Stolen Souls (27 page)

Going by the throbbing weight in his forehead, he supposed he had gotten drunk. A line or two would lift the fog.

His heart stuttered at the thought. No matter, it was the only appropriate medicine under the circumstances.

He wedged his elbows against the couch and pushed himself up on to his feet. The room felt lopsided for a moment until he extended his arms out for balance.

A fine sprinkling of powder still lay on the glass desktop, the hotel key card dusted with it, a fifty-euro note rolled and ready. Plenty for a line, he thought. Best be careful. He had some left in the bag, enough to see him through to the next day if he controlled himself. Herkus could fetch some more in the morning.

Herkus.

Had that been him calling? Had he found the whore?

First, the line.

Strazdas took the card between his thumb and forefinger. He swept it across the desktop, back and forth, up and down, shepherding the powder like a dog herding sheep until he had a thin streak of white.

Not much. But sufficient for now.

He took the fifty-euro note and inserted it into his right nostril, blocked the left with a finger, inhaled the line, and all was beauty and wonder forever and ever until eternity and beyond.

And then he coughed at the chilled snot running down the back of his throat, and his stomach groaned and cramped because he hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

Maybe he should phone room service and get some—

Phone.

His memory caught up with him, and he reached for his mobile to see who had been calling. The display said the number had been blocked.

Why would his contact call at this time on Christmas Eve? If indeed it was Christmas Eve, and the clock had not labored past midnight and into Christmas Day.

As if in answer, the phone rang, the vibration in his palm jolting him more than the sound. He brought it to his ear.

“Yes?”

“Your driver is dead,” the voice said.

Strazdas stared out of his window at the street below, his mind unscrambling what he’d just been told.

“What?”

“Your driver, the man who’s been charging around Belfast, searching for that girl you’re so desperate to find.”

“Yes?”

“He’s dead. Killed in a cellar in the west of the city. Gutted by some crazy bastard, from what I’ve been told.”

“Herkus?”

“But we have the girl.”

Strazdas retreated to the couch and sat down. “The girl,” he said.

“The one you’ve been looking for. She’s been taken to A&E, but in due course she’ll be in our care.”

“Your care,” Strazdas said.

“Listen, are you all right? Are you taking in what I’m telling you?”

Strazdas placed a knuckle between his teeth and bit down hard. The pain pressed against the confusion in his mind, but did not push it away. He tightened his jaw, felt something sinewy between his teeth. The fog cleared. He inhaled through his nose and released his knuckle. Deep red indentations lined his skin. He rubbed it against his thigh.

“You’re certain she will be in your hands?” he asked.

“Soon,” the voice said. “She’s receiving treatment now, but she’ll be released from the hospital soon. She has to go somewhere, and all the agencies for dealing with her sort will be closed for the holiday. Besides, she’s a witness to at least one murder, and possibly a suspect in another. She won’t go anywhere but to a police station. My station. I’ll figure out how to deal with her. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” Strazdas said. “My mother thanks you.”

“One thing,” the voice said. “Your driver is a known associate of yours. Expect questions. Unless you can get out of the country.”

“Out of the country?”

“Go back to Brussels,” the voice said. “You won’t get a flight until Boxing Day, but if you get across the border, you’ll be okay until then.”

“I want to stay,” Strazdas said. “Until the whore is taken care of. I can’t go to Brussels until then.”

“Why not?”

Strazdas thought of his mother’s hard eyes, and her hard hands. “I can’t, that’s all,” he said.

“All right,” the voice said. “I’ll deal with her as quickly as I can. But have your bags packed, sort out whatever transport you need for the airport, and be ready to go. Christmas Day might buy you some time, but after that, you’ll be questioned, there’s no doubt.”

“All right,” Strazdas said.

“Good,” the voice said. “And about recompense.”

“What?”

“Payment. Things have gone well beyond the remit of our arrangement. I expect to be compensated accordingly.”

“Don’t worry,” Strazdas said. “You will be. But tell me this one thing.”

“What?”

“Who is this crazy man?” Strazdas asked. “The one who killed Herkus?”

69

T
HERE WAS NO
doubt in the mind of Edwin Paynter that he would escape. From the moment the first officers stumbled down the cellar stairs, their guns drawn, to his lying down on a gurney in a hospital corridor, he knew they could not hold him for a single second longer than he chose to be held.

It was simply a matter of biding his time, not resisting, being calm and compliant. Sooner or later, the two policemen who guarded him would slip up, and Edwin Paynter would be gone before they knew his name.

They had no choice but to bring him to the hospital. The girl had opened his scalp with the chair, but Paynter knew that scalp wounds bled heavily, meaning there was no way to be sure if the injury was more serious without a proper examination.

He held a wad of gauze to his temple with his free hand, pressing it hard against the cut to staunch the flow. A pair of cuffs fixed his other hand to the trolley. If he wanted to, he could simply throw his legs off the edge of the bed and walk away, dragging the gurney behind him.

But he did not want to. His exit would be better thought out than that.

The hospital’s Accident and Emergency ward was understaffed and overpopulated. It never failed to astound Edwin Paynter that most people marked the Lord’s day by refusing to work and drinking too much. It was no wonder, then, that so many of Belfast’s drunks wound up in an emergency ward with not enough doctors or nurses to treat them.

So Edwin Paynter found himself bound to a gurney in a corridor, listening to the moans and cries of the city’s lowest while the handful of medical staff on duty ran themselves ragged trying to look after the sorry lot of them.

He had always found hospitals strange and frightful places to be, especially the A&E departments. The sounds and the smells. The things occurring behind drawn curtains, the swishes and footsteps that were none of your business. The gatherings of families waiting to be bereaved. The emptyfaced geriatrics staring at you from the other side of the ward.

This place was no different. Drunks called out, challenging their demons as they sobered. Young children screamed as their parents fretted. Others checked their watches and cursed their taxes, furious at waiting so long to have their small hurts addressed. All of it meaningless bustle and noise.

Most of it he could only guess at, limited as he was to this narrow bed. Let them suffer, he thought.

A nurse appeared at the foot of the gurney, an orderly close behind her.

“Mr. Paynter?” she said.

“My name’s Crawford,” he said. “Billy Crawford.”

She looked at the policemen, confused.

The nearest of them shrugged. “They told me he’s Edwin Paynter. I don’t care what you call him, so long as I can get home soon.”

The nurse turned her wavering smile back to Paynter. “Mr., er …”

“Crawford,” Paynter said.

“Mr. Crawford, there’s no bays available yet, but we’ll get you into one as soon as we can. We’re going to move you off the corridor, though. There’s space in the orthopedic room. All right?”

He did not answer.

The ceiling moved above him as he laid his head back on the thin paper-covered pillow. Wheels and feet squeaked on the vinyl-tiled floor until he rolled through a doorway into a room with beds and curtains, a light box on the wall, rows of drawers, and boxes of bandages.

“You’ll be all right here for now,” the nurse said as the orderly pushed the gurney into an empty space. “How’s that bleeding coming along?”

She lifted Paynter’s hand away and examined the side of his head. “You’ll live,” she said. “Right, you sit tight here. It won’t be much longer.”

The nurse whisked out of the room, the orderly trudging behind her, leaving the two policemen standing over the gurney.

One of them sat on the edge of the nearest bed while the other paced, moving in and out of Paynter’s vision. He noted that their guns looked very like the one he had taken from the foreigner, and the one the policeman Lennon had aimed at him earlier in the night.

The policeman who sat on the bed checked his watch and raised his eyebrows. “Merry fucking Christmas,” he said.

70

L
ENNON SAT ON
the edge of the bed while the nurse applied two butterfly strips to the cut on his chin, then covered them with a bandage. CI Uprichard entered the bay as she left. He wore an anorak over a patterned sweater and corduroy slacks. Lennon wondered if he’d ever seen Uprichard in civvies before, and realized he hadn’t. It made him look every one of his sixty years.

“You pick your moments,” Uprichard said. “Happy flipping Christmas.”

Lennon smiled at his superior’s inability to swear. “Thanks for coming out,” he said. “You didn’t have to.”

“No, but best to clear up what I can tonight so there’s less to fight with when I come back after the holiday.” He lifted Lennon’s jacket. “Come on, they’ll want the bay for the next eejit in line.”

Lennon followed Uprichard out through the ward and into the corridor beyond.

“What do we know so far?” he asked.

Uprichard took one of a row of seats lined up outside a consultant’s office. “We’re positive he’s this Edwin Paynter chap young Connolly found in the ViSOR database. A quick search of the house didn’t turn up any identification, but there’s no doubt. There’ll be a proper search after the holiday.”

“What about the woman upstairs?” Lennon asked, taking the seat next to Uprichard. She’d been found after one of the officers who arrived in the second car heard moaning from above.

“She can’t speak, but we’re assuming she’s the owner of the house. Looks like this Paynter character has been keeping her prisoner there. Probably for the two years he’s been missing.”

“Jesus,” Lennon said.

“One thing turned up in the preliminary search that’s … well, worrying.”

“What?”

“A bag of teeth,” Uprichard said. “It’s been left in situ, but I’m told they’re human teeth. Molars, incisors, all in a little red velvet purse.”

“The floor of the cellar,” Lennon said.

“What about it?”

“There were rough patches, different textures, like parts of it had been dug up and filled back in again.”

Uprichard chewed his lip as he thought. “Of course, this chap has a previous conviction for kidnapping a prostitute.”

“Girls like this one he had in Belfast,” Lennon said. “Trafficked in, no trace of them if they disappear, no one to call the police for them.”

“It’ll be a first for Belfast,” Uprichard said. “We’ve never had a serial killer.”

“No, anyone with the inclination to kill for laughs had plenty of outlets until recently. What about the girl?”

“She’s still in the ward,” Uprichard said. “A lady from Care NI’s talking to her.”

Care NI was a Christian charity that, among other things, assisted trafficked women in the days following their rescue. Often the women were terrified of the authorities, so counselors from the charity helped them communicate with the police officers, social workers, and immigration bureaucrats whom they now had to face.

“She’s in a bad way,” Uprichard said. “But she’s a tough wee girl. She’ll need to be. This isn’t a straight trafficking case. She’ll have to answer for the man she killed.”

“We’ve no real evidence that she killed anyone,” Lennon said. “Only what Roscoe Patterson told me, and that’s hardly gospel.”

“Once forensics are in, there’ll be plenty of evidence,” Uprichard said. “But we can recommend leniency if she can show it was done in self-defense.”

“So where does she go?” Lennon asked. “The Victim Care Suite, or a cell?”

“It’s Christmas,” Uprichard said. “There’s no staff in the care unit to look after her. It’ll have to be a cell.”

“No,” Lennon said. “What she’s just been through, we can’t lock her up.”

“We might not have much choice if she’s a suspect in a murder case.”

Lennon stood up. “Are you going to arrest her?”

“No, not yet, but—”

“Are you going to interview her under caution?”

“It’s not up to me to—”

“Then there’s no call for that girl to spend a single minute in a cell until she has to.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Uprichard asked.

Lennon rubbed his dry, tired eyes as he thought. There was only one answer that would allow him any peace.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” he said.

71

G
ALYA WATCHED THE
nice woman’s lips move, heard the words they formed, but little of it registered with her conscious mind. She talked about agencies, police, immigration, women’s rights, sometimes while holding Galya’s hand.

Sleep edged in, and Galya had to shake it away.

The woman was very kind, and was here to help, she said so over and over.

But the bed was so comfortable, even if every part of Galya ached or stung to one degree or another, and sleep was an insistent intruder.

Galya’s eyes had slipped closed when a cough stirred her. She opened them and saw the policeman lean in through the drawn plastic curtain that surrounded the bed. He said something to the kind woman, and she excused herself and left with him.

On her own, the bustle of the hospital became a soothing murmur, like the sound of a stream in the summer. Galya thought of Mama and Papa, and the small house she had grown up in, the smell of baking bread, Mama’s coarse skin, the road that led to her door. As she drifted deeper into the warmth of slumber, she saw the man with the moon face, the teeth in his hand, showing them to her, counting them out one by one, pointing out those that he’d taken from her mouth, and her finger exploring there, finding the gaps where they’d been, and then he wanted to show her something else, something bright and shining, something sharp, something—