Death Trap

By Patricia Hall

Kate O?Donnell, fresh from her adventures in Dead Beat, discovers yet again there?s a darker side to London in the Swinging Sixties|Beatlemania has reached London, but young photographer Kate O’Donnell soon discovers a darker side of the city when a prostitute is found murdered off the Portobello Road. A West Indian immigrant, Nelson Mackintosh, is arrested, and simmering racial tension reaches breaking point. Convinced of Nelson’s innocence, Kate determines to track down the real killer. But when her activities attract the attention of notorious gangster King Devine, not even Kate’s old sparring partner DS Harry Barnard can ensure her safety.|"Colorful characters, social commentary, and sixties ambience all add to the appeal of this engaging British mystery"|"Hall?s second begins where her first leaves off, mixing straight-up procedural with a dose of local color

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780102665

Patricia Hall

Patricia Hall is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Book preview

ONE

‘She 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.’

‘I went to the police when it first started. My union said to complain. But the Old Bill didn’t want to know. Said it was a civil matter and we should get a solicitor. As if I can afford that.’

‘Well, they’ve gone for now,’ Tess said. ‘Perhaps they’ll take no for an answer now.’

Geoff Wilson looked at her lugubriously and shook his head. ‘I don’t reckon they’ll do that,’ he said. ‘I don’t reckon there’s a cat in hell’s chance they’ll do that.’ Elsie began to cry quietly, taking a handkerchief out of the pocket of her flowered apron to dab her eyes. ‘Number three’s empty already. Bloke moved out a couple of months ago and they’ve not put a new tenant in. They want the whole place empty, that’s what it comes down to.’

‘I don’t know how we’ll find another place round here,’ Elsie said. ‘I really don’t.’

The three friends drank a cup of tea with Elsie and Geoff and then left them to their supper.

‘It’s a crying shame,’ Marie said as they trouped down the worn stone steps from the front door under its crumbling portico to the street. ‘Can’t you talk to your tame bizzy about it, Kate. He might know what to do.’

‘He’s based in Soho. You know that,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t suppose he knows much about Notting Hill.’

‘You could ask him, couldn’t you?’ Marie insisted snappily.

Kate shrugged, irritated by the question. ‘Maybe,’ she said. She glanced back at the tall house with its crumbling stucco and flaking paint. ‘They’ve got a cheek asking more for flats in this rotten old dump,’ she said. ‘It looks as if it might fall down any time.’

‘Elsie’s right, though,’ Tess said. ‘The staff at my new school say exactly the same. Flats round here are very hard to find. Rents are going through the roof, there’s so many new people moving into London. Just like us, I suppose.’

‘Shouldn’t we see if the old girl in the basement is all right,’ Kate asked, glancing at the gloomy steps which led to a littered area below street level where there was a door and a barred window.

‘Do you know her?’ Tess asked, surprised.

‘I helped her down with her shopping one day. She’d got a bit stuck on the steps. She seemed a nice enough old dear, if a bit stuck up. Talks with marbles in her mouth.’

‘I’ve never seen her all the time we’ve lived here,’ Marie said. ‘I thought she was a bit of a recluse, though there’s letters left up in the hallway for her sometimes. Dead posh, you’re right there, la. Right over the Wirral is Mrs C Beauchamp.

‘Cecily, she told me,’ Kate said with a grin. ‘She insisted on calling me Catherine. You go on, I’ll catch you up. I’ll just make sure that she’s not having any trouble with those scallies with the dog. Won’t take a minute.’

Kate negotiated the area steps cautiously, kicking aside piles of litter and the first yellow autumn leaves before knocking on the half-glazed door which she now noticed close up also had bars across the window. There was no sign of a light in what must be a dark and gloomy flat, but as she was on the point of giving up she heard a faint noise inside and, when she tapped on the door again, an almost imperceptible sound of movement before a light was switched on behind the glass. She heard several bolts being drawn and a key turned before the door inched open, held on a chain. Here was someone else concerned about their security, she thought, wondering suddenly if her friends were as safe as they thought they were up in their eyrie on the top floor.

‘Who is it?’ The voice, source invisible but which she recognised, demanded from behind the door, only a pair of sharp blue eyes visible in the crack which had opened up to the ill-lit area outside. ‘What do you want?’ The owner of the voice might be old but her tone could still be peremptory.

‘Mrs Beauchamp?’ Kate said. ‘It’s Kate. I live upstairs. I helped you with your bags the other day. Do you remember?’

‘Kate? Catherine? The gel with the very odd accent?’ Cecily Beauchamp said, her face appearing fully round the door, the eyes scrutinising Kate closely.

Kate swallowed the insult. ‘From Liverpool,’ she said mildly. ‘We wondered if you were all right. Some scallies were making a nuisance of themselves upstairs just now, two men with a big dog, and we wondered if they’d been bothering you.’

‘Scallies?’ Mrs Beauchamp said. ‘What are scallies?’

Kate sighed. There were times since she had come to London that she had thought she had travelled to another country instead of less that two hundred miles from the north of England. The cockneys she worked with didn’t seem to realise that she had as much trouble with their vowels as they evidently had with hers. ‘Bad lads,’ she said firmly. ‘We didn’t want you being bothered by bad lads and a big dog, did we? We were worried about you.’

Mrs Beauchamp unhooked the chain on the door and opened it a little wider, pulling a silky cardigan more closely round her shoulders. She was, Kate thought, tall enough to indulge herself by looking down a long aristocratic nose at people on her doorstep with odd accents, but she still looked as thin and frail as she had when she had taken her shopping bags from her in the teeth of her protests a couple of days before. She shrugged.

‘If you’re OK I’ll catch up with my friends then,’ Kate said, stepping back. ‘We’re on the top floor if you ever need any help.’

‘No one will bother me,’ Mrs Beauchamp declared with total certainty. ‘My son looks after my affairs. It’s all taken care of. All in order.’

‘That’s all right then,’ Kate said, turning back towards the steps and the street above them feeling rebuffed. But before the door behind her closed she was surprised to hear Mrs Beauchamp’s voice again.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ it said unexpectedly. ‘It was kind of you to call.’

Several miles away in North London, Detective Sergeant Harry Barnard swung desultorily in his favourite revolving armchair – from Heals, no less, in a daring orange tweed on a stainless steel plinth – in his impeccably furnished small flat. He was sipping a single malt and wondering why he felt so curiously dissatisfied with life. Barnard was not much given to introspection. A sharp East End boy who had survived the Blitz as an evacuee, he had surprised his school mates by opting to join the police instead of drifting into crime like most of his contemporaries. One or two of them had done spectacularly well, but most had been in and out of prison for years and seemed to have little to show for their careers as middle age approached, while he had found a niche at least technically on the right side of the law but which had brought him rewards well beyond his official salary. There was more than one way for crime to be made to pay, he thought, with a faint smile, and while his bosses either did the same or turned a blind eye, he felt secure enough in the smart flat he should not have been able to afford.

But the moment of satisfaction was brief. Not all was well with his career in other ways, he thought. What should have been regarded as a triumph – the banging up of a particularly nasty piece of work that summer – had been overshadowed in the eyes of some of his bosses by the closeness the scandal had come to implicating the Metropolitan Police force itself. The case was yet to come to the Old Bailey, and Barnard knew that complicated legal manoeuvrings were in train to keep some names out of court. His own next step should be promotion to detective inspector, though he knew that to gain promotion and still keep on ploughing the lucrative furrow of West End vice might be tricky. Nothing would persuade him to shift to the less productive manors out in the suburban sticks. But now, with a certain chilliness surrounding his name, he thought that might be exactly what his bosses had in mind for him.

‘Hell and damnation,’ he said to himself, spinning out of his chair to refill his glass and put Sinatra’s Songs for Swinging Lovers on the turntable of the neat teak radiogram in the corner. He had no time for the relentlessly cheerful beat of the new bands from the north. He liked something a bit more sophisticated than that. The very thought of the Beatles simply reminded him of another source of dissatisfaction in his life. He had always regarded women as disposable assets, they came and they went, leaving almost no trace beyond a faint nostalgia. Since the woman he had married as a young uniformed copper had walked out on him, without much regret on either side, he had had no real ambition to share his pad or his bed with anyone else on a regular basis, to adapt to someone else’s wet towels in the bathroom or toiletries in his bedroom. At least, he thought he hadn’t until just recently. But he had to admit, as he sipped his Laphraoig, that he had failed to excise one young woman who had piqued his interest a few months ago as clinically from his mind as he usually did when his overtures were not instantly gratified.

He knew that Kate O’Donnell had regarded him with deep suspicion from the start, far more concerned with her brother’s safety than with helping the police in any way. He guessed that where she came from the bizzies, as she called them, were not very highly regarded. She had been free enough with her obvious charms, sparkling eyes, dark curls and a smile a man could die for, but he knew that for most of the time they were deployed in his direction it was with an ulterior motive. Yet the smile kept ambushing him, asleep and awake, and he knew that he would inevitably see her again when the Robertson case came to court. She’s too young for you, he kept telling himself, and that bloody awful scouse accent is a pain in the neck. With a bit of luck the Ken Fellows photographic agency, right on his manor in the middle of Soho, would give her the push and she would go back to Liverpool with her tail between her legs. Fellows was dead right to say it was no job for a woman. But for all that, he knew that if one day he bumped into her again, he would be pleased.

He downed his Scotch in one final gulp, grabbed his leather jacket from its hook in the tiny hall, and slammed out of the flat, down the stairs and out into the quiet, tree-lined street to seek out the bright lights and cheerfulness of one of the pubs on the Archway Road. With a bit of luck, he thought, he might find some female company there to pass the time and at least share a meal, if not something more. Brooding, he thought, was not his bag. Que sera, sera, as that irritating song said. And if push came to shove, and there was nothing professional or personal to hold him here, he might take one of those ten pound tickets to Australia and try his luck in the sun.

The mansion flat overlooking Lords cricket ground was anonymous and unassuming from the outside, but opulent within. As a manservant took his hat and coat, Nicholas Carey, Old Etonian, heir to an increasingly dilapidated and overgrown estate in Wiltshire, and very reluctant supplicant, took a surreptitious look round. Lazlo Roman, who was so far nowhere to be seen, obviously

Reviews for Death Trap

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After buying the first two books in Patricia Hall's Kate O'Donnell detective series, I thought it only fair to read both, even though I gave Dead Beat a rather harsh panning. I will say that I found the sequel less irritating, though just as repetitive (today's story was brought to you by the overused words 'la' and 'lugubrious'), cliched and unbelievable. Wide boy Harry and his 'nosy little cow' of a girlfriend Kate are growing into their roles, however. Moving on from homosexuality, the social justice theme is now race, with a side helping of protection rackets and slum housing. I probably won't be shelling out for the third book in the series, however.