The Garden Party (22 page)

‘So, Victor and Frankie, you know what you are doing, but do any issues arise from your visit to “Snakebite” Herron yesterday? Any avenues to explore there?'

‘Just the issue of the two previous wives who vanished, but the Bedfordshire boys are on to that and possibly the safety of the third wife. She seemed frightened of him.'

‘Is she in danger?' Vicary asked.

‘Yes, I think she is, but as to whether the danger is immediate or is a brooding threat we can't say,' Swannell replied. ‘But I do think that the danger has lessened after our visit. We were able to remind Herron that contrary to popular belief there have been successful prosecutions for murder despite the absence of a corpse. It was pleasant to watch colour drain from his face when we said that, so wife number three is a lot safer now than she was last week.'

‘Good . . . good.' Vicary nodded his head slightly. ‘That's very reassuring. So, go and call on Rainbird, the man himself. Read his file before you leave. It reads like a soldier who got his good conduct badges because he wasn't found out, rather than because of actual good conduct. He acquired no record at all, not to speak of, just sufficient to get his street cred in the eyes of the underworld. Yet, he climbs to run a very heavy crew and then he gets his first major conviction when he is in his mid–thirties, and he has a list of criminal associates which reads like a felons'
Who's Who
. His victim was one Daniel Meed, just twenty years old when Rainbird filleted him with a butcher's knife. I'll go and talk to his family – Daniel Meed's family, I mean – seventeen years on. Had he lived, Daniel would now be assessing his life as he approached the big 4-0. His home address is in Chiswick, not many jailbirds there. OK, that's it. Let this office know where you are at all times.'

Elizabeth ‘Long Liz' Petty's home was a ground floor conversion in a Victorian era terraced house in Waterloo Road, Canning Town. It offered, Yewdall saw, cramped accommodation and was kept in an untidy manner, with clothes strewn across the floor and empty vodka bottles littering the flat. The unmade bed was pushed into a corner beneath the window, which looked out on to the massively overgrown back garden. Two small armchairs were pushed close up to the small fire grate which at that moment was empty. A sink with a pile of unwashed dishes therein stood in the opposite corner of the room to the bed, and a small electric cooker sat on the chest of drawers beside the sink. The bathroom which Elizabeth Petty used was evidently elsewhere in the house, and likely shared with other tenants, but apart from that necessity of life, it was clear to Penny Yewdall that everything that Elizabeth Petty did when she was not out of doors, she did in this small room; she slept, cooked, ate and relaxed here. Liz Petty showed herself to be tall, blonde-haired, drawn about the face, and emaciated rather than slender. She had a small upper body and achieved her height by means of long, very long, thin – painfully thin, it seemed to Yewdall – legs.

‘So now you can see why they call me “Long Liz”.' Elizabeth Petty rolled a cigarette in a slow, deliberate manner. She patted her bony knees.

‘Yes, I can see why.' Penny Yewdall smiled as she glanced around the flat. ‘Lucky you, a lot of women would kill for a pair of pins like yours,' she added diplomatically.

‘Possibly, but not if they had to take everything else that comes with them.' Petty indicated her flat. ‘Some life I lead; I would chop six inches off my legs if I could be like some of the women you see round here – married, good husband, children – it's them who have it all, not me and my long legs.'

‘Perhaps,' Yewdall replied as the dank smell of Liz Petty's flat reached her and she noticed the small television set and small hi-fi system located underneath the sink.

‘So, Sandra Barnes did all right. I am pleased for her, she was a good girl. She will have made a nice woman. She never looked down on the brasses at that damn party . . . and here am I, still a brass and this is what you get for being one . . . and a few visits to the hospital – the odd broken rib or bust nose . . . all part of the risk you run. I still earn money but not as much as I used to earn. You age very quickly when you're on the game. I mean very quickly.'

‘You don't fancy settling down with some form of employment?' Penny Yewdall asked. ‘It might not pay well but it's safer than working the streets.'

‘Ha!' Elizabeth Petty scoffed as she lit her roll-up with a flourish of a bright yellow disposable cigarette lighter, cupping her hand round the flame as if she was standing outside in a strong wind. ‘I'm unemployable, darling, no qualifications, no time nor the inclination to apply myself to a course of study. I wouldn't be able to hold down a job stacking shelves, even if I was able to get a job like that. I was on the street early in life; just fifteen when I fetched up at King's Cross. I was tall enough to pass myself off for older; it was the only way I could survive.'

‘Did you ever return home?'

‘Naw.' Elizabeth Petty pulled deeply on the roll-up and exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. ‘No, no intention of returning. For one thing, I can't be seen like this. I look used, worn out, my mother would be able to tell what I was doing the instant she set eyes on me and so would my old man, and he would say to my old mum, “See, you see that, you see what I told you? I told you she was going to be no good. She never was good. She isn't good and she never will be no good.”'

‘That's why you left home, that attitude on your father's part? It couldn't have been easy for you growing up with a parent like that.' Yewdall observed.

‘Yes, that . . . being told I was “no good” all the time.' Elizabeth Petty took another deep drag on the roll-up. ‘That and a few other things beside. Like my old man never being able to work out which was his bedroom and which was mine when he wandered home from the pub, and my old mum who didn't seem to care which bed he slept in.'

‘I'm sorry.' Yewdall spoke softly.

‘Well.' Petty shrugged. ‘It happens. A lot of girls who are on the game have similar tales to tell. So that's me, all the way from beautiful Basingstoke to sunny Canning Town, E16. I didn't get very far, did I?'

‘But you're still not but one-third of the way through your life,' Yewdall pleaded, ‘there is more ahead of you than there is behind you.'

‘I'm twenty-seven, darlin'.' Petty once more drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘I look twice that age and I feel twice my age.'

‘You certainly do not look twice your age,' Yewdall replied rapidly and a little angrily, ‘I can tell you that. You are twenty-seven and you look twenty-seven, and I am not just saying that.'

Elizabeth Petty shrugged. ‘Thanks, darling, that will keep me going for a whole month or until some fat old punter says, “How much? There's younger ones down the street knocking it out for half that”, whichever comes first; probably the latter knowing my Donald Duck. But thanks anyway, and it's a fact that I am not far short of thirty; the first thirty years is all but behind me and that's the most important isn't it? The first thirty years dictate the rest. That's when you lay your foundations; that's when you marry well if you can, start your family.'

‘You could hide your past, Liz,' Yewdall said encouragingly. ‘I mean, if you stopped working the street you'd soon lose that used-up look about your face and you'd stop dressing like a tart; your good looks would re-emerge. Leave the Smoke and start again, a small town somewhere.'

‘So what would I do for money?' Petty looked at Yewdall. ‘And it will still be in the eyes, darling, it'll still be there. The face might soften but the hard, cold eyes of a street girl won't ever leave me, not for a likely time, anyway. So I'll be out again tonight in my heels and my short skirt, up at King's Cross, the old crossroads of the world, one of them anyway. London's other meat market; Smithfield for cattle and King's Cross for the sort of cattle that can walk upright.'

‘Are you a clean girl?'

‘I am now.' Petty drew deeply on the cigarette. ‘I caught a dose once but the old penicillin did its job. Did you know venereal disease is getting resistant to penicillin?'

‘I have heard that, yes.' Yewdall once again glanced round the cramped, damp bedsit.

‘So the doctor told me. The amount of penicillin needed to cure a dose of syphilis is now one thousand times larger than the amount needed in the 1940s. Imagine that.'

‘Aids? Herpes?'

‘No . . . and no, clear of all that. Last time I had a check up I was, that was just a week or two ago.'

‘Do you shoot up?'

‘No.' Elizabeth Petty shook her head. ‘Do you know I have never done that, never pumped heroin into myself.'

‘Any children?'

‘No.' She paused. ‘Mind you, I did get a termination once, but I have never gone full term and had it taken from me because I was an unfit mother.'

Yewdall smiled. ‘Well, look at yourself, Elizabeth . . .'

‘Liz, people call me Liz.'

‘Liz. Look at yourself, Liz. I can't see any obstacles to you turning your life around.' Yewdall smiled again.

‘I thought you was the Old Bill?' Petty eyed Yewdall with suspicion.

‘I am.'

‘Well you'd better be careful, darling, you're sounding like my probation officer or a social worker, even sounding like a lady magistrate in her twinset and pearls, smiling down from the bench, telling me I'm going to get a second chance, the whole new start calypso.' Petty put her hand up to her face for a moment. ‘You know, it's not so easy, you have a lifestyle, you're known for who you are, things are expected of you, you have mates who you cling to.'

‘I do understand, Liz, believe me I do.' Yewdall sat forward. ‘And that's all the more reason to think about the whole new start calypso, all the more reason to move to a new town with a new name and start a clean life.'

‘A new name?' Petty seemed intrigued.

‘It's a very good way to start a new life, a new image . . . longer skirts and dresses, a more elegant ladylike appearance; three-quarter length skirts or even ankle length skirts, or dresses of the type that the hippy girls wear; you could carry those with your figure.'

‘You think so?' Liz Petty held eye contact with Penny Yewdall.

‘Yes, they look so comfortable, you'd really suit long dresses and every town has its library and its adult education classes, that's where you meet people, and also there will be hiking clubs, amateur dramatic societies, that sort of thing. Meet healthier minded people. All right, every town has its seedy side, just don't go there.'

‘But my past will come out.'

‘Only if you let it, and even if you don't hide your past it's still all right if you are making a break from it.'

‘Yes.' Petty dogged her butt in a cheap tin ashtray which balanced on the arm of the chair in which she sat. ‘Yes, since you put it like that, I'm fed up with feeling dirty all the time, dirty and used; you've helped me. I just needed someone to say that to me; I was just at that point.'

‘Good.' Yewdall smiled warmly. ‘Because the police assist as well as arrest people, you know. The police can be like probation officers or social workers or lady magistrates in their twinsets and pearls.'

‘So I see.' Elizabeth Petty relaxed back in her chair, as if, Yewdall thought, already contemplating a fresh start in her life. ‘So you'll want to know all about the garden party up in Bedfordshire seven or eight years ago?'

‘Will I?' Yewdall grinned, gently.

‘Well it's the only thing that Sandra Barnes and I have in common that the Old Bill would be interested in.' Liz Petty reached for her tobacco and then seemed to have a change of mind and retracted her hand.

‘Fair deduction,' Yewdall replied.

‘The only deduction.' Liz Petty looked up at the high ceiling of her flat. ‘I knew it would come back to haunt me but I won't be giving evidence, I can tell you that now.'

‘I was afraid you'd say that.' Yewdall relaxed back into her chair.

‘Yes . . . yes, I bet you were, darling, but it's not your little body which will be fished out of the Old Father, is it? It's not your throat that will be slit from ear to ear before they dump you in the river, is it?' Petty paused. ‘I will tell you all I know, I will tell you all I saw, but for that I need a drink.'

‘How much?' Yewdall reached for her handbag.

Petty smiled ‘No, I mean a
drink
drink, darling. I don't mean a drink as in a wedge of cash, I mean a drink as in a vodka and coke.'

‘I see . . . I thought . . .'

‘No, there are still things I won't charge money for.' Petty smiled. ‘There are not many things, but I will give information for nothing, especially about that garden party. Have you ever stood just a few feet away from some poor geezer who's writhing on the ground, coughing blood, while two East End heavies beat his body to a pulp with golf clubs? The sound . . . and I don't mean the sound coming from his mouth . . .'

‘Can't say I have,' Yewdall conceded in a quiet voice.

‘Well I have, twice in one day, so for that I will give information. Can we go to the Vicky Arms? It's not the nearest battle cruiser to here but it's the most comfortable. All the other boozers round here are rough old dens, even at this time of day.'

Penny Yewdall stood and smiled. ‘Of course we can, if you don't mind being seen with the Filth?'

‘They won't know you're the Old Bill, darling, not in those plain clothes.' Petty also stood.

‘Don't be so sure, sometimes I think I have “police” stamped on both cheeks.' Yewdall took a deep breath. ‘It just seems that way, but if you're comfortable to be seen with me . . .'

‘I'll take the risk and I need to talk the garden party out of me, and for that I need a drink. Let me get me jacket, darling.'