Stolen Souls Page 3

Galya looked down at herself and saw blood had soaked through her clothing and coated her hands. She had killed a man not an hour before. If the police got her, she would be treated as a murderer. Did they still hang murderers here? She took a step backward.

  The policeman extended a hand toward her. “Listen, love, no one’s going to hurt you. Just stay—”

  An engine roared. He turned to see the old BMW accelerate toward him.

  Darius got to his knees.

  “What the fuck is going on?” the policeman asked. He reached for the pistol at his hip, but Darius grabbed his wrist. He looked into the policeman’s eyes as he rose to tower over him.

  Once more, Galya ran.

  6

  FOR THE SECOND time tonight, a phone’s shrill call caught Lennon at the edge of slumber. He jerked awake, cold in his darkened office, and reached for the handset.

  “Yes?”

  “Call from Sergeant Connolly,” the duty officer said. “Sounds like a bad one.”

  “Christ,” Lennon said, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “All right, put him through.”

  Lennon listened to clicks and beeps while the call bounced down the wires before he heard Connolly’s strained breath. Sounded like he was fighting the cold. Connolly was a good officer, still young enough to remember why he joined up, but old enough to have had his eyes opened to the realities of the job. He’d made sergeant quicker than most, and was angling for detective. Lennon reckoned he’d have it sooner rather than later, but for now he was stuck on patrols.

  “Go on,” Lennon said. He knew Connolly would give it to him matter-of-fact, no dressing it up.

  “Me and Eddie McCrae took a call to come to the Harbour Estate,” Connolly said. McCrae, his partner, was still a constable despite being ten years older. “One man dead, confirmed by me, one man injured. We’ve an ambulance on the way. Eddie’s giving him first aid, but it looks bad. And here’s the thing: he’s a harbor cop. You’d better get down here.”

  Lennon slumped in his chair. “All right, give me thirty minutes.”

  He hung up and dialed an outside line. He listened to the tone for six rings before an alcohol-soaked voice answered.

  Detective Chief Inspector Jim Thompson, the officer in charge of Lennon’s Major Investigation Team, yawned at the other end as he listened. When Lennon finished relaying Connolly’s words, Thompson said, “You could’ve told me all this in the morning. I’m having a get-together here.”

  “You’re the head of my MIT,” Lennon said. “I’m supposed to report to you first.”

  “And you’re the senior officer on duty. You took the call. You bloody deal with it.”

  “I don’t have enough men to get a full team together.”

  “It’s pitch black outside. There won’t be a proper examination of the scene until the morning anyway. Just get a medical officer down there, and anyone else you can get hold of. Make sure the scene’s secure, and everything’s done that needs doing. The ACC can take over tomorrow. I’m sure you’re capable of doing that, at least. Now, don’t call me again unless the sky’s falling in, understood?”

  “Understood,” Lennon said.

  He would never fathom how Jim Thompson had made detective chief inspector. Lennon had been on Thompson’s Major Investigation Team for four months now, and he’d yet to see his superior officer take responsibility for anything he didn’t absolutely have to. Thompson called it delegation. Lennon called it passing the buck.

  Nevertheless, it was true that little could be done tonight other than secure the scene and have the medical officer certify death, and then the assistant chief constable would assign an investigation team in the morning. All Lennon had to do was make sure all the right boxes were ticked for now. Still, the idea that Thompson would happily carry on his Christmas festivities while a man lay dead by the water stuck in Lennon’s throat.

  It seemed he had no luck with detective chief inspectors. He sat here tonight because of DCI Dan Hewitt. There was no way to prove that, and Lennon had to concede there was a fair chance the notion was only paranoia on his part. But it was a powerful notion when coupled with the knowledge that Hewitt had sold Lennon out more than a year ago, costing Marie McKenna her life, and almost done the same for Ellen.

  Hewitt had many secrets, and Lennon had uncovered enough of them to make things difficult for his former friend if he ever chose to reveal them. For now, he kept the information filed away, some of it in his head, some on paper. For the last year he had scoured case files, looking for connections between Hewitt and cases that had failed to reach prosecution. There was precious little on record because his old friend was a member of the most secretive branch of the force, C3 Intelligence, their clandestine dealings rarely revealed outside of their own secure offices.

  But Lennon had some stored in a locked box back in his apartment. Not enough to bring Hewitt down, but certainly sufficient to raise some awkward questions for him if push ever came to shove.

  Perhaps nothing more than coincidence caused so many late-night shifts to come along at short notice. It could be by chance that so few of Lennon’s old informants were still willing to talk to him. Evidence was mislaid all the time, of course, but two of Lennon’s cases had fallen through when he brought them to the Public Prosecution Service and couldn’t back them up because items had disappeared from storage.

  Or it could be that DCI Dan Hewitt had whispered in certain ears, had nudged certain elbows, had forced certain hands. Lennon guessed that Hewitt wanted to make life at Ladas Drive Station as difficult as possible for him in the hope that he’d transfer away.

  But Lennon would not oblige. Instead, he would continue to come in on nights like this when he’d rather be at home with his daughter. It was the same stubborn streak that made him resist the McKenna family’s desire to bring Ellen into their fold, and he knew there was no logic to it.

  He lifted the phone and began making the necessary calls.

  * * *

  WHEN LENNON ARRIVED, the paramedics were loading the injured harbor cop into the ambulance. Only his mouth was visible through the dressings and neck brace. Another uniformed harbor officer watched them close the doors. Lennon noted the markings on his epaulet.

  “You’re the injured man’s superior?” he asked.

  The sergeant looked at him for a moment, confusion on his face, before he answered. “Sorry, yes. I’m Bobby Watts. I was on the desk when it happened. It was me called the PSNI patrol after Smithy radioed in. Jesus, he sounded worried, but I didn’t think it would be anything like this.”

  “Detective Inspector Jack Lennon.” He extended his hand to Watts. “I’ll be the senior investigating officer until the ACC sets up a team in the morning. What happened?”

  Watts told him about Constable Wayne Smith’s nervous call, how he fully expected it to be some drunk who’d wandered in front of the patrol car, and that as he made his way to the scene of the accident he cursed the prospect of the paperwork and the substantial claim that would surely result. He arrived a few minutes before the Police Service of Northern Ireland car to find something altogether different. “I never saw the like of it,” Watts said, shaking his head. His eyes watered and his breath misted. “Harbor work is quiet, you know? The odd bit of thieving, some traffic stuff, that’s about the height of it. Nothing like this, even when the Troubles was going full scud. They took his weapon, too.”

  “Shit,” Lennon said. Whoever was crazy enough to put a cop in the hospital was now also wandering the city with a Glock 17 in his pocket. He wrapped his overcoat tight around himself as the cold bit hard. Connolly approached from the direction of the water, his fluorescent yellow jacket buttoned up tight.

  Lennon tugged the paramedic’s sleeve as he went to get back into the ambulance’s cabin. “How is he?” he asked.

  “Not great,” the paramedic said. “But I’ve seen worse. Apart from the cuts to his scalp, I don’t see any sign of damage to the skull, but we won’t know much until he has a scan. H
is vitals are good, though. We’re taking him to the Royal. Call A&E in an hour or so, they’ll have a better idea then.”

  “Thanks,” Lennon said. He turned to Connolly. “Well?”

  “The dead man’s mid-thirties or thereabouts. Going by the tattoos and the clothes, I’d guess Eastern European. Looks like a stab wound to the throat did for him.”

  “All right,” Lennon said. “Let’s take a look.”

  They moved toward the body, but Watts called after them. “What do you want me to do?”

  Lennon considered telling him to go back to his office, he couldn’t be any help here, but he didn’t have the heart. Instead, he said, “Why don’t you stay with Constable Smith’s car? Make sure no one interferes with it before it gets cordoned off.”

  Watts looked up and down the darkened road. Even though there wasn’t a sinner to be seen, let alone threaten interference with the car, he said, “Aye, right, good thinking.”

  “Thanks,” Lennon said, grateful Watts hadn’t taken offense at the condescension. There was nothing useful the harbor cop could do here, but to send him away would be a greater insult than allocating a nonsense task.

  Lennon and Connolly made for the water again, their footsteps crisp on the frost.

  “It’s a cold one,” Connolly said to break the quiet.

  “Yep,” Lennon said.

  “How’s your wee girl?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Good.”

  “Looking forward to Santa coming?”

  “Yes.”

  That thin trickle of conversation took them to the water’s edge, and the corpse wrapped in black plastic. The covering had torn away where the bundle had been dragged over the stones, and more had been pulled back to reveal the face and torso.

  “Did you open it up?”

  “Yeah,” Connolly said, “just so I could confirm no sign of life.”

  “Okay. But make sure it doesn’t get disturbed any more than it has been. The medical officer should be here soon. Aside from that, no one else touches him, right?”

  “Right,” Connolly said.

  “Torch,” Lennon said, holding his hand out.

  Connolly pulled a flashlight from his belt and gave it to him. Lennon shone the light on the ground so he could choose his footing without trampling any evidence. The beam found the length of electrical cord and a wad of material—what looked like a piece of torn bed sheet—that lay a few feet away.

  ‘What about these?’

  ‘They haven’t been touched,’ Connolly said. ‘Could be litter, there’s plenty of it lying about, but I don’t think so.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  Lennon hunkered down beside the body. The face was round and blunt-featured, the hair cropped short, the mouth open to the night. Already frost formed on the lips. A deep gash beneath the chin spread into what resembled a dark red bib. “Doesn’t look like a knife,” Lennon said.

  “No?” Connolly asked.

  “Not clean enough.” Lennon held the torch beam close, light finding the recesses of the wound. “See how it’s torn, rather than cut? Something more jagged did this.”

  Lennon quietly hoped the case would not be assigned to Thompson’s MIT. The senior officer, or his deputy, would be required to attend the post mortem. Knowing Thompson, he would assign Lennon the duty of standing there while they cut this poor bastard up.

  “There’s tire tracks over there,” Connolly said.

  Lennon moved the torch’s beam over the loose stones and earth. They were faint, the ground frozen hard, but they were there all right. A car had been parked here tonight.

  He scanned the patch between the tracks and the body for footprints. All he saw were the slightest of impressions, nothing useful.

  “Care to amaze me with some logical deduction?” Lennon asked.

  Connolly shuffled his feet. “Well, I suppose someone maybe drove here to dump the body. The harbor cop disturbed them before they could get it in the water, he got a beating for his troubles, and they ran.”

  “I think that’s some pretty good supposing,” Lennon said.

  “There’s one thing, though,” Connolly said.

  Lennon stood. “What’s that, then?”

  “I think I know his face,” Connolly said.

  7

  ARTURAS STRAZDAS OPENED his laptop on the hotel suite’s desk and powered it up. He sat down in the leatherbound chair, a luxurious sofa to one side of the room. A few seconds later, he had connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi network. He called up the website for European People Management, a labor agency that was jointly owned by him, his brother, and his mother. Half a dozen such agencies operated in the British Isles and throughout the rest of the EU, and all of them were owned by some combination of his closest family members. But only he knew their inner workings.

  He logged in to the website’s secure admin area with a username and password he changed every seven days and followed the links until he found a list of migrants registered as having been assigned work within Northern Ireland. They were all listed as Polish, Czech, Lithuanian or Latvian nationals. He filtered the list down to females who had left employment in the last three weeks.

  One listing.

  It said she was Lithuanian and gave her name as Niele Gimbutiené. Strazdas knew this to be false. He clicked on the link to see her full profile. There were two images, one a scan of a Lithuanian passport, the other a head-andshoulders shot of the girl. A casual examination, such as a tired immigration official might give, would suggest the photographs matched, that this girl was indeed a Lithuanian national with every entitlement as an EU citizen to live and work legally in the United Kingdom.

  But if you looked closely at the eyes, the height of the cheekbones, the set of the mouth, you might suspect this girl was not the one pictured on the passport. And you’d be right. The notes said this girl had left her job at a mushroom farm in County Monaghan just over a week ago and was no longer associated with the agency. Strazdas knew this was not untrue, strictly speaking, but the reality was a little harder. If the notes were entirely accurate, they would say she had been purchased from the agency by another party, along with the passport on which she had travelled. Perhaps the passport would be used to gain passage for some other pretty young woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and Slavic features. But this girl was still somewhere in Belfast.

  Strazdas knew in his gut that Tomas was in trouble. Did this skinny girl have something to do with it? He had no reason to suspect so, but he had learned over many years in business to be mindful of all possibilities.

  His mobile phone rang. He lifted it from the desktop, checked the display, and answered.

  “There’s no answer at the apartment,” Herkus said. “I can’t see any lights from outside. I don’t think they’re here. I’d break in, but all of these places have reinforced doors. I’d need a battering ram to get through.”

  “All right,” Strazdas said. “Check whatever bars Tomas and Darius drink in. Get more men if you have to. I want them found tonight.”

  He did not wait for Herkus’s response before hanging up. Strazdas returned his attention to the picture of the girl.

  “What did you do with my brother?” he asked.

  His cheeks warmed as the sound of his own voice reverberated in the empty room. Talking to himself. His mother had lectured him earlier that day, saying he was working too hard, putting himself under too much stress and strain, not sleeping. A man’s mind could only take so much, even a man as strong as Arturas Strazdas.

  Strazdas did not argue with his mother. No one argued with Laima Strazdiené.

  His father certainly hadn’t. As a teenager, Arturas had sat at the table in the two-room apartment the family shared in Kaunas, Tomas facing him at the opposite side, their father between them. The fourth place often remained empty when they ate. They would talk to drown out the grunts from the other room as their mother took care of another visitor.

  At night, Arturas and Tom
as would share the foldout bed in the same room while their parents talked on the other side of the wall. Or rather their mother talked, and their father listened.

  To feed us, she would say, to keep us warm.

  Once, Strazdas had asked her about the visitors that came and went at all hours. She threw hot coffee in his lap. His father took him to the university hospital, told him to keep his questions to himself.

  His father left their home not long after the Soviets released their hold on Lithuania. He said nothing, left no note, was simply no longer at the table. Strazdas’s mother would not discuss it, as if he’d never existed.

  Soon, men were not the only visitors. Often there were young women, and they would take the men into the other room while Arturas and Tomas ate with their mother at the table.

  Three months later, they moved to an apartment that had two bedrooms. The brothers hoped this would mean a room of their own, but instead it allowed two girls to receive visitors at any one time. But there was money for Tomas to go to a good school, and for the older brother to attend university.

  As a student, Arturas took an apartment of his own. Under his mother’s guidance, he also allowed a room to be used for the entertainment of lonely men. He discovered that he liked having money in his pocket and good clothes to wear. The other students were jealous when he acquired a car, albeit a used one.

  Then there was an incident with Tomas and a teacher at his school, and they had to move away to Vilnius.

  Laima had always indulged her younger son, fool that he was. For every soft kiss on Tomas’s cheek, it seemed Arturas received a hard slap. Still, looking back, he did not hate her for it. Not really. After all, she had taught him how to make a good living from the weaknesses of others.

  Arturas Strazdas stood and crossed the room to the elegant glass-topped sideboard. Herkus had left a small package there, a cellophane bag containing an amount of white powder. Good stuff, Herkus had said, straight from the source. Go easy on it, he had said. Maybe get some rest before taking any.