Stolen Souls

10

LENNON SHIVERED AS the attendants to the scene grew in number. First, the forensic medical officer arrived. Dr. Eoin Donaghy wore a raincoat over his pajamas. His sole duty here was to officially pronounce extinction of life. It took only a few seconds of examining the corpse for him to announce, with confidence, “Yep, he’s dead all right.”

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.