Death Trap (7 page)

‘What's going on?' she asked a harassed-looking woman with a couple of shopping bags at her feet.

‘Someone's dead,' she muttered, glancing sideways at Kate. ‘Found some girl down by the dustbins. Some little slag, I daresay. They come down here messing about with the black men. Don't seem to care if they're black or white, as it goes. They've only themselves to blame if they come to grief. They should be ashamed of themselves. And now I can't get back home because the Old Bill are blocking the road. I'll have to walk right back up to Ladbroke Grove and then back down the other way.'

‘You mean it's a murder?' Kate asked, pulling her camera out again with a sense of excitement. Pictures of a murder scene she was sure would go down well with Ken Fellows, her boss, who would sell them on to one of the papers. She was going to have quite a haul of interesting pictures and ideas to offer him on Monday morning, she thought. She eased her way to the front of the small crowd so as to see round the dark van which was parked amongst several marked police vehicles and spotted DS Eddie Lamb amongst the officers just climbing up the steps from the area. She started snapping busily as a uniformed officer waved the van to move closer and two men with a stretcher emerged and went down the basement steps. She kept her camera by her side as she waited for them to reappear, afraid that the officers might object to what she was doing, but no one even glanced in direction, most of them beginning to move back to their cars without much urgency. Eventually the stretcher bearers manoeuvred their burden awkwardly back up the steps, laden now with a blanket-covered shape which Kate realised with a sick feeling could only be a shockingly small human body, and slid it into the van.

The crowd let out a faint collective sigh and fidgeted slightly as a couple of uniformed officers began to take down the barrier which blocked the street, the vehicles began to move away and the waiting pedestrians were allowed through. Kate made her way slowly to the now empty basement area, glanced around and took a couple of shots of the narrow leaf and litter strewn space, and of the shabby house above it. It was, she thought, a miserable place to die.

She turned away slowly and stowed her camera back in her bag. What she had just witnessed had taken the edge off the bright morning she had begun to enjoy. She turned back to the main road and began to weave her way between the market customers again in the direction of home. She was suddenly aware that the crowds had begun to change their complexion. On almost every street corner groups of young white men had begun to gather, and they were being watched, she realised, by an unusual number of uniformed policemen, patrolling up and down the road and in amongst the market crowds.

She made her way back until she came to the side street down which Nelson Mackintosh had led her and Tess the night before to his cafe. Just steps from the market the streets became much quieter and there seemed to be little activity close to the cafe. Perhaps it did not open in the morning. But then she realised how odd that seemed when there were so many potential customers about, and walked a little way down the street until she could see the closed notice on the door. Only then could she see a uniformed police officer standing in the recessed doorway. Intrigued, she strolled closer and confronted him.

‘Isn't the cafe open?' she asked innocently. ‘I was looking for a cup of coffee.'

The policeman, a tall, thin, lugubrious man with his helmet pulled unusually far down over his eyes and a rather damp, pink nose, sniffed massively. ‘Closed for the duration, miss,' he said, with a smirk. ‘Proprietor unavoidably detained.'

‘I was in there last night,' Kate protested. ‘He was there then.'

‘Well, he's not there now,' the constable said, more sharply. ‘And not likely to be for some time, from what I hear. So I should run along, if I were you, miss. There's a murder inquiry on.'

‘And Nelson Mackintosh is involved?' Kate said sharply.

‘I can't tell you that,' he said. ‘And what's it to you anyway? This isn't the sort of cafe a nice girl like you should be patronising, is it? A West Indian joint? What sort of a name is that – Poor Man's Corner?'

‘It's a place in Jamaica,' Kate snapped and then wished she had not.

The policeman stared at her and sniffed again, his face even more unfriendly. ‘Don't you know a lot about it?' he asked. ‘Maybe you'd like to come down to the nick and help the police with their inquiries too, would you?'

Kate shook her head angrily. ‘Of course not,' she said. She turned away, her face flaming, and when she had gone fifty yards up the street turned back to take a photograph of the cafe as much out of bravado as anything else. The policeman had retreated back into the doorway by now and had become invisible again, but a group of young West Indian boys had congregated on the opposite pavement, chattering with what looked from a distance like anger. What on earth, she wondered, had happened to Nelson Mackintosh, and what effect would his abrupt disappearance have on the neighbourhood. Surely she and Tess could not have been so gullible that they had fallen for the self-serving deceit of a murder suspect.

Feeling slightly weary, she set off back home but as soon as she turned into her street and saw the red car parked outside the house she realised that here was another complication that she was not sure how to handle. Harry Barnard stepped out of the car and came down the road to meet her, a cigarette in one hand and a crumpled copy of the
Evening Standard
in the other.

‘Morning,' he said, slightly brusquely. ‘I was down this way and decided to see how you were getting on with your house hunting. I thought maybe you'd like a chauffeur for a morning instead of grinding round London on the tube. I'm going to the Chelsea match this afternoon but I've got a couple of hours to spare.'

Kate hesitated and then smiled ruefully. ‘It's a nice idea,' she said. ‘But Tess and Maria have decided that they want to move too so we're looking for somewhere for all three of us. We need to go together and Marie's working today so it's not a good day. Sorry.'

‘You were out so early that I thought you must be looking at a flat already,' Barnard said, and Kate realised that he must have been sitting outside the house for some time.

‘No, I had a message to do for the old lady in the basement,' Kate said, wondering why she felt she had to explain herself to this importunate policeman to whom she had never given the slightest encouragement. ‘Did you know there was a murder off the Portobello Road this morning?' she rushed on. ‘I think maybe you're right, this isn't a very nice area. And our neighbours moved out yesterday, the ones who had the bully boys at their door. Geoff got beaten up on the way home from work, so they decided they had to go. The other girls are frightened it might be us next. I'm not even supposed to be in the flat, am I? I'm just a lodger.' Kate stopped, feeling breathless. She had clamped down the fear she had felt since they had faced the menacing Alsatian with its stuttering owner on the landing, and now it all seemed to come spilling out and she guessed Barnard could see it written all over her face.

‘Hey, calm down,' Barnard said, startled.

‘Yes, sorry,' Kate said, taking a deep breath.

Barnard put a tentative hand on her arm and his most expansive smile on his face. ‘Come and have a drink,' he said. ‘The pubs won't be open yet but there's a coffee bar up by the tube station. I'll treat you to the stickiest cake you can find and the frothiest coffee. Come on, get in the car.' Kate shrugged and did as he asked. She felt so confused by her experiences the previous night and that morning that she could not find any words to argue with Barnard. And she desperately needed a coffee. She would have to report back to Mrs Beauchamp soon, but that could wait for as long as it took to have a drink and see what she could learn from Harry Barnard about the murder and the apparent arrest of Nelson Mackintosh.

He parked just round the corner from the tube station and they took a table close to the counter in the sergeant's chosen coffee bar, and he ordered coffee but no cakes.

‘I'm not hungry, la,' Kate had said dismissively, angry with herself now for succumbing to his blandishments. She sipped her drink slowly for a moment and then offered him a slightly wan smile. ‘I didn't imagine staying with my friends for a while would lead to all this stuff,' she said. ‘People getting driven out of their flats, girls getting murdered just down the road. It's as bad as Soho  . . .'

‘Not quite,' Barnard said with a grin. ‘But the chances are she was a prostitute. There are plenty round here too, and there've been a few girls attacked recently. It's a risk they run.'

‘That's no comfort if you're dead,' Kate said. ‘She's someone's daughter. And why have they arrested Nelson Mackintosh? He seems to be a good family man, looking out for his son with Tess, who's one of his teachers  . . .'

‘Who the hell is this Nelson Mackintosh?' Barnard asked, looking at her flushed face in astonishment. ‘What on earth is going on? You sound as if you're getting into something you really shouldn't. And after last time I don't suppose I should be very surprised about that. Come on, tell me all about it. Who exactly is Nelson Mackintosh?'

Slightly reluctantly she told him how she and Tess had bumped into Mackintosh the previous evening and been entertained at his cafe. ‘He's a Jamaican,' Kate said, more airily than she felt. ‘His son's in Tess's English class. She'd met Nelson before, when he came to the school at the beginning of term to talk about his boy. He runs this Jamaican cafe, called Poor Man's Corner.'

‘Jesus wept,' Barnard said. ‘I've heard of that. And so has the local nick, I know for a fact. It was Jamaican independence day last year and things blew up at Poor Man's Corner, if I recall it right. They called out the riot squad in the end. Nicked a lot of them for smoking marijuana – as they do. The local superintendent wanted the place closed down but the magistrates reckoned it was just high spirits, a party that got out of hand. The super was not very pleased with that result, as I hear it. I guess they've been keeping a close eye on the place, and on Mackintosh.'

‘Well, everyone seemed very well behaved last night,' Kate said defensively. ‘And Nelson seemed like the last man you'd expect to get arrested – for murder no less, according to the bizzy on the door.'

‘I'm sure they were on their best behaviour if you were with the boss man, but that doesn't tell you anything about what goes on there when there are no whites around, does it?'

‘But murder?' Kate said mutinously.

‘I'm sure the local nick know what they're doing,' Barnard said quickly, although he was not at all sure that what they were doing was likely to be in any way straightforward. ‘They know this patch.'

‘You don't sound as if you like West Indians very much,' Kate said.

‘Most cops would like it better if they stayed at home,' Barnard said flatly. ‘They've been nothing but trouble since they came to this part of London.'

‘We had an African priest for a bit in my parish when I was a kid, helping Father Reagan,' Kate said. ‘He was a very nice man. The kids all loved him.'

‘But he went back home, I bet,' Barnard said.

Kate nodded.

‘So there you are then,' Barnard said.

Kate drained her coffee and pulled her coat back on.

‘Will you at least stop taking chances, Kate?' Barnard said. ‘Keep clear of all this stuff and find a new flat somewhere safer?'

‘I didn't really know I was taking chances,' she said.

‘Have you been taking photographs too? That might not go down to well with some people.'

‘A few,' she lied airily.

‘Look, let me take you out tonight and I'll show you where it's safe to go and where it's not. Just a tour round the pubs and clubs, no strings. You'll enjoy it, I promise. You never know who you'll see slumming in some of these places.' Kate put her head on one side for a moment.

‘OK,' she said thoughtfully. ‘Pick me up about eight.'

K
ate knocked on Cecily Beauchamp's door but it was some time before the old lady unlocked and unbarred what sounded like a battery of keys and bolts and bars on the other side.

‘Oh, it's you,' she said without enthusiasm. She was quite a tall woman and could look down her nose with what Kate found unnerving hauteur. ‘You'd better come in. It's cold out there.' She led the way into her sitting room and sank into a chair. She was wrapped in several cardigans but still looked chilly. Only one bar of the electric fire in the empty grate was switched on and the room felt cold and damp and no lamps were lit.

‘Did you find Mrs Chamberlain?' she asked, waving Kate into the chair on the other side of the fireplace and leaning back wearily in her own.

‘Yes, I did,' Kate said. ‘She'll come round to see you tonight after she's closed up her stall. About eight o'clock, she thinks.'

Mrs Beauchamp sighed and pulled her cardigan, silky and not very warm-looking, more closely round her. ‘I'm usually in bed by then,' she said. ‘It's been so cold this winter, you know.'

There had been times when she was growing up that Kate and her brother and sisters had not been warm enough, usually when her mother had not been able to pay the coalman, but she could not understand why this woman, surrounded by obviously expensive objects, would be crouched in semi-darkness over a miserable fire like this.

Mrs Beauchamp fell silent for a moment and Kate thought she was falling asleep, but her eyes suddenly sparkled again with what looked like anger. ‘It's difficult to believe that you will end up living in the servants' quarters of your own house, isn't it?' she said.

‘Pardon?' Kate said, not quite believing what she had just heard.