Death Trap (15 page)

‘Do you know what he's called, this West Indian bloke?' Barnard asked, although he reckoned he knew the answer to that question anyway.

‘No, Fred never goes into that sort of detail. He just said that Ray wanted to expand west, and this looked like a good way of doing it. It's what Ray's done before, moving in with someone and then taking over when he's got a grip. Saves starting from scratch every time, I suppose.'

Shirley glanced at her watch. ‘He didn't go out till eight, so we've a couple of hours maybe. We don't want to take any chances.' She pulled Barnard towards her and gave him a lingering kiss. ‘Do you want to go upstairs now or would you like to stay here by the fire?'

Barnard gently pulled her negligee off completely. ‘Why move?' he whispered. ‘This will do nicely.'

Later, walking back to his car after Shirley had begun to get anxious and had hurried him out of the house, he thought again about what she had told him about her husband's trip west with Ray Robertson. He knew that Fred, the money man, would only have accompanied Ray if negotiations with Devine had got to an advanced stage and it surprised him slightly that they had apparently reached agreement so quickly. He couldn't see what advantage there would be for Devine to have Robertson muscling into his territory or, indeed, why Robertson himself was so sure he would benefit from a move which might spread his empire so far from its roots in the East End and into a community which must be a bit of a mystery to him. As far as Barnard could see, Notting Hill was a foreign country where Devine was essentially King. What, he wondered, was really in it for Ray?

A
t the office the next morning Kate developed all the pictures she had taken in Notting Hill over the last few days and collated then onto contact sheets according to where they had been taken and then tapped on Ken Fellows' office door, which, unusually, was closed. But he called her in and put the phone down as she closed the door behind her. She knew that a couple of her male colleagues in the main office were watching her with unusual and not very friendly interest through their plumes of cigarette smoke. If she was making them uneasy, she thought, she was only too pleased.

‘Just the person,' he said with unusual cheerfulness. ‘That was the editor of this new news magazine which is launching next month.
Today
they've decided to call it. Editor used to work for
Picture Post
and I guess he thinks he's going to recreate it
.
I can't see it lasting long, to be honest, TV's put the kibosh on that sort of magazine. But we might as well take advantage of it while it's there. I pitched him two ideas based on what you've been doing: the tensions in Notting Hill and the Merseybeat sensation. He was quite interested in them both, as it happens. I promised to send him a selection of the pics we've got already so he can get a feel for what you do. The music story would mean a trip up to Liverpool for a week or so. How do you feel about that?'

‘Fine,' Kate said, trying to conceal her surprise at this sudden turnaround in Ken's attitude to her work. ‘I'd like that. But I think maybe we should do the London story first. It's all blowing up down here. As it happens I've just done some contacts for you of the latest stuff I've taken. There's a lot of tension on the street. I reckon there could be violence down there. Someone put a brick through the window of Nelson Mackintosh's cafe only last night. It was a miracle no one was hurt. The Beatles and the rest of them could wait until nearer the time of their Palladium date.'

‘Right, I'll have a look at those and you can blow up the best of them and I'll get them over to
Today
before he's had time to lose interest,' Ken said briskly. ‘Go and get a coffee. I'll get back to you in half an hour.'

DS Harry Barnard came out of DCI Keith Jackson's office feeling well pleased with himself. Jackson had sounded interested, in his own lugubrious way, in the intelligence Barnard had relayed – from an anonymous source, he said, tapping his nose suggestively – about the negotiations apparently in train between Ray Robertson and King Devine. Barnard would, they concluded, take a trip west to pass what he knew on to his opposite number in Notting Hill. That, as far as Barnard was concerned, was a result, as it gave him an opportunity to do a bit of snooping around on his own account down there. Jackson had only recently taken over the top job in vice after the sudden departure of his predecessor, and his arrival had not been greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm by the troops. His reputation as something of an old-style martinet had preceded him and many of his junior officers feared that their own lucrative scams in the teeming streets of the West End might be curtailed by their new boss.

In the event, Barnard had quickly decided, the CID room's fears were overblown. Jackson was proving himself a remote figure, more interested in his own promotion prospects than in the freelance activities of his squad and, Barnard suspected, with controlling his own demons which tended to skew his judgement. The detective constables and sergeants out on the street soon learned that if they delivered a regular supply of arrests for gross indecency, gained mainly from regular traps set in public lavatories, DCI Jackson would be happy. His hatred of homosexuality seemed visceral, stemming apparently from a fiercely religious upbringing in Scotland, and his detectives soon learned that little else that went on in the pubs and clubs, brothels and strip joints of Soho seemed to concern him unduly. Barnard himself had a different view, which he kept carefully concealed at work. His own family had suffered from the routine persecution of homosexuals who were rash enough to reveal their preferences and he made himself scarce when ‘queer' pubs and clubs were raided and eager – and prurient – constables provoked men in lavatory cubicles to betray themselves.

Barnard went back to his desk feeling reasonably content with his session with the DCI, and he took it in good part when, as usual, he had to fend off the jibes of colleagues who found regular entertainment in picking over the day's sartorial extravagances he enjoyed as an unashamed follower of fashion from the depths of their own sweaty suits and grubby but acceptably dull shirts and ties.

‘You'll have old Hellfire Jackson on your back if you subject him to many more ties like that, Flash,' one colleague said, nodding at the flowery item tied loosely around Barnard's neck. ‘He'll have you down as a shirt-lifter if you're not careful.'

‘Just seen him as it happens,' Barnard said airily. ‘He took it in his stride. He's got enough sense to know that I'm not a nancy boy, whatever else I may be. After all, he comes from a country where the blokes wear skirts.' That drew a few snorts from the assembled crew and the peal of the phone on Barnard's desk effectively stopped any further sallies.

The desk sergeant downstairs was on the other end announcing a visitor in the front office with an appreciative snort. ‘Young lady to see you, Flash,' he said. ‘Name of O'Donnell. Very tasty.'

This time Barnard had to stifle an angry retort, hoping that Kate had not been able to hear that remark. ‘I'll be right down,' he said curtly, pulling his jacket back on. If she had come here to find him, he thought, as he took the stairs two at a time, she must be seriously worried about something. And he knew her well enough now to know that if she was worried she could do rash and impulsive things and that in spite of the million reasons why he shouldn't, he would always feel he had to try to stop her.

Kate was sitting on one of the hard, wooden chairs in the waiting area downstairs looking tense and dispirited though she brightened up slightly when she saw Barnard coming through the swing doors which led to the rest of the station.

‘Come and have a drink,' Barnard said before she could speak. He did not want to discuss Kate's problems in Notting Hill, which is what he assumed she had come to talk about, within earshot of colleagues. With a protective arm around her waist, which she didn't seem to object to, he led her out and round a corner to a pub which seemed to have just opened its doors. The lounge bar was empty and he settled her at a corner table and bought himself a half pint and her a soft drink, at her insistence.

‘My boss said go for a coffee,' she said. ‘I don't want to be breathing gin all over him when I go back.'

‘So, what can I do for you?' Barnard asked quietly, adapting to her mood.

Instead of a reply she pushed up the sleeve of her shirt and showed him her arm, which was bruised from wrist to elbow. ‘Tess and I got hassled by a gang of lads last night,' she said. ‘They took exception to us going to Nelson Mackintosh's cafe to talk to his wife. His son's gone missing and Tess is very worried about him. He's a very bright lad, apparently, doing well at school, and she thinks he's getting into bad company. I didn't recognise him at the time, but you remember when you paid some lads to look after your car? When we went to King Devine's club?'

Barnard nodded, wincing slightly at the memory of what had turned out to be a disastrously embarrassing encounter with the gangster. At least Devine didn't know he was a copper, he thought, and he had better make sure that it stayed that way.

‘I reckon Ben Mackintosh was one of that little gang. What was he doing out on the streets at that time of night?'

‘And down by all the clubs,' Barnard said quietly. ‘Not a good place for a kid to be.' He pulled Kate's shirt sleeve back down gently and did up the button. ‘I was afraid something like this would happen,' he said. ‘I did warn you to be careful.'

Kate gave him a rueful smile. ‘And as usual I didn't listen,' she admitted. ‘But there's more.' And she told him about finding Cecily Beauchamp's body in the basement flat and about how she and the old woman's friend from Portobello market were not sure that she had died a natural death.

‘Whoa, whoa,' Barnard said. ‘You're already suspicious about the police handling of one death in Notting Hill. Don't tell me there's another the police have got wrong. That's too much.'

‘I don't suppose they're connected but Mrs Beauchamp's son definitely wants to sell the house. Me and the girls are the only tenants left now and I expect we'll be next for the Alsatian dog treatment. It's getting quite spooky down there. Tess is getting really worried.'

‘Wait a minute,' Barnard said. ‘Let's take these things one at a time. As it happens my boss wants me to talk to our opposite numbers in Notting Hill to fill them in on what Ray Robertson is up to with Devine. It won't be my case, and there's no way I want to get involved with Devine after what happened when we went to the club. But at least I'll be able to find out what's going on.' A sudden anxiety struck him. ‘He hasn't tried to get in touch with you again, has he? Don't, for God's sake, get involved with taking his photograph if he asks. He's a seriously dangerous man. If the lads who hassled you last night were all white, that's a good thing, though it probably didn't feel like it at the time. If Devine's got people looking for you they'll much more likely be West Indians.'

‘Looking for me,' Kate said feeling slightly sick.

‘Men like Devine don't like to be thwarted,' Barnard said, his face grim. ‘When I talk to Notting Hill nick I'll see if I can get you some protection, the beat men on the late shift can take a turn down your street, keep an eye on the house, look out for Alsatians and any other thugs you've annoyed. But really, Kate, you need to move out of there. And in the meantime, don't expose yourself by flashing that camera around.'

Kate drew a sharp breath at that, knowing that she would be doing just that if Ken Fellows got any encouragement for her feature ideas. That was something she decided quickly she would not confide in Barnard just now. Work was work, she thought, and her future depended on it, but she would steer well clear of King Devine and his clubs. That at least, she felt, was a risk too far.

‘Will you find out for me what the police are thinking about Cecily Beauchamp's death?' she asked carefully. ‘I'd really like to be sure she died a natural death. She was dead posh but a nice old bird when it came down to it, but her son sounds very dodgy.'

‘I'll see what I can suss out about that, and about the state of play with your Mackintosh man, where that inquiry's got to, if that's what you want. My mate Eddie Lamb will fill me in unofficially if I buy him a couple of pints if I can't get anything out of DCI Hickman who's the man in charge. But please, Kate, I'm serious. Notting Hill is not a good place to be poking your nose in where it's not wanted. You and the girls need to get out of there – fast.' He hesitated for a moment and then laid his hand on hers. ‘You know I'd be very upset if you got hurt, don't you?'

Kate looked at him for a moment before she pulled her hand away wondering why she felt so reluctant. ‘I'll be very careful,' she said. ‘I promise.'

DCI Peter ‘Slim' Hickman, who had agreed readily enough to see Harry Barnard that same day, turned out to be a man of such substantial girth that his body seemed to hang over the edges of his chair like a blancmange. But his small eyes in his treble-chinned face were as sharp as chips of anthracite and his scowl far from welcoming.

‘Vice, is it?' he asked Barnard as soon as he came into his office, his northern accent reduced after years in the south to a faint echo. ‘Weren't you involved with Ted Venables in the spring? Nasty business, that.'

‘Very nasty,' Barnard said tersely.

‘I've not met your new boss yet,' Hickman said. ‘Bit of a stickler I hear. Won't go amiss after what went before.' Barnard did not reply. There was nothing he wanted to feed into the Met's gossip mill about his bosses, previous or current, and Hickman should know that.

‘Ray Robertson,' the DCI said. ‘You reckon he's seriously trying to get involved with Devine down here, do you? I wouldn't have thought an old style cockney like him would have got involved with the blacks.'