Death Trap by Patricia Hall

would stay up and start winning trophies again.
    In the end, Lamb came bustling out of the tube station, towards the end of the stream of supporters, duffel coat and scarf flying, cap pulled down half concealing an anxious look on his puffy face. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said as the two of them joined the rest of the stragglers, hurrying towards the turnstiles. ‘Got called into the nick. Some tom got herself strangled last night and it’s causing a bit of aggro on the street. We had to show a bit of muscle.’
    â€˜Wouldn’t have thought you’d bother too much. It’s the risk they run, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Not if it’s a white girl and a black bloke. It still raises the temperature round there,’ Lamb said. ‘And that’s not good for business. It drives the punters away and that affects everybody’s cut, know what I mean?’
    â€˜And that’s what it is? A black bloke? How do you know that exactly?’ Barnard asked. He did not want Lamb to know what Kate O’Donnell had told him, and especially not that she had taken photographs around Portobello Road that morning. He knew that the Notting Hill nick would not regard that as acceptable on their patch, especially if a major crime had been committed.
    â€˜Looks like she was just a beginner, part-timer maybe, didn’t know the risks in an area like this. I’m surprised she’d go with a coon – some will, some won’t – but we’ve a witness who saw her with one sometime after midnight. We’ve rounded up a few suspects this morning, and that should keep the lid on the aggro for a bit. The local lads know they’ll get a lot of bird if they kick off again. They’ll get sent down for a long stretch, just like the last time, so they’ll take our word for it that it’s sorted. For now anyway. But it’s on the edge. There’ve been a couple of attacks on white toms recently and now this.’
    â€˜You think you’ve got a black Jack the Ripper in Notting Hill, then?’ Barnard asked, half joking.
    â€˜Nah, but what I do think is that someone might be trying to stir the white lads up deliberately. If people get the idea white girls are being targeted, that could mean trouble. There’s still a lot of resentment there, simmering away under the surface. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? Who invited all these blacks in anyway? Certainly wasn’t anyone round here.’
    â€˜I thought it was the government looking for tube drivers and nurses,’ Barnard said mildly. ‘It was Poles and Czechs before that. And the Irish. And the Jews. There’s always been people coming into London. One of my aunties married a Pole. My dad didn’t like it but in the end he was buying him pints in the pub, teaching him the foulest language he could think of, getting on like a house on fire.’
    â€˜You get everything and anything in the East End these days,’ Lamb said. ‘And the bloody Irish. Remember them round Paddington?’
    They had worked their way onto a terrace where a relatively thin crowd surged and swayed against the metal barriers.
    â€˜Remember how it used to be packed here when Greavesy was playing?’ Lamb grumbled. ‘I can’t see them getting anywhere if they keep on flogging off the best players. And to bloody Italy, would you believe? We’ll have Italians here next thing. My dad fought those beggars at Monte Casino. What did your dad do in the war?’
    â€˜We were lucky,’ Barnard said. ‘He worked on the docks, and that’s where he stayed. Though with the bombing we never knew if he’d get home in one piece. I wasn’t around much anyway. I was evacuated to a farm in the country first off. With the Robertson brothers, would you believe. I must have told you that before. They lived just down the street from us. And then I went to grammar school in Norfolk. Funny old time, the war.