Death Trap

Table of Contents

A Selection of Recent Titles by Patricia Hall

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

DEAD BEAT *

DEATH TRAP *

SINS OF THE FATHERS

DEATH IN A FAR COUNTRY

BY DEATH DIVIDED

DEVIL'S GAME

* available from Severn House

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and the USA by

Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2012 by Patricia Hall.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hall, Patricia, 1940-

Death trap.

1. Women photographers–Fiction. 2. London (England)–Social conditions–20th century–Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title

823.9'14-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-266-5 (Epub)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-022-5 (cased)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

‘
S
he loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah . . .
' Kate O'Donnell, with a broad smile on her face, stood outside the front door of her friends' tiny top-floor flat panting slightly. She had raced up the stairs, slowing slightly on the top and final flight, her face pink and her dark curls ruffled, eager to share her news with Marie and Tess, only to find them listening to the very band which was at the heart of her good fortune. She opened the front door of Flat 4 and went into the cramped living room where Tess and Marie were dancing wildly to the record on the turntable, hands in the air, eyes sparkling and hair bouncing.

‘Hey,' she said. ‘Can you listen a minute, girls. I've got the job. Would you believe it?'

Her two friends paused for a moment in mid-gyration to listen, breathless but still swaying.

‘Ken said I knew so much about the Liverpool bands he reckoned he'd have to keep me on. How about that, la?'

Marie and Tess grinned.

‘Bloody fantastic,' Marie said.

‘Amazing,' Tess added, grabbing Kate's hands, trying to pull her into the dance. ‘Listen to this. They're number one. Can you believe that, la? Our very own lads from the Cavern?'

But Kate couldn't stop the words pouring out. ‘Ken sold those pics I took of Cynthia Lennon. He was dead pleased with that, dead pleased with all the pics I took back home,' Kate said. She struggled out of her jacket and dumped it on the sofa, covered with rumpled blankets, which was currently the only place she could call home in London, and let herself be whirled into the dance. ‘
She loves you, and you know that can't be bad  . . .
' But after a few more turns she flopped breathless onto the sofa and ran a hand through her hair trying to calm down now that the news she had been hugging to herself all the way from Tottenham Court Road to Notting Hill Gate on the tube had been relayed at last.

‘I really need to find somewhere on my own to live now,' Kate said, suddenly serious. ‘Now I know I'm staying. I can't carry on camping out here like this, can I? You've been great, having me here but you need the space. Anyway, Ken's given me a pay rise so I'll have a bit more for rent. That can't be bad, can it? I was out this afternoon, round Regent Street, chasing the Beatles as it happens, along with about a hundred screaming teenagers. It's getting just like Liverpool now, the kids are going crazy for them. I can't believe it. No one in London seemed to have even heard of them a couple of months ago.'

‘Well, they certainly have now,' Marie said as the record neared its end. ‘P'raps if Liverpool gets fashionable they'll want a few scouse actresses as well. A bit of the fame might rub off, what do you reckon? If Rita Tushingham could do it, why not me? A Liverpool
Taste of Honey
?'

‘Why not, la?'

‘You never know,' Kate said, feeling slightly guilty. Marie had been in London far longer than she had, working in coffee bars and going to dozens of auditions, trying to launch a career as an actress with very little success. Kate had made the journey south in the spring and had now made her temporary job as a photographer permanent in spite of her boss's doubts about hiring a woman. She was elated but could see the envy in Marie's eyes.

The last bars of the hit song faded away and Tess lifted the needle from the vinyl disc and parked it gently on its rest. ‘How about we go down to the Windsor Castle for a bevvy and then get fish and chips for supper? Have a night off cooking? I've survived my first week in a proper job too, you know, my first week as a proper teacher. Two down, one to go. You'll hit it lucky soon, Marie, I know you will.'

Marie made a brave effort at a smile, pushing her copper hair out of her eyes with a much-practised gesture of insouciance, though Kate could see it was more about acting than genuine cheerfulness. ‘Let's do that. I'll get my jacket,' she said. ‘The evenings are getting cool now. Summer's nearly over.'

The three of them spent a few frantic minutes tidying up and primping their hair and make-up to a rerun of Tess's new record, before opening the front door and becoming aware of unusual noises below, somewhere on the lower floors of the tall Notting Hill terrace house where Marie and Tess rented what had once been the servants' quarters and was now the meagre top-floor flat.

‘What on earth's that?' Kate asked, hesitating on the top stair. The rumble of more than one angry-sounding male voice was suddenly overtaken by the threatening bark of what sounded like a seriously large dog. ‘What on earth's happening?'

The dog barked again and a woman's voice shrieked in obvious alarm.

‘Come on,' Tess said, pushing past Kate. ‘That sounds like Elsie, who lives downstairs at Number Two. Let's see what's going on.'

Kate and Marie glanced at each other doubtfully, but in the end followed Tess down the stairs, leaning over the bannister to see what they could see below. But it was not until they reached the first-floor landing that they got a good view of the drama taking place there. The tenants of the flat, whom Kate only knew by sight, were standing at their front door, the man with a protective arm around the woman Kate assumed was Elsie, his wife. They were a small couple, grey-haired and anxious-looking, and they were facing two tall, burly men in duffel coats, one holding an enormous, panting Alsatian on a chain, its muzzle only inches from the chest of the man at the door. The man with the dog had been shouting, an incoherent rant interrupted occasionally by a painful stutter which he did not allow to interfere with the volume. When he saw the three women approaching down the stairs he stopped and scowled in their direction, before pulling his companion out of the way so that they could pass. But Tess stopped, looking indignant, and Kate and Marie had no choice but to stop close behind her.

‘Are you all right, Elsie?' Tess asked. ‘Is everything all right, Geoff?'

The two people in the doorway said nothing, but their expression made it very clear that they were far from all right. They were terrified of the men with the dog. Geoff opened his mouth as if to speak but no sounds came out as the dog growled, low in its throat, and its handler let it nose even closer.

‘Can we come in, Elsie?' Kate said suddenly. ‘We brought that sugar we borrowed from you the other day.' She smiled to herself when this suggestion reduced all four people in the doorway of Flat 2 to a nonplussed silence.

Elsie's husband was the first to recover. ‘Yes, come in, duck. Elsie'll make you a nice cup of tea.' He glared at the two men who had been threatening them, who in turn looked at each other and hauled the dog away to the other side of the landing.

‘We'll be back, Mr Wilson,' the dog handler said. ‘I told you already. The landlord's not m–m–essing about. He won't take n–n–o for an answer. It'd be b–b–better for everyone if you just did as he wants.' And with that he hauled the reluctant dog down the stairs, tail between its legs now, closely followed by his companion who gave all the tenants a final glare before the two of them headed for the front door which slammed with an echoing thud behind them, sending showers of plaster dust to the floor.

Kate let out a relieved gasp and followed her friends into the Wilsons' living room, a much bigger room with a bay window on the front of the house than Marie and Tess's pokey space upstairs but cluttered with what looked like the detritus of a lifetime. She noticed that Geoff was careful to lock the door and push a couple of solid bolts home before he followed them inside.

Marie pushed Kate forward. ‘This is our friend Kate. She's staying with us for a bit,' she said to Elsie, who was still looking frightened and bewildered. ‘This is Elsie and Geoff,' she said to Kate. ‘Geoff works on the tube. We walk back from the station together sometimes when I've been working late at the coffee bar.'

‘You shouldn't be walking home so late on your own like that, girl,' Geoff Wilson muttered. ‘It's not safe round here now with all these black fellas about. Not like it used to be when we first came to Notting Hill.'

‘Have you lived here a long time?' Kate asked.

‘Twenty years we've been in this flat,' Elsie said. ‘We were bombed out in forty-four by one of them doodlebugs. I came home from work one day and found the house had gone, just a heap of rubble and a hole in the road. Our next-door neighbours were killed, and their children. Lovely youngsters they were. We never had no kiddies.' She glanced away as if passing on that information still hurt. ‘We came here after that,' she went on quickly.

‘It's being here so long that's the trouble,' Geoff said, patting his wife's hand awkwardly. ‘Our rent's fixed and the landlord don't like that. He wants to put it up but he can't. I think he's trying to sell the place and we're a liability, a fly in the ointment. He's been trying to get us to move out for a bit, but this is the first time he's threatened us like that, with the dog and everything. It's not right, that, is it? Not right at all.'

‘Can't you go to the police?' Kate asked, the thought bringing to mind a particular policeman she had not heard from for a while and was trying very hard to forget. ‘It can't be legal to bully you like that.'