Stolen Souls jli-3

by Stuart Neville

  His balance gone, Lennon tumbled headfirst down the rest of the stairs, the wood slamming into his shoulders, his elbows, his knees as he turned end over end. The concrete floor struck his chin, and he tasted blood as his vision blackened.

  The world skipped a beat, and he was on his back, staring at a bare lightbulb, his hands empty by his sides. A broad shape moved into his line of sight, blotting out the bulb’s painful glow. A moon face smiled down at him.

  “When will you people ever learn?” Paynter asked.

  Lennon blinked up at him, coughed as he swallowed his own blood.

  Paynter hunkered down and pressed the pistol’s muzzle to Lennon’s forehead.

  “You can’t beat me,” he said. “Not when I’ve got the Lord on my side.”

  66

  EDWIN PAYNTER HAD never held a gun before. When he grabbed it from the floor, he wasn’t sure if it was as simple as pulling the trigger, or if there was some trick he wasn’t aware of. For all he knew, he might end up having to throw it at the policeman.

  But it was indeed as simple as pulling the trigger. It had sent a shock up through his elbow and into his shoulder, and his arm tingled. And his ears whistled. And it caused a heat and hardness in his groin.

  Now he had the policeman at his mercy, blinking stupidly up at him like the dog he had owned as a teenager—the dog that had continued to gaze at him with witless adoration, even as he calmly kicked it over and over again until its eyes dimmed and its tongue sagged in its reddened sputum.

  Paynter liked this gun. It was noisy and it hurt his arm, but it felt good to use it. He looked at the policeman’s gun lying a few feet away and wondered if it had the same kind of bullets. It appeared identical to the one he now pressed against the policeman’s forehead.

  “Have you ever shot anyone?” Paynter asked.

  The policeman hesitated. “No.”

  “I don’t believe you. Have you ever been shot?”

  “Yes,” the policeman said.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you scared now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Paynter said. “I am an instrument of the Lord, and fear is the only proper response. It took me years to learn that. When people looked at me strange, when girls didn’t want to talk to me, I thought there was something wrong with me. But there wasn’t. They were acting like they were supposed to act. Afraid.”

  He stood upright, keeping the pistol aimed at the policeman’s head.

  “What did he say your name was? Lennon, I think. Well, Mr. Lennon, it’s time I was going.”

  The policeman’s breathing quickened, his chest rising and falling. Paynter tightened his finger on the trigger, feeling the pressure, the hair’s breadth between terror and forever silent. The policeman screwed his eyes shut and raised his hands in some pointless effort to shield himself.

  Enough, Paynter thought, just—

  The floor rushed up at him and the pistol boomed, sending the bullet into the concrete. He had a moment to wonder what had slammed into him, sending him sprawling on the floor, before something hard struck the back of his head.

  67

  LENNON FELT RATHER than saw the girl slam into Paynter. He’d seen her coming, covered his head with his forearms, and weathered the battering of elbows, knees, and feet.

  The girl let out an animal shriek as she set about her captor with the chair that was still bound to one of her wrists. Lennon scrambled back as she raised it and brought it down on Paynter’s head. He kicked to untangle his feet from the other man’s and rolled to his side to reclaim his Glock.

  Paynter groaned and tried to deflect the blows with his hands, but the girl’s determination got the better of him. For a few seconds, it seemed he had given in, but then he turned and struck out with his boot. He caught the chair, throwing the girl’s balance.

  Lennon got to his feet and raised the Glock. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll put one in you, I swear to Christ.”

  Paynter stared up at him for a moment, incredulity on his face, before a high peal of laughter escaped him.

  The girl went to swing the chair at him again, but Lennon forced himself between her and Paynter.

  “What’s so bloody funny?” he asked.

  “You swear to Christ? You think the Lord Jesus cares what promises you make?”

  Lennon struggled for an answer. When one wouldn’t come, he did the only other thing he could think of: he kicked Paynter hard in the balls.

  Paynter doubled up and rolled onto his side, his face turning first red then purple.

  The girl lay curled against the wall, muttering something. Somewhere outside, in the cold night, sirens rose and fell. Lennon crouched beside her, said, “It’s all right. Help’s coming.”

  Paynter groaned and squirmed.

  “You move, and I’ll shoot,” Lennon said. “Understand?”

  Paynter did not respond. Instead, he retched and spat on the floor.

  Lennon kept an eye on him as he listened to the girl. Her words came tumbling one after the other, thick with her Slavic accent, a language he didn’t understand or even recognize. Lithuanian? Latvian? Polish?

  Whatever she said, she repeated it over and over until it sounded like some mantra, a deranged prayer to an ignorant god.

  Lennon spared her a glance. “Do you speak English?”

  The sirens drew close, along with the sound of engines pushed into anger.

  “What’s your name?” Lennon asked.

  Still she repeated the words, blurring and smearing them until he couldn’t tell where the prayer ended and began again. It climbed in pitch, punctuated by desperate inhalations.

  Lennon grabbed her wrist. “What are you saying?”

  She gasped and stared as if woken from a nightmare. For a moment, Lennon thought he was looking at Ellen stirred from her night terrors.

  The girl blinked and said, “Please, sir, I want to go home.”

  68

  STRAZDAS HAD BEEN sitting slumped on the floor for so long, his back against the base of the couch, he’d lost track of time. His head jerked up when his phone rang. He decided to ignore it for the moment. Instead, he focused on the suite’s large flatscreen television, unnaturally bright in the darkened room, the colors jarring his retinas with their intensity.

  It appeared to be some old comedy show, with two men, one small and old, the other middle-aged but trying to play younger, both of them scruffy, arguing over Christmas decorations in a wretched house.

  Was this what people here found funny? Pathetic men with miserable lives? Did it make them feel better about themselves to laugh at the poor souls who were unhappier than them?

  The elderly wretch on the television screeched while the younger one scowled and grumbled, called the other a dirty old man.

  Strazdas laughed, but he wasn’t sure why.

  The phone fell silent, and in the absence of noise, Strazdas noticed the pain that nestled inside his skull, curled above his eyes.

  What had he been doing sitting here?

  Oh, yes. Drinking.

  He had taken a bottle of wine from the minibar an hour ago. His nerves had been jangling more and more as this damned city fell into darkness, a heavy quiet settling on the street outside as it emptied. The silence had been so thick he imagined he could hear the blood in his veins charging around his body. A less sane man than he might have believed that the cold and the dark, borne on soundless air, were invading the hotel, creeping up its stairs, stalking its corridors.

  But he was a sane man, and he believed no such thing.

  Not really.

  More cocaine did not make him feel better, and he began to suspect that it might even be the cause of his anxiety. So he had opened the little fridge that was hidden inside a cabinet and chosen a bottle of white wine. He had tried to read the label, but his eyes seemed unable to pin the words down. He unscrewed the cap
, put the bottle to his lips, and swallowed. Arturas Strazdas did not drink alcohol often, so he did not find the taste, or more specifically, the sensation of the liquid in his throat, at all pleasant. But still, he persevered.

  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

  THERE 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

  LENNON 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.”