Stolen Souls (22 page)

It gaped at him from the bed, its pale and wizened face raised to him.

“Quiet, now,” he said as he approached it.

Still, it wailed.

“If you won’t be quiet, then I’ll make you quiet,” he said. No good, it would not listen to reason, so he took the syringe from his pocket. The thing shook its head, tried to shrink from his grasp, but it could not. He gripped its hair and pressed the needleless syringe between its lips. With no teeth to block its path, the plastic point slipped between the gums. He pushed until he felt the thing try to resist with its tongue, then he pushed harder. It gagged as the syringe reached the back of its throat.

He depressed the plunger and listened to the gargle of the liquid in the thing’s throat. When the syringe was empty, he dropped it on the pillow and placed his hand over the thing’s mouth. Its body bucked, claws dragging across his shoulders, but eventually it weakened. Its pupils dilated, eyelids fluttering as its body went soft and pliant.

He returned its head to the pillow and wiped the drool from his hand onto the blankets. The silence slipped over him like a cloak, and he relished it for a few seconds before leaving the thing to its slumber.

He knew that one day the thing would not wake, that its body would no longer be able to cope with the sedative, but he did not mind. Sometimes he wondered why he kept it alive. Perhaps, in an odd way, he regarded it as a pet that has lost favor in a household. Like a hamster or a fish that has long since ceased to amuse the children of the family, but the parents continue to feed it, quietly hoping for its demise.

Returning to the kitchen, he began preparations for his work. A large bowl for hot water, a kettle, washcloths, soap, a toothbrush, a box of sodium bicarbonate, several cable ties, his torch, and another syringe full of sedative.

But this one had a needle.

He had secured a good supply of barbiturates by breaking into a veterinary clinic almost three years ago. The place stood in the countryside between Lisburn and Moira. It smelled of disinfectant and dog feces. He had walked through its corridors and rooms, gathering the things he needed, until he found a room lined with cages.

Dogs stared at him from their prisons. Three of them, their tongues lolling as they panted. He put his fingers against one of the cages, let the animal lap at his glove. It was an odd sensation, the wetness once removed by a thin membrane of rubber. It triggered an image in his mind that launched up from the black depths like a shark. He recoiled, closed his eyes against the memory before it could fully take form.

Some things were best left forgotten to the waking world. They would come at him in his dreams, he couldn’t help that, but he found it best to keep a wall between his old self and his new self while in the present moment.

He left the dogs there in their dark cages, made one last tour of the building to make sure he’d left no trace of his presence, and let himself out.

The police had made an appeal on the news about the missing drugs, said they were dangerous in the wrong hands. But his were exactly the right hands, so no need to worry. He had put them to good use in his work, and would do so again this evening.

God willing.

He carried a chair—the same one he had found toppled when he returned home earlier—into the hall and left it by the door to the cellar, then went back to the kitchen to fetch the other items. When everything was in place, he put the syringe, its needle protected by a plastic cap, into his pocket. He took the torch in his right hand and put his left on the door handle.

The door swung inward, and he felt the dark reach up to him. He flicked the torch on and shone its beam on the steps so that he could see his way down. Listening as he descended, he heard her panicked breathing somewhere below.

Clearly she knew the time had come. He had to be ready for her to try something. But she was small and light while he was solid and heavy. She would not get the better of him again.

He stopped at the midway point of the stairs and moved the beam around the cellar, touring its corners and crevices. To his surprise, he found her crouched by the open cabinet. She had not tried to hide, perhaps realizing it would be futile. Instead, she had spent her time attempting to open his toolbox, which lay on its side as her fingers worked at the lock.

“Leave it,” he said.

She looked up, her teeth bared like an animal caught feeding on a carcass. But she had such pretty teeth, and he immediately regretted the association.

“Stand up,” he said, taking two more steps down toward her.

She pulled at the toolbox’s lid, letting out a low growl from her throat, the cords of her neck standing out. She turned it on end, gripped it with both hands, strained to lift it from the floor as the weight of the tools shifted inside. She let it drop to the linoleum-covered concrete, trying to somehow break the lid open.

“That won’t do any good,” he said as he neared the bottom step. “It’s a good box. You won’t break it.”

As he stepped onto the linoleum, she hauled the toolbox from the floor again and tried to hurl it at him. It traveled only inches before it slammed and clattered on the ground.

She hunkered down, curling herself into a ball balanced on tattered feet, covered her head with her hands. She muttered something in her foreign tongue, and he wondered if it was a prayer. The only word he could pick out was “Mama,” whispered over and over again.

“Please stand up,” he said.

Still she crouched, rocking on her feet, her head clutched between her hands, her mouth moving against her knees.

As he moved behind her, he switched the torch to his left hand and took the syringe from his pocket with his right. He pried the plastic cap from the needle with his teeth and spat it on to the floor. “Please,” he said. “One last time. Stand up. Don’t make this any harder.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around her head.

He bent down and placed the torch upon the concrete, soft so as to make no noise, then straightened. The torch rolled a few inches, sending her shadow fleeing across the wall. He reached down, grabbed her hair, and pulled her upright.

She screamed as the needle pierced the flesh of her buttock. He pressed the plunger before she could squirm away from him, then pushed her across the cellar. She hit the far wall and dropped to the floor, still crying.

“Quiet,” he said. “It didn’t hurt, did it?”

She spoke only to herself, her rambling prayer continuing in that strange language of hers.

“You could’ve had it with some coffee, maybe a bite to eat, if you’d listened to me earlier. And now look.”

Her speech slowed and her head dipped toward the floor.

“But it works quicker like this,” he said, taking a step closer. “You’ll be under in no time. You can sleep, let me take care of everything. Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. You’ll be home soon.”

She lay still and quiet before he finished speaking, so the man who called himself Billy Crawford set about his work. He did not anticipate any interruptions. It was Christmas Eve, after all.

49

L
ENNON PARKED OUTSIDE
the redbrick house, three stories, with a small, unkempt garden. The sort of house that, just three years ago, would have been snapped up by a property developer and split into rented apartments, or renovated to make a luxurious family home. Most of the houses in the area seemed to have gone that way, but not this one.

He took his phone from his pocket and opened the e-mail. Connolly had copied and pasted the information into the message and attached an image from the ViSOR system. Lennon could see why this profile had rung alarm bells for Connolly: flipping between the photo and the image of the sketch, the similarity was undeniable. The same round face, the same broad nose. No beard, but that didn’t mean anything. It was the slash of pink above the eyebrow that clinched it. The sketch had the scar above the wrong eye—the photograph showed it over the left—but that was clearly a trick of the artist’s memory. This was the man the Lithuanians were looking for, no question.

Lennon read through the rest of the message, though there was little to add to what Connolly had told him over the phone. The prostitute had been picked up on Sackville Street in Manchester city center at around ten o’clock on a Saturday night and was found tied up in the back of Paynter’s van by traffic police on a routine drunk-driving spot check at seven the following morning somewhere near Salford Precinct.

Paynter had offered no explanation as to why the young woman was being held captive. She had received only minor injuries during her ordeal, and when interviewed, she stated that her captor had washed her feet while preaching, comparing his actions to those of Jesus. He had then tried to rape her, but was unable to achieve a sufficient state of arousal to carry the assault through.

Another odd side note was that Paynter had spent some time examining and then cleaning her teeth.

When it went to trial, Paynter pleaded guilty and did not appear on the stand. The proceedings were wrapped up in a day and a half.

After his release, Paynter had gone back to his mother’s home off Eccles Old Road and registered as a sex offender. He kept his head down until his mother died two years later. Days after burying her, he notified Greater Manchester Police that he intended to move to Northern Ireland and live with his aunt in Belfast. He was a builder by trade, so the peace-fueled housing boom would have provided him with plenty of work.

He dutifully registered as a sex offender with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, reporting in when he was required to do so for the next year.

And then he vanished.

The investigating officers had done as much as they could, questioning everyone who knew him—and there weren’t many who did—and had come up with nothing. He’d behaved himself since his release, and resources were tight, so his disappearance was not given a great deal of attention after a few weeks.

The aunt had sworn blind she had no idea where he’d gone, the accountant who filed his last tax return had died of a heart attack, and the building contractor who gave him most of his work had pulled up stakes and moved to Spain as soon as the housing market started to deflate.

Which left Lennon back at the start of the trail, at the home of Sissy Reid, Paynter’s aunt, whom he had lived with when he first came to Belfast.

He stashed his phone away and opened the car door. A blast of cold made him curse and shiver. He climbed out, his feet crunching in snow that had not yet turned to the grayish-brown slush he was more familiar with, and locked the car.

No footprints blemished the white covering on the garden path. He was the first to call here since the snow had begun in earnest that morning, and it looked like no one had exited by the front door in that time either. The windows showed no light.

Was there even anyone here? The notes had said the aunt had no other family, but perhaps she was spending Christmas with a friend.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Lennon said to himself, his lone voice sounding hard and dry in the winter air.

He opened the gate and trudged up to the door.

No bell.

He knocked and waited.

50

H
ERKUS FOUND THE
cab driver playing a quiz machine in a chip shop on the Antrim Road. The drive there had been quick now that the Christmas shoppers were deserting the city for their warm homes. Even so, Herkus’s patience had worn so thin it had almost disappeared. It wasn’t helped by the throbbing that developed behind his eyes.

Gordie Maxwell had said the driver’s name was Mackenzie, that he’d be recognizable by the crude UVF tattoo on the back of his hand.

When Mackenzie realized he was being watched, he turned to Herkus, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Jesus, Gordie said you were a big fucker. He wasn’t joking.”

Herkus took the envelope from his pocket and showed it to Mackenzie. “This man. Who is he?”

Mackenzie turned back to his game. “Gordie said there’d be a couple of quid in it for me.”

“Depend what you tell me,” Herkus said.

Mackenzie smirked. “And what I tell you depends on what the money’s like. Christmas costs an awful lot these days, and these is hard times and all.”

The pain scratched at the inside of Herkus’s skull. He cleared his throat. “I ask one time more. Who is he?”

Mackenzie faced him. “Listen, you Polish cunt, I’m not some hood you can fuck about. You ask anyone around here about me, they’ll tell you—”

Herkus punched him in the balls. Hard.

Mackenzie collapsed in a breathless red-faced heap.

The girl behind the counter squealed. Herkus pointed a scowl and a thick finger at her, and she became quiet and still.

He crouched down over Mackenzie, who lay in a fetal position, his hands cupping his groin.

“I am not Polish,” he said. “Now tell me who is this man.”

Mackenzie went to argue, but Herkus seized his face in one huge hand.

“I am bad mood,” he said. “Very tired. Don’t make fight with me or I hurt you very bad. You understand?”

Mackenzie nodded.

Herkus released his face from his grip. “Okay. So tell me.”

“All right,” Mackenzie said. “I don’t know for sure if it’s him or not, but there was this fella I used to pick up from some of Roscoe Patterson’s places. You know, where he runs the girls out of. He never used to say nothing, he was always quiet.

“One of the girls told me he never wanted to do nothing with them, he just wanted to talk to them about religion and stuff, you know, try to convert them. I never thought much of it. There’s some people’s just odd, like.

“Thing is, he always used to get me to drop him somewhere different. Always somewhere round the Cavehill Road, but never at the one place. Like he didn’t want me to know where he lived.”

Herkus pushed the envelope with the drawing into Mackenzie’s face. “This man? This is him?”

“I think so,” Mackenzie said. “Looks like him, anyway, with that scar and all. But this one time, I picked him up from somewhere out near Newtownards and brought him back to the Cavehill Road. The fare was like twelve pound or something, and he gave me the money and got out. But then after I drove off I sees, fuck, he only gave me a fiver and two ones.”