“That’s what I heard,” the sergeant said. “He’s well known. The first officer on the scene recognized him. They said his neck was broken. Footprints in the snow show a struggle.”
Lennon went to his desk with a heaviness at his core. He threw the report on the pile of papers already gathered there and pressed the chilled drink can against his forehead.
Four dead in twelve hours.
He’d left Connolly at the flat in Bangor, along with the sergeant from C District. All they could do was wait for another forensics team to come and take over. Matching the blood to Tomas Strazdas’s was merely a formality, although it wouldn’t be this side of Christmas.
Lennon sat down, opened the can, and cursed as its contents fizzed over the paperwork. He pulled the Strazdas report and the passport out of harm’s way and mopped up the spillage with a tissue.
The report was little more than a sketch from the Forensic Service, a private company that handled much of the scientific duties for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They worked from former police buildings in Carrickfergus, a setting that was entirely inadequate for the work they had to do. Their old Belfast premises had been destroyed in a bomb attack in the early nineties, and they’d been making do in the seaside town since then.
Despite the limitations of their base, they still managed to provide one of the most advanced and comprehensive forensic services in Europe, honed through decades of investigating terrorist attacks, large and small, that had taken place on their doorstep almost daily.
As far as Lennon knew, Tomas Strazdas’s body still lay out by the waterside, sheltered from the snow by a white tent, waiting to be packed up and brought to the new forensic mortuary at the Royal Victoria Hospital. There, a consultant from the State Pathologist’s Department would do the honors.
On Christmas Eve, it would be whichever poor bastard was on-call for the holiday. Bad enough they’d have one corpse to examine. Now they had three more. Lennon made another silent wish that he wouldn’t have to be the officer in attendance when they got the scalpels and saws out.
He had called by CI Uprichard’s office and asked if the related cases would be handed to one of the other districts, but Uprichard didn’t know. They were having trouble pinning anyone down on Christmas Eve, but Uprichard would call around, see if he could get a decision.
Lennon was not hopeful. He took his mobile from his pocket as he leafed through the report.
The gash in Strazdas’s throat smiled at him as Susan answered.
“How’s Ellen?” he asked.
“She’s been asking for her Daddy,” Susan said. “Will you be long?”
“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “Have you been watching the news?”
“I’ve had it on in the background,” she said. “Somebody at the docks, and another two in Newtownabbey. Which of them are you chasing after?”
“Right now, all of them,” Lennon said. “But you never know, maybe someone will take them off my hands.”
“Is that likely?”
“Not very,” he said. “Can you keep Ellen a while longer?” “You know I will,” she said. “It’ll be fun for Lucy. I don’t know what Ellen’s going to think about it though. They’re having a nap just now.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Jack, I only just got them settled.”
“I know,” he said. “Just for a minute. That’s all.”
“All right,” she said, weariness in her voice.
He turned photographs and pages while he waited. Wound to the throat the most likely cause of death, to be confirmed by the State Pathologist’s Department. Piece of material and length of electrical cord removed from the scene for examination. Lack of blood at the scene suggests death occurred elsewhere and the body transported to the location of its discovery. Presence of tire tracks further reinforces this supposition
Forensic and pathology reports spent so much time stating the bloody obvious, Lennon thought. The details were the key. Hidden, like the points of light that are not at first clear when you look at the night sky, but come into view as you look away.
Details like a piece of mirror glass and a girl’s passport.
He heard a soft breath against his ear, but no greeting.
“Hiya, darling,” he said.
“Hello,” Ellen said, her voice blunted by sleep.
“How’s you?”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Mm.”
“You been playing with Lucy?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Are you being good?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Did you have a nice sleep?”
“It was okay. I had a bad dream.”
“What about?” Lennon asked. Her dreams were seldom dull.
“About a lady,” Ellen said. “Dogs were chasing her. They had fingers for teeth.”
“Sounds scary,” Lennon said.
“Mm-hm.”
“But you’re okay now.”
“Mm-hm. When are you coming home?”
“A bit later,” Lennon said.
Ellen did not answer.
“This afternoon,” Lennon said. “Maybe this evening.”
“Okay,” Ellen said.
The phone clicked as she hung up.
Lennon looked at the handset for a moment before returning it to his pocket.
His thoughts returned to Tomas Strazdas and the other bodies that seemed to float in his wake. From what Lennon could tell, Strazdas was a low-level thug, as were the Mawhinney brothers. Not the kind of scumbags that gang wars erupted over. There had to be something underlying the killings, a root cause. Lennon suspected—no, felt in his bones—that the girl whose passport lay before him had something to do with it.
There had to be more to Tomas than was visible on the surface. And if you needed to see below the surface, there was one branch of the police force to talk to. Lennon hesitated for a moment, then lifted the desk phone’s handset and dialed the extension for the C3 Intelligence Branch office.
“DI Lennon calling for DCI Hewitt,” he said.
He listened to bland hold music and swallowed his own disgust at going to Hewitt for help. The most Lennon’s former friend suffered for his betrayals was a bullet in his leg, courtesy of a madman called Gerry Fegan.
Fegan was dead now, along with many others. Dan Hewitt had as much blood on his hands as those he investigated, and that knowledge gave Lennon a little leverage over his former friend. He had only used it once before, during the inquiry into the events that took Marie’s life. Lennon would hold Hewitt to account one day, but for now, he was useful, as much as it made his skin crawl to deal with him.
The hold music stopped.
“What do you want?” Hewitt asked.
“How are you, Dan?”
“Fuck you, that’s how I am,” Hewitt said. “What do you want?”
“Just a little guidance,” Lennon said. “You know about the killings of Tomas Strazdas and Sam Mawhinney, along with another unidentified male.”
“We’re monitoring the situation, yes.”
“And another death in Sydenham,” Lennon said. “Mark Mawhinney. Call me crazy, but I’ve a notion they’re
