metal, tumblers realigning. The door loosened in its frame. She turned the handle.
The smell hit her first. Urine and feces layered on bile and bleach. Galya brought a hand to her mouth and nose. The howling ceased, cut off by a rasping inhalation.
A bed stood across the room, its headboard against the wall, the eaves of the roof rising up like a church steeple above it. A form lay twitching beneath the blankets.
Galya stepped across the threshold, felt cold floorboards under her feet. She moved slow, watching the bed as she approached. The shape cried out. A thin hand reached up into the shaft of light that cut the stench-ridden air.
A woman’s hand, worn by age, nails long, yellowed and cracked. Scars crossed freshly scabbed cuts on the skin.
“Hello?” Galya said in English, her voice too quiet to be a whisper.
The voice answered, an ululation that died to a hiss as the woman’s lungs emptied.
“Do you need help?” Galya asked.
A head rose from the pillow, a hollowed face blotched red, spidery white tendrils of hair reaching out from a pink scalp. The woman’s black eyes stared, a toothless mouth opening and closing. The cords of her neck trembled at the effort of holding her head upright, until they could support it no longer. It dropped back to the pillow as she moaned.
Galya drew alongside the bed. The woman gaped up at her. Drool ran from one twisted corner of her mouth, her gums pink and shining behind thin lips.
“Aaaahhhh,” she said, her mouth wide.
“I can’t understand,” Galya said. “Do you need help? Do I get someone? A doctor?”
“Mwaah,” the woman said. Her arms reached up, hands like claws, but her stick-thin legs remained still beneath the blankets.
“What do you want?” Galya asked.
The old woman hissed through her gums and grabbed Galya’s arm. Galya tried to pull away, but the woman’s scarred fingers knotted around her wrist like hard vines. With her other hand, she reached up to the top of the wooden headboard. It was chipped and splintered, dried blood staining its varnish. The old woman dragged her fingers across its surface until a new wound opened.
“Don’t,” Galya said. “You hurt yourself. Is bad.”
The old woman tightened her grip as Galya tried to back away. She brought her bleeding forefinger down to the bedclothes covering her midsection and slashed lines across it.
“Please stop,” Galya said. “I’ll get help.”
The old woman pointed at the bloody shapes she had smeared on the sheets. Galya looked down at them and felt the aged hand release her wrist. She studied the shapes, the red lines, crisscrossing on the stained fabric. As she stared, they began to make sense, the lines making a connection in her mind.
Three letters.
One word.
RUN.
37
IT TOOK LENNON almost twenty minutes to walk from a side street near Queen’s University to the city centre. The traffic had come to a standstill, so he’d decided to park up and trudge the rest of the way through the snow. By the time he rounded the corner of the shopping centre on to Victoria Street, his supposedly waterproof shoes had given in, socks drenched, toes going numb.
His mobile rang as he spotted the two traffic cops and the man they’d detained. Lennon moved close to the shopping center’s wall in the hope of it providing some shelter. He answered his phone.
“That child’s been alone all day,” Bernie McKenna said.
“She hasn’t been alone,” Lennon said. “She’s been with Susan and Lucy.”
“She should be with family, not dumped with some neighbor who’s too soft to say no.”
“They aren’t ‘some neighbor,’” Lennon said. “Lucy’s her best friend.”
“That’s as may be,” Bernie said, “but the child’s got no call to be on her own at Christmas. I can pick her up and have her back here before teatime. She can spend Christmas with them that wants her. You won’t have to worry about it.”
“I’ll be home this evening,” Lennon said. “She’ll spend Christmas with me.”
It took some effort to say those words with conviction, as if he really believed them. Family or not, he’d rather Ellen woke up in Susan’s apartment than in Bernie McKenna’s house.
“That Susan one told me you got called away,” Bernie said, her voice almost gleeful in the scolding. “Something to do with them killings. She said she didn’t know when you’d be back.”
“I’ll be back this evening,” Lennon said. “You’ll see Ellen on Boxing Day, just like I told you. Don’t ring me again.”
He hung up. The phone rang almost immediately, but he hit the reject button and stowed it away.
Up ahead, a tall, broad man in a leather blazer stood scowling at the side of the road, a black Mercedes parked half on the curb beside him, one of the cops directing traffic around it.
Lennon approached and showed the officers his ID. The big man did not react, but continued to gaze into the distance, as if there were things of much greater concern than the policemen who surrounded him.
“Herkus Katilius,” Lennon said.
Herkus shrugged.
“I’m Detective Inspector Jack Lennon. I’m investigating the murder of Tomas Strazdas, an associate of yours.”
Herkus spared Lennon a glance.
“The brother of Arturas Strazdas, your employer.”
“English no good,” Herkus said.
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that today,” Lennon said. “I didn’t believe it the first time, either.”
One of the traffic cops stepped forward. “His English is fine.” Herkus gave the cop a hard stare.
Lennon’s mobile rang again. He took it from his pocket, saw it was Bernie McKenna, and once again rejected the call. He switched the phone to vibrate and returned it to his pocket.
“Is there anything you want to tell me about Tomas’s murder?” Lennon asked.
Herkus shook his head. He winced when his own phone rang.
“You expecting a call?” Lennon asked.
Herkus gave a sly smile. “Were you?”
“Not from anyone I want to talk to.”
“Same,” Herkus said.
Lennon wondered for the tenth time if he should have had Herkus taken to the station. For the tenth time he decided against it. The hard environment of an interview room might soften up the average man off the street, but Lennon knew to look at Herkus that he’d seen the inside of a cell too many times for it to bother him in the slightest. A man like him would know to clam up for a formal interview and wait for his lawyer to arrive. That prick Rainey who’d been in Strazdas’s hotel room, probably. He’d swoop in and demand Herkus be released or cautioned. And Lennon had nothing but a few whispers to hold over the Lithuanian, so best to do it here. Use the whispers to his advantage.
“I know about the girl,” Lennon said.
The smile fell from Herkus’s face. As it crept back, he asked, “What girl?”
Lennon took the passport from his pocket, opened it, held the photograph in front Herkus’s nose.
“The girl who traveled here on this passport,” Lennon said. “She probably looks more than a little like the woman in this picture.”
“I don’t know about any girl,” Herkus said.
“I do,” Lennon said. “I know all about this girl. I know she killed your boss’s brother. I know Darius Banys and Sam Mawhinney were killed in retaliation. I also know Mark Mawhinney got his neck broken this morning. Sooner or later, I’m going to start thinking you had something to do with all of this. Then I’m going to have to take you in and
