Cheng looked from one to the other and sighed. ‘If I tell you what you want to know, do you give me your word I will be killed quickly, cleanly?’
Richard nodded. ‘You’ll be hanged. I can’t be no fairer than that, can I?’
Cheng closed his eyes and thanked them.
‘It was plutonium, not drugs,’ he said. ‘Everyone thinks of drugs but they’re old hat. The real money now is coming from Russia. There is a big market for the plutonium they make. The Indians want it, the Iraqis, the Libyans . . . Some people think India will be the next superpower. And superpowers all want one thing, don’t they? Nuclear weapons. Cathy Pasquale didn’t know she was carrying the stuff. But she wasn’t stupid. When she came back unexpectedly and found me there, I had to dispose of her and make it look like a robbery.
‘It was nothing personal, just business. Eamonn Docherty was the instigator. He had her mule for him after he lost his contact in New York. Then he tried to double cross me. The Mafia and the Russians have become allies over in the States - I learned this through a contact out there. Docherty was killed on my orders. The Irish or the Italians would have got to him eventually. Believe me, Mr Gates, this is international. You can kill me, yes, but if you go after all the other players in this drama, you’ll be killing for the next ten years.’
Richard let the information sink in. Only one part of it interested him.
So Docherty had tucked Cathy up, as he had always tucked her up, one way or another, ever since they were children. He marvelled at a man who could put a woman in danger like that, a woman he had professed to love.
He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face, suddenly deflated.
But he would kill Cheng, even though he knew that hanging was too good for him. He would stand and watch as the man took his last breath. It was all he could do to assuage his hurt over Cathy’s condition.
‘Why the rape, though? Why put her through that?’ Susan P’s voice was loud in the small room.
Cheng shrugged. ‘I thought it would look better on the police report. She came in while the burglary was on - a good-looking woman. The robber raped her then panicked. It happens.’
Susan P was fit to be tied. ‘So that was it then? You just thought it would look better on a police report? Cathy was violated because
you
thought it would look better on a police report, eh?’
He closed his eyes and nodded. ‘I am being truthful. Telling you what you want to know. If it’s any consolation, the man you killed was never used by me again. As you know yourselves, we all have to give orders we don’t necessarily like. Well, I hated to give that one but it was necessary. Cathy Pasquale could not have been left alive with any knowledge of this operation. Her close relationship with you, Mr Gates, made that essential. I could never have what we were doing made common knowledge. Surely even you can understand that?’
Susan P was so angry she felt that she could quite happily have a heart attack and not even notice it. This man was sitting in front of her, calmly telling her how he had had her friend raped and murdered, and actually trying to justify it!
Taking back her arm, she let him have the full force of the hammer across the face. The crunch of bone was audible in the room as Cheng’s cheekbone was demolished.
‘You Chinese bastard, I’ll fucking kill you with my bare hands! That girl was decent, fucking decent. She’d made it. Against all the odds, she’d made it and made a go of her life. For what, eh? For you to come and waste her as part of a business transaction?’
Her voice was thick with tears and rage.
‘So some sand niggers, some fucking Arabs, could take the Russians’ nuclear shite and probably blow us all up in years to come? You took her life for
that
? She’s lying in a hospital bed in a fucking coma and you sit there and tell me that it’s
just fucking business
? Well, this is business and all, mate. My friend Richard might have given you some fairy story about being hanged, but I promised you fuck all, mate. So I’m going to beat you to death, like Cathy was beaten to death. Like a mad dog would be beaten.
‘And shall I tell you something else, eh? I’m going to enjoy it, every fucking minute of it. Because that girl was worth fifty of you or Eamonn bloody Docherty. She is one of the few truly decent people I have ever known. All her life she was shat on in one way or another and I watched her fight back and become someone. From a little kid she had what it takes to survive in this shit hole of a world, and then you come along and think you can just fucking take her out of the ball game.
‘Well, you picked on the wrong people this time, Mr Cheng. You had the audacity to fuck with me and mine and I will make you pay dearly for that.’
Cheng looked pleadingly into Richard Gates’s eyes. His face was already half destroyed from the hammer blow.
Richard turned his back. ‘As the lady said, she didn’t make you no promises. And I sure as hell have no intention of arguing with her.’
He laughed then, and afterwards watched in cold silence as Susan P put Mr Cheng to bed for the last time.
Killing Cheng would not make Cathy any better, but at least it made them feel as if they had done something to right a terrible wrong.
In the best tradition of Soho they had had their pay back.
The two nurses on the ward stared down at the woman in the bed. She looked terrifying. They shook their heads in wonderment.
‘In a way, I think it would be better if she
did
die. I mean, if she comes out of it, it’ll be a long slow road to recovery. She’d be looking at years of plastic surgery, let alone everything else. It’s a real shame, isn’t it?’ said one of them.
The other nurse nodded. ‘Weird bunch, though, aren’t they? Especially her so-called aunt, the bloke in the dress. I nearly died when I first saw him! But he seems to really care for her.’
Her colleague chuckled. ‘You should have seen the consultant’s face when he first clapped eyes on Auntie. Nearly died he did! She shook hands and his disappeared into hers. What a laugh! I almost wet meself, and Staff laughed out loud.’
She monitored the drip then said, ‘And what about the big bald-headed bloke, the policeman? He was crying again today, I saw him myself.’
Her friend nodded sagely. ‘Her daughter’s lovely, though. If this Cathy Pasquale looked anything like her, then she was a good-looking woman. Especially those eyes. What a shame, eh? She was raped as well. Who would do that to another human being?’
The first nurse didn’t answer.
In their job they daily saw pain and suffering and none of it was ever truly understandable, though many people who survived major traumas like this said they had learned from the experience. It remained to be seen what priceless insight Cathy Pasquale had gained - or if indeed she would even be capable of rational thought again.
While the night nurses were chattering, Cheng’s body was discovered by a tramp underneath the arches in Shoreditch. He robbed the body before making an anonymous call to the police. He got a few credit cards, a hundred pounds in cash, and a beautiful silver and diamond dragon charm.
It was a lucky dragon, said to bring the wearer wealth, health and happiness. Shame it hadn’t worked for Little Cheng.
Chapter Fifty
Richard made himself a cup of coffee and brought it back to Cathy’s room. It was seven months since the attack and though she was off the ventilator now, she was still not conscious.
As he sipped his drink he looked out over the grounds of the nursing home in Sussex. She had been transferred here two months previously. They had agreed that he would be more or less resident in the room with her.
Richard had a small Z-bed that he slept on at night and in the day he did pretty much everything for Cathy. He washed her and changed her clothes. He brushed her hair, massaged her limbs and sat holding her tiny hand in his large meaty one.
Cathy looked awful. The scars on her face and body were horrific, still a vivid red, raised up and sore-looking. No one who saw her there would ever have believed that this woman had once been beautiful.
There were no photos to remind them; no photos in case she woke and saw herself and remembered. There was no mirror in the room either. Richard had seen to that.
As the nurses went about their business they heard the low drone of his voice, constantly talking to her. He talked all the time: telling her that he loved her, relating how well her daughter was doing, promising that they would have great times once she was on the mend.
It broke their hearts.
The big bald man, with his heavy belly and sad blue eyes, had become like a mascot to them. They had all got to know him, and all liked him. Even the more grudging members of staff sometimes secretly wondered what it must be like to have someone who loved you so much. They had all seen coma patients left for months without visits once the initial shock wore off for family and friends. But not Cathy Pasquale.
She was very thin now, just skin and bone. The doctors had administered a glucose drip to try and fatten her up. She was in a state of semi-coma, neither dead nor fully alive.
She could stay like that for ever. The doctors had diagnosed her as being in a vegetative state. But it was a lottery with brain injuries. As Richard Gates tirelessly pointed out, people had been known to wake up after years had passed. They knew there was no way this patient was being left to die: ‘in her own best interests’. There would be no court consulted for permission to starve Cathy to death.
Richard sipped his coffee and talked to her. ‘Kitty will be here later with Desrae. They’ve been away to Lanzarote. Desrae has a few friends out there. Remember Joanie? Well, he’s bought a great bar there apparently. We’ll all go when you’re better.’
Her tiny birdlike hand was cold in his and he held it tighter. He gazed out of the window as he chatted to her, trying to ignore the tears that blurred his vision.
‘I thought we’d have something nice for dinner. I got in some pasta. They let me use the kitchens here, as I’ve told you before, and I’m doing us all a meal, me and the nurses. Hope they live to tell the tale.’ He laughed gently.
‘All the girls at the club send their love, and Susan P is dropping by this afternoon to see you. She’s bringing you in some clean nightclothes. The laundry here leaves a lot to be desired, and somehow I hate seeing your lovely things taken away in a trolley, your name taped inside like a school kid’s.’
His voice was louder now and he thought of the indignities she daily suffered. ‘She’s going to wax your legs as well. You know what she’s like - if her legs ain’t waxed, she won’t leave the house.’ He chuckled though his face was shadowed with sadness still and his shoulders were stooped. Worry and the full force of his desperate, impotent love for her had aged him.
He put his cup on the bedside locker and picked up her hairbrush. When he looked down at her he was stunned into silence.
Cathy’s eyes were open and she was looking at him.
Those deep blue eyes he had dreamed of for so many years were actually looking into his. Her scarred, destroyed face had been brought back to life. It was as if he had witnessed a miracle.
He held his breath. There wasn’t a sound in the room. He could hear the whirring of the overhead fan in the hallway, and the clatter of cups as the tea lady made her rounds. Outside he could hear a car pulling up, the sound of people chatting underneath the window, their voices so normal, so everyday, they made him want to cry.
Cathy’s eyes were open. She was looking at him still. She blinked just once before closing them again, as if the effort had been too much for her.
Sitting in his chair once more, legs weak from shock, a cold sweat covering his body, Richard took her hand in his again. It felt cold still, like a baby’s hand, lost in his huge paw.
‘I know you can hear me, I’ve always known. Please come back, Cathy, I’m begging you now. Come back to us all. Kitty needs you, I need you, Desrae needs you. You’ve left such a gaping void in all our lives. Please, Cathy, if you can hear me, let me know. Squeeze my hand, blink, anything.’
He stared at her drawn face, the scars livid against it though he didn’t see them. To him she would always be his lovely Cathy. She was still his Cathy, her eyes had shown him that. Opening his own eyes wide, he tried to hold back the tears. Looking out at the summer sky he felt the sadness of a man who had wished devoutly for something and believed he had been given it.
They had said this could happen.
He had been warned about it.
As he held back the tears he swallowed deeply. It was like summer outside. October and the weather was glorious. An Indian summer they were calling it. He didn’t much care what time of year it was if only Cathy were here to enjoy it with him.
He gave way to the tears. Thick and salty, he let them roll freely down his face. There was no one to see them, after all.
‘Stop crying, Richard, please.’
He looked at her hard, unsure if she had really spoken or if he had imagined it.
Her eyes were still closed.
‘Cathy? Talk to me, Cathy, please.’
He stared down at her then like a man demented, the tears still rolling down his cheeks, his eyes blurred and stinging.
‘I’m thirsty. What time will I get a drink?’ Her eyes were open again and he could see she was fully conscious. She knew what she was saying. She was back with him once more.
He gathered her into his arms and held her to him. ‘I love you, girl. God help me, I love you so much.’
She smiled gently, her skin feeling oddly tight, not like her own face at all. ‘I know you do, Richard, but all I want is a drink.’
He kissed her on the forehead then, a big wet smacking kiss. ‘I’ll get you a drink, darling, I’ll get you whatever you want. All you have to do is ask.’