The Runaway Read online

  THE RUNAWAY

  MARTINA COLE

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 1997 Martina Cole

  The right of Martina Cole to be identified as the Author of

  the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means without the prior written

  permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

  in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

  it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2008

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978 0 7553 5072 8

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachettelivre.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  BOOK ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  BOOK THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  BOOK FOUR

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  BOOK FIVE

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  BOOK SIX

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Martina Cole was born and brought up in Essex. She wrote her first novel, Dangerous Lady, for a bet at the age of twenty-five and, as well as being an instant bestseller, the book went on to become a highly successful television mini-series. Since then Martina Cole has written three more bestselling novels set against the criminal underworld, The Ladykiller, Goodnight Lady and The Jump - soon to be shown on television. The Runaway is destined to be an even greater success. Martina Cole lives in Thundersley with her son and new-born daughter.

  Praise for her previous bestsellers:

  ‘A major new talent’ Best

  ‘Graphic realism combined with dramatic flair makes this a winner’ Annabel

  ‘A powerful novel’ Daily Express

  ‘You won’t be able to put this down’ Company

  ‘Set to be another winner’ Woman’s Weekly

  For D

  Love always

  M

  In loving memory of Michael James Williams

  Always remembered

  ‘Non omnis moriar’

  ‘I shall not altogether die’

  - Horace

  Always in your hearts, always in your minds.

  He can never therefore be far from you.

  For Zena and Maurice with sorrow and love.

  Prologue

  LONDON 1995

  ‘Do you think she’ll pull through?’

  The policeman’s face wore a dark frown, all deep creases and premature age. His bald head shone faintly with a sheen of perspiration.

  The young doctor shrugged. ‘I’m not sure she’d want to. We put over two hundred stitches in her face alone. Her nose was completely obliterated and we had to operate to relieve a deep depression of the skull. In reality she should be dead - no one should survive a beating like that. Yet she’s breathing, she’s stabilised, her vital signs are good, the bones are beginning to mend. Until she comes out of the coma - that’s assuming she does, of course - we can’t really ascertain whether or not she’s brain-damaged. Whoever cut her up . . .

  ‘Well, let’s get this straight, she was cut to ribbons - one breast practically severed. Must have been a lunatic who did it. I have never in my life seen anything like it.’

  He stared down at the patient, the lines of stitches criss-crossing her swollen, battered face, stark against the white hospital bedding. She was unrecognisable as a woman, looking more like something from a horror film.

  The whirring of the machines by her bed broke the silence, and the young doctor sighed gently, a barely audible sound.

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  The policeman nodded. ‘Let’s say I have a pretty good idea why she was beaten, and that’s a start, isn’t it? It’ll be proving the bastard’s motive that’ll be the hard one. Placing him in the frame.’

  He tore his glance away from the woman and looked the doctor in the eye. ‘She was a very beautiful woman, was my Cathy. Not in an obvious way, but she had class. Had a way about her. Know what I mean?’ His thick cockney accent was harsh in the quiet of the ICU.

  The doctor smiled faintly. ‘You knew her then?’

  Now the policeman smiled, a sad wistful expression. His face softened, giving the doctor a glimpse of the ruggedly attractive man he had once been.

  ‘Oh, I knew her all right. Everyone in the West End knew Cathy one way or another. I came across her over twenty years ago, just before she came to Soho. She’s travelled a long way in that time, a very long way.’

  He paused as if forgetting the doctor was there. ‘Yes, a bloody long way, God help her.’

  He stroked her thin arm gently, a caressing motion. ‘She’s the owner of Dukes - you know, the big revue bar in Soho. Where the great and the good mingle with the not-so-great and not-so-good. But it’s a respectable place for all that. Tourists love it, the Germans especially. Men dressed as women are a big attraction. It’s La Cage of Soho, and this little lady was the brains behind it.

  ‘Cathy’s trouble was, she never managed to leave the past behind her. It always seemed to follow her, and this is the upshot.’

  The doctor heard the man swallow loudly, knew he was battling to keep tears from falling, and kept his glance on the woman in the bed.

  ‘She wasn’t bad, you know, my Cathy. Not really. She was just a survivor, who did what she had to, to win through. It was all about survival, never anything worse.’

  The doctor squeezed the policeman’s shoulder and said gently, ‘Well, let’s hope she survives this, eh?’ But his voice didn’t hold out mu
ch hope. Deep inside he doubted whether this patient would open her eyes or indeed ever recognise anyone again. Part of him hoped this for her sake, because the beating she had taken had left its mark all right. Apart from the colour of her hair there was nothing left of her to say what she had once looked like.

  ‘She never had a chance really,’ the policeman said softly. ‘Women in Soho normally die of drink or drugs. Often it’s like this, battered and bruised in a hospital room, all alone.’ He paused for a second, gathering his composure once more before looking the doctor in the eye. ‘I loved her in my own way from the first day I saw her, alone and afraid, just a kid. I loved her.’

  Then he walked from the room like an old man, slowly, as if in pain.

  A young policewoman took up a vigil beside the bed. In the unlikely event that the patient regained consciousness, she was to write down any words spoken. Armed guards stood outside the room twenty-four hours of the day.

  ‘Was that your boss?’ The doctor’s voice was still low, as if in the presence of death.

  The young redhead grinned impishly, thrilled to be noticed by the handsome young dark-eyed medic.

  ‘He’s my boss, all right. That was Chief Inspector Richard Gates, Head of the Vice Squad.’

  NEW YORK

  The man looked out of his office window, and for once in his life didn’t thrill at the sight of the skyline before him. Normally it brought a tightening in his guts, a feeling of euphoria, that he, Eamonn Docherty, London bootboy, was now a respected businessman with an office the size of a tennis court and a desk that looked as if it should be in the Victoria and Albert Museum, not on the eighty-second floor of Plaza Tower, one of his many property holdings.

  He picked up the phone for the tenth time that morning and tapped in a number. The dialling tone shrilled loudly in his ear, as if he were phoning the deli round the corner, not London, England. He replaced the phone as a recording of a woman’s voice came on the answerphone.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’

  He spoke to no one, voice loud in the quiet of the room. Getting to his feet, he walked to the glass wall and stared unseeing at the view before him. Closing his eyes, he envisaged his first glimpse of America as a young man.

  His father, Eamonn Docherty Senior, was drunk and snoring beside him on the boat as they entered the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty before them in all her glory. Unlike their forebears there was no Ellis Island for them. They had been brought in illegally on an English container boat. A friend of a friend had arranged it - that was his father’s favourite expression.

  Eamonn Junior had been the perpetrator of a violent murder, that had haunted him all his life. He had had to disappear from the East End, and his father had arranged it so that they both went together.

  It was the only time the old man had ever come up trumps for him in his whole life.

  He had lost his father within the year, and had been left at just eighteen to make the best he could of his life in the States. And as eventful, dirty and violent as it had been, it had eventually brought him here to Plaza Tower.

  He’d worked for it, using anyone and anything to get here. Even Cathy, his Cathy as he always thought of her. Always his.

  The phone rang and the sudden noise made him jump. His heartbeat hammered in his ears. It was his private line.

  Now the phone was ringing he was frightened to pick it up, frightened of what he was going to hear.

  Knowing in his heart exactly what he was going to hear.

  The voice on the other end was unmistakable, a husky, female voice only ever mastered by transvestites: more feminine than Elizabeth Taylor, more masculine than his own.

  ‘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 babbling broken sentences, the heartfelt crying, the gut-wrenching sobs.

  ‘I’ll be there. Don’t worry.’ He replaced the receiver gently, the sobbing still audible in the quiet of the room.

  Putting his head in his well-manicured hands, Eamonn wept. He’d thought he was prepared for the news, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t prepared at all.

  He had started something, and didn’t know how to stop it.

  BOOK ONE

  ‘Quem Jupiter vult perdere, dementat prius’ ‘Whom God would destroy, He first sends mad’

  - James Duport (Homeri Gnomologia), 1606-1679

  Chapter One

  JANUARY 1960

  ‘I ain’t going in there, he’ll start on us.’

  Cathy sighed deeply and pushed a stray hair from the boy’s forehead. ‘So where are we going to go then, smart arse?’

  ‘Can’t we go next door, Cath?’ Eamonn’s voice was a soft whine and she shook her head slowly.

  Mrs Sullivan had the flat next door to theirs on the second-floor landing. A kindly soul, she would give the children shelter when a fight between their parents was raging - a very frequent occurrence. They could hear Eamonn Docherty Senior’s voice raised in anger through the front door as they stood outside, interspersed with Madge’s shrieks in reply.

  ‘We can’t take the piss, or when we really need her she’ll tell us to take a hike. Tell you what . . .’

  The front door was opened abruptly and Madge Connor stood before them in all her glory. Her fifteen-stone frame was wrapped in a pink quilted housecoat and make-up was smeared around her moon face. Only the cigarette dangling from her swollen lips moved, bobbing up and down as she stared at them, eyes narrowed. Finally she shrilled at them in a voice that could cut glass: ‘You got home then, you lazy pair of bastards! Get in here, Eamonn, and sort your old man out, will you? He’s going up the wall.’

  Cathy could hear Eamonn Senior shouting about Ireland, and after Eamonn Junior had walked through the door she closed her eyes tightly.

  She had always wondered what it must be like to have a father, but after two years of living with Eamonn Senior she was glad inside that all she had to contend with was her mother. Though, between the two adults, both Cathy’s and Eamonn’s lives were a constant nightmare. The adults were always either kissing or kicking one another. There was never, ever a happy medium. Walking into the flat, she was engulfed in the usual smells: cooking fat and cat’s urine, mixed with an underlying beer-bottle smell that she just couldn’t get to terms with. It burned her nose and throat until once more she became accustomed to it. It always made her stomach revolt, always depressed her. The stench of poverty.

  As she entered the tiny front room, her mother’s lover was removing his belt. His large frame, without an ounce of spare fat, was imposing. Eamonn Senior was huge, from his size twelve feet to his bulbous blue eyes, and exuded an animal strength and cunning that made lesser men wary before even speaking a word to him.

  ‘I’ll cut the fecking legs from under you, you dirty swine. I’ll put your names in me book with a line through them. Now how would you like that?’

  Cathy sighed with delight and relief. The blue eyes were twinkling now, his temper apparently over, the violent rage soothed by drink and giving way to an all-encompassing happiness with the world. This was his favourite joke, old IRA talk from the days of the freedom fighters. They put your name in a book, apparently, and if a line was crossed through it, you were shot at dawn the next day.

  Cathy grinned as she heard the big man bellow: ‘Shot at dawn, the pair of you. How’d you like that, eh?’

  He lowered his huge face down to their level, his heart apparently bursting with love for the two children. Especially for his son, his namesake, his only child.

  ‘Is it chips you’re wanting?’ He smiled, a huge toothy grin that creased his face in all the right places and made people understand what women saw in him, because women loved Eamonn Docherty - they always had.

  A certain kind of woman anyway.

  Madge Connor, face full of disbelief, shook her hea
d in wonderment. ‘You never know what the fucker’s going to do. Never.’ It was said in a thick cockney accent, with just a hint of rough pride. Her big, fighting, drinking, whoring common-law husband was a mystery to her. Which, she admitted in soberer moments, was his chief attraction.

  ‘I better get ready for work. Cathy, do me a favour, mate. Iron me red dress.’

  Cathy went into the small kitchenette and began to plug in the iron and place the cleanest towel she could find on the table. It was all done automatically. You never refused an order in this house, even when it sounded like a request. If you wanted to get through the night, you jumped when they told you to jump, simple as that.

  Twenty minutes later, with a cat’s lick for a wash and heavy make-up piled on to yesterday’s, her red dress straining at the seams, Madge was ready for work. As she gave her hair one final backcomb she looked at her daughter and said gently: ‘Do I look all right, love?’

  Cathy smiled, the gap-toothed smile of a seven-year-old ancient, and said honestly, ‘You look lovely, Mum. ’Andsome.’

  It was the required answer.

  ‘Get me bag from the bedroom.’

  Cathy skipped off, grinning at Eamonn Junior who was now ensconced on his dad’s lap, searching through a big handful of change for the chip money.

  They looked each other in the eye, relief and childish joy flooding through them both at this unexpected outcome. It was a Wednesday, normally a fraught day for the children. Middle of the week, skint and argumentative, both parents generally had tempers on them when the kids arrived back from school. Today, for some unknown reason, they were happy. And if the grown-ups were happy, the children were ecstatic.