5
GALYA HAD BEEN a runner ever since she was small. She’d been the fastest in her school district, winning every medal and trophy the regional championships had to offer. Mama displayed them in the old china cabinet she had inherited from her own grandmother forty years before.
As Galya reached her teens and her bones lengthened, she found the 5000 meters to be her best event. At fourteen, she trained three times a day, edging ever closer to running the distance in fifteen minutes. She remembered the cold early mornings, closing the door of Mama’s house behind her, jogging to the track in the village, listening to the sounds of the world awaking as she devoured lap after lap.
The coach had wanted to put her up for the athletic school, said she’d sail through the trials, they might even start grooming her for the Olympic team. But that would have meant going away and leaving Mama to work the few acres of land she owned all by herself. So Galya turned the chance down and ran purely for the heart-racing pleasure of it.
Now she ran for her life.
Her arms churned. Frosty tarmac chewed at the naked balls of her feet. Her lungs grabbed at cold air.
She had a twenty-meter start before they realized she had gone. Sam had tripped over the dead man in his panic to get after her. She heard him hit the ground and cry out in pain, leaving only Darius to pursue her, his footsteps heavy as he propelled his bulk forward.
Did they have guns? Galya did not believe so; she would have heard them boom by now, felt the bullets slam into her back. How would it feel?
She dismissed the thought.
Up ahead, an open gate, a dock beyond. Behind, running feet, lumbering, unable to close the distance. She did not look back. To do so would be to lose her balance and rhythm. Galya knew this was the essence of running. Balance and rhythm granted speed and minimized fatigue. If she lost those, she would lose ground to them. If she lost ground, she would die.
Breathe.
She heard the ragged stabs of Darius’s breathing. He was not a sprinter, but had no endurance either. Not like Galya. If she could keep ahead of him long enough, keep out of his reach, his legs would give up, the muscles’ craving for oxygen too great to carry him any further.
Galya heard him roar as he found a last reserve of speed. But she had more. Despite the pain as the salted ground tore the skin from her feet, she pushed harder. He was closer now, his desperate gasps gaining on her. He cried out again as his pace faltered.
She spotted the ice in time to lengthen her stride, and she cleared it easily. Darius did not. She heard him slide, then the soggy thump of flesh meeting hard ground, and finally the wheeze of air knocked from his lungs.
The Lithuanian grunted and cursed behind her as he hauled himself to his feet. He was big and strong, but he was slow. She could outrun him, she had no doubt of that, but the pain dragged at her ankles and the chilled air spiked her lungs.
Galya couldn’t hold it in her chest, it was too cold. Her rhythm skipped.
The breath hissed from between her teeth, her balance lost along with it. She commanded her mind to concentrate, her body to follow its lead, but the pain wouldn’t stay in her feet. It crept up her ankles to her calves, shortening her stride, speed deserting her.
The Lithuanian’s thudding footsteps drew closer. He huffed and gasped, but he held his pace.
The open gate stood only meters away. Inside the yard she could make out great black mounds against the city lights. Coal, maybe, or stones, and towering machines and low huts. Places to hide, if she could reach them.
But the pain and the cold. They stabbed at her legs, tightened around her chest.
The Lithuanian came closer still, so close he could touch her if he reached out.
Galya prayed as she ran.
Blinding light, a screech, a thump and a cry.
The car, a big four-wheel drive, came from a side road. She felt the displaced air as it missed her and hit the Lithuanian. She heard him hit the ground hard.
A door opened and a voice called, “Stop!”
Galya kept running, though her long strides had turned to lopsided lurches.
The voice called again, “Stop! Police!”
She slowed, spared a glance over her shoulder.
The car bore colored markings and had the words HARBOUR POLICE emblazoned on the side. Galya halted, her fear mixing with confusion.
“Don’t move,” the policeman said. He turned his attention to the man sprawled in front of the car. He spoke into a radio. “Bobby, we better get an ambulance down here.”
The radio crackled in reply.
“Because I just ran somebody over.”
A longer burst of static.
“I don’t know. He’s alive. He’s moving, like. Corner of Dufferin and Barnet Road.”
Galya fought the adrenalin, forced herself to be still, to wait.
The policeman noticed the car by the water, the plasticwrapped bundle on the embankment. He spoke into his radio again. “Better get some PSNI boys down here too.”
More crackling.
“That’s what I’m going to try to find out. I don’t like the look of it, whatever it is.’
He turned back to Galya. “Right, love. What’s happening here?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but remembered what she’d been told about the police in this country. The gangmasters had warned them all on the farm, and the workers remembered the stories they’d heard from others. The police hated immigrants, would arrest and beat them. The lucky ones got kicked out of the country; the rest went to gray prisons for years, abandoned to a system that would let them rot in the dank bowels of its detention centers.
Galya looked down at herself and saw blood had soaked through her clothing and coated her hands. She had killed a man not an hour before. If the police got her, she would be treated as a murderer. Did they still hang murderers here? She took a step backward.
The policeman extended a hand toward her. “Listen, love, no one’s going to hurt you. Just stay—”
An engine roared. He turned to see the old BMW accelerate toward him.
Darius got to his knees.
“What the fuck is going on?” the policeman asked. He reached for the pistol at his hip, but Darius grabbed his wrist. He looked into the policeman’s eyes as he rose to tower over him.
Once more, Galya ran.
6
FOR THE SECOND time tonight, a phone’s shrill call caught Lennon at the edge of slumber. He jerked awake, cold in his darkened office, and reached for the handset.
“Yes?”
“Call from Sergeant Connolly,” the duty officer said. “Sounds like a bad one.”
“Christ,” Lennon said, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “All right, put him through.”
Lennon listened to clicks and beeps while the call bounced down the wires before he heard Connolly’s strained breath. Sounded like he was fighting the cold. Connolly was a good officer, still young enough to remember
