Then Sacha said, ‘If he sticks his thing in your nunu it will be very sore and you will bleed.’ It was a trick of her damaged mind to repeat things over and over again.
‘It’s time for me to go now, Sash,’ Bryoni said at last.
‘Oh, no! Please stay a little longer. I get very frightened and sad when you go and leave me.’
‘I will come back next Sunday.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes, I promise.’
*
The next Sunday Bryoni brought with her a Dictaphone she had ‘borrowed’ from Henry’s study.
She and Sacha walked hand in hand down to the lake. Bryoni carried the rug and the picnic basket. When they reached their special spot Sacha spread the rug and made certain there were neither folds nor tucks in it. Arranging the rug was her responsibility and she was very conscientious and proud of her ability to spread it to perfection. While her sister was concentrating all her attention on the rug, Bryoni slipped the Dictaphone out of the pocket of her jeans, switched it on and then returned it to her pocket without Sacha having noticed.
The day followed its familiar pattern; they fed the ducks and spoke about Sacha’s puppy that was staying with its mummy dog in heaven. They ate their lunch and Bryoni took Sacha to the toilet. They returned to the lakeside and lay on the rug. Sacha asked her to scratch her back and Bryoni made her say please. Then, while she was tickling Sacha’s back, she started humming ‘Humpty Dumpty’. It set off a train of ideas in Sacha’s crippled mind, as Bryoni had hoped it might.
Suddenly Sacha said, ‘I didn’t like it when he made his thing squirt into my mouth. It tasted awful.’
Bryoni shuddered but kept on humming quietly. For once Sacha was at ease and she rambled on.
‘I have been trying to remember his name. He said he was my brother, but I don’t have a brother. He showed me how to hold his thing and go up and down with it until it squirted. I liked it when he told me how clever I was and how much he loved me.’
She fell silent again and Bryoni went on humming softly and soothingly. Suddenly Sacha sat up and exclaimed, ‘I remember now! His name was Carl Peter and he really was my brother. But then he went away. They have all gone away. My mummy and daddy; all of them have gone away and left me; all except you, Bryoni.’
‘I’ll never leave you, Sash. We will always be together like sisters should be.’ Sacha was placated and she subsided back onto her stomach. Bryoni stroked her back and hummed softly.
Suddenly Sacha spoke out in a tone of voice more resembling the woman she was, rather than the five-year-old she had become.
‘Yes, I do remember now that it was my brother Carl who came to my bedroom that night and climbed into my bed. It was Carl who pulled my legs open and put his big hard thing deep into me and made it squirt. I screamed but nobody heard me. I was bleeding and it was so sore, but I never told anybody because Carl had told me not to. Do you think I did the right thing, Bryoni?’
‘Of course you did, my darling sister. You are such a good girl, and you always do the right thing.’
‘Promise you will never leave me, Bryoni.’
‘I promise you I will never leave you, my dearest Sash.’
*
When Bryoni arrived back home from Nine Elms that Sunday evening Carl’s brand-new Ford Mustang was parked in the driveway. As she entered the front doors Carl was coming down the main staircase at a run. He was dressed in a suit and tie. His shoes were polished and his hair was slicked and glossy with oil.
‘Hi, Bree!’ he called down to her. ‘How’s our coo-coo sister? Is she still playing with the fairies?’
‘Sacha is just fine. She’s a very sweet and lovely girl.’ Bryoni couldn’t look up at his face; that smug arrogant face.
Carl swiftly lost interest in Sacha. He had only mentioned her name to rile Bryoni. He stopped in front of the full-length mirror at the foot of the stairs and adjusted the knot in his necktie. Then he took out his comb and carefully rearranged a few hairs that were out of place.
‘Big date tonight. She’s been panting after me for a month or more. Tonight is her lucky night. How do I look, Bree?’ He turned to face her and spread his arms. ‘Ta-ra! Ta-ra! Every woman’s dream, yes?’
Bryoni stopped in front of him and forced herself to study his face. Many of her girlfriends said that he was the most handsome man they had ever laid eyes on. She realized that she hated him. He was a sick twisted sadistic swine.
‘You know, Carl, this is the first time I’ve noticed that your right eye is bigger than the left one,’ she said, and he turned back to the mirror in consternation. She brushed past him as she ran up the stairs to her own room. She knew that for weeks he would agonize about the relative size of his eyes, and she was pleased.
Her dad was out of town. He had gone off in his new jet plane to some funny little country in the Middle East called Abu Zara, and would not be home for two days more. She was alone in the big house. She phoned down to the kitchen and asked Cookie if she could eat dinner in the staff dining room with the other household servants, instead of alone in the big old dining room. Cookie was delighted. They all loved Bryoni.
‘I baked an apple pie especially for you, Miss Bree.’
‘You are a darling, Cookie. You know that’s my absolute favourite.’
After dinner Bryoni locked herself in her study adjoining her bedroom and she copied the recording she had made at Nine Elms onto a spare tape. As she listened to Sacha’s sweet baby voice reciting such disgusting perversions she grew very angry all over again.
She caught herself thinking of the twelve-gauge shotgun in her dad’s den downstairs. Henry had taught her to shoot clay pigeons, and she had become a good little shot. Now she realized that she was in danger of losing her good sense and reason. She forced herself to return to her original plan.
When she had completed the copy of Sacha’s rambling recollections she locked the recorder in her bedside drawer and went back to her desk to complete her homework assignment for the next day. She switched off her light at a little before ten o’clock but she could not get to sleep until almost midnight. Then she was awakened again by the roar of Carl’s Mustang coming up the long driveway. He always drove very fast when he had been drinking. She checked the time and it was ten minutes past three.
The next morning she ate her breakfast in the kitchen with Cookie, and Bonzo drove her to school before Carl had emerged from his bedroom.
At mid-morning break she gave the back-up recording of Sacha’s confessions into the safe keeping of her best friend, Alison Demper. She knew that if she kept the recording at Forest Drive Carl would find it.
‘You have to swear a “Cross your Heart and Hope to Die Double Dixie Oath” that you’ll not tell anybody I gave it to you,’ she told Alison, who was intrigued. She dutifully spat on her finger, crossed her heart and swore her life away.
After school Bryoni pleaded a headache and was released from her art class. She went directly home and was waiting for her brother Carl when he returned from his job at Bannock Oil headquarters. He usually stopped for a beer with his chums at the Troubadour Inn, but this evening he came thundering up the drive in the Mustang a little before seven.
Bryoni was sitting in the window seat of her bedroom. She leaned out of the window and called down to him as he climbed out of the car and slammed the door. ‘Hi, Carl! If you have a few minutes I would like to talk to you. Please can you come up to my bedroom?’
‘Right on, sis.’
She heard him pounding up the stairs and then he knocked on her bedroom door.
‘Door is open,’ she called and he opened it, and paused in the doorway.
‘What’s up, sis?’
She was sitting on her bed but she had moved the armchair to the centre of the room for him.
‘Come in, Carl. Take a seat. I want to talk to you about Sacha.’ He closed the door and sauntered across to the chair. He sprawled into it with one leg hanging over the arm.
‘So, what
is it about Sacha? Is she seeing little green men from Mars, or does she think she has turned into a pink polar bear at last?’ He laughed at his own wit.
‘Please listen to this.’ She held up the Dictaphone.
‘Is it your new all-time favourite rap recording, perhaps?’
Bryoni couldn’t bring herself to reply to him, she hated him so much.
She switched on the recorder and placed it on the bedside table.
There was silence as the recorder ran through its backing and then Sacha’s voice spoke out. Carl knew it was her at once. He straightened up in the chair, unhooked his leg from the arm and placed both feet together on the floor in front of him.
‘I didn’t like it when he made his thing squirt into my mouth. It tasted awful,’ Sacha said and Bryoni saw her brother wince, and his eyes shifted towards the window as though he was seeking an escape. But then they were drawn back to the recorder as Sacha went on.
‘I have been trying to remember his name. He said he was my brother, but I don’t have a brother. He showed me how to hold his thing and go up and down with it until it squirted. I liked it when he told me how clever I was and how much he loved me.’
Bryoni picked up the recorder and fast forwarded the tape for a few seconds. Then she hit the play button and replaced it on the bedside table. Sacha’s voice was firmer and more mature as she began speaking again.
‘… it was my brother Carl who came to my bedroom that night and climbed into my bed. It was Carl who pulled my legs open and put his big hard thing deep into me and made it squirt. I screamed but nobody heard me. I was bleeding and it was so sore, but I never told anybody because Carl had told me not to. Do you think I did the right thing, Bryoni?’
‘Of course you did, my darling sister. You are such a good girl, and you always do the right thing.’
Bryoni reached out and switched off the recorder, and then in the silence that followed she asked quietly, ‘Do you think that you did the right thing, Carl?’
His mouth was working but was forming no words. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket and then stared at the sweat traces left on the fine cloth.
Then abruptly he sprang to his feet and snatched the Dictaphone off the bedside table and in the same continuous movement hurled it against the door to Bryoni’s bathroom. It shattered into its component parts. He crossed the room with quick and decisive strides and stamped on the remains.
His hands were trembling and his entire body was shaking as he turned back to face Bryoni.
‘The slut. The filthy little whore. You and your crazy whoring sister dreamed that all up. Admit it: you are as raving mad as she is. You are both jealous of me. You are trying to discredit me with my father. But my father loves me.’
‘Your father was a Nazi war criminal,’ Bryoni said quietly. ‘Your father was somebody called Kurtmeyer who murdered people in gas chambers and ran a chain of brothels. You are your true father’s rotten seed, Karl Kurtmeyer.’
‘That’s a lie,’ he shouted at her. ‘You made that up. You are a lying little bitch,’ he screamed at her.
‘I did not so make that up,’ Bryoni replied without raising her voice. ‘Our mother told me all about your father one afternoon when she was drinking gin.’
‘It’s a lie! My father is Henry Bannock. I am his only son. He loves me and I am his heir. You and your dirty little whoring sister are jealous of me. You want to poison his mind against me. That’s why you are telling these filthy lies about me.’
‘We aren’t doing anything to you. You are the one who brutalized and debased your own little sister. You forced her to do terrible and disgusting things, and then you raped her and drove her out of her mind.’
‘Lies!’ he shouted at her. ‘My father will never believe your lies.’
‘He will when he listens to my recording.’ Bryoni stood up from the bed and confronted him calmly. He spun round and ran to where the shattered pieces of the recorder lay and dropped on his knees. He swept them up and stuffed them into his pockets.
‘There is no recorder,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. It never was. It was only a mad girl’s fantasy.’
‘I made a copy,’ Bryoni said. And he stood up and advanced on her menacingly.
‘Where is it?’
‘Where you will never find it.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘Never!’ she hissed at him fiercely and he hit her. It was an open-handed, full swing across her face. It knocked her backwards onto the bed. She pushed herself up on her elbows and there was blood in her mouth and it ran down her chin. She snarled at him again through bloody lips, fierce as a wounded lioness, ‘Never!’
The sight of her bright blood inflamed him. Blood always had that effect on him. It tipped him past the point of reason. He threw himself on top of her and forced her shoulders back on the bed. He was more than twice her age, and much more than twice her body weight. His strength was overpowering. He tore at her clothing and grunted, ‘You are going to have to learn a lesson in respect. The same lesson I taught your crazy sister.’
She screamed but he locked the fingers of his left hand around her throat and squeezed hard, while with the other hand he pulled down her underclothes and forced one knee up between her thighs.
‘Scream as much as you like. No one will hear you. No one will come to help you. No one will believe you.’ His voice was thick with lust. ‘I have to teach you respect.’
He sprang the buckle of his belt, and tore open the fly of his trousers so violently that one of the buttons flew off. Now he had her skin to skin.
Her lower body and loins were childlike and totally devoid of hair. She was unripe fruit; tiny, tight and dry. But he tore her open and forced his way into her.
In a paroxysm of agony she sank her teeth into his shoulder and he swore at her and released his strangling grip on her throat to prise her jaws open. Now they were both bleeding.
She threw back her head, and she screamed and screamed as he continued pounding into her.
Cookie in the kitchen below them heard her screams and she shouted for Bonzo Barnes, the chauffeur. The two of them raced up the stairs and burst into Bryoni’s bedroom just as Carl’s whole body contorted, and he bucked and groaned in orgasmic ecstasy over Bryoni’s slim half-naked form.
Bonzo hauled Carl off his sister and threw him across the room.
‘What you doing, man? She only a baby, man. She your little sister, man. What you think you doing to her, man?’ Bonzo bellowed at him. He picked up Carl from the floor by his throat and shook him like a rat.
‘Don’t hurt him, Bonzo,’ Cookie shouted at him. ‘Police going to take care of him.’ Bonzo dropped him in a heap, and Carl sat up.
‘No, don’t call the police,’ he pleaded desperately. ‘My father will be home tomorrow. He will take care of everything. He will pay you—’
‘Shut your face, you pig-dog animal. I’m warning you, man,’ Bonzo growled at him.
Bryoni was weeping bitterly with shock and pain. Cookie hugged her to her bosom and told her, ‘Hush up, my baby. He not going to hurt you no more. You safe now.’
She reached out and lifted the bedside telephone handset from its cradle and dialled 911. The call was answered almost immediately.
‘Young girl just been raped here. She’s bleeding pretty bad. We caught the pervert done it to her. Send the police.’
The blue-uniformed police arrived in two squad cars within twenty minutes. They listened to what Cookie and Bonzo had to tell them and then turned to Bryoni.
Bryoni stood up from the bed where Cookie had laid her down. She faced the officers. Her clothes were torn and bloodstained. Her face was swollen and one eye was blue and half closed. She was still shaking.
She took one step towards the police sergeant, but a thin ribbon of blood snaked from under her skirt and ran down her thigh. She moaned and clutched at her lower belly. She doubled over slowly and sagged to her knees. Cookie picked her up and held her to her bosom.
> ‘Holy Moses!’ said the sergeant. ‘Get the cuffs on that sad bastard and take him down to the station.’
His men grabbed Carl and twisted his arms up behind his back.
‘Take it easy, damn you,’ Carl protested. ‘You don’t have to act so tough.’
‘Like you didn’t have to act so tough with that little girl?’ one of them asked as he locked the cuffs on Carl’s wrists. Then he looked across at his sergeant. ‘Prisoner is resisting arrest, Sarge. Better we slap the leg irons on him just in case.’
The sergeant nodded approval, then turned back to Cookie. ‘We have to get this child to the hospital. She needs a doctor.’
Cookie wrapped the blanket around Bryoni’s shoulders. Bonzo picked her up and ran with her to the waiting squad car.
*
Ronald Bunter phoned Henry Bannock at the Bannock Oil installation in Abu Zara, and Henry’s voice was thick with sleep.
‘This had better be good, Ronnie. It’s three in the morning here.’
‘Sorry, Henry, but I have news for you. It isn’t good,’ Ronald told him. ‘In fact it’s about as bad as it gets. Is there somebody there with you?’
‘Of course there is. Do you think I am a monk?’
‘She doesn’t have to listen to this.’
‘Hold on. I’ll move to another room.’ There was a short exchange between Henry and his mysterious companion, a pause and then Henry said, ‘Okay, Ronnie. I am sitting on the john and the door is locked. Give it to me.’
‘Carl Peter has been arrested.’
‘Oh no! The little monster,’ Henry groaned. ‘What is it this time? Speeding? Drunken driving?’
‘I wish it were, my old friend. It’s far, far worse, I’m afraid.’
‘Come on, Ronnie! Stop being coy! Out with it!’
‘They have charged him with a number of different offences. The most serious are common rape, statutory rape, aggravated sexual assault, common assault and grievous bodily harm, battery, incest and corrupting a minor. They are still investigating and questioning witnesses, but they have warned us that they expect to bring other charges of repeated aggravated sexual assault on a person or persons under the age of fourteen years. A couple of those felonies are capital offences in the state of Texas.’