The Runaway (12 page)

After what seemed the longest time blood began to pulse from the jagged wound. His carotid artery sent dark red jets two feet into the air. His hands were covered within seconds. With every beat of his rapidly failing heart more blood was pumped out of his body. It was only when Cathy was sprayed with its warm rankness that she began to scream.

The sound seemed to be coming from someone else and the volume was overwhelming in the small room.

Madge watched her lover die and finally, after what seemed an age, she started screaming too.

 

DI Richard Gates pushed roughly through the small crowd in the hallway and bellowed: ‘All right, all right, had your look? Now move outside, and please be quiet. We’ll take statements later from all of you.’

He was hustling them out of the doorway as DC Fuller walked into the Connors’ flat. Two bobbies were stationed outside the door to keep onlookers at bay as Gates, smoothing down his thinning hair, walked into the small lounge.

The carnage that met his eyes was unbelievable.

‘Fucking hell! What happened here?’ The words were out of his mouth as soon as they entered his mind.

The blood-splattered walls ran crimson, and the slender girl before him seemed to be soaked through with blood. The deep red stain on her white nightdress looked obscene somehow. She held a knife. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he walked towards her and took it from her gently.

A pair of terrified blue eyes looked into his beseechingly. Against his better judgement, the policeman wanted to take the suspect into his arms and comfort her. Instead, placing the knife on the table, he looked around him once more.

‘All right, Madge. What’s happened here then?’

‘Please, Mum.’ The girl’s voice was thread-like, the note of pleading in it audible to everyone. Gates sighed heavily. He had known Madge for years, from his beat days. Now, at twenty-nine, he was the youngest DI in the East End, and had cut his teeth running in the likes of Madge and her cronies. They had a sort of hostile friendship, one that was mutually beneficial at times. Whores were natural born grasses, and always ready to cover their own arse. Gates smiled grimly at her.

‘What’s he then?’ He poked Ron’s corpse with his foot. ‘Not a punter, surely? Pimp? I know Ronnie was a worker.’

DC Fuller said snidely, ‘He won’t be working any more, will he?’

The smirk on his face set the tone for the night. It was an old whore’s problem. The dead man was a piece of scum. They would wrap it up quickly and go home. It was already cut and dried. No one respectable, so no one to worry about, and apart from all that blood, no different from most other East End murders. Knives were the order of the day, unless you had poke and could afford a gun.

Cathy stood as still as a statue, the shaking of her legs visible to everyone in the room.

‘Why don’t you sit down, love?’

Gates’s voice was unexpectedly gentle. Taking her arm, he led her to the sofa and lowered her on to it. He went into a bedroom and brought back a heavy coat from the bed, draping it around her.

‘She’s in shock, and I ain’t fucking surprised. Poor little mare.’

Cathy was sobbing now. The unexpected display of kindness had opened up the floodgates of emotion once more.

‘She stabbed him.’ Madge pointed at her daughter with a trembling hand.

Gates looked at her in disgust.

‘It’s true, Mr Gates. We was fighting and she came out and somehow he ended up dead. She’s always had a temper, little mare! You couldn’t control her half the time . . . She picked up the knife and the next thing I knew he was stabbed. I don’t think she did it deliberately, she was trying to help me, like.’

‘Sling them in the motor, Bernie. Forensics are here. We’ll sort this out down the station.’ As Madge walked from the room, Gates whispered to her: ‘You’re a real bitch, Madge, do you know that? Your sort never change. You bring scum into your home with a teenage girl there . . .’ His voice trailed off in contempt.

Madge dropped her head in shame.

‘Get in the car, whore, and think on what you just said.’ His voice was low, tired-sounding, disgusted.

He picked Cathy up effortlessly and carried her down the stairs, placing her in the front seat of the car as the neighbours stared at them with ghoulish interest. The blood soaking Cathy was very noticeable and Mrs Sullivan, a kind woman at heart, pushed her eldest son in the chest and said quietly: ‘Away round to the Irishman’s house. Tell him what’s happened and say Cathy needs him.’

Then, gathering her own brood around her, she herded them once more up the stairs and out of the coldness of the night.

 

Inside the police station, Cathy was given hot sweet tea and wrapped in a blanket. Her hair was sticky with blood and fingers stained brown with it. Gates came into the cell they had placed her in carrying a bowl of warm water and washed her gently.

She stared at the man all the while, saying nothing. To her he looked frightening, with his large round face and piercing blue eyes. Usually he had a friendly expression that onlookers found engaging; only now, with his anger carefully suppressed, did he look formidable and frightening. Cathy mistakenly thought the anger was directed at her, his gentle ministrations notwithstanding.

A large man, with thinning blond hair and huge biceps, he was an unknown quantity to her. His large belly jutted before him and Cathy could feel the warmth of it through the blanket. When his heavy hand came out to wipe her face, she flinched involuntarily.

Gates stared down at the frail teenager and sighed heavily. This girl had struck a chord in him somewhere. He knew Madge, knew the problems of whores and their children, and though he would never have admitted it out loud in a million years, sympathised with Cathy Connor. Madge was going to leave her high and dry, and he knew what lay in store for the young girl then. At nearly fourteen she would be detained indefinitely at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, a thought that made him rage inside himself.

People like Madge had nothing in their minds but themselves. Unlike most whores, who sold themselves for their children, Madge was the one in a million who actually liked what she did; revelled in it even. Now she would let her child take the consequences of her own lifestyle without a second’s thought.

‘Cathy?’ Gates’s voice was quiet, low, his most distinctive feature. ‘Come on, love. Tell me what happened and we’ll see if we can sort it all out, eh?’ Putting one heavy arm around her thin shoulders, he pulled her roughly against him, her head cradled on his barrel chest.

‘Cry - that’s right,’ he said, seeing the big fat tears rolling down her face. ‘Let it all out, and then we’ll have a chat and see what can be made out of this mess.’

He held Cathy until she fell asleep, and then carefully laid her on the bed, putting a pillow under her head and covering her with a blanket. Fuller, watching through the spyhole, was struck dumb with amazement.

 

Madge looked demented: her hair was wild, her make-up streaked all over her fat face. Her cheeks were swollen and blotched red from crying - over her own situation though, not Ron’s death. Sitting on the narrow cot in her cell, she stared at the pale yellow walls covered in graffiti and felt the tears flow once more.

What was she going to do?

The question had been hammering in her brain for the last few hours. Other than being given a cup of tea and a few cigarettes, she had had no contact with anyone at all. Restlessly, she sat herself up and tried to tidy her hair. All the time she was scheming. Inside herself she knew she should be protecting her daughter, but the fact was she had looked out for number one all her life and couldn’t stop now.

Madge could not do time. Adult time. The few occasions she had been banged up in Holloway as a teenage delinquent had been an education, and Madge, knowing what lay in store, couldn’t bear to face more time inside.

A long time inside at that.

Life.

She convinced herself once more that Cathy was young, would be out in no time and would cope quite adequately. Whereas she herself, the wrong side of forty and used to being outside, couldn’t.

Anyway, Cathy had wielded the knife.

Cathy had stabbed Ron.

Cathy was quite old enough to take the consequences of her own actions.

But a glimmer of shame deep within her could not be ignored. Getting up, she paced the cell. Her heart was beating a tattoo inside her chest and her breath was coming in heavy gasps. Fear had taken hold of her and she knew it. She could taste it inside her mouth and it was bitter.

 

Gates watched his superior officer, DCI Bannister, with a resigned expression on his face. Bannister was of the old school. Find a suspect and nail them, was his philosophy.

The airless room was making both men testy, and Bannister, watching his DI in turn, smothered a small impulse of dislike.

Since Gates had come into his life he had for the first time found himself at a loss. This man looked more like a criminal than a policeman with his hair cropped close to his large balding head, his bull neck and hard blue eyes. Gates also had a strange philosophy of life, made apparent by his obvious kinship with many of the criminals he dealt with.

Being born in the East End, he had taken a circuitous route to respectability. His father had been a pub landlord who had, in his day, entertained some of the leading criminals of his era. DI Richard Gates was an anomaly to everyone who met him, and knowing this, he played on it relentlessly. His soft voice struck terror into the hearts of his men and criminals alike. With his brawny arms and big belly, he could look amiable one day and menacing the next.

Now, staring into his superior’s eyes, he knew the effect he was creating and enjoyed it immensely. Inside himself he had no respect for anyone or anything. It was this that set him apart from other policemen and he used it shamelessly.

‘I think it was the mother’s doing, meself. The girl had nothing to do with it.’

Bannister nodded then said, ‘I understand Madge Connor was screaming blue murder that it was her daughter who was the culprit?’

Gates shrugged. ‘Madge is a whore and whores will say anything to cover their own arses. Surely you know that much?’

The insult was taken on board and filed away for future reference. One day Bannister intended to get rid of Gates, and get rid of him for good.

‘So what are you going to do?’

Gates smiled then. He knew he’d won the battle; all that was left was the war.

‘I’m going to have a little chat with Madge, and see if I can talk a bit of sense into her. Show her the error of her ways, so to speak.’

Bannister nodded. ‘Good man. I’ll leave it to you, then?’

Gates nodded and strode out, leaving his superior to reflect that the DI’s transfer to another station couldn’t come too fast for him.

Chapter Seven

Richard Gates ran one hand across his forehead and sighed. Madge watched him as he lit a cigarette and took a deep drag on it.

‘So what you’re saying, Madge, is that the girl, your daughter, stabbed Ron while the two of you were fighting?’

She nodded vigorously, all innocence and smeared mascara. ‘She didn’t mean it, Mr Gates, but her temper’s terrible. He was hammering the life out of me and she came in the room and just lost it. I’ve never seen anything like it in me life.’ Madge closed her eyes in mock horror.

Gates laughed softly. ‘You missed your vocation, Madge. You should have been a fucking actress. Now let’s stop fannying around and you can sign a nice statement telling me how you topped Ron and then we can all go home and get a bit of kip, eh? Except you, of course.’ His voice was low and menacing now.

Madge lit a cigarette and sighed heavily. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gates, but I can’t lie to you. I know what happened, see. I was there, you wasn’t.’

Walking round the table, Richard Gates looked hard into the face of the old harridan before him. ‘Do you remember a few years ago, Madge, when that sailor was stabbed to death in the docks?’

She nodded vaguely. ‘That rings a bell, yes. But what’s it got to do with me?’

Gates stubbed out his cigarette and smiled. ‘I interviewed you, Madge, together with that skinny bitch of a mate of yours and the big black bird.’

‘Sod off, Gates. If you think I had anything to do with that, you must be a nutter. I didn’t know the bloke, none of us did. You can’t try and pin anything on me. It’s not fair!’

Gates rubbed a hand once more across his balding head, feeling the thin hair and smiling.

‘If it’s left to me, Madge, you’ll go down at some point. I am known as the villain’s friend. I’m quite aware of me nickname and made a point of earning it. I put away anyone I want, see. Because I can. I can get people banged up; I can even make them disappear. If I were to tell people that you’d begun grassing, I could make your life a misery.

‘Now, there’s a young girl banged up not ten feet from here. She’s your daughter and I want to see her get a bit of a chance in life. Get her out of here and away from you. Maybe then she’ll have that chance.’

Madge watched the man before her in amazement. ‘Why should you care about her, or about anyone? I know your reputation, mate - the whore’s friend as well as the villain’s. Not above getting yourself a quick blow job now and then. Frightening the tarts into doing what you want. Why, all of a sudden, are you worried about my girl?’

She pulled herself up by leaning on the wooden table. Smiling lop-sidedly, she shook her head. ‘I ain’t doing it. Not for her, and especially not for you. I can’t be banged up, I just can’t. I’m too old for all that. She’ll be out before she knows it and things will soon get back to normal. It ain’t that I don’t want to do it, I can’t do it. I just can’t.’ Her voice broke and she hung her head in shame as she listened to the man before her.