“Look at me,” Herkus said, leaning over him. He smelled whiskey and terror.
Darius raised his eyes to meet Herkus’s.
“Where is he?”
Darius shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know. I’m not his babysitter.”
“Yes you are,” Herkus said. He kept his voice calm and even, lest Sam realize the gravity of the situation. “I left him with you. You’re responsible. I’ll ask you once more. Don’t lie to me. Where is Tomas?”
“I took him to the flat in Bangor,” Darius said. “He wanted to try out the new girl. He decided to take her out somewhere. I don’t know where. That was around eleven. I haven’t seen him or her since.”
Herkus placed a hand on Darius’s shoulder. The muscles tensed beneath the leather. “You’re lying to me. I’ll have to call Arturas. He’ll be angry. You know how much he cares for his brother.”
Darius held his hands up. They betrayed the panic boiling beneath the forced calm. “That’s what happened. He took the girl. That’s all there is to it. What do you want me to say?”
“The truth,” Herkus said. “And you will. Eventually.”
He turned his attention to Sam, noticed the grazing and dirt on his hands, as if he’d taken a fall.
“You,” he said in English. He spoke it better than Darius. “Where is Tomas?”
The moron looked up at him with drink-heavy eyes. He sneered. “Fucked if I know.”
Herkus grabbed as much cropped hair as he could and slammed the moron’s face into the tabletop. He felt more than heard the satisfying cracking of teeth.
Sam spat blood and tiny chips of enamel on the granite, lurched to his feet, and reached for something at the small of his back. Was the idiot going for a knife?
“Don’t,” Darius said.
The anger on Sam’s face turned to terror as he seemed to realize whatever he sought in his waistband was no longer there. He turned to look at the spot where his skinny arse had been just moments before.
“Don’t,” Darius said again, louder.
Sam reached for something on the seat. He brought it up to point at Herkus’s forehead. Or thereabouts. The pistol danced in his grip like a landed fish while blood dripped from his chin.
Herkus sighed. “You need to take the safety off.”
Sam stared for a moment before turning the pistol in his grip, looking for the catch.
In one smooth, quick sweep of his hand, Herkus snatched it from his grasp. Sam gaped at his own empty fingers.
“It’s a Glock,” Herkus said. “It has no safety catch. Sit down.”
Sam did as he was told while Herkus stashed the gun in his jacket pocket.
“I ask you again, where is Tomas?”
Sam spat again. “My hucking heeth!” he said, tears welling in his eyes. He brought his fingertips to his swelling lip.
Darius wiped red spots from his cheek and spoke in Lithuanian. “I told you already. We don’t know. He went off with the girl and didn’t come back.”
“All right.” Herkus smiled and spoke to Sam in English. “Let’s go for a drive.”
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
