The Runaway

by Martina Cole

  Barry Callard was shocked to the core. Nodding, he went back up to the flat above. All he could see was Caroline Harvey’s face, or rather the lack of it.

  It would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Cathy went into a coffee bar in Brewer Street and ordered herself a large pot of coffee and a cake. Settling herself in the window, she stared out at the people passing by. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, everyone seemed to have a place to go. It was a beautiful April day and the sun was still shining even though it was cold.

  As she sipped her coffee she wondered how she was going to get on with her life now.

  Eamonn had been in her mind so much, more so even than her mother; he had always been the most important thing to her. When she thought of poor Madge locked up in Holloway, and how she herself had been more worried about Eamonn, her heart felt sore. Yet he had been everything to her once.

  Seeing him with Caroline in that awful flat, with his face battered, his clothes dirty, had opened her eyes. She had always felt that she needed him - without him would be only half alive. She had assumed he felt the same way about her. He had been her reason for living for so long, and now she was seeing him as her mother had seen him, as Betty had seen him, as his own father had seen him.

  She thought of the lies she had told him and was glad that he thought she had found someone else. Had someone who cared for her, wanted her, needed her. The tragic part of it was she doubted it would ever be so. That part of her life, the ability to love and trust a man, had gone for ever. Eamonn was the only man she had ever lain with and at this moment she felt he would also be the last. She would never be a Caroline for anyone.

  A shadow passed over her and she said desultorily, ‘More coffee, please,’ thinking it was the waitress.

  ‘It’s all right, love, I’ve ordered it already.’

  Cathy looked up into Desrae’s face. He was dressed in his straight gear, Sta-prest trousers and a black polo neck. His hair was tied back and he had on only a minimal amount of make-up. Dressed like this on a Saturday night? That told her how worried he was about her.

  ‘I’ve cancelled all me customers,’ he said now. ‘Thought we’d have a nice girlie night in. What do you say?’ As he spoke, a woman at a nearby table picked up her bag and coat. Looking at them both furiously, she moved to the other side of the coffee shop.

  Desrae stared at the woman and smiled, saying loudly, ‘Oh, thank fuck she moved away. The smell was simply horrendous!’

  Wiping away the tears, Cathy gave him a smile she would have sworn she did not have in her. ‘Oh Desrae, things can’t be that bad if I’ve got you.’

  ‘Joey’s coming round later tonight, so we’ll have a right laugh with him anyway,’ he consoled her. ‘Life’s what you make it, girl, always bear that in mind. It’s what you, me or that old bag at the other table with the face like a well-slapped arse, make it - dig? As those bleeding hippies say.’

  Cathy laughed again, a small hurt sound. ‘I loved him, Desrae. I loved him so very much.’

  ‘You’ll have a few more before you’re ready to settle down, you mark my words, love,’ he said gently. ‘With your looks and nice ways, you’ll have your pick of men.’

  Cathy looked into his eyes and said seriously, ‘Not for me, Desrae. Never again.’

  Her voice was so sure, so serious, that for a moment he forgot that she was just a young girl. She sounded for all the world like an old, old woman.

  Eamonn Senior was half drunk and could not take in what he was being told. Jimmy Salter was trying to tell him that his son had got himself into more trouble.

  ‘Trouble? Fecking trouble? The boy’s middle name is trouble,’ he said airily, and belched. ‘Now away from me door and leave me to meself.’

  Jimmy Salter felt as if he would explode from annoyance. Danny Dixon had told him to bring the older man to him, and he had to do it. He didn’t want to get involved and yet he was. Seriously.

  Pushing his bullet head towards the large Irishman, he said through his teeth: ‘Your boy has murdered Caroline Harvey. Now Danny Dixon wants to see you and you’re going. He told me to bring you to him and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

  Somehow Eamonn grasped that this was trouble so grievous it would make the Lord Himself worried. Grabbing his coat, he followed the man down the path and climbed into his mini-van. Jimmy Salter was glad to see that shock had sobered up the big man beside him.

  ‘He’s killed that little girl Caroline, then?’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Battered her to fuck, mate. Couldn’t even recognise her.’

  Eamonn shook his head, stunned by what he was hearing. ‘Sure she was a sweet little thing, what would he want to be doing that to her for?’

  Jimmy carried on driving. There was no answer to that kind of question.

  ‘Jumping Jasus Christ and all the angels! Has the boy gone fecking mad? Are you sure that’s what he’s done, not just given her a dig like, a smack in the jaw?’

  Jimmy pulled the car to the side of the road. He looked at the man beside him and said seriously, ‘I dragged him off the poor little mare. He’d beaten her to a fucking pulp. Now will you just let me drive you to Dixon’s then get meself home for me bleeding tea? Not that I’ll have much appetite, knowing that poor little whore is underneath my kitchen, dead as a fucking doornail.’

  Eamonn Senior was quiet for the rest of the journey. He was by now as sober as a judge.

  Danny Dixon was in a quandary.

  Eamonn had killed the daughter of a man known throughout the East End as a raving lunatic. Even from Broadmoor Harvey had a big rep. He kept in contact through visits and letters. He was a great letter writer, by all accounts, and still classed himself a man to be reckoned with.

  If Danny helped the boy out then Harvey would hear of it, and a lot of other people too would turn against him over a thing like that. A man could murder other men, maim them, blow them up. But if the same man harmed a woman or a child, then public opinion would turn against him straight off.

  For himself, Danny thought that Caroline had most probably asked for what she got. Most women like her did. She’d used her name and her father’s notoriety to get things and to open doors. She was a slag, like a lot of the East End girls. He preferred the women of his own youth who’d been good girls, lived cleanly and didn’t shack up with every Tom, Dick and Harry who had a big cock and a bit of wedge.

  But this was a sign of the times. With loose morals came loose behaviour in other ways. If she had been Eamonn’s wife he would have had respect for her. As it was, she’d been his fancy piece and so Danny felt nothing.

  It was that clear-cut to him.

  Now he was going to hand the boy over to his father. He’d see him all right with a few quid and tell him to get away, as far away as he could before Harvey made his presence felt. There was no way that nutter would let the murder of his daughter go unavenged.

  No way in the world.

  Father Seamus Jensen had heard Eamonn’s confession and was now drinking a large Irish as he listened to the boy’s father droning on about the old country and their associations with it. The priest did not really want to be reminded that he came from an extended family of villains and rebels. Didn’t really want to be reminded that they were cousins on his mother’s side, and certainly didn’t want to be reminded of the times they had got drunk together as young men.

  Seamus Jensen had entered the priesthood because he had been forced into it. His father was a well-known IRA man and before his execution by the British in Mountjoy Jail, had seen to it that his youngest son had been set on a different course. He had entered the church, and after a few months had thanked God every day for the chance to serve Him. He also served himself, but didn’t dwell on that fact too much.

  Now, in his late-sixties, he enjoyed his life very much. He had his drink, his housekeeper - a fine woman who could cook white pudding like a native of Cork - and he had his parish house to live in. Most of all he had respec
t.

  He didn’t want Irish scum in his home. He liked to think of his fellow countrymen as poets and singers and hard done by, hard-working men. The Dochertys and their ilk were like a form of cancer in the body politic. Yet, he knew he had to help them.

  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 po
or 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.