“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.
83
GALYA 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?”
84
LENNON THANKED GOD 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.”
* * *
THE 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.”
* * *
HE 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 thei
r respective little girls slept. With a sigh, he took his phone from his pocket. She answered on the first ring.
“Something’s come up,” he said.
“Doesn’t it always?” she asked, and disconnected.
“Fuck,” he said to himself.
Galya lay sound asleep when he entered the room. He took a seat by the window, facing the door. He placed his Glock on the table next to him and set the alarm on his phone for six.
Five and a half hours of sleep, if he were lucky. But he had never been lucky.
85
AFTER AN HOUR of phone calls, and another hour of self-punishment, Arturas Strazdas began to pull himself together. He had been through the process before, reassembling himself from the pieces that had scattered over the previous hours and days.
He always began with a period of silence and contemplation. Sitting quite still, recounting every wound he had inflicted on himself, remembering that he was a sane man, and sane men did not harm themselves like this. Sane men channeled their rage, used it to fuel their lives, not destroy them.
The contact had said the girl’s elimination was now a matter of when, not if. Strazdas had no reason to stay in this city a minute longer than necessary. He should be in the taxi provided for him, the contact said, and on his way to the airport by ten in the morning. If not, a police car would come for him instead. And that would take him to a station for questioning.
One or the other, the contact said, simple as that.
So Strazdas took him at his word and set about his own reconstruction.
Once he felt sufficiently balanced in his mind, he shaved and showered before dressing himself in a fresh shirt and his good travel suit. His stomach gargled, and he checked the bedside clock.
Almost five in the morning.
Would they provide room service at this time? Some toast, perhaps, and a boiled egg?
He would try. A sane man has to eat. And Arturas Strazdas was, most definitely, a sane man.
86
FOG STILL LAY heavy on the courtyard when Lennon helped Galya to the car, dawn two hours away. Ten minutes to the airport, he said, then she had half an hour to get through security and onto the plane. He pressed the documents into her hand. She had to go into the terminal herself, he said, and walk straight to security. All she had to do was show them the printed boarding pass and her passport.
Simple, he said.
Galya did not believe him.
She remained silent as Lennon drove. The car’s headlights barely penetrated the fog, and the hot water he’d poured on the windows to defrost them had frozen, making the darkened world appear to ripple and distort.
The vague form of the airport emerged ahead, revealed only by the glowing haze of its lights. Lennon steered into a car park facing the terminal. Galya could barely make out the shape of the building, and could see no one walking to or from it, but she knew they were there, hidden by the gray.
Lennon shut off the engine. He reached into his pocket and handed her a paper bundle. When she felt the coarseness and weight of it, she knew it was money.
“Three hundred and fifty,” he said. “It’s all I had. You should be able to change it in Kraków and get a train to Kiev. Once you get home, take your brother and leave. Don’t stay there. Strazdas will find you if you do.”
“Mama’s farm,” she said. “It’s our home. Where will we live?”
“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “You’ll figure it out. You’re smart and you’re strong. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
Galya thought about it and realized that, yes, she would. Back home, the man whom Mama owed so much money to, he could take the farm. Galya and her brother would be free of him and his debt. She could live with that. She looked at Lennon’s lined face, saw the scars beneath his skin.
“Your friend Susan,” she said.
Lennon paused, then asked, “What about her?”
“You should make her happy,” Galya said. “Then she will make you happy.”
Lennon smiled. “Maybe,” he said.
“No maybe,” she said. “Only yes.”
“Let’s go,” Lennon said, reaching for the door handle. “You need to get on that plane.”
He climbed out and walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and helped her out.
“Remember,” he said as he closed the door. “Don’t talk to anyone if you don’t have to. Go straight to security. They should be boarding by the time you get through. Go straight to the gate and get on the plane. That’s all you have to do.”
“Thank you,” Galya said. She hesitated a moment, then wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders.
He resisted for a moment, then returned the hug.
“Make Susan happy,” she said.
“I’ll try,” he said.
A few feet away, his voice deadened by the cold, someone said, “Jack.”
87
LENNON LOOKED FOR the source of the voice, moved between it and Galya, one hand already reaching for the holster attached to his belt.
The tall and slender shape of a man stood beyond the Audi. He limped forward, his left hand raised, a revolver gripped in it, his right arm held tight to his side as if it pained him. Dried blood drew deep red lines across his cheek, cuts and grazes crisscrossed his forehead and jawline, his hooded jacket torn.
“Connolly,” Lennon said.
He reached behind with one hand and shoved Galya away, his other freeing his Glock from its holster.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Connolly said.
The first shot hit Lennon’s left shoulder like a punch from a heavyweight, threw him against the Audi. He kept his legs under him as adrenalin hit his system ahead of the pain. By instinct, his right hand came up, his Glock squared on Connolly’s chest. Before he could get a round off, he felt a punch to his gut, then another, and his legs deserted him.
Lennon went down on his back, his right hand still raised. In the periphery of his vision, he saw Galya crouch over him, her mouth wide, but he heard no scream.
“Run,” he said.
Connolly entered his line of sight, his pistol aimed not at Lennon, but somewhere over his head.
“Run,” Lennon said. “Now.”
He fired at Connolly’s body, no idea if his aim was true or not. Connolly jerked and fell against the side of the van, his face twisted in pain.
Lennon took a breath, held it, steadied his right hand, the Glock’s sight lined on Connolly’s chest. Connolly brought his left hand up, the pistol looking back at Lennon. As a hard chill spread from Lennon’s gut, he squeezed the trigger, saw Connolly’s muzzle flash, saw him go down, saw a deep, cold blackness where the world had once been.
88
GALYA RAN AT first, her mind closed to the pain, the money and documents clutched to her chest. She slowed to a walk as the building came into view and crossed the road that cut in front of the terminal entrance. Airport policemen ran into the fog, following the sound of the gunfire. They did not notice her.
The doors swished aside and a flood of warmth washed over her. More policemen hurried to the exit, static chatter on their radios, concern on their faces. Still, they did not notice her.
She followed a sign saying Departures. The arrows led her through shops and restaurants, people drinking coffee, eating toast, cases stacked on trolleys. They did not know the world they lived in, the dangers that hid beyond their vision.
Galya did.
But she kept that knowledge buried, forced it down inside, in case it might show on her face as she approached the security man who waited ahead.
“Boarding pass, please,” he said.
Galya handed it over.
He looked at her clothing, a glimmer of distaste on his features. Galya read his thoughts. Just another migrant, another miserable parasite leaving its host now the money had burnt away.
She smiled for him when he scanned the pass and handed it back.
“Better get a shake on,” he said.
“It’s probably boarding by now.”
“Thank you,” Galya said.
She joined the short queue for the security search, obediently placed the shoes and coat Susan had given her in the trays provided, the bandages on her feet hidden by thick socks, and patiently waited until it was her turn to pass through the magnetic gate. On the other side, she did not complain when the female security guard patted her down.
A short walk took her to the departure gate where a flight attendant gave her documents only the briefest of glances. Another walk across the tarmac to the airplane, and then she boarded. She found row twelve and sat down.
When the lady in the seat next to her asked if she was all right, Galya said yes, thank you, and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve.
Everyone believes in God when they fly, she thought.
She said a prayer for Jack Lennon’s soul.
89
STRAZDAS SAT IN the hotel foyer, his suitcase at his feet. Eight forty-five, the contact had said. He checked his watch. Eight forty-seven.
His phone rang.
“The taxi is on its way,” the contact said. “Get in it, get on the plane.”
“And the girl?”
“I suggest you give the driver a decent tip,” the contact said. “It’s Boxing Day, after all. He’s done me many favors in the past.”
“What about the girl?” Strazdas asked.
Silence for a moment, then, “She got away. It went wrong.”
Strazdas took his knuckle between his teeth and bit down hard, tasted salt. He breathed through his nose, a low groan resonating in his throat.
“It’s done, and that’s all there is to it. A good man died in the process. Just remember that. He didn’t have to but for your stupid bloody vendetta. Now let it go.”
Strazdas noticed the receptionist’s attention on him. He forced himself to release his knuckle form his teeth. Something hot dripped on his chin. He wiped it away and smiled at her. She turned her gaze back to her paperwork.
“You hear me, Arturas?” the contact asked. “It’s over. There’s nothing more can be done.”
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