The Runaway (77 page)

‘Where is it, Mrs Pasquale?’ His voice was tight.

‘Where’s what, Mr Cheng? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He walked up to her, his little body stiff with threat. Taking out a long slim-bladed knife, he held it to her face. ‘I do not have time for this, Mrs Pasquale. I need to know as soon as possible where my merchandise is. Now tell me what I want to know.’

Trying to pull herself free, Cathy finally surrendered to the panic inside her. She became hysterical. The knife had a strange smell - the smell of cold steel. It was cool against her skin and as she realised what he was going to do, she opened her mouth to scream. Using all her strength, she kicked out at the little man and pulled free from the bigger Chinese behind her. She ran for the door but he caught her by the hair and dragged her back into the room.

Lying prone on the floor, she began to take a beating the like of which she had never thought to experience in her life. Ten minutes later she was half-conscious, talking rubbish but somehow holding the attention of the man above her.

‘The cases, Mrs Pasquale. Where are the cases?’

She was in such pain his words seemed to drift towards her on a warm red tide. She told him where she’d left her cases. As she lost consciousness, her final thought was that this was all Eamonn’s fault.

She had been set up by the man she loved.

Cheng looked down at her gravely. He had what he needed. Glancing at the bigger man, he nodded. ‘She can’t be left alive.’

He stood up, his suit stiff with blood, and sighed. He had always liked Cathy Pasquale, everybody did.

But Docherty had phoned an hour ago, had tried to tell him that he needed the merchandise back, that he was to deal with the others from now on. Cheng knew a double cross when he heard one. He didn’t trust Docherty. There was something afoot and Cheng had a buyer all lined up. He was not going to let them down. Not for anyone.

As the bigger man went to work with the knife, Cheng visited the bathroom and tidied himself up as best he could. Then, thinking quickly, he went into the lounge and said heavily: ‘Rape her - it’ll look more like a domestic robbery.’

The other man nodded, pleased with this turn of events.

Mr Cheng left the flat then. There were some things he did not choose to witness. He had his standards.

 

Desrae was well drunk. It was a great party. Even Kitty had been allowed a few glasses of champagne and looked all starry-eyed and grown-up. The cabaret consisted now of young men in leather dancing to soul numbers.

Susan P, coked up and hot to trot, suddenly said to Richard, ‘Where the fuck has Cathy got to?’

He glanced at his watch. Cathy had been gone over two hours. Fear drenched him like a cold shower. He looked at Susan P. ‘Come with me. I think she might be in trouble.’ They handed Kitty over to Desrae and made their way out of the club, apprehension plain on their faces.

As they walked through the streets of Soho they made an incongruous pair. Richard was dressed in one of his out-of-date suits, his heavy body making him lumber along. Susan P was costumed as Cleopatra, her gait unsteady, eyes dark with worry. More than a few people turned to stare at them. Even in a wacko place like Soho they looked strange.

They found Cathy five minutes later.

As Richard phoned the ambulance and police, Susan P threw up repeatedly in the toilet. It was the worst sight she had ever seen. One she would never, ever forget.

Cradling Cathy’s ruined head in his lap, Richard Gates cried bitter tears. It looked very much as if he had lost her.

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.’