The Runaway (34 page)

Even though the boy had murdered a poor young lass, Father Seamus knew it was men like Docherty who put their money into his kitty again and again, while they sang songs about Irish colleens and the old wars against the British, thereby keeping the modern soldiers of Ireland in boots and guns. There was going to be a screaming shenanigan out there soon and it was eejits like Docherty who’d see it was all paid for.

‘I’ve to make a few calls. Pour yourselves a drink and I’ll see what I can do, OK?’ Father Seamus told them.

Eamonn Junior nodded and said heavily, ‘The lights of heaven to you, Father Jensen.’

Seamus Jensen rolled his eyes and said testily: ‘No need to go that far, I’m not fecking well dead yet!’

Eamonn Senior sighed with relief as the man left the room. The priest would help his son, as Eamonn Senior would. Yet a part of him was crying out: Why?

Why had he to help him at all after what he had done?

He could only fall back on the old adage: blood really was thicker than water.

Chapter Nineteen

Seamus Jensen was not long making the arrangements. He came back to speak to the two men, his distaste evident to them both.

‘You’re away tonight. I’ve been in touch with a few friends and you’re to leave on a boat at midnight.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘New York, the pair of you. It’ll cost you your thousand from Mr Dixon but it’ll be worth it. They’ll get you papers, everything you need to live there and work. But you’ll be expected to help them out at some point.’

Eamonn Senior nodded. He knew enough to have expected that.

‘The boy’s of interest to them, apparently. You can imagine why.’

Eamonn Senior nodded again. They had come out of the frying pan and into the fire. Hands shaking, he poured himself the last of the Jameson’s from the bottle. ‘Tell them we’re willing to deal with them.’

The priest nodded.

People like Eamonn Junior only came along now and again. They were a strange aberration of human nature. The people Seamus dealt with already knew Eamonn’s name, knew of his reputation and wanted to persuade him to their way of thinking. He could be very useful to the Cause.

The priest saw the sadness in the boy’s father’s eyes and for the first time felt sympathy for him. ‘They’ll take good care of him, Eamonn, I promise you that.’

Eamonn Senior sniffed and wiped a hand across his face. ‘Well,’ he said, looking around the room with interest, ‘they seem to have taken good care of you too. And you a man of the cloth.’

The unfortunate words were not lost on the man before him and no others were spoken until the car came to pick them both up. At the door Eamonn Senior looked at the priest and said brokenly: ‘Will you go and see my wife for me, in a few weeks? Tell her you received a letter. That I’m dead or something.’

The priest nodded. ‘I’ll do what I can for her all right.’

There was nothing left to be said and so Eamonn got into the car with his boy and offered up a last silent goodbye to London. He knew he would never see it again.

His son sat beside him, quiet and shocked. His breathing seemed laboured, as did his movements. The two other men in the car were chatting between themselves, their voices a low drone in the background of Eamonn Senior’s thoughts.

New York. Please God they’d find a bit of peace there. If his son would ever know peace again, of course.

He felt responsible for the boy’s conduct, felt that if he had been a better father, more of a man, the lad would have stood a chance in life. Instead he was a nothing, a nobody, the vicious son of a notorious drunk.

He understood his son’s need for respect - it was the driving force behind most men. Eamonn himself had taken his son’s self-respect many years ago when he was a child. Now he could only try and give it back to him. If it wasn’t already too late.

 

Cathy and Desrae made their way through Soho, giggling and laughing like schoolgirls. As they approached Old Compton Street, though, Desrae swore under his breath. ‘Why don’t they give them poor girls a break?’

They stood and watched as a hostess club was ransacked by the police. Women and girls of all ages stood out in the cold night air in flimsy dresses and open-toed high heels. The police were rounding them up and putting them into meat wagons. The men who frequented the club were allowed to go home. They had not technically done anything wrong.

As they went to pass by, Cathy grabbed at Desrae’s arm and held him back. Then, to his utter astonishment, a well-known voice said: ‘Hello, Desrae, who’s your little friend?’

Richard Gates’s voice was low as usual and Cathy looked fearfully up into his eyes, her own filled with terror.

Desrae smiled. ‘This is me niece, Cathy Duke. Say hello to the nice man, dear.’

Cathy didn’t say one word.

Gates looked down at her and smiled gently. ‘You’re looking well. Desrae looking after you, is he?’

Cathy nodded.

Desrae looked at the man and said loudly, ‘Now listen here, you, there’s nothing funny going on here. She just maids, that’s all. I’ve never been into the female side of things and you of all people should know that.’

Gates chuckled gently. ‘That’s the thing I’ve always liked about you, Desrae. You’re never afraid to open your big trap. Keep your voice down before we have half the filth here listening to our conversation! I’m on another tack entirely, nothing to do with all this. I’m strictly East End, me. Now, I know this little girl and I happen to like her, all right? So you can stop looking so scared.’

He placed a hand on Cathy’s shoulder and smiled. ‘You all right, really?’

As Cathy was about to speak the sirens went off and the noise was deafening. They all waited until it was over before continuing with their walk.

‘I’m up here looking round for an old friend of yours, really. Maybe you could help me? Eamonn Docherty Junior - seen him today?’

Cathy shook her head. Like most Londoners she thought it best never to admit anything to the police unless they had you bang to rights.

‘He murdered his girlfriend today, battered her to death,’ Gates said imperturbably.

She blurted out: ‘What, Caroline? Caroline Harvey?’ Her face was screwed up in disbelief.

‘Yeah, Caroline Harvey. Did you see her at all today?’

Cathy shook her head. ‘I ain’t seen no one, Mr Gates. I rarely go anywhere without Desrae. He looks after me like.’

Gates stared at her for a while before saying, ‘There’s a lot worse than old Desrae in the world, love.’

Desrae said nastily, ‘Not so much of the bleeding old, you!’

‘Was you in the East End today, Cathy? Tell the truth.’

She shook her head once more. ‘I’ve been with Dessie all day, haven’t I?’

Desrae nodded, he knew what to say. ‘We’ve been together since we got up this morning. Ask Joey if you don’t believe me.’

‘There won’t be any need for that.’ Gates patted Cathy’s shoulder again and said, ‘Look after yourself, all right? And if you need any help, anything at all, you call me, OK?’

As Cathy walked away with Desrae, she looked back over her shoulder at the man who had been so kind to her. He had let her go, knowing what she had done at that school.

Desrae marched them back to his flat. Closing the door behind them, he said heavily, ‘If Gates is on your side, love, you’re halfway home to anything you want in life. He ain’t a bad one for an Old Bill. Bent as a nine-bob note, but a nice fella for all that. Now let’s sit down and you can tell me what the fuck happened today. All of it, and in graphic detail.’

Cathy sat on the sofa and began to cry, thinking of poor Caroline. As Desrae cuddled her close, she opened up her heart and mind. Holding her close, he whispered his love for her and told her that everything would be all right now, because he would make it so. Cathy Duke, as she now was, believed him. Desrae was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and she thanked God for leading her to him.

Tucked up in bed an hour later, she listened to the low drone of Desrae’s conversation with Joey and allowed her thoughts to stray to Eamonn.

She remembered him when they were children, growing up together. Remembered how they had stuck together through everything, because all they had ever had was each other. She cried then, cried for the boy he was and for the boy he became. Cried because she had loved him, really loved him, and he had thrown away that love.

Of all the things that had happened to her, Eamonn’s rejection of her had been the worst.

 

Father and son felt the movement of the tanker as it rolled out of Tilbury docks. The captain had taken them to their quarters and left them with some food and a bottle of whiskey. Eamonn Junior had not spoken a word all day and his father watched him warily, wondering if he knew what was going on around him.

This boy, his son, had murdered a defenceless girl, as once before he had robbed a young man of his life. Now the upshot of it all was they were sitting on a filthy cargo boat making their way to America. Maybe it was for the best. God had His pattern, and made you live by it.

Pouring his son a large drink, he placed it in the boy’s trembling hands. Eamonn Junior drank it down and held out the glass for more. He needed total oblivion above all things. He needed to be drunk and out of his head. He needed to stop thinking.

Strangely, he wasn’t thinking about poor Caroline, he was thinking about Cathy and what a fool he had been not to realise what he possessed in her. Having her in front of him again had shown him all he had given up. All he had abandoned. He had hated her in that moment, believing that she was to blame for all his troubles. Now he knew that he had no one to blame but himself.

Cathy was right: he was greedy, he was selfish and he used people. Now he had murdered for a second time, a girl who had loved him with all her heart. Poor Caroline. He had never really cared for her - she had been a possession, something he owned. Someone he had abused as he abused everyone.

As he had even abused Cathy Connor.

It was daybreak when he finally cried, but Eamonn being Eamonn, it was mostly for himself. The best part of his youth was gone, and with it any chance of seeing again the girl he loved.

BOOK TWO

‘Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economise with it’

- Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), 1835-1910

Chapter Twenty

1971

‘Jasus, son, would you ever let a man fecking sleep?’

Eamonn Senior’s voice was heavy with drink and tiredness. His son stared at him balefully while he tried to dress in the confined space of their bedroom.

‘You’d better get up and let’s get to work, Dad, for fuck’s sake. You know what O’Halloran said yesterday and if you lose this job then you can fuck off out of it, I ain’t keeping you.’

The older man looked at his handsome son and sighed heavily. The boy was working hard to try and get them some kind of life. They were robbing Peter to pay Paul, and after all this work and worry their home was a walk-up in the Bronx which housed only Irish, blacks and cockroaches.

The smell was worse than anything he had encountered in his life before and he was heartily sick of it. The heat of a New York summer here was bad enough, but the cold winter, with endless snow and ice, was doubly unbearable. If the boy would only listen to reason they’d be riding the pig’s back. But he would not listen, wanted to do everything right this time. Wanted to have a regular job, a normal way of life. It was sickening.

Scratching his belly, the older man waited until he heard the pop of the gas under the coffee pot before pulling on his trousers. Dragging on his shirt, he began his daily complaint, shouting to be heard in the kitchen.

‘If you’d only listen to sense, boy, we’d be living the life of Riley now and no mistake.’

Eamonn Junior rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Rinsing the cups under the tap, he tried to blot out his father’s words. Every day it was the same thing and he was getting sick of it. The old man wanted him to become America’s answer to Ned Kelly and get them a good living. In England, his father had told him that his way of life was bad. Now, though, in the States, he wanted the boy to capitalise on his reputation as a murderer and join what amounted to the Irish Mafia.

He stared out of the window and watched the street as he sipped his coffee. There were black faces everywhere; at first that had amazed him. England had a fair few, but America was positively overrun with them. It had been strange finding himself in a minority when they had first moved here, and time hadn’t changed that. There was a very beautiful black girl living on his floor and Eamonn had chatted to her a few times before he realised she was a prostitute. He smiled now as he recalled asking her out, and her discussing the price! In England he had thought himself so knowledgeable about everything. Here he was a babe-in-arms.

The dock work had been easier to acquire than he had expected yet it was still physically arduous and his father was only taken on because of his Irish connections. They both knew and both used it in their own way. Strangely, Eamonn did not miss his old job with Danny Dixon.

Eamonn loved New York. It was a seething mass of people, cultures and trouble. City Hall was the all-important centre of government for the province. People talked about it as if it were a mixture of the House of Lords and the worst military junta they could name. It was corrupt, it was splendid and it was there.

Yet as exciting as the city could be to him at times, he saw the ugliness of it keenly. Felt the tensions among the under-classes, and heard the way that people talked and talked and never really said anything. The bottom line was that New York was like any other big city: it was a good touch providing you had money. He needed money here more than he had ever needed it in London.