Death Trap (11 page)

‘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 happening 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.

Later Mr Robert Manley, who is a friend of my father and a lawyer, come round to see my mother and say that they are questioning my father not just about the parcel, but about the murder of a woman. My mother begins to cry then and I have to tell Mr Manley exactly what happened that morning and he takes it all down and he is very angry and says he will get my father out. And then Mr Abraham Righton come round to the flat and he has heard everything about the morning. He is my father's friend and he says he will put the cafe back to normal and run it till my father come home. So my mother and my brother and me, we put the flat back to rights and do as Mr Manley say and keep everything that the police have trashed because he says he will make a complaint and we will need all that as evidence. He says it is more than time the police stopped behaving like colonial people and mistreating the black brothers. And all the morning people call to talk with my mother and they are very angry and Mr Righton decide that people will go to the police station to complain about what happened to my father. So at six o'clock I know a lot of people went there. My mother would not let me or my brother go, we was to stay in the flat. But she came back later and say that the police had come out with truncheons and arrested some of the men and the rest had been frightened and gone home. So no one found out anything about my father that night.

Next day my mother went down again, and I went with her, and Mr Manley was there, and the police told us that he was charged with possession of cannabis and was being questioned about the murder of a white woman. And my mother screamed and cried and said that no way could that be true, he was a godly man and had nothing to do with any women but her, but the policeman who spoke to us laughed and said everyone knew about black men. And Mr Manley brought us home and said I must look after my mother and my brother and that he would do the best he could for my father but I could see that he was worried. And I asked him who the dead woman was and he said she was a prostitute and they were sure a black man killed her, and that if they did not have evidence they would make it up. He asked if my father had annoyed the police and I said they did not like his cafe, they thought it encouraged people who wanted to change things for black people and that I heard a policeman say to him once that he should think himself lucky he wasn't in Birmingham, Alabama where they knew how to keep black people in their place. So I decided to write down everything that had happened so if anything more happened people would know how it started and who started it. Because it was not Nelson Mackintosh because he is a good man and an innocent man and we will prove it.

THE END.'

‘Whew,' Kate said. ‘That's an amazing story.' She looked at Tess. ‘Do you think it's true?' she asked.

‘I'm sure it is,' Tess said. ‘That boy changed over the weekend from a bright, self-confident lad to a nervous wreck. Jean Curtis, my head of department, says there's not many of the West Indian boys who look like they're going to do well at school. But Ben was the exception. He had his parents behind him and he's intelligent and focussed. This looks as though it has been a catastrophe for him.'

‘I told you I knew there'd been a murder,' Kate said. ‘I saw the police when I went up to Portobello Road on Saturday morning. And I saw them at the cafe, too. In fact I took some pictures. I developed them this morning and gave them to Ken, but he wasn't very impressed. He said the papers wouldn't give much space to the murder of a prostitute. But maybe they'll change their mind if this sort of thing is going on down there.' She looked thoughtful and then shook her head. ‘Or maybe not,' she said. ‘I don't think they're very interested in what goes on with the West Indians unless they're actually causing trouble on the streets.'

‘Perhaps your tame bizzy could find out what's going on for you, if you really want to know. I can't get involved, Kate. The school really wouldn't like it and I'm on probation. I can't take any chances in my first year.'

Kate nodded, but she knew that she didn't want Harry Barnard, who had so firmly warned her of the dangers of the neighbourhood, to know she was still pursuing the fate of Nelson Mackintosh. ‘Maybe I'll go round to the cafe to see Mrs Mackintosh,' she said. ‘It would be good to get some pictures of the damage the police did. It sounds to me as if this case might get into the news if what Ben says is all true. It would annoy my boss if the thing blew up and I hadn't taken my chances to get him some good pics.'

‘Are you sure, Kate?' Tess said doubtfully.

‘Quite sure, la,' Kate said with rather more confidence than she actually felt. ‘It's my job, isn't it?'

After the three flatmates had eaten that evening, Kate put her coat on, put a fresh film in her camera and announced that she was going out to see Mrs Mackintosh. Tess looked appalled.

‘You mustn't Kate,' she said. ‘Really you mustn't. It's not safe.'

‘It's not far to the cafe,' Kate said. ‘And it's main roads all the way. I won't come to any harm. And some pictures of the place might be really useful at work.' She knew that was not her only motive but she did not plan to tell Tess and Marie that Ben Mackintosh's story had filled her with the sort of anger that she had not felt since her own brother had run into trouble with the police. She had no faith at all that there were not still officers in the Metropolitan Police who were deeply corrupt. She had met them in Soho and saw no reason to suppose that all was pure as the driven snow in Notting Hill. Harry Barnard had virtually said so.

She walked quickly along the now familiar route to Portobello Road and turned into the side street where she was surprised to see lights on in the Poor Man's Corner cafe. She went to the door but found it locked in spite of the lights and signs of activity inside. She hesitated for a moment and then knocked. The door was opened by a tall West Indian man with a beard and a lot of hair who looked her up and down with some suspicion.

‘We closed for refurbishment, sister,' he said.

Behind him Kate could see several other people with mops and buckets, brushes and pots of paint and large rubbish bins. The police must have done a thorough job of trashing the place, she thought.