Death Trap

by Patricia Hall

  ‘Oh yes,’ Lamb said. ‘Someone on their way home late spotted a black lad running down Argyll Gardens and noticed he smelled of petrol. Unfortunately he was almost home and didn’t spot the fire, so he took no notice. Just thought it was odd but didn’t want to challenge a West Indian. No one saw the fire until it had taken a good hold. Kate and her friends were very lucky to get out the way they did. Anyone older or slower would have died.’ Barnard nodded as Lamb confirmed his own assessment of what had happened.

  ‘And what about the other thing? Did you get anywhere chasing up the girls who spotted Janice Jones the night she was killed?’

  ‘I did, as a matter of fact,’ Lamb said, with some satisfaction. ‘I caught up with them living in Shepherd’s Bush. And I got a pretty good description of the men they saw with the Jones girl that night. I need to have another go at them but I think they can identify them if I push a bit harder. It sounds to me like Stuttering Stan and his mate, though they don’t seem to have had that mangy dog with them. So if the Yard come thundering down here in response to the fuss Mr lawyer Manley is making in the press, I’ve got my back covered. Bloody Slim Hickman is just going to have to take his chances. I’m not swinging for him and his prejudices on this one.’

  ‘So you reckon Nelson Mackintosh is home and dry? That’ll please Kate, anyway.’

  ‘I never thought he was a likely killer in the first place, did I?’ Lamb asked piously. ‘He’s not the type. But Hickman’s had a grudge against him for years because he was always willing to make waves, stand up for himself and his so-called community, and for anyone else in trouble, come to that. He’s been a thorn in Hickman’s side for years. But the comeback was always petty stuff from our side, small beer, till now; searches for ganja, noisy parties being raided, street searches, that sort of stuff. Not a lot you could pin down, not a lot the West Indians could go to town about. A murder charge is something else, a whole lot of steps too far, in my book.’ Lamb finished his drink and put the glass down on the table noisily. ‘God knows where this leaves Notting Hill CID,’ he said. ‘Up the bloody creek, as far as I can see, when most of us had nothing to do with it.’

  Barnard sighed and finished his pint. ‘You know the theory? One bad apple? The trouble is one bad apple infects the whole barrel.’ He felt infinitely tired and his spirits were only slightly lifted as he spotted Kate at the door, obviously looking for them.

  He went over to her and led her to the table. ‘A drink?’ he asked, but she shook her head.

  ‘I’m not thirsty,’ she said. She looked at Lamb, her eyes fierce. ‘Will you catch whoever tried to kill us?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t think it was personal,’ Lamb said. ‘My guess it was the landlord they were trying to intimidate.’

  ‘I’m not even sure who the landlord is any more,’ Kate said. ‘Miles Beauchamp was trying to sell the house to someone called Roman, but I’m not sure whether he succeeded or not. It was a fraud anyway. His solicitor told me Miles didn’t inherit the house when his mother died. But presumably you know all this anyway . . .’

  Lamb flashed a surprised look at Barnard. ‘You’re very well informed, Miss O’Donnell. I hope you passed all this on to my colleagues just now.’

  ‘I’m sure the fire-service people investigating the fire will have tracked down the landlord by now,’ Barnard said quickly.

  ‘You need to catch up with Miles Beauchamp, anyway,’ Kate said, her eyes flashing. ‘I’m sure he bumped off his mother, but she seems to have had the sense to change her will. Harry will tell you all about it.’

  ‘The good news is that Nelson Mackintosh is probably off the hook, Kate,’ Barnard said. ‘Eddie here has tracked down the girls you spoke to and is working on finding the two men they saw with Janice Jones before she was killed.’

  Kate nodded slowly. ‘It’s about time, la,’ she said. ‘As far as I can see you’re more interested in chasing innocent black men round here than catching the real criminals. That can’t be right, can it?’

  Lamb did not respond. He got to his feet and raised his hand to Barnard, ignoring Kate entirely. ‘I’d keep a low profile in this neck of the woods for a bit, if I were you mate,’ he said. ‘Slim Hickman has a long record of slithering out of sticky situations. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it again. I’ll see you around.’

  Barnard watched his friend push his way through the thickening crowd of lunchtime drinkers. ‘You were a bit hard on him,’ he said mildly. ‘I don’t think he had much to do with this mess. And he’s right. We shouldn’t stick around here. It’s all going to get very nasty when the Yard descends in force.’

  ‘Can we go to see Mrs Mackintosh at least?’ Kate asked. ‘Someone should tell her the good news about Nelson.’

  Barnard looked doubtful but then nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just a quick call on the Mackintoshes and then I’ll take you back to my place. You look as though you need to sleep. I’ll go in to work later and find out what’s going down.’

  Kate did not argue. For once in her life she was happy for someone else to take charge.

  When they got to Poor Man’s Corner the door was wide open and a handful of customers were eating and drinking in the cafe. No one looked especially pleased when they walked in. Not even Abraham Righton gave them more than a bleak nod from behind the bar.

  ‘Are the Mackintoshes at home?’ Kate asked Righton who nodded cautiously in the uneasy silence. ‘We picked up some good news for them.’

  ‘They certainly need that, girl,’ Righton said. ‘You know the way up.’

  Kate led the way and knocked on the outside door of the flat. Evelina Mackintosh opened it quickly, looking surprised and seeming to hesitate before waving them inside. Like her husband, Kate thought, she appeared to have aged years over the last few weeks. The small living room seemed crowded when they got inside. Nelson Mackintosh was standing by the window gazing down into the street, and spun round to face them with something like horror on his face when he recognised them. There were two boys sitting on the sofa, the younger boy Joseph sitting beside his older brother Ben, whose face was puffy around the eyes as if he had been crying. He too looked horrified when he saw Kate.

  ‘You?’ he said. ‘Why are you here again?’

  ‘We thought you’d like to hear that the Notting Hill police are pursuing a new lead in the murder case,’ Barnard said to Nelson. ‘Nothing’s definite, but it looks as though new information will let you off the hook. I’m sure your lawyer will want to know about it.’

  ‘It a pity they didn’t pursue new leads a long time ago,’ Mackintosh said bitterly. ‘It’s too late now. My family is ruined.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked, surprised that Nelson did not seem more relieved by the news they had brought. Evelina gave her a desperate look, tears in her eyes. She glanced at her husband who turned towards Barnard, putting one hand on his older son’s shoulder, his face implacable.

  ‘You warned me Ben had fallen into bad company,’ he said. ‘You were right. But I didn’t realise how bad it was. He came home this morning and told me what had happened to him last night.’

  ‘No, Nelson,’ Evelina said softly, tears running down her face now. ‘Don’t do it.’

  ‘Be quiet, woman,’ Nelson said. ‘This we can’t hide. How could we, and face this young woman here? A young woman who tried to help us.’

  Kate glanced at Barnard who had gone very still, standing just inside the door and gazing not at her or Nelson but at Ben.

  ‘What can’t you hide?’ he asked Ben. ‘Where you in Argyll Gardens last night?’ The boy glanced at his father who stared back at him, his face stony. Ben nodded.

  ‘With a can of petrol?’ Ben nodded again, swallowing hard to keep down the tears.

  ‘Did you know there were people in that house?’ Barnard snapped.

  ‘No,’ the boy said. ‘The King, he said the house had been sold and was empty. The landlord was being difficult and needed to be taught who was in charge
in Notting Hill.’

  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.