Stolen Souls (12 page)

* * *

T
RAFFIC THICKENED AS
Herkus drove east, across the Albert Bridge, heading for Sydenham. Motorists kept their speed low as they travelled through slush and compacted ice. He followed the instructions from the car’s sat-nav system until he arrived at a newly built apartment block that sprawled around a small square, looking more like a school or a clinic than a place to live.

He preferred Rasa’s flat on its quiet street to this series of squares and triangles. No matter. He didn’t have to stay here long, just buy the goods and go.

The Merc’s lights blinked as Herkus locked the car. He turned his collar against the cold and shoved his hands down into his pockets. A trail of layered footprints in the snow gave the only indication of a path to the building’s entrance. An array of buttons studded a metal panel by the door. Frost formed a crisp coating on its surface. Herkus selected the buzzer for the flat number Rasa had given him, and held his thumb against it.

No answer.

He pressed again.

A tinny voice crackled, “What?”

“This is Pollock?” Herkus asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“Rasa sent me,” he said. “To buy stuff.”

A pause, then, “Who sent you to what?”

“Rasa,” Herkus said. “She told me she buys from you before. She told me you make a good price.”

“I don’t know any Rasa,” the voice said. “Now fuck off.”

Even through the tiny speaker, Herkus knew fear when he heard it. The voice had that edge, that brittle signal of restrained panic.

But why?

The cogs of his mind turned too slowly, hindered by a lack of sleep, but they connected at last. Adrenalin followed realization, charging his limbs. Instinct took over. Herkus spun away from the door, dropped low to the ground, as the attacker came at him, the knife outstretched in his hand.

The man’s momentum carried him forward, his gut meeting Herkus’s shoulder, the air driven from his lungs with a strangled wheeze. Herkus rammed into the attacker’s midsection, pushing him upward, and let gravity do the rest.

Snow cushioned the man’s fall, and Herkus had a moment to see his upturned face before he drove his heel into it.

Mark Mawhinney fell back, his lip already swelling. The knife slipped from his fingers, a blade that looked like he’d taken it from his mother’s kitchen. He spat blood, red spraying on white, and coughed.

When he tried to regain his feet, Herkus kicked him square in the groin. Mawhinney fell to his side, pulled his knees up, whined like a starving dog.

“Don’t get up,” Herkus said in English. “Your brother was a stupid man. Now he is dead. If you a smart man, you stay down, you stay alive.”

Mawhinney writhed in the snow, hissing through his torn lips. “You bastard,” he said, the words squeezed through his teeth, tears spilling from his eyes, melting tiny pits in the snow where they fell. “Fucking bastard … Sam did nothing … no call to … do that … bastard.”

Herkus crouched beside him and picked the knife from the snow. He pointed the blade at him. “Sam let the whore kill Tomas,” he said. “Arturas will forget this, you think? I don’t think. You go away from here, maybe Arturas can forget you. Go now.”

Mawhinney rolled onto his belly, hoisted himself up on his hands and knees, and crawled. Crimson drool formed a line between his mouth and the ground, leaving a trail behind him.

Herkus stood. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the knife handle clean, and tossed it into the snow as he walked back to the Mercedes. As he approached the car, pain called from his shoulder. He stopped, rotated his arm, felt the tendons and muscles complain.

“I’m getting old,” he said.

Mark Mawhinney had meant to harm him, possibly kill him. Had Herkus not reacted in time, he might have succeeded.

The Irish brothers had messed it up, Rasa said. They tried to put the girl to work too soon. It was their fault. And Arturas would say the same.

Herkus looked over his shoulder.

Mark had reached the wall of the building. He grabbed a windowsill, tried to pull himself to his feet.

“Fuck,” Herkus said.

He turned and marched toward the other man, his hands ready.

22

D
REAMS SHIFTED FROM
darkness to light, from joy to terror. Galya was a child again, and her grandfather held her hand in his. The old man’s skin was coarse and cracked, and he smelled of tobacco. They walked along a path in the dark woods near her birthplace close to the Ukrainian-Russian border. Wild things watched from the trees.

Up ahead, she saw what might have been a little girl with yellow hair. She hurried her step, straining her eyes to focus on the shape. After a few moments, she realized the coarse skin no longer rubbed against her own; her hand was empty. She looked back along her path. Papa lay there on his back, those coarse hands folded across his chest, his face pale in what little light this place offered.

Growls came from the trees around him. A snout appeared from the undergrowth, low to the ground, sniffing the trail of the dead man. Then another, and another, dogs emerging from the woods to feast on her offering.

Galya opened her mouth to shout at them, but the earth tilted, throwing her down on the stones and rotting leaves. The ground lurched, pitching her against Papa’s body. Except Papa no longer lay there, and she rolled in the stones and mud. The dogs advanced, and she knew they had not come to feed on her grandfather. They had come for her. She tried to get to her feet, to get away from them, but the mud held her down like a warm blanket.

They pounced. She raised her hands to shield herself. Their mouths felt like hard hands on her body, their teeth like blunt, graceless fingers. As she drowned in the mud, they probed her ears, her ribs, her toes, her thighs, everywhere but those secret places reserved for a lover she might never meet. Finally, they parted her lips and ran across her teeth.

Galya smelled sweat and sour milk and knew she was dreaming. She swam upward through the mire, desperate to wake, but she tired, the effort too much. Instead, she let the darkness take her down into its belly, swallowed by a sleep so thick she thought she might have died.

As she sank, the hands left her, summoned by another voice, an animal howl in the distance.

23

B
ILLY
C
RAWFORD LEFT
the girl to answer the thing upstairs. Always it called. Always wanting more. Never letting him be. One day it would take the light from his eyes, he was certain.

He climbed the stairway to the attic room, his shoulders brushing the walls as he ascended. It called again, its voice tearing at him like a claw. He stood still and quiet at the door, wincing at each screech.

“God help me,” he said, his voice not even a whisper. A private exchange between him and the Lord. “God give me the strength to endure it.”

He opened the door and stepped inside. He breathed shallow lest its odor overcome him. Six paces took him to within its vision.

Its eyes focused, its toothless mouth opened. It cried out, claws flaying.

“Quiet,” he said.

Its voice cracked as it rose, a broken wail that scratched at his hearing like a rat’s claws.

“Quiet,” he said, more forceful now.

Again it cried, its pale blue eyes wide and tearful.

He placed a hard hand over its mouth, forced it back down. It stared up at him. He felt its gums slip and slither on his calloused skin.

“Quiet,” he said. “Or I’ll hurt you.”

It grew still. Its toothless mouth stopped seeking purchase on his skin.

He knelt beside it. “Pray with me,” he said.

He brought his hands together, bowed his head, closed his eyes.

“Our Father,” he said.

He prayed that God on high would take mercy on this creature and end its suffering soon. He prayed for a time when he could sleep through the night without hearing its wounded howls. He prayed the Lord would take pity on whatever it had for a soul, festering inside its breast.

He prayed, and it wept.

24

L
ENNON WAS ON
his way to his office, a can of Coke in one hand, the preliminary forensic report on Tomas Strazdas in the other, when a passing sergeant asked him if he’d heard about the Sydenham killing. The victim might be of interest.

“Who?” Lennon asked.

“Mark Mawhinney.”

Lennon stopped. “Sam Mawhinney’s brother?”

“That’s what I heard,” the sergeant said. “He’s well known. The first officer on the scene recognized him. They said his neck was broken. Footprints in the snow show a struggle.”

Lennon went to his desk with a heaviness at his core. He threw the report on the pile of papers already gathered there and pressed the chilled drink can against his forehead.

Four dead in twelve hours.

He’d left Connolly at the flat in Bangor, along with the sergeant from C District. All they could do was wait for another forensics team to come and take over. Matching the blood to Tomas Strazdas’s was merely a formality, although it wouldn’t be this side of Christmas.

Lennon sat down, opened the can, and cursed as its contents fizzed over the paperwork. He pulled the Strazdas report and the passport out of harm’s way and mopped up the spillage with a tissue.

The report was little more than a sketch from the Forensic Service, a private company that handled much of the scientific duties for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They worked from former police buildings in Carrickfergus, a setting that was entirely inadequate for the work they had to do. Their old Belfast premises had been destroyed in a bomb attack in the early nineties, and they’d been making do in the seaside town since then.

Despite the limitations of their base, they still managed to provide one of the most advanced and comprehensive forensic services in Europe, honed through decades of investigating terrorist attacks, large and small, that had taken place on their doorstep almost daily.

As far as Lennon knew, Tomas Strazdas’s body still lay out by the waterside, sheltered from the snow by a white tent, waiting to be packed up and brought to the new forensic mortuary at the Royal Victoria Hospital. There, a consultant from the State Pathologist’s Department would do the honors.

On Christmas Eve, it would be whichever poor bastard was on-call for the holiday. Bad enough they’d have one corpse to examine. Now they had three more. Lennon made another silent wish that he wouldn’t have to be the officer in attendance when they got the scalpels and saws out.

He had called by CI Uprichard’s office and asked if the related cases would be handed to one of the other districts, but Uprichard didn’t know. They were having trouble pinning anyone down on Christmas Eve, but Uprichard would call around, see if he could get a decision.

Lennon was not hopeful. He took his mobile from his pocket as he leafed through the report.

The gash in Strazdas’s throat smiled at him as Susan answered.

“How’s Ellen?” he asked.

“She’s been asking for her Daddy,” Susan said. “Will you be long?”

“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “Have you been watching the news?”

“I’ve had it on in the background,” she said. “Somebody at the docks, and another two in Newtownabbey. Which of them are you chasing after?”

“Right now, all of them,” Lennon said. “But you never know, maybe someone will take them off my hands.”

“Is that likely?”

“Not very,” he said. “Can you keep Ellen a while longer?” “You know I will,” she said. “It’ll be fun for Lucy. I don’t know what Ellen’s going to think about it though. They’re having a nap just now.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“Jack, I only just got them settled.”

“I know,” he said. “Just for a minute. That’s all.”

“All right,” she said, weariness in her voice.

He turned photographs and pages while he waited. Wound to the throat the most likely cause of death, to be confirmed by the State Pathologist’s Department. Piece of material and length of electrical cord removed from the scene for examination. Lack of blood at the scene suggests death occurred elsewhere and the body transported to the location of its discovery. Presence of tire tracks further reinforces this supposition

Forensic and pathology reports spent so much time stating the bloody obvious, Lennon thought. The details were the key. Hidden, like the points of light that are not at first clear when you look at the night sky, but come into view as you look away.

Details like a piece of mirror glass and a girl’s passport.

He heard a soft breath against his ear, but no greeting.

“Hiya, darling,” he said.

“Hello,” Ellen said, her voice blunted by sleep.

“How’s you?”

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Mm.”

“You been playing with Lucy?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Are you being good?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Did you have a nice sleep?”

“It was okay. I had a bad dream.”

“What about?” Lennon asked. Her dreams were seldom dull.

“About a lady,” Ellen said. “Dogs were chasing her. They had fingers for teeth.”

“Sounds scary,” Lennon said.

“Mm-hm.”

“But you’re okay now.”

“Mm-hm. When are you coming home?”

“A bit later,” Lennon said.

Ellen did not answer.

“This afternoon,” Lennon said. “Maybe this evening.”

“Okay,” Ellen said.

The phone clicked as she hung up.

Lennon looked at the handset for a moment before returning it to his pocket.

His thoughts returned to Tomas Strazdas and the other bodies that seemed to float in his wake. From what Lennon could tell, Strazdas was a low-level thug, as were the Mawhinney brothers. Not the kind of scumbags that gang wars erupted over. There had to be something underlying the killings, a root cause. Lennon suspected—no, felt in his bones—that the girl whose passport lay before him had something to do with it.

There had to be more to Tomas than was visible on the surface. And if you needed to see below the surface, there was one branch of the police force to talk to. Lennon hesitated for a moment, then lifted the desk phone’s handset and dialed the extension for the C3 Intelligence Branch office.