Read Online Death Trap by Patricia Hall - Free Book Online

two men with a stretcher emerged and went down the basement steps. She kept her camera by her side as she waited for them to reappear, afraid that the officers might object to what she was doing, but no one even glanced in direction, most of them beginning to move back to their cars without much urgency. Eventually the stretcher bearers manoeuvred their burden awkwardly back up the steps, laden now with a blanket-covered shape which Kate realised with a sick feeling could only be a shockingly small human body, and slid it into the van.
    The crowd let out a faint collective sigh and fidgeted slightly as a couple of uniformed officers began to take down the barrier which blocked the street, the vehicles began to move away and the waiting pedestrians were allowed through. Kate made her way slowly to the now empty basement area, glanced around and took a couple of shots of the narrow leaf and litter strewn space, and of the shabby house above it. It was, she thought, a miserable place to die.
    She turned away slowly and stowed her camera back in her bag. What she had just witnessed had taken the edge off the bright morning she had begun to enjoy. She turned back to the main road and began to weave her way between the market customers again in the direction of home. She was suddenly aware that the crowds had begun to change their complexion. On almost every street corner groups of young white men had begun to gather, and they were being watched, she realised, by an unusual number of uniformed policemen, patrolling up and down the road and in amongst the market crowds.
    She made her way back until she came to the side street down which Nelson Mackintosh had led her and Tess the night before to his cafe. Just steps from the market the streets became much quieter and there seemed to be little activity close to the cafe. Perhaps it did not open in the morning. But then she realised how odd that seemed when there were so many potential customers about, and walked a little way down the street until she could see the closed notice on the door. Only then could she see a uniformed police officer standing in the recessed doorway. Intrigued, she strolled closer and confronted him.
    â€˜Isn’t the cafe open?’ she asked innocently. ‘I was looking for a cup of coffee.’
    The policeman, a tall, thin, lugubrious man with his helmet pulled unusually far down over his eyes and a rather damp, pink nose, sniffed massively. ‘Closed for the duration, miss,’ he said, with a smirk. ‘Proprietor unavoidably detained.’
    â€˜I was in there last night,’ Kate protested. ‘He was there then.’
    â€˜Well, he’s not there now,’ the constable said, more sharply. ‘And not likely to be for some time, from what I hear. So I should run along, if I were you, miss. There’s a murder inquiry on.’
    â€˜And Nelson Mackintosh is involved?’ Kate said sharply.
    â€˜I can’t tell you that,’ he said. ‘And what’s it to you anyway? This isn’t the sort of cafe a nice girl like you should be patronising, is it? A West Indian joint? What sort of a name is that – Poor Man’s Corner?’
    â€˜It’s a place in Jamaica,’ Kate snapped and then wished she had not.
    The policeman stared at her and sniffed again, his face even more unfriendly. ‘Don’t you know a lot about it?’ he asked. ‘Maybe you’d like to come down to the nick and help the police with their inquiries too, would you?’
    Kate shook her head angrily. ‘Of course not,’ she said. She turned away, her face flaming, and when she had gone fifty yards up the street turned back to take a photograph of the cafe as much out of bravado as anything else. The policeman had retreated back into the doorway by now and had become invisible again, but a group of young West Indian boys had congregated on the opposite pavement, chattering with what looked from a distance like