taught him how to make a good living from the weaknesses of others.
Arturas Strazdas stood and crossed the room to the elegant glass-topped sideboard. Herkus had left a small package there, a cellophane bag containing an amount of white powder. Good stuff, Herkus had said, straight from the source. Go easy on it, he had said. Maybe get some rest before taking any.
Strazdas opened the bag’s seal and poured a little of the powder onto the glass. Using the hotel’s key card, he divided and shaped the powder into three lines. He took a fifty-euro note from his pocket, rolled it into a tube, inserted one end into his left nostril, and inhaled.
The world snapped into focus.
He shivered as he exhaled, moved the rolled-up note to his other nostril, and inhaled the second line.
His head lightened.
Strazdas switched the note back to his left nostril and took the last line. He threw the note aside and bent down, licked the last of the powder from the glass. As his tongue slipped across the glossy surface, tingling from the cocaine, he opened his eyes and saw their reflection. He stood upright and stared at himself for a moment.
“Fuck you,” he said.
His wits sharpened, his heart beating harder, the air sweeter than it had been before. He grinned at the powderstreaked face in the glass. His phone chimed, and somewhere inside himself, he thought he might have sensed the coming call seconds before it sounded. Some might dismiss that as nonsense, but Arturas Strazdas was not an ordinary man. He was a great man. He could do anything.
Or perhaps that was the cocaine talking.
He sniffed hard and wiped his nose before crossing back to the desk and lifting his mobile. His soul withered a little when he saw the name on the display.
“Yes, Mother,” he answered.
“You didn’t call,” she said, her voice jagged like broken slate. “You said you’d call when you landed, and you didn’t. Why not?”
“I’ve been busy,” Strazdas said.
“Not so busy you couldn’t call your mother, let her know you got there safe.”
“No.”
“And how is Tomas?” she asked.
Strazdas closed his eyes. “Why are you up so late? It’s the middle of the night. You should be sleeping.”
“And so should you,” she said. “You didn’t answer my question. How is Tomas? I haven’t seen him since he went to that awful place.”
Strazdas had never been able to lie to his mother. “I haven’t spoken with him,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked, no attempt to disguise the worry in her voice. “Have you phoned him?”
He took a breath. “Yes. He didn’t answer.”
“But Tomas always answers his phone.”
“I know.”
“Even when he’s with one of his women, he answers his phone. There’ve been times I wish he hadn’t, but he always does.”
“I know.”
“Then find him,” she said. “Don’t dare talk to me again until you’ve found him.”
The phone died in his hand.
“I won’t,” he said.
8
GALYA DIDN’T KNOW how long she’d hidden in the shadows before making her way through the fenced-off yards to the rubble and steel of this building site. She had spared one glance over her shoulder to see the big Lithuanian slam his huge fist into the policeman’s head. She had heard the sickly slapping of fist on flesh as she ran, and for a short while, the policeman’s cries.
Lorries and cargo containers stood sentry outside a warehouse, along with piles of rusting machinery and giant sacks of concrete. She found the dark pools between them, immersed herself there where the orange streetlights couldn’t touch her.
Soon she heard the BMW’s engine rumble as it advanced along the road, nearing her hiding place. It came into view, only meters away. It stopped, a door opened, and the big Lithuanian climbed out. His breath plumed around him.
Galya clasped a hand over her mouth in case he saw the warm air seeping from her lungs.
He stood staring into the blackness. For a moment, she was certain he looked directly into her eyes. His body leaned forward as if he were about to take a step closer to her hiding place, but Sam called from inside the car, “We have to go.”
“She here,” the Lithuanian said.
“There’s no time. The cops will be on their way. They’ll be here any second. For fuck’s sake, come on.”
The Lithuanian turned to face him. “You no say me what do.”
“What?” Sam peered out at him, his face slack with disbelief. “I’m not having this out with you now, for Christ’s sake. Get in the car or I’m leaving you here.”
The Lithuanian’s shoulders slumped. He returned his gaze to the shadows. “I know you here,” he said. “I know you speak English. I not stupid like this man. You stay in dark. I find you, you dead. Tomas brother find you, you dead. Police find you, you dead.”
Galya shrank further into the black. The Lithuanian took one more step forward.
“Yes,” he said. “Arturas own police. Police give you to him. Then you dead. Arturas hurt you bad, hurt you long time. Then you dead.”
He drew a finger across his throat and grinned.
“Come on,” Sam said. “I’m not asking again.”
The Lithuanian climbed back into the BMW. Its tires skittered on the ice before he closed the door, and the car disappeared from her view.
How long ago had that been? How long had she hidden in the dark there? The shivering had become uncontrollable, her limbs jerking and bucking. She knew she had to move or the cold would get her. She had seen it before, how the hypothermia took old Vasyl on the neighboring farm. With no money for fuel, he had burrowed into a pile of rags at the bottom of a wardrobe to die. Like an animal, Mama had said, digging its own grave.
It was the arrival of another car saying Harbour Police on its flank that got her on her feet. Galya clung to the shadows as she fought to put one foot in front of the other, her arms and legs feeling like they belonged to a drunkard. The icy air robbed her of her balance as she tried to quicken her pace.
A foolish part of her almost welcomed the growing numbness in her feet, blocking the stinging pain, but then she remembered how Papa had lost parts of his own to frostbite. She wiggled her naked toes to keep the blood flowing to them.
Through the stacked sacks of concrete and lorry cabs, in the orange-lit distance, she saw the policeman kneel beside his fallen colleague. While his attention was on the stricken man, Galya emerged from the darkness to cut across the road and lose herself in the night.
She had half run, half walked perhaps a quarter of a mile or more, keeping the rumble of the motorway on her right, water on her left, when she heard the sirens. That was when she had come upon the stretch of steel skeletons, a row of buildings under construction.
Galya squeezed through a gap in the barrier that had been erected around the site. Four stories of girders rose up above her head. She kept to the edge of the site, her focus on the ground in case a hole might swallow her. For every step she took, she first explored the earth and stones with her toes. Her vision failed as she moved further into the site and away from the streetlights.
An old church stood adjacent, on the other side of the plywood wall, its arched windows showing no light from within. Galya skirted its perimeter until she reached the far side of the building site and found a hinged door secured by a padlock and chain. She pushed against it, opening a gap of only a few inches, and crouched down. Her slender shoulder fit through the opening beneath the chain, but her head jammed tight in the gap. Coarse wood scratched her cheek. She put all her weight against the barrier, and splinters dug at her ear as she squeezed her
