Stolen Souls (31 page)
Authors: Stuart Neville
He restarted the engine and pulled away from the curb, once more picking his way through the frozen streets.
After several minutes of silence, Galya asked, “Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “But I know who sent him.”
“Who?”
“Arturas Strazdas,” he said. “The brother of the man you killed.”
The woman at the hospital had explained the aftermath of Galya’s actions to her in a soft, sad voice. At the time, it seemed like a story, a tale about some other girl who had been brought to a strange city to be bought and sold.
“I didn’t want to kill that man,” Galya said. “I didn’t want these things to happen.”
“I know you didn’t,” Lennon said. “But I don’t think that matters to him.”
He turned left onto a roundabout, then exited to a long, straight road. Lennon slowed the car as they approached a cluster of buildings surrounded by a high wall. Floodlights cut through the fog that covered the site. Next to a closed pair of gates were emblazoned the words:
LADAS DRIVE STATION, POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHER IRELAND
.
Lennon stopped the car and shut the engine off. He stared at the building.
“Is this where you’re taking me?” Galya asked.
“Yes,” Lennon said. “It was, anyway.”
“Was?”
He sat silent for a moment, his forearms resting on the steering wheel, thinking, his breath misting the car’s windshield.
“Please, what is wrong?”
He did not answer.
“Out here, on the streets, it is not safe,” Galya said. “We should go in that place.”
“No,” Lennon said.
“Why?” Galya asked.
He took a mobile phone from his pocket and searched for a number.
T
HE TELEPHONE JARRED
Strazdas from his bloodied dreams. He sat upright on the bed, still naked, still sweating and shivering. His heart hammered in his chest as his lungs tried to catch up. A splintering spear of pain shot from the center of his forehead to the base of his skull to dissipate through his neck and shoulders. He pressed the heel of his hand to his brow.
The phone rang again. Strazdas checked the clock: almost eleven. He had slept for less than an hour. That made no more than three hours out of the previous seventy-two.
He reached for the phone before it could tear at his nerves again with its shrill voice.
“Yes?”
“Good evening, Mr. Strazdas, reception calling. I have a Mr. Lennon on the line. Shall I put him through?”
Strazdas swallowed. “Yes.”
“Go ahead,” the receptionist said.
“You should hire some better help,” Lennon said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Strazdas said.
“I mean whoever you sent to do your dirty work, they fucked it up.”
“I don’t know what you refer to.”
“We got away, the girl and me.”
“Which girl?”
“I’ve been thinking, though.”
“Mr. Lennon, perhaps you should talk to my—”
“How would he know I’d been called back to the station?” Lennon asked.
“You should talk to my lawyer, the gentleman you met—” “And how would he know what route I’d take?”
“Mr. Lennon, I am going to hang up now.”
“Is it Dan Hewitt? Is that who you’ve got inside? He sold me out before, and he’d do it ag—”
Strazdas returned the handset to its cradle and cursed the soul of his brother for getting himself killed in this wretched place.
L
ENNON RE TURNED THE
phone to his coat pocket. As he did so, he felt the passport tucked in there. He withdrew it and opened it to the data page, the image of a girl looking back at him through the laminate. A girl who did not sit next to him in the Audi’s passenger seat. But she had those blue eyes, the almost unnaturally fine features, the high cheekbones, the yellow hair.
He turned his gaze to Galya, held the passport up close to her face so he could see them together.
“What do you look at?” she asked.
“It might be enough,” he said.
“What is enough?”
“That I’m a fucking idiot,” he said as he put the car into gear and drove past the gates of the police station, leaving it behind until the fog swallowed it.
* * *
H
E TOOK THE
Crumlin Road, then the Ligoniel Road, heading west into the countryside instead of north toward the motorway, stopping only once to use a cash point. The damaged car would attract traffic cops on the lookout for Christmas drunk drivers, and he couldn’t risk being pulled over.
The motorway would have been faster, better lit and with less ice, but the back roads carried less traffic. He kept his speed down, watched for ice, and studied road signs. Even on these roads, the journey should have been no more than forty to forty-five minutes, but the conditions meant they’d been travelling that long with no sign of their destination when Lennon’s mobile rang.
He checked the display. Sergeant Connolly’s number.
Why was he calling? He should have been at home with his family, enjoying Christmas like any other normal human.
“What’s up?” Lennon asked.
“Where are you?” Connolly asked.
“Driving,” Lennon said. He kept one hand on the wheel, his eyes on the fog-covered road.
“I called Ladas Drive, they said you were due there.”
“I didn’t make it that far yet,” Lennon said, avoiding the truth. “The weather.”
“Well, something’s come up,” Connolly said. “I got a call from a mate, a constable I was paired with when I came out of Garnerville. He was one of the boys watching Paynter at the hospital. I thought you’d want to know what he said.”
“Go on,” Lennon said.
“Paynter committed suicide.”
Lennon eased the Audi to the side of the road, slowed to a halt, flicked his hazard lights on.
“How?” he asked.
“He faked a seizure,” Connolly said. “In the commotion, he managed to grab an officer’s Glock. There was a standoff for a minute or two, at least that’s what I was told, and they thought he was going to make a break for it.”
“But he didn’t,” Lennon said.
“No,” Connolly said. “He announced that he’d killed eight women, and had no regrets about it. Then he put the gun in his mouth and blew his brains out.”
“Christ,” Lennon said.
“Anyway, I thought you’d want to know straight away.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Lennon said. “Here, listen.”
“Yeah?”
“I might be off work for a few days. Maybe longer.”
“What, now? But there’s—”
“You’ll know all about it tomorrow. Just do me a favor, all right?”
“What’s that?”
“Watch your back,” Lennon said. “Things could get tricky over this case. Just be careful what you say and who you say it to. Especially if anyone from Special Branch comes calling.”
“C3?” Connolly asked. “What’s Paynter got to do with them?”
“It’s complicated,” Lennon said. “Just keep your head down, all right?”
“All right,” Connolly said. “Listen, Inspector, are you okay? You’ve been good to me, so, you know, if there’s anything I can do for you, I will.”
“I’m fine,” Lennon said. “Don’t worry about me. Just look out for yourself.”
He hung up and dropped the phone into the car’s cup holder. Galya stirred in the seat next to him. She’d fallen asleep before the city had faded from around them. Now she watched him with confused and heavy eyes.
“Something has happened?” she asked.
He considered keeping it from her, but knew there was no point. She faced enough dangers. Knowing one of them had died couldn’t hurt her.
“Edwin Paynter,” he said. “The man who kept you in that house. He’s dead. He killed himself.”
She made the sign of the cross and stared straight ahead, no emotion on her face.
“He deserved to die,” Lennon said. “For what he did to you. And maybe some others.”
“No,” she said. “Only God makes to die. It’s not your thing to say. Not his thing. Only God’s.”
Lennon hadn’t the will to argue her point, so he put the Audi into gear and released the hand brake. Ten, fifteen minutes, he thought, and they’d be at the guesthouse. He set off into the fog, wishing he believed in her childish dream of justice.
G
ALYA SPENT THE
rest of the journey in thought. The man who had held her captive had called himself a pastor, a Christian, but she wondered if he even had a soul. If he did, where had it gone when he took his own life?
How did she feel about his death? Relief? Satisfaction? Pity? All of those things, but if she looked deep into her heart, she also felt anger. Anger that he would not face her and know that she had got the better of him.
She scolded herself for gloating, even if it was only in her own mind. Mama had not raised her to be spiteful. But she had survived, and she could at least be proud. Galya let her mind wander, imagined she had died back there in that cellar, and this gray world was her afterlife, journeying forever in darkness and mist. The urge to cry came upon her, and she closed her eyes against it.
When she opened them again, they had pulled into a courtyard overlooked by a grand country house. Lennon parked the car in the farthest corner, beneath the boughs of a winter-stripped tree.
“We’re here,” he said.
He climbed out, closed his door, and walked around the car. Galya allowed him to take her hand and help her to her feet. The horizon glowed with a mass of lights, iridescent in the fog.
“What is over there?’ she asked.
“The airport,” Lennon said.
“Where is this?” she asked.
“It’s a guesthouse,” he said. “Like a hotel. We’re staying here tonight. Come on, let’s get out of the cold.”
He closed the car, locked it, and guided her toward the house. Lights burned behind closed curtains on the ground floor. Lennon pressed a doorbell. A few moments later a curtain peeled back at one of the windows, and a lady of senior years peered out.
The curtain fell back into place before a light came on in the hall, visible through the rippled glass of the door. The lady’s silhouette appeared on the other side. She slid a security chain into place and opened the door by a few inches, worry written plain on her face.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“We need a room,” Lennon said.
“At this time?” she asked, her eyebrows arching upward. “On Christmas night?”
“I know it’s last minute,” Lennon said. He placed his arm around Galya’s shoulder. “My girlfriend’s mother, back in Latvia, she’s taken ill. We’ve a flight first thing in the morning.”
She looked at each of them in turn. “Well, seeing as I’ve no stable or manger for you, I’d better let you in. Should I be expecting three wise men?”
L
ENNON THANKED
G
OD
that Galya had the sense to hold her questions until they got to the room. Once inside, she ignored the flowery curtains and stale cabbage smell of the place and sat on the end of the bed.
“Where will we fly to?” she asked.
“Not we,” Lennon said. “Just you.”
“Where will
I
fly to?”
“I don’t know,” he said, pacing in front of her. “The earliest flight I can get you. As close to your home as I can get you.”
“Why? Because that man in the car?”
“Yes,” Lennon said. “Strazdas has someone on the inside. It’s the only way anyone could have known to come after us when we drove to the station. And I’ve a good idea who it is.”
“Who?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to tell her it was DCI Dan Hewitt of C3 Intelligence Branch, but realized the knowledge could bring her greater danger than she already faced.
“Just someone,” he said.
“A bad man?”
“Yes,” Lennon said. “He used to be a friend of mine. He’s dirty.”
“Dirty?”
“He takes bribes, money, from bad people.”
“Will you arrest him?” she asked. “Put him in prison?”
Lennon laughed in spite of himself. “It’s not as easy as that. And he has a grudge against me.”
“You mean he doesn’t like you?” She smirked. “I think you don’t like him.”
“No, I don’t,” Lennon said. “But if I’m right, then no police station is safe for you. It means you have to get out of here. Go home.”
She nodded. “Home. I want to go home and see my brother. But you will be in trouble.”
“Maybe,” Lennon said. “Probably. But I’m getting you on a plane anyway.”
* * *
T
HE LANDLADY SHOWED
Lennon to the computer in the guesthouse lounge. It was an old machine, and the Internet connection crawled, but within a few minutes he had established that the only flight that could do Galya any good was a seven a.m. plane to Kraków. He knew nothing about public transport in Eastern Europe, but he had to hope she could get a train from there to Kiev, and from there to whatever village she came from.
But the price. He had a moment of panic as he tried to remember how much credit he had left on his MasterCard. Not much, but maybe enough. He wouldn’t know until he tried, and the website would either accept or reject his payment.
Relief came as he entered the card number and he was presented with the confirmation page, and a link for online check in. It seemed to take an age for the ancient printer to spit out a fuzzy bar code on an A4 page.
The landlady watched from the doorway as he worked. “All done?” she asked when he stood up.
“Yes, thank you,” he said. “Sorry to have disturbed your Christmas.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. She brushed his arm as he passed. “She seems like a nice girl. I hope you can sort out whatever trouble you’re in.”
Lennon almost argued, almost said there was no trouble other than the ill mother he’d told her about when they arrived. Instead, he said, “So do I.”
* * *
H
E CLIMBED THE
two flights of stairs to the room and paused outside the door. Susan would be waiting for him. He’d promised he would join her on the sofa when he returned, drink some wine with her while their respective little girls slept. With a sigh, he took his phone from his pocket. She answered on the first ring.