Death Trap by Patricia Hall

more careful. And you must mind what you say. I don’t imagine Mackintosh is any friend of Devine or the King of him. From what I hear, Nelson Mackintosh is into West Indian politics, and not very popular with the powers that be on that count. King Devine is a gangster, plain and simple and the local cops find that much easier to deal with, as it goes. From your point of view I don’t think either of them is someone you really want to know.’
    After their brief, surprise encounter with Ray Robertson, they had ended the evening with a couple of drinks in the Windsor Castle, a quieter pub at the more respectable end of the neighbourhood before the sergeant dropped Kate back at the flat. He had put an arm round her shoulder again before she got out of the car.
    â€˜What are you doing tomorrow?’ he asked.
    â€˜Flat hunting,’ she said. ‘We’ve fixed up two places to go and look at in Shepherd’s Bush. Tess says it’s not too far away and a bit cheaper than here.’
    â€˜There’s another street market down there for you to patronise,’ Barnard said with a smile. ‘And fewer dodgy landlords, I think. You should be OK, in spite of the genius you seem to have for attracting unwanted attention.’
    Kate looked at him with a sly smile. ‘I do, don’t I?’ she said. ‘If it’s not robbers its cops. I’ll have to be more careful in future.’
    â€˜Ouch,’ Barnard said. ‘Can I ring you again?’
    â€˜Only if you tell me what I can do to help Nelson Mackintosh,’ she said, suddenly deadly serious. ‘He has this clever son that Tess teaches. And whatever you say, I really liked the man. I can’t believe he killed some woman in the street. It just doesn’t seem real.’
    â€˜Leave it alone, Kate. It really isn’t anything you should be involving yourself in,’ Barnard had said firmly. ‘If you like, I’ll see what’s happening at the nick, and let you know. They can’t keep him without charging him and taking him to court on Monday morning. I’ll let you know. I promise.’
    And with that she had had to be content.
    The three flatmates took the tube to Shepherd’s Bush only to be disappointed in their search. The first flat, half of a terraced house on the Hammersmith side of the Green, had already been let, and at the second, in a side street off the Uxbridge Road, with a handwritten notice on the door making very clear that blacks and Irish were not welcome as tenants, the landlady had to be persuaded that their accents were from Liverpool not Dublin before she would let them in to see a flat even more pokey that the one Marie and Tess were already renting.
    â€˜That so-called single bedroom would make me claustrophobic,’ said Marie as they hurried away. ‘It was minute.’
    â€˜It didn’t even have a proper window,’ Kate agreed. ‘And it wasn’t very clean. And there was a very funny smell in the bathroom. How can they get away with it? It’s worse than Scottie Road.’
    â€˜Oh, I wouldn’t go quite that far,’ Tess said laughing. ‘But there’s a terrible shortage of accommodation. It’s a nightmare.’
    Dispirited, they trailed back to the Green and decided to take a bus back to Notting Hill Gate, from the top deck of which they had a grandstand view of the substantial properties along Holland Park Avenue. Money sat cheek by jowl with poverty in this part of London, Kate thought, in a way it didn’t in Liverpool. On the right she could see the tree-lined avenues leading down to Kensington. On the left a ribbon of elegance only a couple of houses wide hid the dilapidated terraces split into a multitude of flats from which the likes of Cecily Beauchamp’s son were making a fortune.
    â€˜Maybe we should try a different part of London altogether,’ she suggested as they dropped off the bus and took