Death Trap Page 2

  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 did not follow the latest fashion for stripped-down Scandinavian furnishings. Everything here was upholstered and swagged and opulent, the wood polished and the cushions plumped, in a way which Carey did not think was possible in post-war Britain any more. But it was new, of course, he thought, wrinkling his nose in disdain. His grandmother would not find the style unappealing but she would demand the genuine article, preferably passed down through many generations. This was a man who bought his own furniture which was nouveau and pretty much beyond the pale, even though families like his, whose properties had been more often than not requisitioned and wrecked during the war, were becoming as poor as church mice in comparison.

  He felt rather than heard someone else come into the room behind him and turned to find himself facing a squat man with dark hair and a broad face, eyes concealed behind dark glasses, and wearing an impeccable suit which Carey knew could only have come from Savile Row.

  ‘Mr Roman, it’s good of you to see me like this,’ Carey said smoothly, holding out his hand which his host shook without great enthusiasm. ‘I hope this will be a mutually beneficial meeting.’

  Roman waved him into one of the well-cushioned armchairs and walked to a mahogany cocktail cabinet at the far side of the room. ‘Scotch?’ he asked, and poured two generous measures when Carey assented. He sat down himself and Carey felt himself being scrutinised carefully from behind the dark glasses.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ Roman asked at length. The foreign accent was pronounced but not incomprehensible and the manner pleasant enough but Carey felt that he was being appraised and not necessarily coming out on the credit side of the ledger.

  ‘I’m here for a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘He wishes to remain anonymous at the moment but he is the owner of a property in Notting Hill which he is anxious to dispose of – four floors, four flats at the moment, but with much more potential than that. Unfortunately he is not really in a position to capitalise on that himself and is looking for a buyer who could.’

  Roman sipped his Scotch. ‘Tenants?’ he asked.

  ‘At present yes, but only one couple with a controlled rent, and security of tenure, and we think they can be persuaded to leave. We are already working on that.’

  ‘I was not looking to extend my portfolio at this time,’ Roman said. ‘I acquired some of Peter Rachman’s properties in that area and wish to consolidate for a while. But what your friend has sounds attractive.’

  ‘I think it would suit your purposes very well,’ Carey said, finding it hard to sound as ingratiating as he thought he should.

  ‘I would need to visit the property, and have it surveyed,’ Roman said. ‘Some of those old places need structural repairs. I never get involved in anything major of that sort.’

  ‘Of course. I can arrange a visit if that’s what you would like.’

  ‘Then perhaps we might have a deal with your friend, Mr Carey,’ Roman said, draining his glass and getting to his feet. ‘Do you have a card?’

  ‘Of course,’ Carey said, digging into his pocket for a slip of cardboard.

  ‘Then I will ring you with some suitable times.’

  The brief interview was clearly at an end and Carey found himself helped into his coat and ushered to the front door by the silent manservant. On the landing he waited for the lift with a feeling of distaste. If he and Miles had not been pretty desperate, he thought, he would not have come to this slimy foreigner in a month of Sundays. Where the hell was he from, he wondered. He didn’t look like a Jew, but you never knew. A Slav, more likely perhaps, one who had got into the country during the war and stayed behind, as too many of them had. But wherever he had been born he had been long enough in the country to learn pretty good English and do very well for himself. ‘Bastard.’ All the resentment of the dispossessed coloured Carey’s reaction as the lift descended. But he knew that his old school-friend would jump at the deal. He was as desperate for cash as he was himself and at least had the advantage of very nearly owning something which was eminently saleable in the current housing shortage in London, even if it did mean doing business with the likes of Lazlo Roman. The only thing which stood in his way was his mama, who apparently did not like M
iles’s plans at all.

  TWO

  Kate O’Donnell had had a frustrating day at work, largely spent hanging around the reception area of a West End recording company waiting for Gerry and the Pacemakers to turn up. Her boss, Ken Fellows, had assured her that morning that the band would be there that day some time, and that the agency should add them to their growing portfolio of musical pictures, largely provided by Kate herself. Ken, she had thought, reckoned he had become an expert on the exploding music scene in the short time she had been around and pushed his sceptical interest in that direction.

  ‘They could be as big as the Beatles,’ he had said with all the certainty of a new religious convert. ‘They’ve had two Number Ones.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kate had said doubtfully.

  ‘So get down to Columbia Records and see if you can catch them with a gang of hysterical teenagers,’ Ken said. ‘Don’t you know any of them? Wasn’t Gerry Marsden at art college with you too?’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ Kate said, surprised Ken knew the band leader’s second name. He really was doing his homework, after a very reluctant start, she thought with an amused satisfaction.

  ‘Well, if you make contact I’m sure you can charm them with that accent of yours,’ he said.

  Kate had shrugged and done as she was told, inured to the insult, but on this occasion had no luck. No one would confirm or deny that the band was due in that day, but in fact they never turned up. Dispirited, hungry and tired by the end of the afternoon, she trailed back through Soho’s narrow, crowded streets to report her lack of success. It was a good thing Ken had finally signed her up the previous day, she thought, or he might have been tempted to change his mind about her job. In the event, it was a relatively benign boss, breathing alcohol fumes in her direction, she had reported back to.

  ‘You can’t win them all,’ he had said, leaning precariously back in his chair, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. ‘Have an early night, if you like. Get yourself off home. I suppose you think you’ve earned it.’

  Kate took him at his word and was down the narrow wooden stairs and out of the door before the usual rush of workers leaving the cramped offices of Soho hit the streets. She set off towards Oxford Street, planning to do some window shopping before making for the underground at Oxford Circus, but before she had reached the top of Frith Street her stomach lurched as she recognised a familiar figure coming in her direction, overcoat unbuttoned and trilby at a rakish angle.

  ‘Well, well,’ Harry Barnard said with a smile. ‘I was only thinking about you this morning as I went past your office. I was wondering if you were still here or if you’d gone back north. Did Ken Fellows keep you on, then?’

  ‘He certainly did,’ Kate said sharply.

  ‘Well done,’ Barnard said. ‘I must say I never thought he’d take on a girl. It’s not usually reckoned to be a job for a woman.’

  ‘Times are changing, Sergeant Barnard,’ Kate said, acid in her voice. ‘Maybe they’ll change for the police too, one day.’

  Barnard shrugged. ‘Can’t see me working for a woman DCI in the near future,’ he said. ‘Or ever, to be honest.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad I bumped into you,’ Kate conceded, trying not to let an ounce of warmth into her expression. ‘As it happens, I need some advice about the law.’

  Barnard glanced around the bustling street and then took her elbow and led her round the west side of Soho Square. ‘Coffee, or something stronger?’ he asked.

  ‘Coffee, thanks,’ Kate said, and followed him into a steamy cafe in Carlisle Street. She watched him as he went to the counter and ordered two frothy coffees in glass cups and carried them back to their table. She could feel her heart beating a little faster than normal and was annoyed at her reaction to this chance meeting. She did not trust Harry Barnard an inch but she had to admit that he was an attractive man, and suspected that he still felt the same about her, although she had rebuffed every attempt he had made to take her out for an evening, even after the case which had entangled her brother, Tom, had been resolved.

  Barnard stirred a couple of spoons of sugar into his coffee, offered Kate a cigarette, which she refused, and lit his own thoughtfully. ‘So what can I do for you, Miss O’Donnell?’ he asked, blowing smoke towards the ceiling. ‘You’ve not stumbled into another murder case, have you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Kate said. ‘But there is something nasty going on where I live, and I want to know if it’s illegal, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re still in that dump in Notting Hill, are you, with your friends? I did tell you that’s not a good area for girls to be on their own. What’s happening? Have a couple of tarts moved in? Or is it marijuana? There’s a lot of that about down there too. The West Indians treat it just like tobacco.’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing like that. Our house is very run down, though. Marie says she doesn’t think the landlord has done any work on the place since she got there and that’s nearly a year ago. But what he is trying to do is get some of the tenants out, the ones who pay a low rent, who’ve been there a long time. There’s an old couple on the first floor – they say they’ve been there since the war – and there were a couple of thugs with an Alsatian dog round there yesterday threatening them, more or less telling them they had to go. It was awful. We were thinking of going to the police to complain but I thought I’d ring you first and check if it would do any good.’

  Barnard sipped his coffee and looked at her thoughtfully through the steam. ‘Do they put something into the water in Liverpool?’ he asked. ‘Something special from the River Mersey, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You must get this battling crusader spirit from somewhere,’ he said. ‘It’s not natural.’

  ‘My da was a docker for a while, till he did a flit. And my mam was always playing hell about something in the neighbourhood. It was never a quiet life at ours, so I suppose it must be born in. My parents were both as tough as old boots. I don’t like to see nice old people being bullied. It’s not right. But I don’t know what I can do about it.’

  ‘Right,’ Barnard said.

  ‘So I go to the police?’

  ‘Well, you could try, but I think they’ll just tell you that tenancy disputes are a civil matter. Are you sure these people are up to date with the rent? If they’re not they’ll not have a leg to stand on if they go to law. They’ll still get chucked out one way or another.’

  ‘I’ll ask them,’ Kate said more soberly, finishing her coffee.

  ‘Do you know who the landlord is?’ Barnard asked. ‘Is it a bloke call Rachman? Or one of his companies?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll ask Marie. Why?’

  ‘If it’s him, I should be very careful. He owns a lot of property round there – or he did. He’s supposed to have died last year, though there’s some who think that’s just a trick to get himself out of the spotlight. He was getting a very bad name with the newspapers and TV. His speciality was getting controlled tenants out of properties, then dividing them up and letting them out at rack rents, mainly to West Indians who can’t get homes anywhere else because of the colour bar. I don’t know what’s happened to his properties since he died, but I guess there’d be plenty of people queuing up to take them over. I know the Robertson brothers here in Soho were leaning on Rachman a few years ago, trying to take a cut. If you’re in a Rachman house I’d advise you all to get out as soon as you can.’

  Kate stared at Barnard, horrified. ‘I was going to start flat-hunting right away now I’ve got a permanent job. Are you saying Marie and Tess should move out too?’

  ‘If you’ve got thugs with dogs on the stairs, I wouldn’t hang around if I was you. Whoever the landlord is, he’s not someone you really want to know, is he?’ Barnard said. He put his hand over Kate’s for a second. ‘Notting Hill’s a rough old place,’ he said. ‘It’s not so long ago that there were riots in the streets between the newcomers and the local teddy boys, black against white.
Go down to the nick to complain if you like. See if you can get to see a mate of mine down there, DS Eddie Lamb, generally know as Baa Lamb. He’s a good bloke. He should be able to fill you in on what’s going on. But keep looking for somewhere else to live. This sort of thing’s been going on for years and I don’t reckon it’ll stop soon, the way people are scrambling for somewhere to lay their head. The best thing for you and your friends to do is get out.’

  ‘Eddie Lamb,’ Kate said faintly. ‘Right, I’ll remember the name.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Thanks for your help,’ she said, her tone suddenly dismissive. ‘It was nice to see you again.’

  Barnard gave her a rueful smile. ‘I don’t suppose you feel like a meal later?’ he asked.

  Kate shook her head. ‘I need to get back to see what’s going on at the house,’ she said, very aware that the invitation seemed more seductive than it had when it had last been issued several months ago. At some point, she thought, the invitations would stop coming and she was not sure that was really what she wanted, but that was the last thing she wanted Barnard to know just now. He smiled again and shrugged.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you haven’t had to go back home to Liverpool anyway. I may see you around.’