Death Trap

by Patricia Hall

  ‘I didn’t think we would run into that sort of trouble,’ he had said. ‘I should have been more careful. And you must mind what you say. I don’t imagine Mackintosh is any friend of Devine or the King of him. From what I hear, Nelson Mackintosh is into West Indian politics, and not very popular with the powers that be on that count. King Devine is a gangster, plain and simple and the local cops find that much easier to deal with, as it goes. From your point of view I don’t think either of them is someone you really want to know.’

  After their brief, surprise encounter with Ray Robertson, they had ended the evening with a couple of drinks in the Windsor Castle, a quieter pub at the more respectable end of the neighbourhood before the sergeant dropped Kate back at the flat. He had put an arm round her shoulder again before she got out of the car.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘Flat hunting,’ she said. ‘We’ve fixed up two places to go and look at in Shepherd’s Bush. Tess says it’s not too far away and a bit cheaper than here.’

  ‘There’s another street market down there for you to patronise,’ Barnard said with a smile. ‘And fewer dodgy landlords, I think. You should be OK, in spite of the genius you seem to have for attracting unwanted attention.’

  Kate looked at him with a sly smile. ‘I do, don’t I?’ she said. ‘If it’s not robbers its cops. I’ll have to be more careful in future.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Barnard said. ‘Can I ring you again?’

  ‘Only if you tell me what I can do to help Nelson Mackintosh,’ she said, suddenly deadly serious. ‘He has this clever son that Tess teaches. And whatever you say, I really liked the man. I can’t believe he killed some woman in the street. It just doesn’t seem real.’

  ‘Leave it alone, Kate. It really isn’t anything you should be involving yourself in,’ Barnard had said firmly. ‘If you like, I’ll see what’s happening at the nick, and let you know. They can’t keep him without charging him and taking him to court on Monday morning. I’ll let you know. I promise.’

  And with that she had had to be content.

  The three flatmates took the tube to Shepherd’s Bush only to be disappointed in their search. The first flat, half of a terraced house on the Hammersmith side of the Green, had already been let, and at the second, in a side street off the Uxbridge Road, with a handwritten notice on the door making very clear that blacks and Irish were not welcome as tenants, the landlady had to be persuaded that their accents were from Liverpool not Dublin before she would let them in to see a flat even more pokey that the one Marie and Tess were already renting.

  ‘That so-called single bedroom would make me claustrophobic,’ said Marie as they hurried away. ‘It was minute.’

  ‘It didn’t even have a proper window,’ Kate agreed. ‘And it wasn’t very clean. And there was a very funny smell in the bathroom. How can they get away with it? It’s worse than Scottie Road.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ Tess said laughing. ‘But there’s a terrible shortage of accommodation. It’s a nightmare.’

  Dispirited, they trailed back to the Green and decided to take a bus back to Notting Hill Gate, from the top deck of which they had a grandstand view of the substantial properties along Holland Park Avenue. Money sat cheek by jowl with poverty in this part of London, Kate thought, in a way it didn’t in Liverpool. On the right she could see the tree-lined avenues leading down to Kensington. On the left a ribbon of elegance only a couple of houses wide hid the dilapidated terraces split into a multitude of flats from which the likes of Cecily Beauchamp’s son were making a fortune.

  ‘Maybe we should try a different part of London altogether,’ she suggested as they dropped off the bus and took themselves into the coffee bar that Barnard had taken Kate to the day before.

  ‘This is very convenient for you and me getting to the West End,’ Marie said doubtfully.

  ‘And it couldn’t be handier for my school,’ Tess put in firmly. ‘I don’t want to be travelling miles every day if I can possibly avoid it. Some people down here in London travel for hours to get to work.’

  ‘So on with the search then? Agreed?’ Marie said, and the other two nodded, if slightly doubtfully. She glanced at her watch. ‘I need to go,’ she said. ‘The Lagoon’s opening at twelve. I’ll be late if I’m not careful.’ And she was away in a flurry of red hair and flying coat, every inch the actress she had not yet managed to become.

  Kate and Tess finished their coffee more slowly and then began the walk back to 95 Argyll Gardens. As they approached the tall, drab house with its cracked steps and chipped portico, they saw a black youth watching them intently from the other side of the road.

  ‘That’s Benjamin Mackintosh,’ Tess said quietly, a hint of anxiety in her voice, as the boy crossed the road in their direction. ‘I wonder what he wants.’

  ‘Looks as if he’s going to tell you,’ Kate said.

  ‘Miss,’ the boy said to Tess. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’

  ‘How did you know where I live, Ben?’ Tess asked, and Kate heard the tension in her voice and realised that maybe Tess was living too close to her school for comfort.

  ‘My dad told me. My dad’s in trouble with the police and I thought you might be able to help.’

  ‘I’m really sorry to hear about that, Ben,’ Tess said. ‘But I’m sure that what you need is a solicitor, not a teacher.’

  ‘The police are fitting him up,’ the boy said more vehemently. ‘They do it all the time. They hate us all and they ’specially hate my dad because he stands up to them.’

  Tess sighed. ‘Ben, I’m really sorry your family is having this trouble but I can’t get involved in this sort of thing. I’m a teacher not a lawyer, and anyway it’s something your mother should be dealing with. It’s not something you can handle. I’m sure she can get some legal help for your father. I’m sure it’s all a terrible mistake and he’ll be home soon.’

  ‘If you really want to know, miss, they came and searched the house and the cafe, said they found ganja but I know my dad would never have that in the place,’ the boy persisted with a mutinous look.

  ‘I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing I can do,’ Tess said firmly, and turned away to go into the house.

  Kate flashed the boy a sympathetic look and followed her. ‘Poor kid,’ she said after they had closed the front door.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Tess said. ‘But it’s not my job to help his family. I don’t think the school would want me interfering. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  No, but I might, Kate thought as they set off up the stairs.

  ‘I thought he was really concerned about the boy when he came to school, the father,’ Tess muttered, almost to herself. ‘But what do I know about him really? Or Ben for that matter. I know we liked Nelson Mackintosh when we bumped into him and went to the cafe, but we have no idea what he’s really like, or what he’s involved in. You said yourself your copper warned you it’s a dodgy area and we should move away. Perhaps he’s right.’

  ‘He may be,’ Kate said. ‘But you’re right to be worried about that boy. I saw him when I was out with Harry last night, right down where all the nightclubs are. It must have been well after his bedtime, and he didn’t show the slightest intention of going home. Far from it. He looked as if he had every intention of staying out for the rest of night.’

  SEVEN

  Kate sat opposite Ken Fellows in his tiny cluttered office, watching him intently while he thought about her proposal to take a series of photographs in Notting Hill.

  ‘I suppose this murder will put it in the news again,’ he said. ‘People haven’t forgotten the riots down there in fifty-eight, was it? If it looks like kicking off again we’d be ahead of the pack if we had your pics in the bank. Have they charged this man they’ve arrested?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Kate said. ‘Though they will pretty soon. He has to be taken before a magistrate within a certain length of time, or let go.’ The formalitie
s of court procedure were indelibly seared on her mind from the time earlier in the year when her brother Tom had found himself in the dock. That case had ended happily for Tom and he was now back in Liverpool taking some time to recover from his ordeal with friends who had stood by him in the dark days. She hoped Nelson would be so lucky.

  ‘I heard that some people were trying to organise some sort of West Indian carnival down there. That would make a good picture story. It’ll wind a lot of people in Kensington up. They’d much rather the West Indians went back home.’

  ‘Yes, I heard something about that. I’ll check it out,’ Kate agreed quickly, seeing Fellows’s scepticism beginning to crack. Now she was permanently on his team, she began to see that she could come up with ideas that her mainly middle-aged male colleagues could not. There was a sea change in society that she was in tune with and Fellows needed to tap into and she guessed that he was beginning to recognise that. She was beginning to see that he needed her just as much as she needed him.

  ‘This news magazine Tom Vallens says he’s launching might be interested,’ Fellows said. ‘I’ll give him a bell. And there’s the new Sunday Times magazine. I guess if they think it’s worth doing, the other Sunday papers will follow on behind, for the advertising if nothing else. We could be looking at new opportunities for photo journalism.’

  ‘So I can go ahead in Notting Hill then?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Yes, I don’t see why not,’ Fellows agreed. ‘But keep me up to date with these Liverpool bands of yours as well. It looks as though you were right. They’re going to be really big. Can you get me some exclusive pictures of the Beatles?’

  ‘I can try,’ Kate said. ‘But they’ve signed up with Brian Epstein as a manager, and I think he’s keeping a pretty tight grip on their publicity. I might try to contact Cynthia Lennon again though. Now she’s got the baby I guess she’s even more out on a limb than she was before. And there’s always the kids in the street, and at the concerts. It’s getting as bad down here as it was at home now, hysterical girls screaming their heads off.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Fellows said. ‘If I had a daughter I’d tan her backside. Some parents don’t seem to care.’ Kate grinned. The massed parents of Liverpool had failed miserably to control their teenagers from going wild for John Lennon and his mates, and she did not expect that the parents of London would fare any better.

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on what’s going on,’ she said. ‘Gerry and the Pacemakers are doing well but I don’t know any of them personally. But Dave Donovan doesn’t seem to be making any headway. I heard he’s thinking about going back home. I’ll talk to him. He’ll have all the latest crack.’

  ‘Crack?’

  ‘Gossip,’ Kate said, laughing. ‘There’s a pub in Liverpool called Ye Cracke. You used to see some of the lads from the bands in there.’

  ‘It sounds like a foreign country,’ Fellows said sourly.

  ‘Oh, it’s that all right, la,’ Kate said with a grin. ‘I’ll be getting on then.’

  Tess Farrell faced her Monday morning third form B stream English class and tried to hide her frustration. The group was fractious, showing little interest in the scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream they were reading aloud. A particular worry was Benjamin Mackintosh who was sitting at the back of the class with his chair tipped back against the wall and the book held slackly in his hand. The scene they were reading did not include Bottom the Weaver, the part he had taken in previous lessons, apparently with some enjoyment, Tess thought. Today he looked tired and sulky, his tie was only loosely done up, and his shirt looking rumpled and unwashed, which was understandable, she thought, in the light of the turmoil which must be going on at home. She had been surprised to see him at all, and she wondered if his mother had told the head of year about Nelson’s problems.

  But this was a group with potential, she told herself firmly, and she wasn’t about to let Ben become a focus of disaffection in it.

  ‘Sit up straight, please, Ben,’ she said sharply. ‘You come in as soon as we get to the next scene. Page sixty-four, line seven. Do you see?’

  The boy nodded miserably and Tess knew that she would not get the enthusiasm from Ben that she had gained in previous lessons. The class eventually came to an end, with Tess feeling that the whole session had been blighted by Ben Mackintosh’s unhappiness. She hesitated to keep him back at the end, but as the rest of the group bustled out of the door she was surprised to find that he was lingering behind anyway.

  ‘Will you read this, miss?’ he mumbled, handing her some folded sheets of paper.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Is it something you’ve written?’

  The boy nodded and turned abruptly on his heel, leaving her alone in the classroom.

  At lunchtime Tess approached her head of department, Jean Curtis, a comfortably upholstered middle-aged woman whose traditional style concealed a sharp brain and a shrewd ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the hundreds of pupils now enrolled in this, the first, of London’s purpose-built comprehensive schools, and the most controversial in an area where the wealthy and the impoverished lived so close together and their children would find themselves sitting side by side in class at the new school.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, glancing at the sheets of handwritten text suspiciously. ‘Has some little beggar been writing dirty stories?’

  ‘No, it’s nothing like that,’ Tess said. ‘One of the boys in my fourth form group has got trouble at home. His father’s been arrested on suspicion of murder. This is his account of what happened when the police came round. If it’s true it’s a bit horrifying and I don’t know what to do about it.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Jean said. ‘I know we get all sorts of kids here, but this is a new one. Who is he?’

  ‘Well, you’ve met his father too, that’s why I thought I’d talk to you. You remember Mr Mackintosh, who came in to talk to us about his son Ben? It’s him. He’s been arrested and Ben has written this description of what happened.’ To Tess’s surprise Jean handed the document straight back to her unread.

  ‘The simple answer, Tess, is that you can’t do anything about it. I’m sorry to hear Mr Mackintosh is in trouble. He seemed a nice sort of man with his son’s best interests at heart. But what goes on out there in Notting Hill is nothing to do with us. And the headmaster certainly wouldn’t be best pleased to have the school linked to criminal activity amongst the West Indians. He has a hard enough job getting people to trust the school at all after all the fuss there was about getting it built here in the first place and taking children of all abilities as well. You must know by now what Kensington is like. The only middle-class parents who’ll send their children here are the socialists. The rest run a mile. And even the socialists might balk at the place being associated with a murder. I should give Ben his essay back and forget all about it.’

  ‘He’s accusing the police of violence,’ Tess said doubtfully.

  ‘Not our business,’ Jean said firmly. ‘Believe me.’

  But Tess soon realised that she could not dismiss Ben’s writing so easily and when Kate came home from work that evening she showed his work to her friend. ‘Read this,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty horrifying and I don’t know what to do about it.’

  It was obvious, Kate thought, as she looked at the careful, neat handwritten sheets, that Ben had taken a great deal of trouble to document events which he felt outraged about to the point of giving it an underlined title:

  The Arrest of my father.

  They came just after we had finished our breakfast, about nine o’clock. It was Saturday so me and my brother was not going to school. My mother was in the kitchen cooking eggs for my father. My brother and me were at the table eating toast, when there was a great banging at the cafe door downstairs, and my father went down to see what the ruckus was. We heard some shouting and banging and we got frightened, specially my brother, and my mother went to the top of the stairs to look what was happeni
ng when some men came up, not in police uniform, but they said they were policemen. The first man, a tall very fat man with black hair and a red face, angry looking, said he was Inspector Hickman CID and he wanted to search our house and my mother was to sit down and keep quiet and keep us boys quiet, and she said why were they searching what were they looking for, and Inspector Hickman pushed her into a chair in the living room and said keep quiet when I tell you. Then some policemen in uniform brought my father upstairs to the flat as well and they had handcuffs on him and he had bruises on his face and he looked sick, but he told us to sit quietly and not make a fuss. Then most of the police began to search everywhere and we asked them what they were looking for but they told us to shut up and sit still. And I could see my mother getting very upset because they turned everything out of the drawers and cupboards, and broke things – I think they broke things deliberately – and made the whole place a mess, even my room and my brother’s, and then after about ten minutes, one of the men who had been searching the cafe downstairs came to Inspector Hickman and said he had found a parcel which was what he was looking for, and he went into the kitchen where my father was and there was a lot of shouting and I heard my father say that no way was that his and that they had put it there. And I heard them hit him again and curse at him and I jumped up and ran into the kitchen. My father was bleeding from his eye and nose and I saw the parcel they said they had found and I knew it had ganja in it, and I knew my father would never have that in the house or the cafe. He was dead set against it. He threatened me and my brother with a wopping if we ever got involved with the brothers who smoked it or sold it. So it could not have been in our place. But then one of the policemen took me back to my mother and hit me round the ear and told her to keep me quiet. By then my brother was crying, so she had to hold him and I sat there and was shaking and felt sick. Then after more shouting and cursing in the kitchen Inspector Hickman came out of the kitchen with two policemen who were half carrying my father and they took him downstairs and away, and my mother got up then and shouted at them but they would not tell her why they were taking him, just that he was under arrest and she could ask at the police station later.