The Garden Party

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘I can believe that,’ Brunnie commented.

  ‘So we applied for planning permission, achieved interim status, not full permission, but we lodged the application. It was received and we had it progress to the “pending” stage, when we were visited by a man who offered us what the land was worth without planning permission.’

  ‘Which you declined?’

  ‘Of course we did. So then the guy says, “I am representing a gentleman who always gets what he wants. This way you stay alive. So you are offered a fair two hundred thousand pounds for the twelve acres. If you refuse the offer you will meet with an accident, you’ll just vanish.” To which I said, “Don’t threaten us like that!”’

  ‘Yes.’ Brunnie nodded his head. ‘As you would.’

  ‘To which he replied, “I am not threatening you, Mr Cole, I am making you a solemn promise.” So we had warnings; our yard was vandalized, our vehicle set on fire. We would come home and some soul’s clearly beloved cat or dog would be on our doorstep with its neck broken. I don’t mean a stray but a well-fed pedigree with an owner’s collar, that sort of thing. Then one day my brother got attacked, they broke his legs. Then I got a phone call at home and the voice said, “You’re next.” Eventually we sold it all for a quarter of a million pounds, we managed to negotiate an increase of fifty thousand. The people who bought it still have it; they haven’t built on it but they now have the planning permission we applied for. The planning permission went through. It’s now worth about five million pounds with clear planning permission for an estate of sixty houses plus amenities. The building trade is in a depression at the moment so those guys are clearly waiting for things to pick up again, then they’ll sell it and make a killing. If we had kept our mouths shut me and my brother would have shared five million pounds between us instead of a quarter of a million.’

  ‘Who did you talk to, Mr Cole?’ Brunnie glanced at the multitude of colours that was the small garden in front of Roy Cole’s modest house.

  ‘Only the men we employed as builders,’ Cole explained. ‘We told them that we had bought the field next to our depot and had applied for outline planning permission, and if we got full planning permission then there would be at least twelve months’ work for them. There was nothing on the land at all; just an old wooden hut which looked like it had been there since Victorian times, so one of them, one of our crew, told someone, who told someone . . . or one of our builders was probably known to the proprietor of A. R. Holdings, being the people who now own the land.’

  ‘So who is the glazier who occupies your old site, Mr Montgomery?’

  ‘He’s no glazier,’ Roy Cole snarled as he brushed a fly from his face, ‘he’s just keeping an eye on the land, occupying it in case travellers find it. It doesn’t sound like A. R. Holdings will have any problem getting a bunch of travellers off their land, but probably, sensibly, they don’t want them there in the first place.’

  ‘I am sorry.’ Brunnie stood. ‘That is not a clever story.’

  ‘It’s done now,’ Roy Cole sighed. ‘I live here, modestly. My brother lives in Spain, modestly, but we are alive and we have been left alone.’

  ‘Long Liz’ Petty pulled on the length of chain but it was soundly fastened. Outside, it was silent apart from the birdsong. She sat against the wall of the hut and tried to calm herself, breathing the hot, stale air with difficulty; adjusting her eyes to the gloom. She felt about her with her fingertips and eventually found a section of floorboard which was loose and could be lifted up. Below the section of boarding she felt a small enclosed space. She tugged at her scalp hair, pulling out as many strands as she could, and then rolled them into a tight ball and placed them in the space. She then replaced the small section of flooring.

  ‘One day, one day, someone might just find them,’ she said quietly to herself.

  She sat against the wall of the hut and thought of her life, the escape from Basingstoke to the not much better existence of nights in King’s Cross and daytime sleeping in cramped bedsits in East London . . . and her death . . . tomorrow . . . battered half to death with golf clubs before being drowned in Snakebite’s swimming pool, her body incinerated, her bones dropped into the river at still not thirty years old.

  If only she had accepted the witness protection offer. If only she hadn’t gone for a drink with a copper in the pub in the middle of the day . . . if only . . . if only . . . if only . . .

  Harry Vicary sat on the settee clutching the bottle and grinned inanely as his wife entered the living room.

  ‘Harry!’ Kathleen Vicary strode forward and grabbed the half-empty bottle of whiskey from her husband’s hand. ‘Why? Why now? You’ve been so good. You know your job depends upon you staying off the bottle. Heavens, Harry, why? This is going down the sink . . . but Harry, why?’

  ‘Why?’ Vicary slurred his words. ‘Why? You ask why? Well, three women, that’s why. Three young women . . . one’s a raspberry ripple . . . a cripple.’

  ‘Yes, I know what a raspberry ripple is. I am a nurse! Remember.’

  ‘Another is in a coma and the third looks like she’s been run over by a steamroller, that’s why . . . Oh . . . there’s a fourth, she’s been abducted and she is going to be murdered if she hasn’t already been iced.’

  ‘So, is that your fault?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vicary replied quietly, ‘yes, it is . . . all of it, all my fault, all because of my stupidity.’

  Penny Yewdall lay in her bed again watching Orion track really quite rapidly, she thought, across the sky.

  She sat upright. Staring straight ahead. She said to herself, ‘I know where she is.’ She leapt out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of sports shoes. She left her house quite calmly, ensuring that the door was locked behind her, then she got into her socially responsible grubby car, which was good for London but not any further afield, and drove slowly and steadily away, towards the Dartford Tunnel. She knew the value of taking her time.

  It was a night of a full moon and once clear of the city, and off the main road, the landscape was bathed in moonlight. Switching off her car’s headlights, she found that she could see clearly for a distance of about, she guessed, half a mile in all directions. She halted the car at the entrance of the first field and then, expediently, turned it around so that it faced back towards London. She opened the door slowly and quietly and let it remain open.

  An owl hooted.

  She crept stealthily onwards between the glazier’s lorry and the first hut, and saw, clearly, the second hut standing as if forlorn in the second field. She halted at the entrance of the second field, recalling advice given to her in her childhood, “Don’t go into that empty field because that empty field might not be so empty . . . search, search the shadows.” So she searched the shadows as the owl hooted once more. Then she crept forward, approaching the second hut, and then she halted at the door. She tapped on it. ‘Liz . . . are you in there?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Liz . . . Liz . . . it’s Penny.’

  There was still no reply. Yewdall examined the hasp and padlock . . . it was small and screwed into rotting timber and would, she guessed, be easily broken. She returned to her car, moving more speedily by then, and took a large screwdriver from the tool kit and returned to the shed, confident that she was the only person in the vicinity. At the shed once again, she forced the screwdriver behind the hasp and levered it towards her. The hasp tore away from the rotting wood of the shed and she opened the door.

  The shed was empty.

  There was though, as if by some compensation, a sense felt by Penny Yewdall of someone having recently been within the shed, not dissimilar, she thought, to returning to one’s hotel room after room service has called . . . There was a definite presence in the confines of the wooden structure, and she saw in the moonlight a length of silver chain which lay on the floor of the shed, with one end affixed to a ring bolt set into the frame.

  She had been here. ‘Long Liz’
Petty had been here . . . Penny Yewdall had been correct . . . and she had also been too late.

  Yewdall returned to her car . . . disconsolate . . . even the owl’s hoot then seemed to have a spiteful, mocking tone. In the distance she saw the vast spread of the lights of north-east London; to her left and behind her, all was darkness. She knew then that Long Liz Petty was out there . . . anywhere. Anywhere at all.

  ‘Long Liz’ Petty lay on the grass shivering in the early morning, wearing only the red T-shirt she had on when she had been abducted by the men who had woken her up by knocking on her door and shouting, ‘Police, Miss Petty, open up . . .’ She looked about her. The house hadn’t changed much, if at all, so far as she could see; the large lawn, the swimming pool, the barbecue area, the Leylandii, taller now, and doubtless still concealing the impossible to climb high wire fencing, which, she assumed, was the only reason why she had been left on the lawn unsupervised and unrestrained . . . There was just nowhere for her to go . . . she was like an animal in a huge cage . . . all she could do was wait.

  ‘Rainbird won’t have her at his house . . . he’s too fly for that . . . he’ll keep that drum very clean, you can bet on that,’ Frankie Brunnie offered to the group who sat in front of Harry Vicary’s desk; Swannell, Ainsclough, Yewdall and, behind the desk, Harry Vicary himself, and with each person in front of the desk noticing Vicary’s heavily bloodshot eyes, and smelling the vapour of strong mint on his breath, which did not fully smother the under odour of stale alcohol. Each person thought, ‘Come on, Harry, pull through, pull through, you can do it, you’ve been doing so well . . .’

  ‘Where?’ Penny Yewdall turned to Brunnie. ‘Where, Frankie . . . ?’

  ‘The big house up in Bedfordshire, Snakebite’s drum . . . it’s the place they used to execute people before. That back garden has probably seen quite a few lives snuffed, many more than the two we know about.’

  ‘Yes.’ Vicary nodded. ‘It’s the only place she can be . . .’ He reached for the phone on his desk.

  Ainsclough stood and grabbed the phone. ‘Let me do the talking, Harry . . . you’d better get home . . . lie down . . .’

  ‘No. I am staying.’ Harry Vicary sank back in his chair, but he allowed Ainsclough to make the phone call.

  ‘Bedfordshire, isn’t it?’ Ainsclough dialled a four figure internal number.

  ‘Yes.’ Harry Vicary put another strong mint into his mouth. ‘Ask them to get there asap. Tell them to batter their way through that front gate . . . a Range Rover should be able to cope with that. If we leave now, we’ll arrive at about the same time . . .’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Ainsclough replied. ‘But one of us will drive . . . you’ll be in the passenger seat . . . We’ll go in two cars in fact. Switchboard? Hello, can you please put me through to the Bedfordshire Constabulary . . . in Luton. Yes, I’ll hold . . . thank you.’

  ‘Long Liz’ Petty stood slowly as the three men walked purposefully side by side towards her.

  Snakebite, who carried a golf club, Rainbird, and the man they called The Baptist. They had, she noted, aged a little, as was to be expected, but they were definitely the same three men whom she had first seen, amongst other men, at that dreadful party nearly ten years ago.

  ‘You’re not going to run?’ Snakebite asked coldly, as the three men stood in front of her. ‘Pity.’

  ‘Pity?’ Petty asked. ‘What’s the pity about?’

  ‘We thought we’d be having a little fun with you . . . chasing you round the lawn till we caught you . . . so . . . pity.’

  ‘Well, sorry but you’re not going to have any fun . . . not with me.’

  ‘You’ve got bottle, I’ll say that for you,’ The Baptist commented. ‘Me . . . I reckon I’d try to make a run for it.’

  ‘There’s nowhere to run to.’ Petty lowered her head. ‘Just make it quick . . . no need to spin it out; there’s no audience . . . not like the last time.’

  ‘That wasn’t the last time.’ Rainbird smirked. ‘It was the last time you saw anything . . . but we’ve been quite busy over the years . . . our little system . . . golf club, swimming pool . . . bonfire . . . now it’s your turn. Talking to the law . . . you should have stayed shtum . . . and you a street girl . . . you should have known better.’

  It was then, ‘Long Liz’ Petty would later recall, just as Rainbird and The Baptist were stepping backwards to allow Snakebite room to swing the golf club, that the air was rent by the sound of klaxons, of barking dogs, of shouts, of squealing tyres. The three men turned away from Petty and looked towards the house, and Petty also turned and ran . . . instinctively realizing there was then some hope of escape. She ran beyond the remnants of the fire to the very bottom of the garden and then turned. She saw police officers in uniform and also in plain clothes spill out of the rear door of the house and on to the lawn . . . amongst them she recognized Penny Yewdall.

  She saw Snakebite lift the golf club as if to strike at the officers . . . and continued to watch as The Baptist slowly took it from him and dropped it on the grass. She saw a police officer, a male, step forward and approach Rainbird, and she was able to read his lips as he said, ‘It’s over . . . Arnie. It’s all over.’

  EPILOGUE

  Six months later

  ‘Meet Alice Adnam.’ Liz Petty smiled as Penny Yewdall sat on the bench beside her.

  ‘Hello, Alice.’ Penny Yewdall returned the smile.

  ‘They’re not very friendly in here.’

  ‘They think you’re a criminal,’ Yewdall explained. ‘The majority of people who go into witness protection are criminals who have turned Queen’s Evidence to avoid prosecution, so don’t take it personally. It’s better if as few people know your real identity as possible, including police officers, so let them think you’re a crim.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So why Alice Adnam?’

  ‘They showed me a list of names and asked me to choose one. It was in alphabetical order so I just took the first one. Tell you the truth, I am getting to like it. I’ll get a new social security number. If I want a passport I’ll have to use my real name. They explained that I can’t be issued with a replacement birth certificate.’

  ‘That is the one proviso of a new identity, so don’t plan any long distance travel for a while.’

  ‘Yes.’ Long Liz sighed. ‘Penny, if you lot hadn’t rescued me . . .’

  ‘You’re safe now.’ Penny Yewdall looked at the room; it was large and cavernous like a small aircraft hangar, she thought. Two uniformed police officers stood by a car with a plain-clothed driver waiting to drive ‘Long Liz’ Petty into her new life, as Alice Adnam.

  ‘I’m going to the south-east,’ Petty said.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Yewdall cautioned. ‘In fact, you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m a soft southern flower and I won’t do well in the cold north and I want to learn to speak French.’

  ‘French?’

  ‘I’m going to do what you suggested, Penny. Take evening classes; French for Beginners. I might meet someone. If I do, I won’t hide my past.’

  ‘Good. Always the best policy.’

  ‘And if I live near Dover or Ramsgate I can get a ferry across to France for the day, once I have the basics; see if I can go into a café and order some food. I don’t need a passport to travel within the European Community.’ Petty reclined on the hard bench.

  ‘You have it all planned,’ Yewdall observed. ‘It’s a good sign.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes . . . positive attitude.’

  ‘I dare say. So it was what you wanted?’

  Penny Yewdall smiled. ‘Yes, it was a good result, a very good result. Rainbird, Herron, Magg, McAlpine, Primrose and Harley all with multiple life sentences . . . Pearl Holst, with ten years for conspiracy to murder, with four years for procuring for the purposes of prostitution swallowed up in that. I dare say that that will please her family no end. Your testimony and Davinia Bannister’s testimony, and you putting
your hair in the shed where Convers and Tyrell had done the same thing seven years earlier – nice DNA profiles to be had there to match the bones dug up in a wood in Enfield. And the Forensic Accountants are looking at their assets, Rainbird and Co.’s assets, I mean. Anything that cannot be proven to have been obtained lawfully, or bought with lawfully earned money, will be seized and sold off as proceeds of crime and the money donated to the public purse. So, if they come out, they’ll come out to very little at all. A very nice result all round.’

  A stern and stoutly built woman police constable approached and handed ‘Long Liz’ Petty a padded envelope. ‘Your documents.’ The constable spoke in a cold, detached manner. ‘Your new National Insurance Number, a Post Office savings account book in your name, with five hundred pounds credited to your name to start you off. Anything else you earn or claim as being unemployed. Do not make contact with the Metropolitan Police for any reason. If someone from your past finds you and threatens you, you must walk into the nearest police station and explain the situation; let them contact the Metropolitan Police, and you’ll be given another new identity.’