The Garden Party (18 page)

‘Good, all part of building the picture,' Penny Yewdall replied.

‘So we arrived. Tony parked the car in front of the house next to another car and off to one side of the car parking area was a single-decker bus, or rather a coach, I should say. Then it was “Get your kit off, girl”.'

‘Just like that!' Penny Yewdall felt shocked.

‘More or less.' Sandra Barnes spoke quietly. ‘Sorry, but this is where it gets a bit difficult.'

‘OK, Sandra, take your time,' Penny Yewdall replied comfortingly. ‘But it's vital we know what happened at that party; we need as much detail as possible.'

‘Yes, I realize it is important . . . believe me, I know why you have travelled all the way up from London.'

‘Thank you for saying that, we appreciate your cooperation.'

‘I stepped into the house, behind Tony. Usually it was me first, him second, but this time it felt like I was being led into the house . . . and . . .' Sandra Barnes shook her head. ‘I confess I don't think I have seen so many naked girls since I was in the showers at school . . . and they all looked frightened. It was then that I was told to take my kit off, “Take your kit off girl, all of it, or we'll take it off for you”.'

‘“We'll”,' Penny Yewdall queried, ‘“we'll take it off for you”?'

‘Yes. It was a woman who said that. She was past her prime, well past it; middle-aged, short but very muscular . . . and she gave some serious grief to any girl who stepped out of line. The other girls were all holding a black plastic bag and a bag like that was pushed into my hands by the older woman and she repeated what she had said, “Everything off and put it all in the bag”. So by then I was thinking, what have I got myself into?, but I peeled it off anyway. It was all I could do. By this time Tony had walked off leaving me at the mercy of the older woman. So it all went in . . . shoes, clothing, jewellery, watch, handbag and all the contents of the handbag. Then she opened a small room off the main vestibule and we were told to dump our plastic bags in there, which we did, and the door was locked and the woman pocketed the key.'

‘You were trapped,' Penny Yewdall observed.

‘Yes, yes we were,' Sandra Barnes replied, ‘and we knew it; none of us were going anywhere in a hurry.'

‘No telephone?'

‘Well, any mobile phones were in the plastic bags among the clothes behind a locked door.' Sandra Barnes forced a smile. ‘The one landline was in the entrance hall which I found later was fixed so it could only take incoming calls. So, we were trapped, as you said. Outside the door were some lowlife geezers like minders and then there were dogs which were left out at night, and we had a walk over a rough surface on bare feet to the road down a long, very long drive. The back of the house was fenced off with a twenty foot high wire fence beyond a line of Leylandii, with fields beyond that. So, yes, we were trapped all right, and I soon realized that if I was going to survive this so-called party I was going to have to cooperate. The girls were then herded, and that is the only word, herded like cattle through the house into the rear where men were standing drinking beer and eating hamburgers. All they did was give us a casual glance and that just made us feel even more vulnerable. I learned the whole thing was to celebrate a fella called Arnie Rainbird coming out of prison after a long time inside. It was then that all doubts about who Tony Sudbury was just vanished, totally evaporated. It was then that I realized that this party was for top-end villainy, organized crime. No wonder he'd flash his money around like he did. Never found out what sort of crime though; drugs, I assume.'

‘Used to be,' Penny Yewdall said, ‘they were moving out of drugs by then and getting into people smuggling.'

‘People smuggling?' Sandra Barnes repeated in astonishment.

‘So we believe.' Penny Yewdall glanced at Sandra Barnes. ‘Huge profits to be made with only puny penalties to fear.'

‘I did wonder. Thank you for telling me that.' Sandra Barnes nodded her head gently. ‘I did wonder what their line of crime was. It's not the sort of thing you can ask.'

‘Certainly isn't,' Penny Yewdall replied, ‘not if you don't want to disappear.'

‘Yes, yes, I realized then that they were that sort of crew. So, the party . . .'

‘For want of a better word,' Penny Yewdall said.

‘Yes, if you can call it a party.' Sandra Barnes looked to her left. ‘If you can call it that. Well, the evening began, drink flowed and there was a buffet, but we learned quickly that the buffet was a man-only affair. One girl helped herself to a slice of cold pizza and got a good smack across her face for doing so by one of the men, and then it was anything goes, for the men that is. Once the men were fuelled up the women began to get used, with myself and the other “good” girls finding ourselves to be quite popular and much in demand. We were told that “Arnie's been inside for ten years, he's got a lot of catching up to do”, and he caught up all right, him and his mates.'

‘I'm sorry.' Penny Yewdall grimaced. ‘I really am sorry. We understand it went on for a week . . . longer in fact.'

‘Yes.' Sandra Barnes drew breath between her teeth. ‘You understand correctly. On the Saturday morning, the morning after the first night, we, the girls that is, had been given breakfast . . . a bowl of cereal each. One of the girls asked if she could have her two hundred pounds and a ride back to London. Apparently a lot of the girls were street girls, they'd been hired . . .'

‘Yes.' Penny Yewdall once again glanced at Sandra Barnes. ‘The offer was two hundred pounds for a night's work.'

‘Yes, for them. There were four other girls like me, sugar babies whose “daddies” had decided that they were “time served” and thus expendable. We were each just told we were going to a party. The older woman said, “No, darling, not one night, it's going on for a little longer than that”, and the men who were loafing about started to laugh.'

‘Oh . . .' Penny Yewdall groaned, ‘I wondered how you had found out.'

‘It was then we found out, breakfast time on Saturday, and silly me, silly me who had told herself that cooperation and passivity was the only way to survive started to mouth off, “You can't keep us here against our will, that's false imprisonment . . .” and all the rest of it. The older woman, the only female who kept her clothes on, she just strides over to me and slaps me, just once, but it sent me reeling. I saw stars and fell over. I've never been slapped so hard . . . ever. I was told later that it knocked me off my feet, that for a split second my entire body was in the air and my cheek felt like someone had put a hot iron against it. Then she picks me up by my hair and drags me outside, telling the other women to follow her. Then . . .' Sandra Barnes' voice trailed off. ‘Sorry, the next bit is a bit difficult.'

‘It's all right,' Penny Yewdall said quietly, ‘you don't have to tell me. We know what happened to you then.'

‘You do?' A note of surprise crept into Sandra Barnes' voice.

‘Yes, we do, we got a fair summary from Charlie Magg,' Penny Yewdall explained. ‘He remembers you well. He seemed to take quite a shine to you.'

‘Charlie!' Sandra Barnes smiled. ‘Oh, Charlie, he looked after me. He couldn't rescue me but he was a source of comfort. How is he?'

‘He's in Brixton Prison probably facing a murder charge.'

Sandra Barnes sighed. ‘I am sorry to hear that.'

‘Yes, he'll be going down for a long time.'

‘Brixton Prison?'

‘Yes.'

‘I will write to him.'

‘He would appreciate that,' Penny Yewdall replied, ‘but don't let him have your address.'

‘Don't worry.' Sandra Barnes forced a grin. ‘I am not that stupid.'

‘Good.'

‘So you know what happened then, after I got slapped like that?'

‘Yes, you were half-drowned . . . they made an example of you.'

‘Didn't they just. I thought I was going to die. All the girls standing round the edge of the swimming pool. I was told it went on for about fifteen minutes but it felt a lot longer.' Sandra Barnes paused. ‘But it worked; after that we were all so meek and mild. The party continued and it was anything goes because the women were trapped there, and trapped by a load of heavy geezers . . . it really was survival time.'

‘It sounds like it,' Penny Yewdall replied. ‘It certainly sounds like it.'

‘There was one guy, a little rat-faced geezer, who had a real downer on women. One day he played football with one girl's head, on another day he used a second girl as a punchbag. He had to be pulled off both times and both times it was Charlie Magg that pulled him off.' Sandra Barnes paused. ‘Strange bloke was Charlie, he never seemed to take advantage of the women, any of us, but by heavens could he get violent with men. So it really doesn't surprise me that he is looking at a murder charge.'

‘So,' Penny Yewdall asked, ‘I am just curious, what were the sleeping and eating arrangements?'

‘Sleep!' Sandra Barnes snorted with derision. ‘I dare say the answer to that is in a man's bed if so summoned, until you were kicked out, but otherwise one stretched out on a sofa, curled up in an armchair if one was small enough . . . in the corner of a room, really anywhere you could put your head down when things got quiet, usually after about one or two o'clock each morning. We'd eat in the kitchen, just a little food each morning so we were always hungry. We were put on a dishwashing rota and that became popular because we were always well away from male attention then and we could also pilfer leftover food. We had the use of one particular bathroom near the kitchen but they had taken the door off. No escape at all, you see, none at all.'

‘They had thought of everything,' Penny Yewdall snorted sourly.

‘Hadn't they just?' Sandra Barnes continued. ‘Apart from what happened to me and the other twenty plus women. I suppose you really want to know about the two men who were murdered?'

Surprised at the offer of information, Penny Yewdall fought to contain her excitement. She was able to hold the pause and then said, ‘Yes, yes we do. We know their names but that's about all we know.'

‘I can't tell you from beginning to end because I was one of the ones who fainted,' Sandra Barnes apologized.

‘You fainted?'

‘Nearly all of us, all the women did, apart from the mighty atom that was meant to keep us in line, I don't think she fainted. She was a hard, hard woman.' Sandra Barnes looked skyward. ‘You know, even now it doesn't seem real.'

‘Oh that,' Penny Yewdall replied, ‘that I can well understand. Believe me.'

‘So . . . the bloodletting . . . the murders.' Sandra Barnes steeled herself. ‘This is another difficult bit . . .'

‘As I said before, Sandra,' Penny Yewdall replied calmly, ‘in your own time.'

‘In my own time,' Sandra Barnes repeated, as she and Penny Yewdall strolled slowly along the pathway, ‘dare say I have plenty of that. Well . . . it was about halfway through the so-called party, on the Wednesday or the Thursday, that two wretched men were brought to the house. But the sight they presented, they looked like shipwrecked sailors . . . long hair, straggly beards, frail, emaciated, toothless . . . human skeletons. It was certain that they had been kept against their will and kept alive on a starvation diet. One was short and the other was tall and there was fear in their eyes; their eyes were bulging with fear as they were pushed to the ground in front of the party boy and said, “We didn't say nothing, Mr Rainbird, we didn't grass you up”, stuff like that.'

‘I see,' Penny Yewdall said, ‘that explains the motive behind it, gangland retribution.'

‘So . . . we . . . all the women, naked as the day we were born except the older woman who wore her nice blue tracksuit and tennis shoes, we all got told to stand in line, then one of Arnie Rainbird's lieutenants said to us “Watch and remember”, and the two shipwrecked sailors were pleading for their lives. Then two of the men – one was the rat-faced bloke – he and Charlie Magg appeared carrying golf clubs, I mean a golf club each, the heavy ones . . .' Sandra Barnes cupped her hands – ‘those with a club on the end, not the ones like you get to use on a putting green, the heavy ones used to hit a ball off the tee . . .'

‘Drivers?' suggested Penny Yewdall. ‘They're called drivers.'

‘If you say so . . . but the heavy ended ones,' Sandra Barnes continued, ‘they had one of those each and Charlie Magg felled the first geezer with a blow to the back of his legs, then he and the rat-faced one started to pound him with the drivers on his chest, arms, legs, but never his head. They didn't want to kill him, they kept him conscious. He was screaming and the women . . . they started fainting. He was howling and then the woman who wore the tracksuit and who was also watching started to grin.'

‘Grin!' Penny Yewdall was incredulous.

‘I kid you not, a wide grin and a gleam in her eye. She said, “Wind him, he's too noisy”, and the rat-faced geezer brings his golf club down on the man's stomach. After that he was quieter, but they kept raining blows, and Arnie Rainbird is watching all this while he's sipping a glass of wine. I tried to look away, tried to close my eyes but you just can't help looking . . . and the sound of the clubs on this poor man's body . . . I just can't describe it. After a while he stays still, I reckon it was because he couldn't move his arms or legs any more . . . then they stop. I never heard anyone tell them to stop but they both stopped at the same time. Then the guy who had half-drowned me, he picks the wretched man up by his hair and drags him across the lawn to the swimming pool and does his thing, immerses his head and holds it there, then brings it out . . . then puts it under again . . . in and out . . . in and out . . . and then after a while he doesn't bring it out. The poor man can't struggle of course because every bone in his body is broken, but the guy called “The Baptist”, he holds his head there for ten minutes, probably longer. While this was happening I noticed two other blokes piling up firewood as if making a bonfire at the very bottom of the garden. The Baptist pulls the bloke from the pool and two other guys carry the body to the bottom of the garden. He was dead . . . I . . . we had just seen a man murdered and the other bloke was just kneeling and making a wailing sound . . . trembling with fear. Then Charlie Magg and the rat-faced bloke pull the other hairy shipwrecked survivor to the centre of the lawn, and then I join the other girls lying in the grass . . .'