Read The Garden Party for Free Online Page B

her.’ The publican wiped his hand across the surface of the bar, as if brushing away a fly that only he could see.
    â€˜Understood. Well, we know her name; we’ll find her easily. A regular in here, woman in her sixties . . . Pearl Holst . . . old man was a brickie and she sounds like she’ll have form.’
    â€˜Oh she has.’ The publican raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘She’s got form, all right.’
    â€˜So if she comes in here wanting to go ballistic, you just say we found her because of her police record and we’ll do the same,’ Yewdall replied. ‘That will cool her off.’
    â€˜Dare say that’s true, but if she’s not in trouble and her old man’s in the clay, I don’t see why I shouldn’t point you in her general direction, don’t see why not at all. Her old drum is just round the corner . . . five minutes’ walk.’
    Frankie Brunnie smiled. Harry Vicary had been quite correct. There were few Monkhams in London, just three in fact, one Avenue, one Road and one Lane, and there was a plentiful number of thoroughfares called Orchard something, but only one of the Monkhams, Monkham Lane, joined a thoroughfare called Orchard something. In this case it was Orchard Hill and they met each other in Woodford, north London.
    Pearl Holst lived in what Yewdall and Ainsclough found to be a modest, neatly kept terraced house on Eynsford Road in Ilford. The houses along the length of the street had, they noted, a small area of land between their frontage and the pavement, and which the officers observed had either been retained as garden, or turned into a parking space for the family car, either one or the other, in equal measure. The houses were of a ground and upper floor design, with the occasional vaulted roof indicating the existence of attic space which could be developed into a living area. The complete absence of ventilation grills or small windows at ground level showed that the houses on Eynsford Road had no cellars. Yewdall and Ainsclough parked their car half on and half off the pavement where a space to do so was to be found, so as not to impede traffic flow along the narrow road, and walked up to the highly varnished door which was, they had been advised (and confirmed by means of a criminal record check) the home of Pearl Holst. Tom Ainsclough paused and then knocked on the door, twice, in what Penny Yewdall thought to be a soft, reverential, but yet authoritative tap.
    The door was opened rapidly and aggressively by a short, strongly built woman, wearing a yellow T-shirt, faded blue jeans and sports shoes. She planted herself strongly on the threshold of her house in a manner which said loudly, ‘This is my territory; no one comes in unless I say so’. She was, the officers guessed, in her sixties but had the muscle and facial tone of a much younger woman. Her blonde hair was worn back in a tight ponytail, further adding to a more youthful appearance for a woman of her years. The woman’s face was small and pinched; her eyes seemed, to Ainsclough and Yewdall, to be cold and dark and piercing: the eyes of a raptor. ‘The Old Bill?’ she asked in a local accent.
    â€˜Yes.’ Yewdall showed her ID card, as did Ainsclough. ‘I am DC Yewdall, this is DC Ainsclough of Scotland Yard.’
    â€˜The Yard!’ The woman seemed alarmed. ‘Must be serious.’
    â€˜It is.’ Yewdall replaced her ID in her handbag. ‘But it is nothing for you to be alarmed about. All we need is a little information. Nothing more.’
    â€˜Just information? Well, I can’t see what good anything I can tell you will be but you’d better come in . . . the curtains are twitching already.’ Pearl Holst stepped aside and allowed the officers ingress to her home.
    The two officers entered what they found to be a neat and cleanly kept living room with a television and a CD player on a shelf in the corner of the