Stolen Souls

20

LENNON PICKED CONNOLLY up at his house near Ulsterville Avenue. Rented, he told Lennon. The housing crash had lowered prices in the Lisburn Road area of the city, but not so low that a uniformed officer could afford one, even if he could get a mortgage. Having a pair of six-month-old babies didn’t help his finances, he complained, as Lennon drove to the apartment building on the outskirts of Bangor. Traffic moved at a deliberate and steady pace as the snow deepened on the ground.

Connolly did his best to hide his yawns. He had changed out of his uniform and into a casual jacket and jeans. He held an overcoat on his lap.

“I haven’t had much kip either,” Lennon said.

“I got an hour at most,” Connolly said. “The wife wanted me to help her with stuff today, look after the twins, that sort of thing. She’s having everyone for Christmas this year. First time she’s ever done it, so it didn’t go down too well when I said I had to work.”

“I can imagine,” Lennon said. “But you’ll be at home tonight. She can’t complain about that.”

“She might,” Connolly said.

Lennon pulled off the Belfast Road and drove to the quiet cul-de-sac where the three-story apartment building stood.

It was a modest place. Clean, anonymous, dull. The perfect location from which to run prostitutes. Good access from the city, just fifteen minutes by car for a lonely man, and neighbors who probably didn’t pay much attention to the comings and goings. Lennon scanned the other cars parked here as he pulled up. At least half of them were old BMWs or Audis, left-hand drive with continental license places: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania. Migrant workers lived here, many of them probably on short leases.

Yes, a needful businessman could come here without fear of being recognized by a neighbor. Lennon wished he didn’t understand that quite so clearly.

It had been more than six months since he’d last visited such a place himself. And then two months before that. Less than half a dozen times since Ellen had been in his care. Before, he had been able to wash himself clean of the shame after leaving some hollow-eyed young woman with a hundred pounds on a bedside locker. But ever since Ellen had taken her place in his home, he’d been unable to scrub the crawling feeling from his skin. It wasn’t that the girls were unclean, that he feared he had contracted some vulgar infection, but that he imagined the disgrace seeped from inside him, out through his pores, sticking to anything he touched.

So he had made the decision to stop. Of course, he knew if it had been as simple as making a moral and logical choice, he never would have started in the first place. He had gone six weeks after Ellen first moved in without feeling the slightest temptation. But then one night he let her have a sleepover with Lucy and Susan, and he found himself lifting his car keys from the table, taking the lift downstairs, getting into his car, and driving to a place he knew in Glengormley. He didn’t allow his conscience a voice until he came home two hours later and his better mind began to pick over the deed. The next morning, Ellen wanted to hold his hand when he went to collect her from Susan’s apartment upstairs. He wouldn’t allow it, fearing the sin would spread from his fingers to hers, and she punished him with silence for a full day.

Still he didn’t learn the lesson, and only two weeks later he made another late-night journey to a dark corner of the city. And again a few weeks later. Each time, he promised himself, and the part of his heart that belonged to Ellen, that he would not do it again. Each time, he knew he would break that promise.

Jack Lennon knew a human soul could bear an almost infinite amount of shame as long as it remained there, inside, and stayed hidden from others. Many bad people survived that way. In the quietest minutes of the night, he wondered if he was one of them.

THE LANDLORD’S AGENT and a uniformed sergeant from C District waited outside the apartment building. Lennon and Connolly got out of the car and presented their identification. The landlord’s agent looked worried. The sergeant looked bored.

The agent introduced himself as Ken Lauler. He let them into the building, and they followed him up to the top floor.

“It wasn’t us who let this place out originally,” Lauler said. “There was a different agent before us. We just took over the contract for the landlord, the maintenance, all that.”

“What about the rent?” Lennon asked.

“It’s paid by standing order every month, straight from a bank account.”

“Whose bank account?”

“It’s under the name of Spencer,” Lauler said. “Same name as the lease. The rent gets paid on time every month, we don’t get any complaints from the neighbors, so we’ve no call to be coming round asking questions.”

“Until now,” Lennon said.

“Quite,” Lauler said. “Here we are.”

He inserted the key and turned it. The door swung inward.

Lennon stepped past him. “Looks like there was a party,” he said.

A dozen empty beer cans lay scattered on a glass coffee table along with a half-full bottle of Buckfast fortified wine, loose tobacco, and cigarette papers. A poorly decorated Christmas tree stood in the corner, a few strands of tinsel clung to the fake fireplace.

Lauler tut-tutted at the mess.

“Stay there,” Lennon told him.

He walked to the kitchenette, followed by Connolly. The hob looked like it had never been used, but crumbs dusted the toaster, and spilled water pooled around the kettle. A drawer stood open. A bundle of black plastic bin bags lay by the sink, a roll of adhesive tape beside them.

“Shit,” Lennon said.

“What?” Connolly asked. He looked at the items, followed Lennon’s thoughts, and said, “Ah.”

Lennon opened more drawers, all of them empty, except for one. There, he found a brown envelope containing several hundred pounds in cash and an employment contract.

And a passport.

He lifted it from the drawer. The green cover said LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKA, the Republic of Lithuania. He had seen others like it. This was an older passport, not bearing the burgundy cover now required by European law, and not biometric as all new passports were. He opened it to the data page.

Issued in 2005, it said, to Niele Gimbutiené, born in 1988. He looked at the image. A pretty, young woman, blonde hair, fine features. He flicked through the rest of the pages, searching for immigration stamps. There were none. It had never travelled outside the European Union.

“This might be the girl they were keeping here,” Lennon said. He held the passport up for Connolly to see.

“A prostitute?” Lauler asked from the doorway.

“Why else would they keep a place like this?”

“I can assure you,” Lauler said, “the agency has no knowledge of any illegal—”

“So where is she now?” Connolly asked.

Lennon didn’t answer. He examined the employment contract next. It bore a logo saying EUROPEAN PEOPLE MANAGEMENT. Each paragraph was printed in three languages: English, French, and what Lennon assumed to be Lithuanian. It bore two signatures, one resembling that on the passport, the other a name Lennon couldn’t make out. It listed a Brussels address as the company’s head office.

He returned the contract to the envelope, but tucked the passport into his pocket.

“Excuse me,” Lauler called.

Lennon stepped out of the kitchenette and looked closer at the living area’s wooden laminate flooring. Lauler went to move from the doorway, but Lennon held his hand up.

“I said stay there,” he said.

“Listen, you can’t take a tenant’s property from—”

“I need the photograph,” Lennon said. “It’ll be returned along with everything else we gather.”

“But—”

“Shut up,” Lennon said.

He let his gaze wander the floor until he found it. There, a red streak, running away from one of the doors. Lennon pointed.

“I see it,” Connolly said.

“See what?” Lauler asked.

Lennon said, “Sergeant, can you please show Mr. Lauler outside?”

The officer from C District took Lauler’s arm and guided him to the corridor.

Lennon walked to the door, watching where he put his feet, and opened it. The metal smell, insistent, pushed him back a step. Beneath it lay something not quite rotten, something that would be foul before too long.

Connolly coughed. “Is that … ?”

“Yes,” Lennon said.

He moved into the room, his shoes clicking on the linoleum-covered floor, his breath shallow. The dark pool spread beyond the bed, touching the far wall. It had thickened in the hours since the blood had spilled. What appeared to be vomit had splashed nearby. Red footprints wandered around the room, gathered in a huddle by the pile of stained sheets where they’d cleaned their shoes. A track like a long brushstroke arced toward the foot of the bed.

“Jesus,” Connolly said. “So Tomas Strazdas was killed here, and whoever did it took Sam Mawhinney and the foreign fella to the other side of the city?”

“Maybe,” Lennon said. “Or maybe Sam and the foreigner killed Tomas, and someone else took exception to that and held them to account.”

“Tit for tat?”

“Just like the good old days,” Lennon said.

A glint of reflected light caught his attention. He advanced as far as he could without treading in the blood. A shard of mirrored glass lay in the red, one end wrapped in torn cloth. A makeshift dagger, perfect for opening a man’s throat. He’d seen such a thing before, three years ago, when an informant behind bars had his face slashed to ribbons by another inmate. It was a prison weapon. Used by a prisoner.

Lennon’s hand went to his pocket.

“You think there’ll be more?” Connolly asked.

“Hmm?” He felt the hard shape of the passport.

“More killings,” Connolly said.

“I hope not. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy spending Christmas looking at shit like this. One good thing might come out of it, though.”

Connolly stepped into the room. “What’s that?”

Lennon took his phone from his pocket and began dialling DCI Ferguson’s number. “Sam Mawhinney and his mate were killed in D District. We found Tomas in our patch, B District, but he was killed in C. With a bit of luck, it’ll be given to one of the other districts’ MITs, and we can go home.”

Even as he spoke, Lennon held little optimism that things would work out that way. But he could hope.