Stolen Souls

by Stuart Neville

  He trudged back over to Lennon’s side, peeling off the surgical gloves he’d worn for the examination, as brief as it was. “It’s a cold night to be out killing anyone,” he said.

  “True,” Lennon said.

  “Shame about the young lad, the harbor policeman. How bad was it?”

  “Bad enough,” Lennon said. “But he’ll pull through.”

  “Good, good,” the doctor said. “Well, if there’s nothing else?”

  “No,” Lennon said, “that’ll be all. Thank you.”

  They shook hands, and the doctor walked back to his car. Connolly approached. “I’ve got a name,” he said.

  He’d spent the last fifteen minutes in his patrol car, talking to the duty officer at his station, having him check records for public order arrests Connolly had made over the last few months.

  “I knew I’d seen him before,” he said. “Tomas Strazdas. Lithuanian. I lifted him for disorderly conduct back in October. He’d been giving the nightclub doormen grief. He got an evening in the cells and a caution.”

  “Is that all?” Lennon asked.

  “He’d given one of the doormen a good dig in the mouth,” Connolly said. “The doorman was all for pressing charges, until the next morning.”

  “You think someone got to him?”

  “Maybe,” Connolly said. “I remember some big fella, another Lithuanian, lifted him from the station the next day. I thought it strange at the time. The big fella was kind of, what’s the word? When you’re talking to your boss?”

  “Deferential?” Lennon suggested.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Deferential. Like Tomas here was the big fella’s boss.”

  “I think we’ll have to do a bit of digging into poor Tomas’s background. You up for some detective work?”

  Connolly’s face stiffened with the effort of suppressing a smile. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good,” Lennon said. “I’ll clear it with DCI Thompson. When you’re done here, go home and get some rest. See me in my office at eleven.”

  Connolly’s happy glow intensified with a layer of hope. “I’m due on night shift tomorrow evening.”

  “On Christmas Eve? I’ll straighten that out, don’t worry. You’ll get to spend the night with your family.”

  Connolly could hold his grin back no longer. “Thank you,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” Lennon said. “Just be sure to make the most of the opportunity. You do some solid work for me, I’ll see it doesn’t go unnoticed by the higher-ups.”

  A marked four-by-four pulled up on the other side of the crime-scene tape. Two men emerged, a forensics officer and a photographer. There was no point in pulling in a full team before daylight. Until then, they’d erect a tent over the body and take some cursory photographs.

  Lennon doubted he’d be away from here before morning. He’d call back home to see Ellen before heading into the office to draw up his notes for DCI Thompson. He’d already been penciled in for duty on Christmas Eve—thanks, he was certain, to Dan Hewitt’s influence—but he would have been home by early evening to spend the rest of the night with his daughter. With any luck, he still would, but he’d be too tired for much more than falling asleep on the couch again.

  The previous Christmas had slipped by almost unnoticed. Apart from the nightmares, Ellen had been quiet for the first couple of months after her mother’s death, like the shadow of a child. Lennon had sat with her for hours at a time, trying to coax her into talking, only to be met with her polite silence.

  Now and then, she would hold his hand. Seldom at first, but more frequently as time went on. Often he sensed it was more for his benefit than hers.

  He’d found it difficult to face himself in those weeks after Marie died. It took an almost physical effort not to ask himself that question over and over again: What if he hadn’t left Marie and Ellen alone in that flat in Carrickfergus?

  Lennon had a couple of sessions with the counselor the force provided. He talked over the possible answers with the psychologist, and none of them helped. If he’d been there when the killer came for the child and her mother, could Lennon have defended them? Perhaps. Or maybe he would have died too, and they would have been taken anyway. Then there was the question of whether Lennon had been betrayed. DCI Gordon had called him away from the flat, only to be executed less than two hours later. Had Gordon been part of it? Had he set Lennon up, then been betrayed in turn? If so, and Lennon had not left Marie and Ellen alone, would the killer have gone there for them, or bided his time until they were more vulnerable?

  Trying to answer those questions was like catching falling rain with your hands; for every drop that landed in your palm, a thousand more fell freely to the ground. The futility of it became clear. Lennon couldn’t change what had happened. Instead, he would give Ellen the best life he knew how.

  Things were bearable, at first. Her silence was a relief, in a way, even though he knew he was a coward for feeling so. But then the anger came. Bright flashes, like lightning from a blue sky. Anything could set the child off. She’d be playing with a doll, and when it wouldn’t hold the pose she’d arranged it in, she would scream and thrash and bite. Sometimes she would break things in her fury; whether they were her possessions or her father’s, it didn’t seem to matter. Each flare would burn itself out as quickly as it ignited, and she would carry on as if nothing had happened.

  It was around that time that Bernie McKenna, Marie’s aunt, began to call. She was a dry-hearted spinster who couldn’t crack a smile if God himself had come down from above and told her a knock-knock joke. Lennon agreed to her requests to see Ellen, thinking contact with her wider family could only help her deal with her new situation. He never thought for a moment it would lead to Bernie suggesting, in a tone of labored innocence, that the child might be better off with her maternal relatives. Sure, a single man like him, how could he raise a little girl? Not that they’d think ill of him for giving her up, of course, but a man is a man, and if he worked the odd hours of a police officer, how could Ellen have any stability?

  Lennon would never admit it as long as he lived, but a small and frightened part of him did wonder if Bernie McKenna was right. After all, he had abandoned Ellen while she was still in the womb and had no contact with her for the first six years of her life. Then he would remember she was the only family he had. At least, the only family that acknowledged his existence since his mother and sisters had disowned him when he joined the force.

  No, he would not give his daughter up. Was that selfish of him? Maybe. Probably. But that was the promise he had made to himself when he carried her from that burning building, the building where her mother died, and it was a promise he was going to keep.

  Lennon shivered as he watched the photographer help the forensics officer raise the tent, white PVC over an aluminium frame. It took less than a minute between them, and one more to secure it with pegs.

  He walked to the open flap and stepped inside. The translucent roof allowed the street lighting to penetrate the shell. Lennon stood over the corpse, feeling like a mourner at some strange funeral.

  He wondered who would mourn for Tomas Strazdas.

  11

  MY NAME IS Galya Petrova,” she said. “Please help me.”

  “Where are you?” the man asked.

  “ “I don’t know,” she said. “Under a bridge. Near water.”

  “Look around you,” he said.

  “There is a big building,” she said. “Glass and metal painted red. I hear cars on the bridge. There are cranes and fences all around.”

  “I understand,” he said. “That’s the Royal Mail building you’re talking about. Don’t move from there. Stay under the bridge. Stay in the dark. I’ll find you.”

  Tears climbed up from Galya’s throat. “Thank you,” she said, and hung up. She retreated further into the shadows, clutching the phone to her breast as if it were a newborn infant.

  It had only been this afternoon—no, yesterday afternoo
n— that Rasa had come to the bedroom where they had kept her locked up for almost a week. She told Galya she would start work that day.

  Galya knew what kind of work.

  Rasa had laid out underwear on the bed, tiny sheer things, and placed a pair of shoes on the floor. The shoes had platform soles and heels that were so tall Galya could not possibly have walked in them.

  “Take your clothes off,” Rasa said in stilted Russian. “Put these on.”

  “No,” Galya said.

  Rasa smiled in the tired but patient way a parent does at a slow child. Galya guessed her to be twenty years her senior, maybe more, her face lined by age and tobacco. Rasa dressed like a businesswoman who yearned for younger men. “Don’t be silly,” Rasa said. “You want to look nice for your client, don’t you?”

  Galya backed toward the wall. “Client?”

  “The gentleman who’s coming to see you. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Who is he?” Galya asked.

  “No one,” Rasa said. “Just a nice man.”

  “What does he want?”

  Rasa laughed and sat down on the foot of the bed. “That’s for you to find out. And whatever he wants, you’ll do it for him.”

  “I won’t do—”

  “Whatever he wants,” Rasa said, her voice hard like bones beneath skin. “Come. Sit beside me.”

  Galya pressed her shoulders against the wall, kept her feet planted firm on the floor. “I don’t want to.”

  “Sit,” Rasa said. “Now.”

  Galya moved to the bed and lowered herself onto the mattress, keeping a good meter between her and the other woman. She kept her eyes downward.

  “Are you a virgin?” Rasa asked.

  Galya blushed.

  “Are you?”

  Galya chewed her lip.

  “Answer me,” Rasa said.

  “No,” Galya said.

  “One man?” Rasa asked.

  Galya looked at the wall.

  “Two men? More?”

  “Two,” Galya said, wondering why she told the truth even as she spoke it. “There was a boy back home. We were very young. It was in a field near Mama’s house. It was so quick, he hardly started before he was done, then he ran away. He never spoke to me again. I didn’t sleep for two weeks. Not until the blood came.”

  Rasa’s voice and countenance softened. “And the second man?”

  “Aleksander,” Galya said. She turned to look directly at Rasa. If Rasa recognized the name, she didn’t let on. “In Kiev. The night before we flew to Vilnius. He told me I’d live with a nice Russian family in Dublin, that I’d look after their children, and …”

  “And what?”

  Galya almost said she’d teach them English, that was what Aleksander had told her as they drove the many kilometers from her village near the Russian border to Ukraine’s capital. Aleksander had told her of the life she’d have, of the places she would see, of the money she would make and send back home to her little brother Maksim so he could settle the debts Mama had left behind.

  Aleksander told her about the good life she would have as he took her in his arms in that hotel in Kiev. Galya had never seen such luxury, such thick carpets, sheets made of silk, more food than she could eat. All this would be hers, he said, and he pressed his lips and his groin against her. And she succumbed, despite what Mama would have thought looking down from Heaven, because, dear God, she was grateful. And Aleksander was handsome and tall, with dark eyes and long lashes, and Galya needed to touch something beautiful, just once in her life.

  Her orgasm had come like breaking glass and left her hollow like one of the mannequins she’d seen in the shop windows at the Metrograd center. For a minute, perhaps only a few seconds, she felt she might have loved Aleksander. But the feeling dissolved in her breast, washed away when he handed her a Lithuanian passport with a picture of a girl who looked just enough like Galya Petrova to satisfy a casual glance.

  She boarded the plane alone, the passport clutched in her hand, a joyful fear in her heart. Her nerves sparked with anticipation. She had never flown before and gasped at the sensation of being pushed back into her seat by the speed of the craft. It left the ground, and she made a prayer that God would deliver her safely to Vilnius.

  Looking around, she noticed the faces of other passengers. Whether they laughed with their companions or sat in silence, she saw that same prayer behind all their eyes.

  Everyone believes in God when they fly, she thought.

  Otherwise, who would have the courage?

  * * *

  “AND WHAT?” RASA asked again.

  “Play with them,” Galya said.

  “And now you’re here in Belfast. So what are you going to do?”

  Galya twined her fingers together.

  “So this Aleksander lied to you, and you wound up at that farm, slaving every hour of the day,” Rasa said. “You were filthy when I found you, you stank like a horse. Now look at the nice things I bought for you to wear. And you can make some money, once you’ve paid me back.”

  “Paid you back?”

  “The agency that brought you here. I had to pay them good money to get you out of that farm. How are you going to pay me back?”

  “I didn’t ask—”

  “I don’t care what you asked for,” Rasa said, that hardness in her voice once more. “I took you out of there. It cost me plenty, and you owe me. All you have to do is make the clients happy. Is that so bad? Just do what they ask, smile for them, be pretty.”

  Rasa edged closer to Galya, reached out a hand to brush the hair from her face. “And you’re such a pretty girl, you know.”

  Galya chewed a nail.

  “Like a doll,” Rasa said. “That’s all you have to do. Smile, be pretty, and do what they ask.”

  Galya turned her head to Rasa. “What if I say no?”

  Rasa gave a sad smile. “Then the client will be unhappy,” she said, speaking slowly, the Russian colored by her Lithuanian accent. “And the men who gave you this room and this roof over your head, they will be unhappy. You don’t want to seem ungrateful, do you? You don’t want them to think you’re difficult, hmm? They’ll be upset. They need the money to pay your rent. You don’t want to make them angry, do you?”

  “No,” Galya said, her voice barely audible even to herself.

  “Good girl,” Rasa said. She leaned in and placed a dry kiss on Galya’s cheek. “Do as you’re told and everything will be all right. I promise.”

  And so Galya had taken off the gray tracksuit and plain underwear they’d given her a few days before and put on the lacy things and the shoes she could barely stand in. She had sat there for an hour, goose pimples sprouting on her bare skin, waiting for the client to come. The weeks since she’d flown from Kiev to Vilnius, then Vilnius to Brussels, then Brussels to Dublin, they had blurred into one long, arduous smear, work and sleep, sleep and work, always wet and cold, always dirty, always tired, always aching for home.

  Now she sat in a room with a soft bed, cold but dry, and all she had to do was make a client happy. Could she do such a thing? Maybe, if she forced Mama from her mind.

  She might have done it, might have given herself away, if not for the kind man and the cross on a chain he’d pressed into her hand, and the piece of paper with a telephone number written upon it. The hope he gave her had turned to courage in her heart and blood on her hands.

  “Call me,” he’d said in an accent that was not from Belfast.

  “I can save you,” he said.

  And Galya believed him.

  12

  HE PLACED THE phone back on the table, next to the glass. Condensation beaded on its surface. He brought a thick finger to the moisture, felt the cold on his callused skin.

  She had called sooner than he expected. He had been awake, unable to sleep, nursing a buttermilk shandy. Half a glass of buttermilk, half a glass of lemonade. He took a sip, tasted the sour-sweet mix, and swallowed.

  It usually took days, someti
mes a week or more, before they would call. Sad as it was, it took a good deal of abuse before a girl would seek a way out. But this girl had taken less than twenty-four hours. She must have suffered at the hands of those monsters, but he refused to think about that.

  He had taken a taxi to the apartment that afternoon, not wishing his own vehicle to be seen, and rang the doorbell. A buzzer sounded, and the door unlocked. He let himself in. The older woman waited for him on the landing, dressed far too well for such an occasion.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” she said in her thick accent. “Your first time?”

  “Yes,” he lied.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, showing him into the apartment. “You have nice time.”

  Three men stood inside, huddled in the kitchenette. Two of them were local, going by their tattoos and clothing. The third looked foreign, a big man, all belly and fat fingers.

  He paused in the doorway, unsure if he should proceed.

  One of the local men looked up, barely registered his presence, and fell back into conversation with his friends.

  “Come on,” the woman said. “Don’t be shy.”

  He entered, wondering why he was so nervous. It wasn’t as if this were the first time he had entered such a place. He had done it many times before.

  “Is fifty pounds for massage,” the woman said, holding out her hand.

  “What?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

  “You give fifty for massage,” the woman said. “You want something else, is between you and her.”

  “Ah,” he said. He reached for his wallet, counted out two twenties and a ten, placed them in her hand.

  “Is good,” she said, smiling, showing her yellowed teeth.

  Nicotine, he thought.

  She tucked the notes inside her blouse, pulling aside the fabric of her brassiere. An unnecessary touch, he thought.

  “Come,” she said. “Her name is Olga.”