prepared.
“My name is Edwin Alan Paynter,” he said. “I have delivered eight women to the Lord, three in Salford, five in Belfast.”
“For Christ’s sake, drop the gun,” the officer said.
Paynter ignored him, remembering what he’d watched the foreigner in his cellar do just hours ago. He brought his free hand to the pistol’s slide assembly, pulled it back, felt metal parts move and click into place, and said, “They will thank me when I see them in His arms.”
The officer took a step closer. “I will shoot you dead, do you hear me?”
“You cannot hold me,” Paynter said. “Your prisons cannot hold me. The Angel of the Lord will set me free.”
He did not hear the screams of those around him as he brought the muzzle to his lips, slipped it between his teeth, pressed it to the roof of his mouth.
He tasted oil and metal, felt the Angel of the Lord’s kiss upon his cheek.
He squeezed the trigger.
PART FOUR
JACK
80
GALYA WAITED IN the passenger seat as Lennon examined the car’s rear. Even with the coat wrapped tight around her, she felt the night’s cold, dark fingers creep in through the broken window behind her. She shivered through the fatigue that wracked her body. Too exhausted to be afraid, all she wanted now was sleep.
Lennon opened the driver’s door and lowered himself in. “It’s not that bad,” he said, his breath misting. “It’ll drive, anyway.”
They had toured the streets for half an hour, winding from one row of darkened houses to another, the policeman constantly watching his rearview mirror until he was certain they were not being followed. Only then did he stop to check the damage.
He restarted the engine and pulled away from the curb, once more picking his way through the frozen streets.
After several minutes of silence, Galya asked, “Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” Lennon said. “But I know who sent him.”
“Who?”
“Arturas Strazdas,” he said. “The brother of the man you killed.”
The woman at the hospital had explained the aftermath of Galya’s actions to her in a soft, sad voice. At the time, it seemed like a story, a tale about some other girl who had been brought to a strange city to be bought and sold.
“I didn’t want to kill that man,” Galya said. “I didn’t want these things to happen.”
“I know you didn’t,” Lennon said. “But I don’t think that matters to him.”
He turned left onto a roundabout, then exited to a long, straight road. Lennon slowed the car as they approached a cluster of buildings surrounded by a high wall. Floodlights cut through the fog that covered the site. Next to a closed pair of gates were emblazoned the words: LADAS DRIVE STATION, POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHER IRELAND.
Lennon stopped the car and shut the engine off. He stared at the building.
“Is this where you’re taking me?” Galya asked.
“Yes,” Lennon said. “It was, anyway.”
“Was?”
He sat silent for a moment, his forearms resting on the steering wheel, thinking, his breath misting the car’s windshield.
“Please, what is wrong?”
He did not answer.
“Out here, on the streets, it is not safe,” Galya said. “We should go in that place.”
“No,” Lennon said.
“Why?” Galya asked.
He took a mobile phone from his pocket and searched for a number.
81
THE TELEPHONE JARRED Strazdas from his bloodied dreams. He sat upright on the bed, still naked, still sweating and shivering. His heart hammered in his chest as his lungs tried to catch up. A splintering spear of pain shot from the center of his forehead to the base of his skull to dissipate through his neck and shoulders. He pressed the heel of his hand to his brow.
The phone rang again. Strazdas checked the clock: almost eleven. He had slept for less than an hour. That made no more than three hours out of the previous seventy-two.
He reached for the phone before it could tear at his nerves again with its shrill voice.
“Yes?”
“Good evening, Mr. Strazdas, reception calling. I have a Mr. Lennon on the line. Shall I put him through?”
Strazdas swallowed. “Yes.”
“Go ahead,” the receptionist said.
“You should hire some better help,” Lennon said.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Strazdas said.
“I mean whoever you sent to do your dirty work, they fucked it up.”
“I don’t know what you refer to.”
“We got away, the girl and me.”
“Which girl?”
“I’ve been thinking, though.”
“Mr. Lennon, perhaps you should talk to my—”
“How would he know I’d been called back to the station?” Lennon asked.
“You should talk to my lawyer, the gentleman you met—” “And how would he know what route I’d take?”
“Mr. Lennon, I am going to hang up now.”
“Is it Dan Hewitt? Is that who you’ve got inside? He sold me out before, and he’d do it ag—”
Strazdas returned the handset to its cradle and cursed the soul of his brother for getting himself killed in this wretched place.
82
LENNON RE TURNED THE phone to his coat pocket. As he did so, he felt the passport tucked in there. He withdrew it and opened it to the data page, the image of a girl looking back at him through the laminate. A girl who did not sit next to him in the Audi’s passenger seat. But she had those blue eyes, the almost unnaturally fine features, the high cheekbones, the yellow hair.
He turned his gaze to Galya, held the passport up close to her face so he could see them together.
“What do you look at?” she asked.
“It might be enough,” he said.
