Stolen Souls (7 page)

She boarded the plane alone, the passport clutched in her hand, a joyful fear in her heart. Her nerves sparked with anticipation. She had never flown before and gasped at the sensation of being pushed back into her seat by the speed of the craft. It left the ground, and she made a prayer that God would deliver her safely to Vilnius.

Looking around, she noticed the faces of other passengers. Whether they laughed with their companions or sat in silence, she saw that same prayer behind all their eyes.

Everyone believes in God when they fly, she thought.

Otherwise, who would have the courage?

* * *

“A
ND WHAT
?”
R
ASA
asked again.

“Play with them,” Galya said.

“And now you’re here in Belfast. So what are you going to do?”

Galya twined her fingers together.

“So this Aleksander lied to you, and you wound up at that farm, slaving every hour of the day,” Rasa said. “You were filthy when I found you, you stank like a horse. Now look at the nice things I bought for you to wear. And you can make some money, once you’ve paid me back.”

“Paid you back?”

“The agency that brought you here. I had to pay them good money to get you out of that farm. How are you going to pay me back?”

“I didn’t ask—”

“I don’t care what you asked for,” Rasa said, that hardness in her voice once more. “I took you out of there. It cost me plenty, and you owe me. All you have to do is make the clients happy. Is that so bad? Just do what they ask, smile for them, be pretty.”

Rasa edged closer to Galya, reached out a hand to brush the hair from her face. “And you’re
such
a pretty girl, you know.”

Galya chewed a nail.

“Like a doll,” Rasa said. “That’s all you have to do. Smile, be pretty, and do what they ask.”

Galya turned her head to Rasa. “What if I say no?”

Rasa gave a sad smile. “Then the client will be unhappy,” she said, speaking slowly, the Russian colored by her Lithuanian accent. “And the men who gave you this room and this roof over your head, they will be unhappy. You don’t want to seem ungrateful, do you? You don’t want them to think you’re difficult, hmm? They’ll be upset. They need the money to pay your rent. You don’t want to make them angry, do you?”

“No,” Galya said, her voice barely audible even to herself.

“Good girl,” Rasa said. She leaned in and placed a dry kiss on Galya’s cheek. “Do as you’re told and everything will be all right. I promise.”

And so Galya had taken off the gray tracksuit and plain underwear they’d given her a few days before and put on the lacy things and the shoes she could barely stand in. She had sat there for an hour, goose pimples sprouting on her bare skin, waiting for the client to come. The weeks since she’d flown from Kiev to Vilnius, then Vilnius to Brussels, then Brussels to Dublin, they had blurred into one long, arduous smear, work and sleep, sleep and work, always wet and cold, always dirty, always tired, always aching for home.

Now she sat in a room with a soft bed, cold but dry, and all she had to do was make a client happy. Could she do such a thing? Maybe, if she forced Mama from her mind.

She might have done it, might have given herself away, if not for the kind man and the cross on a chain he’d pressed into her hand, and the piece of paper with a telephone number written upon it. The hope he gave her had turned to courage in her heart and blood on her hands.

“Call me,” he’d said in an accent that was not from Belfast.

“I can save you,” he said.

And Galya believed him.

12

H
E PLACED THE
phone back on the table, next to the glass. Condensation beaded on its surface. He brought a thick finger to the moisture, felt the cold on his callused skin.

She had called sooner than he expected. He had been awake, unable to sleep, nursing a buttermilk shandy. Half a glass of buttermilk, half a glass of lemonade. He took a sip, tasted the sour-sweet mix, and swallowed.

It usually took days, sometimes a week or more, before they would call. Sad as it was, it took a good deal of abuse before a girl would seek a way out. But this girl had taken less than twenty-four hours. She must have suffered at the hands of those monsters, but he refused to think about that.

He had taken a taxi to the apartment that afternoon, not wishing his own vehicle to be seen, and rang the doorbell. A buzzer sounded, and the door unlocked. He let himself in. The older woman waited for him on the landing, dressed far too well for such an occasion.

“Hello, sweetheart,” she said in her thick accent. “Your first time?”

“Yes,” he lied.

“Don’t worry,” she said, showing him into the apartment. “You have nice time.”

Three men stood inside, huddled in the kitchenette. Two of them were local, going by their tattoos and clothing. The third looked foreign, a big man, all belly and fat fingers.

He paused in the doorway, unsure if he should proceed.

One of the local men looked up, barely registered his presence, and fell back into conversation with his friends.

“Come on,” the woman said. “Don’t be shy.”

He entered, wondering why he was so nervous. It wasn’t as if this were the first time he had entered such a place. He had done it many times before.

“Is fifty pounds for massage,” the woman said, holding out her hand.

“What?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

“You give fifty for massage,” the woman said. “You want something else, is between you and her.”

“Ah,” he said. He reached for his wallet, counted out two twenties and a ten, placed them in her hand.

“Is good,” she said, smiling, showing her yellowed teeth.

Nicotine, he thought.

She tucked the notes inside her blouse, pulling aside the fabric of her brassiere. An unnecessary touch, he thought.

“Come,” she said. “Her name is Olga.”

At least a third of the two dozen times he had visited these places, the girl’s name had been Olga. Most of them had hollow eyes and moved like marionettes. They said hello, and please, and thank you. When he said he wanted nothing from them, they tugged at his clothes anyway. They were the lost. He could do nothing for them.

But a few were still alive inside. They listened when he spoke. They gazed on him with hope and awe when he told them of salvation. They called him. Eventually.

The woman led him across the living room and opened a door. He looked back over his shoulder at the three men. One of them lifted a coat, exchanged a farewell with his friends, and let himself out. None of them paid any attention to the man who watched.

“Come,” the woman said. “She is nice. You see, you like her.”

She stepped through to the bedroom.

He followed.

She extended a hand toward the girl on the bed.

The girl looked up, no more than a glance, but enough to see that she still had her soul. They had not yet stolen it. She could still be saved.

Silently, he thanked the Lord on high.

13

T
HE OTHERS HAD
been waiting when Herkus and his friends pulled up in the old BMW. The moron Sam drove, the Glock’s muzzle pressed against the back of his seat. Darius lay in the trunk. He had given a pained sigh when Herkus told him to get in.

Now Darius and Sam sat side by side, each bound by cable ties to a chair. Herkus stood over them, blowing into his cupped hands to warm his fingers. The others, Matas and Valdas, stood silent against the roller door. They were good men, Herkus had known them since his army days, and they would back him up, no matter what happened here.

He’d called Arturas on the way, told him he had the two men on the way to the lockup. Arturas had said to do whatever was necessary, to hell with whomever it upset.

The lives of these two men were now worth shit, which gave Herkus solace.

The lockup was as cold inside as it was outside, one of two dozen identical buildings on an abandoned industrial estate that lay to the north of the city. It had belonged to someone called McGinty. Herkus had been told in hushed tones that a crooked cop had been killed here by a madman called Fegan, and the planned housing development that was to replace the complex of storage buildings and commercial premises was indefinitely put on hold as a result.

Herkus regarded each of the men in turn. Sam was as stupid as his idiot brother, both cheap hoods with a big-name organization behind them. No wonder Arturas held his business partners in the Loyalist movement in such contempt; if this was the standard of their personnel, then God help them all.

Darius was a different animal. He was not the brightest of Arturas’s men, that wasn’t under question, but he had heart. And real physical strength. A mountain of a man, bigger than Herkus, even.

So whom should he start with? For a moment, he thought it should be Darius. Show Sam how serious this situation was. But on the other hand, Darius was too useful. At least for the moment.

Sam, then.

Herkus tore two strips off a tissue. He rolled each into a ball and jammed them into his ears. He took the Glock 17 from his pocket and pressed the muzzle against Sam’s forehead.

“Where is Tomas?” he asked.

“Jesus,” Sam whined. “I don’t know, I swear to—”

Herkus squeezed the trigger and shouted, “Bang!”

Sam screamed, and a dark stain spread on his lap.

Herkus laughed. “Other thing about Glock 17,” he said. “No round in chamber, no bang.”

He pulled back the slide assembly.

“Now it goes bang,” he said.

Herkus placed the muzzle against Sam’s forehead.

Liquid trickled to the floor.

“Where is Tomas?” Herkus asked.

“He’s dead!” Sam cried. “She killed him.”

Herkus’s heart sank. He closed his eyes.

“Who killed him?” he asked, opening them again.

“The girl,” Sam said. “She had a piece of glass, off a mirror. She stabbed him in the throat. We panicked. We stuffed her and the body in the trunk of the car. We drove out to the harbor to get rid of them. She got away. We left Tomas there on the side of the road.”

He looked up at Herkus, his eyes wide and wet. “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry. We didn’t know what to do, we were scared, I’m sorry, oh God, I’m—”

Herkus squeezed the trigger.

The back of Sam’s skull exploded.

Darius wept.

Herkus placed the muzzle against his old friend’s forehead.

“Tell me everything,” he said.

14

A
RTURAS
S
TRAZDAS PRESSED
the red button on his phone before Herkus finished speaking. He stared at the display, but saw nothing.

Tomas dead.

Killed by a whore.

Abandoned at some roadside like a dog.

Strazdas roared and threw the phone at the wall. He burned inside, his heart incandescent. He grabbed fistfuls of his own hair and pulled until his scalp screamed. He formed a fist with his right hand and struck his forehead and temples again and again until he staggered, dizzy like a drunk, into the wall.

But still, the fire would not dim.

He tugged at his left shirtsleeve to expose his forearm and closed his teeth on the pale flesh.

Oh, the pain, white hot and fierce, at last blotting out the anger. His mind found balance. He eased his jaw open, tasted metal.

The shame hit hard, like a punch to his gut. He had never,
would
never tell a living soul about his anger. How sometimes it made him hurt himself. How, now and then, he bruised himself. How, albeit rarely, he occasionally drew his own blood.

Strazdas breathed hard, in through his nose, out through his mouth, until his heartbeat settled in his chest. He went to the suite’s bathroom and turned the cold-water tap on the washbasin. Leaning against the black marble, he held his forearm beneath the stream and watched the red streaks run down to the drain.

He cursed himself.

Ten years or more he’d been doing this. Always out of the blue, always over as soon as it began. First the anger, then the pain to drown it out, then the shame.

Once, in his Brussels apartment, the housecleaner had seen him slap his own face and bite the back of his hand. She had asked if everything was all right. He had said yes, everything was fine, not to worry.

Her body had never been found.

Strazdas tore off half a dozen sheets of toilet paper, wadded them into a ball, and pressed them against the bloody ellipse. He straightened and looked at himself in the mirror. A handsome man, he had been told. Thick dark hair and blue eyes. Good skin, fine features.

He spat at the mirror.

Saliva sprayed and dripped down the glass.

Arturas Strazdas knew he was unwell, but had no idea how to get better. Often it seemed his life played out before him, and he was a spectator of his own days. He had never had a woman he hadn’t paid for, he had never had a friend who didn’t fear him, and he knew he would die alone.

He had always known he would bury his brother.

Oh God, Tomas.

Strazdas grabbed a hand towel and wiped spittle from the mirror, avoiding his own gaze in the reflection. He dropped the towel in the basin, walked to the bedroom, and sat on the edge of the bed.

Tomas, dead.

What did grief feel like? Strazdas had never knowingly experienced it. When he got word from an uncle that his father had died, he had played the part of the mournful son, but deep down, he had rejoiced. He had never wept over the passing of another.

Strazdas closed his eyes, reached inside himself, searched for any sense of loss. Something nestled there, in his heart, that might have been a keening for his brother. But it was matched by the relief that he would never have to deal with Tomas’s catastrophes again. And that in turn was dwarfed by the anger at his own kin being snuffed out by a whore.

There, seize on that, take hold of the anger.

Surely a real human being would feel anger at the murder of his brother? Yes, they would. Murdered by a whore. Strazdas took hold of his rage and brought it close to his heart.