Stolen Souls (2 page)

Alert now, Lennon went to her bedroom, opened the door, and flicked on the light. Ellen stared at him from under her twisted duvet, no hint of recognition on her face. She screamed again.

Lennon knelt beside the bed, placed a hand on her small cheek. He had learned not to take the child in his arms when she awoke pursued by night terrors, the shock of it too much for her.

“It’s me,” he said. “Daddy’s here. You’re all right.”

Ellen blinked at him, her face softening. He’d almost forgotten how old she looked when she emerged from her nightmares, a girl of seven carrying centuries of pain behind her eyes.

“You were only dreaming,” Lennon said. “You’re safe.”

Her fingers went to her throat, brushed the skin as if it were tender.

“What did you dream about?” he asked.

Ellen frowned and burrowed into her pillow, pulling the duvet up so he could only see the crown of her head.

“You can tell me,” Lennon said. “Might make you feel better.”

She peeked out. “I was all cold and wet, then I couldn’t breathe. I was choking.”

“Like drowning?”

“Uh-uh. Like something around my neck. Then there was this old lady. She wanted to talk to me, but I ran away.”

“Was she scary?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Then why did you run away?”

“Don’t know,” Ellen said.

“You think you can get back to sleep?”

“Don’t know.”

“Can you try?”

“Okay.”

Lennon stroked her hair. “Good girl,” he said.

He watched her in silence as her eyelids drooped and her breathing steadied. The ring of the telephone in the living room caused her to stir for a moment. He held his breath until she settled, exhaled when it seemed the phone had not woken her, and went to answer it.

“It’s Bernie McKenna here,” the caller said, her voice hard.

They had spoken on the phone and in person more times than he could count over the last few months, but still she introduced herself with that stiff formality.

“How are you?” Lennon asked. His only interest in her well-being was to gauge how the conversation might flow. Their discussions rarely went well.

“I’m fine,” she said. She did not enquire after Lennon’s health. “What about Ellen?” she asked instead.

“What about her?” Lennon regretted the hostility that edged into his voice as soon as he’d spoken.

“No need for that tone,” Bernie said, the words delivered in a staccato rhythm, as if squeezed through tight lips. “She’s my grandniece. I’ve every right to ask after her, more right than you—”

“You didn’t want to know her for six years,” Lennon said. He winced.

“Neither did you,” she said.

Lennon swallowed his anger. “Well, she’s fine. She’s in bed.” “Any more dreams?”

“Some.”

Bernie clucked. “Her eyes were hanging on her last time I saw the
cratur
.”

“Some nights are better than others,” Lennon said.

“Did you call Dr. Moran for her?”

“My GP has her on the waiting list for the child psych—”

“But she’ll be waiting for months. Dr. Moran can see her straight away.”

Lennon saw the rest of the conversation spreading out in front of him. He closed his eyes. “I can’t afford to go private,” he said.

“
I
can,” Bernie said. “Michael saw us right. I can spare whatever she needs.”

Lennon had heard rumors of the substantial estate Michael McKenna’s kin had inherited when he got his brains blown out last year. He didn’t doubt Bernie could afford to pass on a few shekels, but the idea of it burned him.

“I don’t want Michael McKenna’s money,” Lennon said.

“And what’s wrong with my brother’s money?”

“I know where it came from.”

He listened to her hard breathing for a few seconds before she said, “I don’t have to take that from the likes of you.”

“Then don’t,” Lennon said. “I’ve things to do, so if—”

“Hold your horses,” Bernie said. “I haven’t even got asking what I called you for.”

He sighed loud enough for her to hear. “All right. What?”

“Christmas.”

“We talked about this already. Ellen’s spending the day with—”

“But her granny wants to see her. That poor woman’s been through hell. Ellen’s all she’s got left of her own daughter. What’s the sense in making the child spend the day all alone in that flat of yours?”

“She won’t be alone. She’ll be with me.”

“She should be with her family,” Bernie said. “Her grandmother, her cousins, all of our ones will be here. Let her have a nice day. A happy day. Just because you’re miserable, don’t make her miserable too.”

“I’m taking her to see her grandmother—
my
mother— then she’s spending the day with me. We’re having dinner with Susan from upstairs, her and her wee girl, Lucy. They’re best friends. She’ll be happy here.”

“You’re taking her to your mother? Sure, what’s the point of that? Your mother hasn’t the wit to know her own children when they’re in front of her, let alone—”

“That’s enough,” Lennon said, his throat tightening. “I have to go.”

“But what about Chr—”

He hung up and placed the handset back on the coffee table, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall. How many times would he have to argue this out with Bernie McKenna? Ever since Marie died, her family had been circling, waiting for him to slip up so they could claim his daughter for their own.

True, he hadn’t been a father to the girl for the first six years of her life, but they had been no more a family to her. Marie’s people had cut her off when she took up with him, a cop, long before Republicans changed the stance they’d held for decades and acknowledged the legitimacy of the police service. Until then, any young Catholic who joined the police immediately became a target for assassination, and anyone who associated with them risked being ostracised from their community. Marie had done just that, and he had repaid her sacrifice by abandoning her when she fell pregnant. These arguments only served to remind him that they had all failed Ellen, and they always left him wishing he had some moral high ground he could take. But there was none. His was the worst betrayal of all, and Bernie McKenna would always hold that over him. Anger bubbled in him after every call, and only force of will would quell it.

Before he could fully calm himself, the phone rang again. He snatched it from the coffee table, ranting before he hit the answer button. “For Christ’s sake, you’re going to wake her up. I am not discussing this anymore, so for the last time, you can—”

“Jack?”

“—shove Christmas up your—”

“Jack?”

Lennon paused. “Who’s this?”

“Chief Inspector Uprichard.”

Lennon sat down on the couch, covered his eyes with his free hand. “No,” he said.

“I need you in, Jack,” Uprichard said.

“No,” Lennon said. “Not again. I told you, didn’t I? We agreed on this. I’m not doing nights over Christmas. I can’t.”

“DI Shilliday’s taken ill,” Uprichard said. “I’ve no one else to cover for him.”

“No,” Lennon said.

“It’ll be an easy night. It’s quiet out. You can sleep in your office. Just so I have someone on site, that’s all.”

“No,” Lennon said, but there was no conviction behind it.

“I’m not really asking you, Jack,” Uprichard said, his voice hardening. “Don’t make me order you.”

“Fuck,” Lennon said.

“Now, there’s no call for that.”

“Yes there bloody is,” Lennon said as he stood. “That’s the fourth time this month.”

He almost said he knew where it was coming from, that DCI Dan Hewitt of C3 Intelligence Branch was pulling strings to make his life difficult, but he thought better of it.

“I’m sorry,” Uprichard said. “That’s just the way it is. I want you here in an hour.”

* * *

S
USAN OPENED THE
door wearing a dressing gown pulled tight around her. In the few minutes between Lennon phoning her and knocking her door, she had tidied her hair and applied as much makeup as she could manage. Either that or she went to bed wearing lip gloss.

Ellen huffed and mewled in Lennon’s arms, her bare feet kicking at his sides.

“You’re a diamond,” he said to Susan. “I can’t thank you enough.”

Susan gave him a smile that was at once warm and weary. “It’s all right. I hadn’t gotten to sleep yet.”

Lennon knew a lie when he heard one, but still he was glad of it. “I’ll be back before you get up in the morning.”

Susan reached for Ellen. “C’mere, pet, I’ve got you.”

Ellen whimpered and rubbed her eyes.

Susan kissed her hair. “You can sleep in with Lucy, all right?”

Ellen buried her head beneath Susan’s chin. She had been ferried here while she slept many times before.

Lennon touched Susan’s forearm. “Thank you,” he said.

She smiled again. “When you come back, why don’t you come in for breakfast?”

“The neighbors might talk,” Lennon said.

“Let them,” she said.

3

T
HE PLASTIC-COVERED CORPSE
rolled against Galya as the car jerked to a standstill, its bloody odors forcing her to gag against the cloth that had been shoved in her mouth. She wedged her shoulders against the rear wall of the trunk and pushed the body back with her knees. They’d used some sort of thin electrical cord to bind her wrists, but already it worked loose on her blood-slicked skin. She could easily slip free from it, but instead chose to keep it there until her hands could do her some good.

Galya felt the car rock as the men alighted, heard the doors slam shut. The last few minutes of the journey had been slow, with sharp turns and sudden stops, before a final lurch and judder as the car came to a halt on rough ground. She strained to listen to the environment beyond the darkness that encased her. Traffic noise somewhere, but closer, the soft sigh of water.

As soon as she’d woken in the black, her head throbbing with the car’s engine, she knew they meant to kill her. There was no question. The sound of water only confirmed it. They would dump the dead man in it, then throw her in after. Maybe they’d kill her first, or maybe they’d drown her. Either way, she would be in the water soon.

Voices now, outside, the Irishman’s high and panicky, the Lithuanian’s low and angry. They exchanged accusations and curses as they came closer. A key scraped against metal, the lock turned, and cold air flooded in.

A cloud of mist formed between Darius and Sam as their breath mingled. The Lithuanian grabbed his countryman’s body and hauled it from the trunk, grunted as he let it drop to the ground with a wet thump.

Galya did not resist when Sam reached for her. The icy ground seemed to bite at her soles as he held her upright. She bucked with the intensity of the shivers that shot through her, and he gripped her arms tighter.

The car, an old BMW, stood feet from a stretch of water, parked on a narrow band of waste ground separated from the empty road by a low curb. All around were warehouses and cranes, quiet and still in the cold night. Lazy waves lapped at the embankment. Across the channel, more warehouses, and the lights of the city beyond them. Galya tried to turn her head to see more of the surroundings, but Sam squeezed and jerked her arm.

“Quit it,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

Darius stooped and grabbed his dead friend’s ankles. He pulled, but managed no more than two feet, the plastic snagging and tearing on the rubble. He cursed and dropped the legs.

“Help,” he said.

“What?” Sam said.

“Help,” the Lithuanian said. “Put Tomas in water.”

“I’m keeping hold of her,” Sam said, tightening his grip on Galya’s arm.”

“Where she go?” Darius asked, holding his hands out, indicating the expanse of water and low buildings. He pointed at the corpse on the ground. “You help.”

A clammy heat lingered on Galya’s arm when Sam released it. He pushed her back against the car.

“Don’t move,” he said.

He crossed the few feet to the body, hunkered down, gripped the shoulders.

Darius said, “
Vienas, du, trys, hup!”

Both men hissed as they raised the body a few inches from the ground. They shuffled toward the water’s edge, huffing and grunting as they went. A bloodstained hand flopped from the plastic and brushed its fingertips along the loose stones.

“Jesus,” Sam said.

A thin, distorted disco beat erupted from nowhere, and he yelped in fright as he dropped the dead man’s shoulders. Galya took a step away from the car.

Darius lowered the feet and straightened. Something vibrated on the body. He reached down and tore a hole in the shiny plastic. His hand explored inside for a moment before emerging again, a mobile phone gripped in his thick fingers. His face went slack when he looked at the screen, its light making him look even paler than he already was. He glanced at Sam.

“Is Arturas,” he said.

Sam swallowed so hard Galya heard the click in his throat. “Are you going to answer it?” he asked.

Darius gave him a hard stare. “You a stupid man. I answer, say brother busy? Say he go in water, yes? I say to him this?”

Sam shifted his weight as if the insult had hit him square in the chest. “Well, fuck, I don’t know. He’s your boss, not ours.”

Galya moved to the far side of the car.

“Arturas everybody boss,” the Lithuanian said.

Sam took a step forward. “He’s your boss, not mine.”

Darius held out the phone, still blasting its tinny music, his pudgy face swelling with anger. “Okay, you say he not you boss, you say him now.”

“Fuck yourself,” Sam said.

Galya flexed her wrists, felt the electrical cord skim the backs of her legs as it slipped away.

Darius stepped over the body, came face-to-face with Sam.

“You think you big man?” he asked, the phone still lit up and ringing in his hand.

Two meters separated Galya from the car now. She pushed the cord aside with her toes, kept her hands behind her back. She pressed her tongue against the rag between her teeth, pushed it out, and let it fall to the ground. She steadied her breathing.

Sam moved to the other side of the body. “Listen, this isn’t the time for getting the arse with each other, right? We need to get this sorted before anyone comes along and asks us what we’re doing here at this time of the night.”