Death Trap by Patricia Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

Holland Park Avenue, if its alcohol you want, in a better class of pub, or I can give you a soft drink in my cafe over here.’ He waved vaguely down a side road where lights in red and gold and green lit up a shop front decorated with exotic painted trees and flowers. ‘I don’t serve anything harder. There’s no one likely to give me a license for that.’ He laughed. ‘You know I told you I thought my Benjamin has a rare talent for story tellin’ that I wanted to tell you about. He gets that from me, you know? But my education was interrupted because I was a foolish boy who thought he should go off and help fight a war for the mother country, you know? So I never finished my schoolin’ and have to make my livin’ as and where I can. And now I find the mother country doesn’t actually like me very much. I want Benjamin to do better than I have. I want Benjamin to do well whatever the colour of his skin. I suppose all fathers want that.’ His laughter this time had an edge to it. ‘Let me treat you to a coffee and I’ll set you on your way home.’
    Kate and Tess glanced at each other and then Kate nodded, aware that a group of white teenagers on the corner of the street was looking at their encounter with some hostility. ‘That would be very kind of you, Mr Mackintosh,’ she said, sounding more confident than she felt.
    â€˜Nelson, please,’ he said and strode ahead of them to the brightly lit cafe they had seen from a distance.
    â€˜Why Poor Man’s Corner?’ Kate asked, glancing at the name over the windows.
    â€˜It’s a place in Jamaica, where I was born,’ Mackintosh said. ‘Not far from Kingston. Seemed like a good name round here. There plenty of poor men.’
    Inside the cafe was hot and steamy and he settled them at a table close to the window, sat down at the table himself and waved to one of the young black men behind the counter who began to hover as soon as their boss walked through the door.
    â€˜Is it coffee, or would you like to try some Jamaican soft drinks? Spiced carrot juice, or mango  . . .’
    â€˜Coffee, thanks,’ Tess said firmly.
    â€˜And me,’ Kate said, feeling slightly ashamed of their caution. But she barely knew what a mango was and spices were a foreign country. She glanced round the crowded tables crammed together in the smoky, low-ceilinged room, and realised she and Tess were the only white faces there. Most people were drinking what looked like fruit-based drinks and a few elderly men in a corner were playing dominoes.
    Mackintosh ordered in a patois they did not fully understand, and then slipped easily back into more standard English. ‘Won’t be long,’ he said.
    â€˜I take photographs,’ she said. ‘I’d really like to come back here and take some pictures. I don’t think many people realise places like this exist in London.’
    â€˜And those that do wish they didn’t,’ Mackintosh said without rancour. ‘Still, at least they’re not blowing up little girls in church like they are in Alabama. Not yet anyway.’
    â€˜That was terrible,’ Kate said.
    â€˜That was pure evil,’ Nelson came back sharply, as if suddenly unable to control an anger he usually kept hidden. He handed them their coffee and took a gulp of his own. ‘About your pictures. I’ll talk to my customers, maybe. Give me a call in a day or two and I’ll let you know.’
    They drank their coffee, increasingly the object of curious glances, while Mackintosh told them how he had decided to remain in England when he was discharged from the RAF and had been one of the first to settle in West London.
    â€˜I still get homesick,’ he confessed. ‘And my wife more so. She came over later when your government said it wanted West Indians to come here to work. She’s a nurse. There’ve been some bad times round here for us,