The Runaway

by Martina Cole

  This wasn’t the lively, lovely woman he had seen only a few hours ago. This was a battered, mutilated stranger, her closed eyes so swollen the eyelashes had disappeared. She lay in his lap like a broken doll. But the worst of it for him was knowing that she had been raped. Brutally raped. He could see the bloodstains on her legs and clothes.

  His Cathy, whom he loved more than anything in the world, was dying in his arms. He felt as if he would go mad with grief. Tears streaming, he whispered over and over: ‘Hang on, Cathy, please hang on.’

  He was still saying that when the paramedics and police arrived.

  He went in the ambulance with her. If she died, if his Cathy died, then so would the people responsible. If it took him the rest of his days, he’d track them down and kill them, one by one.

  Eamonn had been trying Cathy’s number all morning but all he got was her voice on the answerphone. Slamming down the phone, he stared out at the view from his offices in Plaza Tower.

  The phone rang and he picked it up.

  It was Desrae, her breathy voice coming down the line from England.

  ‘Oh my God, Eamonn, she’s dying! Cathy’s dying. Oh, please come. Please. I don’t know what to do . . . They’ve cut her to ribbons. You can barely see her face for the stitches! Oh God, oh dear God, help her someone . . .’ Then, after the broken words, the gut-wrenching, heartfelt sobs.

  ‘I’ll be there, Desrae. Don’t worry.’ But for a moment after he’d hung up he could not move. He thought back over the years, remembering Cathy, lovely and loving. Cut to ribbons . . . And it was all his fault.

  Ten minutes later he was collecting his car from the underground car park when two Chinese men walked towards him. The car parking valet suddenly turned away and walked out of the small booth he used, towards the daylight at the exit.

  Eamonn knew, before he turned and saw the men, what was going to happen to him. He was surprised the Chinese had got to him first. He had expected the Italians to be the assassins. He knew it was stupid trying to run, but despite everything the life force was still strong in him.

  They caught him easily and cut his throat as he struggled on the ground. Afterwards his heart was stabbed through to the backbone twice in rapid succession.

  It was a quick professional job.

  He lay on the dirty, oil-stained floor, the blue eyes Cathy had loved so much staring up into the darkness.

  His last thought was a hope that soon he would be joining her.

  Cathy’s attack was not treated as a rape and robbery as Mr Cheng had hoped. Richard Gates saw to that.

  He sat by her bed, holding her hand, until he was told that she was stable and her vital signs were good. He stared down at this travesty of the beautiful woman he loved and felt hot tears sting his eyes. He had loved her, he still loved her, and he was willing her to survive.

  A distraught Desrae was being looked after by Susan P, who was also taking care of Kitty. Cathy’s daughter was so upset that they had had to have her sedated. No one had allowed her to see her mother. It was decided she was too young to take that.

  Richard resigned from the job five days after Cathy was found. He left without a backward glance and stayed at the hospital from then on. If she died, he would go with her. There’d be nothing to keep him on this rotten earth if Cathy left him.

  The nurses were afraid of him, even while they marvelled at his tenderness as he washed her, tidied her hair, and sat endlessly holding her hand. They gave up trying to make him go home. He was there for the duration, they accepted that.

  But Cathy lay, mute and unmoving, and no one knew what she could hear, feel or understand.

  There was no mention of turning off the ventilator. Richard Gates would kill anyone who tried.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Betty walked into Broadmoor and underwent the usual searches until finally she was taken through to see Madge. Her friend loved her room there and kept it spotless; she had finally been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and with her new medication was much better.

  In Holloway, where Gates had had her taken for parole violation, she had bitten off another woman’s nose in a fit of anger over a match-thin roll up. On the recommendation of two prison psychiatrists, she was finally put away properly.

  She would never be coming home.

  Betty hugged her friend and they chatted for a while. Madge made them both a cup of tea, and as they sipped it Betty showed her the photos of Kitty and Cathy which she had brought with her.

  Madge admired them all happily.

  ‘That Kitty is the image of me mother, you know. Got the Irish look to her. The widow’s peak and the black hair. Good-looking girl. Can I keep these?’

  Betty nodded and Madge put them on her small bedside table. Later she would pin them to the wall with all the others.

  ‘I wish she’d visit me, though. I’d love to see her. Cathy was always so full of life, wasn’t she, Betty? Remember how she used to make us laugh when she was small? Those big blue eyes staring up at us.’

  Betty nodded and grinned. This was Madge on a good day. On others, despite her medication, she raged against her only child and grandchild, threatening to kill them, Betty, and everyone else who had ever betrayed or even slighted her in any way.

  Betty was sad, but knew that in her own way Madge was happy. Or at least as happy as she would ever be.

  As she looked at the photos of Cathy, she felt the sting of tears. It was terrible to think of her slowly dying in hospital, in a coma. She hadn’t told Madge - it didn’t seem right somehow. Let her live in a world where everything had been great, where Cathy’s childhood had been ideal and Madge herself a woman of renown, a loving mother, capable housewife and good provider. In Madge’s mind that was how it had been for her and the daughter she had loved so much.

  Mr Cheng was walking along Brewer Street. It was very late and the Soho streets were quiet but the little man’s gait was cocky. He had no fears, knew his reputation would stand him in good stead. No one would ever challenge him; he would be safe in his own world.

  A smile played around his lips as he went into an inconspicuous doorway. He walked up a flight of stairs and into a tiny flat. A petite Eurasian girl with short cropped hair and non-existent breasts was waiting for him.

  She bowed and smiled, displaying small white teeth. Her almond-shaped eyes were welcoming. She said in broken English: ‘I have been expecting you, sir. I have everything ready.’

  Cheng was already undoing his shirt as he followed her through the flat, the smile on his face now bright as daylight. As he sat on the leather sofa and accepted a cup of herbal tea, he was shocked to hear a familiar voice say: ‘Hello, Mr Cheng, long time no see.’

  Richard Gates was standing behind him. Such was the man’s shock he dropped his tea on to the white carpet.

  The girl didn’t move a muscle. Her face was closed now; she was detached from what was happening around her. Richard nodded at her. She picked up her coat and left the flat.

  The little man looked at Richard warily. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Gates?’

  Richard laughed heartily. ‘You, you old cunt, can tell me what you were taking from Cathy Pasquale’s drum the night you had her attacked and raped. By the way, before you try and bullshit me, I know you were there. I had a meeting with the man you hired to do your dirty work. He is at this moment on a mortuary slab in Deptford, so none of your funny business. All he knew was, you took suitcases from the club. That was all. So what was in them - drugs?’

  Cheng narrowed his eyes and kept silent.

  Richard said politely, ‘Have you ever heard the expression: You can do more with a soft voice than a big stick? Only everyone knows how quietly spoken I am, and how I will batter people without a second’s thought. You see, I love Cathy, and you hurt her, and I just want to know why before I kill you. You can handle that? Understand what I’m saying? ’

  Cheng nodded.

  ‘Now you can make this easy on yourself, or you can
make it hard. It’s entirely up to you. I can beat the truth out of you, I can remove certain parts of your anatomy, or I can gouge out your eyes. All things that will hurt but not kill you. So what’s it to be?’

  Still Cheng said nothing.

  Taking a length of rope from his pocket, Richard tied Cheng’s hands behind his back. The man didn’t attempt to struggle, he knew it was useless. Richard admired him for that, even as he hated him.

  ‘One more time: what was in the cases?’

  Still Cheng didn’t answer. The man’s face was a study in obstinacy. His narrow-lipped mouth was set in a stubborn line and his eyes were distant. He jumped, though, when he saw Richard turn on a hairdryer. Gates turned the setting to very hot and held it close to the man’s face.

  Cheng tried to move his head away.

  ‘You’d be surprised the damage you can do with one of these,’ Gates said nonchalantly. ‘It’s why they stopped letting them into certain nicks. Good torture weapons. They burn the skin lovely, blister it up a treat.’

  As he spoke Susan P let herself into the flat. When Cheng saw her he felt a wave of nausea wash over him. She was smiling at him. In her hand she held a small hammer and a bag of nails. Susan P’s trademark when upset was to have people nailed to the furniture. For the first time Cheng was afraid.

  Richard Gates turned off the hairdryer and laughed loudly. ‘Hello, darlin’, come to join in the fun?’

  Susan grinned. She was wearing a short leather mini-skirt and a see-through blouse. Her nipples were erect from the cold and her skin was flushed a pretty pink colour.

  ‘Has he told you yet?’

  Richard pulled a mock-tragic expression. ‘Afraid not, my love.’

  Susan tutted loudly. ‘I enjoy my work, Mr Cheng. This is a little trick I learned off an old lag I knew once. Nice bloke he was, a torturer for the old-time gangs. Died as he lived, violently, but then that’s par for the course in our game, ain’t it? Nothing personal usually. But this is personal.’

  She bent down and said through gritted teeth: ‘This is very fucking personal. You only had to rob that girl, not fucking rape and leave her for dead, you Chinese cunt. Now my advice to you is start talking, mate, because I’m looking forward to this. In fact, I can’t wait to get fucking started. I’ll nail your cock to the fucking floor, and laugh while I’m doing it. In my bag I have a whole host of goodies - all designed to make you scream in pain. And you can scream in here, as you know. It’s soundproofed. Your little punchbag got a hefty wedge to deliver you to us, and we intend to get our money’s worth.’

  Cheng looked from one to the other and sighed. ‘If I tell you what you want to know, do you give me your word I will be killed quickly, cleanly?’

  Richard nodded. ‘You’ll be hanged. I can’t be no fairer than that, can I?’

  Cheng closed his eyes and thanked them.

  ‘It was plutonium, not drugs,’ he said. ‘Everyone thinks of drugs but they’re old hat. The real money now is coming from Russia. There is a big market for the plutonium they make. The Indians want it, the Iraqis, the Libyans . . . Some people think India will be the next superpower. And superpowers all want one thing, don’t they? Nuclear weapons. Cathy Pasquale didn’t know she was carrying the stuff. But she wasn’t stupid. When she came back unexpectedly and found me there, I had to dispose of her and make it look like a robbery.

  ‘It was nothing personal, just business. Eamonn Docherty was the instigator. He had her mule for him after he lost his contact in New York. Then he tried to double cross me. The Mafia and the Russians have become allies over in the States - I learned this through a contact out there. Docherty was killed on my orders. The Irish or the Italians would have got to him eventually. Believe me, Mr Gates, this is international. You can kill me, yes, but if you go after all the other players in this drama, you’ll be killing for the next ten years.’

  Richard let the information sink in. Only one part of it interested him.

  So Docherty had tucked Cathy up, as he had always tucked her up, one way or another, ever since they were children. He marvelled at a man who could put a woman in danger like that, a woman he had professed to love.

  He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face, suddenly deflated.

  But he would kill Cheng, even though he knew that hanging was too good for him. He would stand and watch as the man took his last breath. It was all he could do to assuage his hurt over Cathy’s condition.

  ‘Why the rape, though? Why put her through that?’ Susan P’s voice was loud in the small room.

  Cheng shrugged. ‘I thought it would look better on the police report. She came in while the burglary was on - a good-looking woman. The robber raped her then panicked. It happens.’

  Susan P was fit to be tied. ‘So that was it then? You just thought it would look better on a police report? Cathy was violated because you thought it would look better on a police report, eh?’

  He closed his eyes and nodded. ‘I am being truthful. Telling you what you want to know. If it’s any consolation, the man you killed was never used by me again. As you know yourselves, we all have to give orders we don’t necessarily like. Well, I hated to give that one but it was necessary. Cathy Pasquale could not have been left alive with any knowledge of this operation. Her close relationship with you, Mr Gates, made that essential. I could never have what we were doing made common knowledge. Surely even you can understand that?’

  Susan P was so angry she felt that she could quite happily have a heart attack and not even notice it. This man was sitting in front of her, calmly telling her how he had had her friend raped and murdered, and actually trying to justify it!

  Taking back her arm, she let him have the full force of the hammer across the face. The crunch of bone was audible in the room as Cheng’s cheekbone was demolished.

  ‘You Chinese bastard, I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands! That girl was decent, fucking decent. She’d made it. Against all the odds, she’d made it and made a go of her life. For what, eh? For you to come and waste her as part of a business transaction?’

  Her voice was thick with tears and rage.

  ‘So some sand niggers, some fucking Arabs, could take the Russians’ nuclear shite and probably blow us all up in years to come? You took her life for that? She’s lying in a hospital bed in a fucking coma and you sit there and tell me that it’s just fucking business? Well, this is business and all, mate. My friend Richard might have given you some fairy story about being hanged, but I promised you fuck all, mate. So I’m going to beat you to death, like Cathy was beaten to death. Like a mad dog would be beaten.

  ‘And shall I tell you something else, eh? I’m going to enjoy it, every fucking minute of it. Because that girl was worth fifty of you or Eamonn bloody Docherty. She is one of the few truly decent people I have ever known. All her life she was shat on in one way or another and I watched her fight back and become someone. From a little kid she had what it takes to survive in this shit hole of a world, and then you come along and think you can just fucking take her out of the ball game.

  ‘Well, you picked on the wrong people this time, Mr Cheng. You had the audacity to fuck with me and mine and I will make you pay dearly for that.’

  Cheng looked pleadingly into Richard Gates’s eyes. His face was already half destroyed from the hammer blow.

  Richard turned his back. ‘As the lady said, she didn’t make you no promises. And I sure as hell have no intention of arguing with her.’

  He laughed then, and afterwards watched in cold silence as Susan P put Mr Cheng to bed for the last time.

  Killing Cheng would not make Cathy any better, but at least it made them feel as if they had done something to right a terrible wrong.

  In the best tradition of Soho they had had their pay back.

  The two nurses on the ward stared down at the woman in the bed. She looked terrifying. They shook their heads in wonderment.

  ‘In a way, I think it would be better if she did die. I mean, if
she comes out of it, it’ll be a long slow road to recovery. She’d be looking at years of plastic surgery, let alone everything else. It’s a real shame, isn’t it?’ said one of them.

  The other nurse nodded. ‘Weird bunch, though, aren’t they? Especially her so-called aunt, the bloke in the dress. I nearly died when I first saw him! But he seems to really care for her.’

  Her colleague chuckled. ‘You should have seen the consultant’s face when he first clapped eyes on Auntie. Nearly died he did! She shook hands and his disappeared into hers. What a laugh! I almost wet meself, and Staff laughed out loud.’

  She monitored the drip then said, ‘And what about the big bald-headed bloke, the policeman? He was crying again today, I saw him myself.’

  Her friend nodded sagely. ‘Her daughter’s lovely, though. If this Cathy Pasquale looked anything like her, then she was a good-looking woman. Especially those eyes. What a shame, eh? She was raped as well. Who would do that to another human being?’

  The first nurse didn’t answer.

  In their job they daily saw pain and suffering and none of it was ever truly understandable, though many people who survived major traumas like this said they had learned from the experience. It remained to be seen what priceless insight Cathy Pasquale had gained - or if indeed she would even be capable of rational thought again.

  While the night nurses were chattering, Cheng’s body was discovered by a tramp underneath the arches in Shoreditch. He robbed the body before making an anonymous call to the police. He got a few credit cards, a hundred pounds in cash, and a beautiful silver and diamond dragon charm.

  It was a lucky dragon, said to bring the wearer wealth, health and happiness. Shame it hadn’t worked for Little Cheng.

  Chapter Fifty

  Richard made himself a cup of coffee and brought it back to Cathy’s room. It was seven months since the attack and though she was off the ventilator now, she was still not conscious.