Stolen Souls

7

ARTURAS STRAZDAS OPENED his laptop on the hotel suite’s desk and powered it up. He sat down in the leatherbound chair, a luxurious sofa to one side of the room. A few seconds later, he had connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi network. He called up the website for European People Management, a labor agency that was jointly owned by him, his brother, and his mother. Half a dozen such agencies operated in the British Isles and throughout the rest of the EU, and all of them were owned by some combination of his closest family members. But only he knew their inner workings.

He logged in to the website’s secure admin area with a username and password he changed every seven days and followed the links until he found a list of migrants registered as having been assigned work within Northern Ireland. They were all listed as Polish, Czech, Lithuanian or Latvian nationals. He filtered the list down to females who had left employment in the last three weeks.

One listing.

It said she was Lithuanian and gave her name as Niele Gimbutiené. Strazdas knew this to be false. He clicked on the link to see her full profile. There were two images, one a scan of a Lithuanian passport, the other a head-andshoulders shot of the girl. A casual examination, such as a tired immigration official might give, would suggest the photographs matched, that this girl was indeed a Lithuanian national with every entitlement as an EU citizen to live and work legally in the United Kingdom.

But if you looked closely at the eyes, the height of the cheekbones, the set of the mouth, you might suspect this girl was not the one pictured on the passport. And you’d be right. The notes said this girl had left her job at a mushroom farm in County Monaghan just over a week ago and was no longer associated with the agency. Strazdas knew this was not untrue, strictly speaking, but the reality was a little harder. If the notes were entirely accurate, they would say she had been purchased from the agency by another party, along with the passport on which she had travelled. Perhaps the passport would be used to gain passage for some other pretty young woman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and Slavic features. But this girl was still somewhere in Belfast.

Strazdas knew in his gut that Tomas was in trouble. Did this skinny girl have something to do with it? He had no reason to suspect so, but he had learned over many years in business to be mindful of all possibilities.

His mobile phone rang. He lifted it from the desktop, checked the display, and answered.

“There’s no answer at the apartment,” Herkus said. “I can’t see any lights from outside. I don’t think they’re here. I’d break in, but all of these places have reinforced doors. I’d need a battering ram to get through.”

“All right,” Strazdas said. “Check whatever bars Tomas and Darius drink in. Get more men if you have to. I want them found tonight.”

He did not wait for Herkus’s response before hanging up. Strazdas returned his attention to the picture of the girl.

“What did you do with my brother?” he asked.

His cheeks warmed as the sound of his own voice reverberated in the empty room. Talking to himself. His mother had lectured him earlier that day, saying he was working too hard, putting himself under too much stress and strain, not sleeping. A man’s mind could only take so much, even a man as strong as Arturas Strazdas.

Strazdas did not argue with his mother. No one argued with Laima Strazdiené.

His father certainly hadn’t. As a teenager, Arturas had sat at the table in the two-room apartment the family shared in Kaunas, Tomas facing him at the opposite side, their father between them. The fourth place often remained empty when they ate. They would talk to drown out the grunts from the other room as their mother took care of another visitor.

At night, Arturas and Tomas would share the foldout bed in the same room while their parents talked on the other side of the wall. Or rather their mother talked, and their father listened.

To feed us, she would say, to keep us warm.

Once, Strazdas had asked her about the visitors that came and went at all hours. She threw hot coffee in his lap. His father took him to the university hospital, told him to keep his questions to himself.

His father left their home not long after the Soviets released their hold on Lithuania. He said nothing, left no note, was simply no longer at the table. Strazdas’s mother would not discuss it, as if he’d never existed.

Soon, men were not the only visitors. Often there were young women, and they would take the men into the other room while Arturas and Tomas ate with their mother at the table.

Three months later, they moved to an apartment that had two bedrooms. The brothers hoped this would mean a room of their own, but instead it allowed two girls to receive visitors at any one time. But there was money for Tomas to go to a good school, and for the older brother to attend university.

As a student, Arturas took an apartment of his own. Under his mother’s guidance, he also allowed a room to be used for the entertainment of lonely men. He discovered that he liked having money in his pocket and good clothes to wear. The other students were jealous when he acquired a car, albeit a used one.

Then there was an incident with Tomas and a teacher at his school, and they had to move away to Vilnius.

Laima had always indulged her younger son, fool that he was. For every soft kiss on Tomas’s cheek, it seemed Arturas received a hard slap. Still, looking back, he did not hate her for it. Not really. After all, she had taught him how to make a good living from the weaknesses of others.

Arturas Strazdas stood and crossed the room to the elegant glass-topped sideboard. Herkus had left a small package there, a cellophane bag containing an amount of white powder. Good stuff, Herkus had said, straight from the source. Go easy on it, he had said. Maybe get some rest before taking any.

Strazdas opened the bag’s seal and poured a little of the powder onto the glass. Using the hotel’s key card, he divided and shaped the powder into three lines. He took a fifty-euro note from his pocket, rolled it into a tube, inserted one end into his left nostril, and inhaled.

The world snapped into focus.

He shivered as he exhaled, moved the rolled-up note to his other nostril, and inhaled the second line.

His head lightened.

Strazdas switched the note back to his left nostril and took the last line. He threw the note aside and bent down, licked the last of the powder from the glass. As his tongue slipped across the glossy surface, tingling from the cocaine, he opened his eyes and saw their reflection. He stood upright and stared at himself for a moment.

“Fuck you,” he said.

His wits sharpened, his heart beating harder, the air sweeter than it had been before. He grinned at the powderstreaked face in the glass. His phone chimed, and somewhere inside himself, he thought he might have sensed the coming call seconds before it sounded. Some might dismiss that as nonsense, but Arturas Strazdas was not an ordinary man. He was a great man. He could do anything.

Or perhaps that was the cocaine talking.

He sniffed hard and wiped his nose before crossing back to the desk and lifting his mobile. His soul withered a little when he saw the name on the display.

“Yes, Mother,” he answered.

“You didn’t call,” she said, her voice jagged like broken slate. “You said you’d call when you landed, and you didn’t. Why not?”

“I’ve been busy,” Strazdas said.

“Not so busy you couldn’t call your mother, let her know you got there safe.”

“No.”

“And how is Tomas?” she asked.

Strazdas closed his eyes. “Why are you up so late? It’s the middle of the night. You should be sleeping.”

“And so should you,” she said. “You didn’t answer my question. How is Tomas? I haven’t seen him since he went to that awful place.”

Strazdas had never been able to lie to his mother. “I haven’t spoken with him,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked, no attempt to disguise the worry in her voice. “Have you phoned him?”

He took a breath. “Yes. He didn’t answer.”

“But Tomas always answers his phone.”

“I know.”

“Even when he’s with one of his women, he answers his phone. There’ve been times I wish he hadn’t, but he always does.”

“I know.”

“Then find him,” she said. “Don’t dare talk to me again until you’ve found him.”

The phone died in his hand.

“I won’t,” he said.