Death Trap

by Patricia Hall

  When she had worked her way through to the end, Kate tucked her knees under her chin and sat looking for a long time at the small black-bound record of a life which by Cecily’s own account had begun in affluence and ended in poverty. Was she being fanciful in thinking her death was anything other than a natural? She was sure that if she asked Harry Barnard to find out what more, if anything, the police knew about her death, he could do it, though probably reluctantly. Had there been a post-mortem? If so, what was the result? And had Sergeant Eddie Lamb taken the trouble to contact her doctor to discover what medical problems she had? She could not bear the thought that Cecily Beauchamp’s body might have been cleared away like so much rubbish with no one asking the questions which were beginning to plague her, leaving her legacy to her remarkably smug and unpleasant son. She would sleep on it, she thought, and right now she must sleep. She had a busy day tomorrow, with a photo session booked with Gerry and the Pacemakers, as part of Ken Fellows’ pursuit of the Liverpool bands. But if she felt the same way about Cecily when she finished work, she would contact Harry again and see what he thought. If he told her she was imagining things, she would probably accept it – or possibly not.

  But when she woke with a start, in total darkness some time later, she knew she was not a victim of her imagination this time. Something had wakened her, and not only her, it turned out, as Marie put a sleepy head round the bedroom door.

  ‘Did you hear something, la?’ she asked.

  ‘Something woke me,’ Kate said, sitting up quickly.

  ‘There was a crash downstairs,’ Marie said. ‘I’m sure it was inside the house, not outside. Do you think someone’s broken in?’

  Kate extricated herself from her blankets and went to the front door, which she opened cautiously. The landing and stairs outside were in complete darkness and she listened intently for several long moments but could hear nothing at all, the silence feeling almost tangible in the rest of the empty house. She closed the door again and leaned her back against it. ‘Do you want to go downstairs to look?’ she asked.

  Marie was staring down at the street from the window. ‘I can’t see anyone outside,’ she whispered. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think we’re very isolated up here, a long way from the phone,’ Kate said. ‘But I don’t think I’m very keen on going down there just now.’

  ‘Push the table against the door,’ Tess, who had joined them, whispered, looking pale and scared. ‘I’m not sure I’m going to stay here much longer. I’m going to ask around the staffroom and see if anyone’s got a spare room, or just a spare bed I could bunk down on for a bit.’

  ‘We’ll be all right if we stick together,’ Marie said, without much confidence in her voice. ‘It could have been something out in the street.’

  ‘It could,’ Kate said. ‘But let’s move the table anyway, just in case. We’ll never get back to sleep if we don’t.’ The other two nodded.

  ‘I doubt I’ll get back to sleep anyway,’ Tess said gloomily. This place is turning into a nightmare.’

  And as they pushed the heavy table against the front door Kate silently agreed. The flat felt more and more like a trap from which they would be lucky to escape. She too was beginning to feel a sense of panic which she was determined to hide from the other two.

  Kate got home early the next day. The photo shoot with Gerry and the Pacemakers had gone well, Ken Fellows had cast an eye over the contact prints with unusual satisfaction towards the end of the afternoon and told her to take the rest of the day off. But when she climbed the steps to the front door Kate felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and hesitated as she went to put her key in the lock. Marie, she knew, would not be at home, and nor, she remembered would Tess, who was staying late at school for a rehearsal of the school play. She realised she would be alone in the house and the idea made her distinctly nervous. She glanced at the front window of the ground-floor flat where there was still a gaping hole in the glass where a brick had shattered it during the night. Marie had promised to telephone Miles Beauchamp to ask for it to be repaired urgently, but it was obvious that nothing had been done. We shouldn’t have to put up with this, Kate told herself, her hand hovering above the lock. She no longer felt safe here and she was sure Tess and Marie would feel the same when they came home from work.

  In the end she put her door key back into her bag, deciding that she could use the unexpected time she had gained to good effect. She walked quickly down to Portobello Road and made her way to Mrs Chamberlain’s stall where she found Vera beginning to tidy her miscellaneous wares away in boxes.

  ‘Oh, hello, dear,’ she said. ‘Are you feeling better now? That was a nasty shock you got the other day. Poor old Cecily. Though I must say I’ve thought for some time that she was an accident waiting to happen. She wasn’t really looking after herself properly, and that son of hers was worse than useless.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with the police?’ Kate asked. ‘You said you would.’

  ‘I did pop in to see that Sergeant Lamb, as it happens,’ Vera said. ‘Not that he seemed very pleased to see me. Said it turned out she probably died of a heart attack, according to the post-mortem, and I should calm down and not worry my head about her. I only wanted to ask if him if knew when the funeral was. I’ve no idea where that son of hers lives to ask him about it. I guess he’ll dump her in the ground as cheaply as he can. He never seems to stint on anything for himself while his mother struggled in that miserable little flat. Anyway, the sergeant said he was too busy with a murder case to chatter on about Cecily Beauchamp. I suppose he meant that tart who got strangled last week.’

  ‘I thought the police believed Nelson Mackintosh did that,’ Kate said.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. The crime rate’s gone right up round here since all these blacks arrived. But I was talking to a woman who lives round here at lunch time and she says there’s a lot of talk about the girl being seen with a couple of white blokes that night. But she’s a bit of a red, always agitating about something or other. She’s always going to take sides with the blacks, isn’t she? I know for a fact she went to the big party the Jamaicans had for their independence day, the one that nearly caused a riot. She must have been the only white face there. Leonie Fletcher, she’s called. Has a stall down the far end selling all sorts of foreign tat.’

  ‘I might have a word with her,’ Kate said. ‘Nelson Mackintosh’s son’s gone missing. She might just have an idea who he might have gone off with.’

  ‘I don’t know why you bother, dear, I really don’t,’ Vera said with a sniff. ‘He’ll likely end up in jail just like his father.’

  ‘Did Sergeant Lamb say whether or not he’s found any diabetic medicine or syringes at Cecily’s flat?’ Kate asked, keen to change the subject.

  But Vera shook her head. ‘I didn’t ask him,’ she said, turning away to dump a jumble of metal items in a box. ‘I expect he took them, if they wanted to find out her medical details, don’t you? Stands to reason.’

  Maybe it did, Kate thought. And maybe there was an innocent explanation for Cecily’s death. Clearly the police seemed to think so, but she still had her doubts. She left Vera Chamberlain packing her stock into a battered van, taking photographs as she wove through the turmoil created by the packing up of the market. She strolled down towards the end of the street where the stalls became more domestic, fruit and veg occasionally intruding, until she found what was little more than a trestle table piled with brightly coloured belts and shawls and shirts of a distinctly exotic colour and pattern. Was this what Vera dismissively called tat, Kate wondered, attracted by the vivid display.

  ‘Are you Leonie Fletcher?’ she asked the willowy woman with a shock of unruly golden curls who seemed to be wearing some of her own stock.

  The woman stubbed out her cigarette and nodded. ‘Who’s asking?’ she asked, her expression neutral. ‘You’re not from these parts, obviously.’

  ‘Liverpool,’ Kate said tersely, wond
ering how long she would have to live in the south before she lost her scouse trademark.

  ‘Thought so,’ Leonie Fletcher said, her expression more friendly. ‘I’m from Manchester myself, though you’d hardly know it now, maybe. But whatever it’s like back home, we northerners have to stick together down here, don’t we? So what can I do for you, love?’

  Kate explained who she was and how she had come to meet the Mackintosh family, and her listener’s face darkened.

  ‘I heard young Ben had gone missing,’ she said. ‘His mother must be frantic. The whole thing is a travesty of justice and everyone round here knows it. Nelson would never hurt a fly let alone kill anyone. He’s a lovely man. But the local cops are bent, as well as racist, and no one has the guts to stand up to them. There are at least two witnesses who saw the dead woman with two white men before she was killed. One was her pimp and I guess the other must have been a client. The police haven’t even bothered to interview them as far as I know. It suits them to pin it on Nelson and get someone they regard as far too uppity off the streets.’

  ‘Can you tell me where to find these witnesses?’ Kate asked. ‘I think I know someone who might help.’

  ‘What? A lawyer? I think Nelson’s got a good brief.’

  ‘No, not a lawyer, a bizzy, as it happens, but not one based round here,’ Kate said.

  ‘An honest copper? You must be mistaken, pet,’ Leonie said. But if it helps . . .’ She took a notebook out of the satchel she had strapped to her waist and wrote something on a sheet which she handed to Kate. ‘Try these two,’ she said. ‘I haven’t spoken to them myself but a friend of mine told me what they were saying. They live close to where the body was found.’ She hesitated for a second. ‘They’re both on the game themselves.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Kate said. ‘Can I take a photograph of you and your stall, by the way?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ Leonie asked, laughing. ‘I’m no pin-up.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Kate said pulling out her camera. ‘But I love your stuff. And I’m doing a photo feature about Notting Hill and you’re something a bit different. Where do all the clothes come from?’

  ‘Africa, India, all over the world,’ Leonie said. ‘Here, have a scarf. You can do a bit of advertising for me around the neighbourhood.’ She handed Kate a long sliver of gauzy orange and peacock blue fabric which Kate immediately draped round her neck, as Leonie took up a pose behind the mounds of clothes she had not yet packed away. ‘Then take your snaps. I’ve got to be at a meeting at seven, so I’m in a hurry. The struggle goes on.’

  Kate did as she was told, not quite sure what struggle Leonie was referring too but knowing neither of them had the time just now for idle chat.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said when she had taken half a dozen pictures.

  ‘And good luck,’ Leonie said. ‘If you can really help Nelson a lot of people will be very grateful to you. Believe me.’

  Kate walked slowly back to the street where she had so recently seen police activity and a dead body being taken away and then glanced at the sheet of paper Leonie Fletcher had given her. It was the same street name but she had offered a choice of house numbers, not sure, she had said, exactly where the two prostitutes lived. For once she struck lucky and when she asked for Connie Smith or Denise Baker at the first of the houses Leonie had suggested, the woman who came to the door, blowsy and bleary eyed in a loosely fastened and much-stained satin dressing gown, agreed that she was Denise Baker. Kate explained her mission and the woman looked startled, her pale, blue eyes, under an unkempt tangle of fair hair, widening in what looked like alarm.

  ‘Who told you I said that?’ she demanded in a shrill voice.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Kate came back quickly.

  Denise glanced up and down the quiet street anxiously. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, standing aside to let Kate through the door and closing it quickly behind her. She led her along a narrow hallway and into a cluttered kitchen at the back of the house where a steaming mug of tea stood on the kitchen table in the centre of the room. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she asked as she waved Kate into a chair. ‘I don’t want any trouble with the Old Bill. They can make my life a misery soon as look at me. What the hell is going on?’

  Kate explained quietly why she thought that the police had arrested the wrong man for the murder which had happened just a little way down the street, and how she had become involved with Nelson Mackintosh’s family. ‘It was Leonie Fletcher who told me that this woman who was killed – what’s her name . . .?’

  ‘Janice Jones,’ Denise said sulkily. ‘She was only nineteen, wasn’t she? Hadn’t been working long, poor cow. You get to know the dodgy blokes in time, and I don’t think she knew what she was doing, to be honest.’

  ‘Leonie told me you’d said you’d seen Janice with two white men that night and you didn’t think it was a black man who killed her . . .’

  ‘Me and Connie did see her. We were working down Westbourne Grove and we came back here for a cup of tea about midnight, and she was out there on the street bold as brass, chatting to two blokes. No way were they black. Black blokes don’t generally come up this end. They stay down Notting Dale where all the clubs are. They know a lot of the girls around here won’t go with them.’

  ‘So you’d have noticed if Janice had been with a black man?’

  ‘We’d have noticed,’ Denise said. ‘I might even have said something to her. Us working girls have to look out for each other. No one else will. All Alphonse is good for is taking the cash.’

  ‘Alphonse? Who’s he?’

  ‘It’s not a he, it’s a them. There’s lots of them about. Alphonse – ponce. Don’t you know anything?’ Denise was contemptuous.

  ‘Have you told the police any of this?’ Kate asked, already knowing the answer to expect.

  ‘You joking?’ Denise asked. ‘Don’t you know the Bill round here are as bad as the bloody criminals? If they want this bloke Mackintosh to go down for killing Janice Jones then that’s what’ll happen, girl. You can bet on it.’

  DS Harry Barnard drove home early that evening feeling unusually dissatisfied with life. He had bought fish and chips on the way home and perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in his kitchen with the newspaper-wrapped parcel open in front of him, picking desultorily at the lukewarm meal which he had somehow managed to over-salt and over-vinegar in the chippie. He was losing touch with his East End self, he thought bitterly as he glanced round his white-and-cream kitchen where he very seldom cooked. Eventually he rolled up the coagulating mess in disgust and pitched it into the waste bin and lit a cigarette before going into the living room he had so carefully furnished. He flung himself into his revolving chair and spun round in frustration.

  If he was honest with himself, he thought, he knew exactly what was bugging him and it had very little to do with the back streets of pre-war London where he had spent his childhood. Those he had left without much regret as soon as he left grammar school and by fair means or foul he had achieved most of the ambitions he had started out with. And this flat was the icing on the cake. But he was increasingly aware that there was a vacuum at the centre of his life. More crucially he knew exactly who could fill it, but increasingly doubted that he could persuade Kate O’Donnell into his bed let alone into his life on a permanent basis. He wasn’t used to failure with women, though he had never given much serious thought to what might come beyond the chase and the bedding. This time, he thought, giving the chair a vicious twirl and spinning until it made him dizzy, something was different and he had to admit he was at a loss and he did not like it one bit.

  He could see the infuriating Kate again though, if he put his mind to it and indulged her enthusiasm for digging into murky areas of supposed injustice. The first time she had had good reason, he admitted, with her brother entangled in a murder case. But this time there was no such excuse and his first instinct was to choke off her interest in the murky side of Notting Hill as quickly as he could. There wer
e ruthless men there, both black and white, and on both sides of the very fuzzy frontier of the law, and he knew that the best thing she and her friends could do was to move out of their flat as quickly and as quietly as they could. But . . . He stopped spinning and sighed, walking slightly dizzily to the phone in the hall and dialling an East London number.

  ‘Ray?’ he said when the phone at the other end was picked up. ‘Harry Barnard. Could you just possibly give me a steer on something.’

  There was little more than a grunt from Ray Robertson but Barnard took it as an affirmative.

  ‘I know you’ve been down in Notting Hill chatting up the locals,’ he ploughed on. ‘Do you know if Devine’s extended his protection racket to the landlords as well as the usual businesses?’

  ‘You what?’ Robertson said explosively at the other end. ‘He’s doing what? That was one of the areas of business I was talking to him about. If he’s jumped the gun I’ll bloody have his black balls on toast.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Barnard said, alarmed by this unexpected reaction. ‘It may not be him, but I’m told someone’s at it. I’ve got a girlfriend down there, as you know, and I don’t want her involved in any unpleasantness. Can you see if you can get a whisper about exactly what’s going on and give me a bell? I’ll be seeing her tomorrow with a bit of luck and I really need to know what the hell’s going on.’

  There was another grunt from Robertson’s end, which Barnard took for assent.

  ‘I owe you, Ray,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘You surely do, Flash, you surely do.’