed, and guessed that he would continue his blandishments for a while yet.

‘So Marie had decided not to come back?' he said.

‘She went home to Liverpool and managed to get some work up there. Nothing spectacular but it's a start,' Kate said.

‘So tell me what's happened while I've been staying with Jenny,' Tess said.

‘Both the Mackintoshes are in jail,' Kate said sombrely. ‘Ben charged with arson and Nelson with the murder of Devine. I've not been back to see Evelina. I don't think I can bear it.'

‘But Kate has some good news,' Barnard said quickly. ‘She's got some of her pictures in this new magazine that's being launched. Some of the Notting Hill stuff she took, and the excitement yesterday when the Beatles played at the Palladium. As far as her boss is concerned she's a bit of a star.'

‘Great,' Tess said. She gave Kate a hug.

‘And Miles Beauchamp has been arrested,' Kate said.

‘Notting Hill nick moved on that in the end and found him holed up with his friend Nick Carey down in the country with all the cash still in a carrier bag. As far as they can make out Carey thought he had some claim on the loot from the fraud, so he's been arrested as well. The joke is that when the old lady changed her will she left the house to a cats home in memory of her late departed moggie. So Miles got nothing at all.'

‘And did Beauchamp kill his mother?' Tess asked.

Barnard shrugged. ‘They're still doing some forensic work on that, I think, but it looks likely.' He put a carrier bag on the table and pulled out a bottle of champagne. ‘I brought you this as a flat-warming present,' he said, undoing the wire.

‘I'll see what glasses we've got,' Tess said.

Kate looked at Barnard thoughtfully as Tess went into the kitchen. ‘You don't look totally happy with the state of things,' she said. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing you need to worry about,' Barnard said lightly. ‘But these things never end. If there's a vacuum in Notting Hill it will soon get filled by another Mister Big.'

‘Ray Robertson, you mean?' Kate asked.

‘I'd put money on it,' Barnard agreed as Kate came back with three tumblers. He let the cork off and poured the foaming liquid into the glasses.

‘So here's to the new flat, girls,' he said, raising his glass. ‘And to a quieter life, I hope. Cheers!'