Stolen Souls

by Stuart Neville

  At least a third of the two dozen times he had visited these places, the girl’s name had been Olga. Most of them had hollow eyes and moved like marionettes. They said hello, and please, and thank you. When he said he wanted nothing from them, they tugged at his clothes anyway. They were the lost. He could do nothing for them.

  But a few were still alive inside. They listened when he spoke. They gazed on him with hope and awe when he told them of salvation. They called him. Eventually.

  The woman led him across the living room and opened a door. He looked back over his shoulder at the three men. One of them lifted a coat, exchanged a farewell with his friends, and let himself out. None of them paid any attention to the man who watched.

  “Come,” the woman said. “She is nice. You see, you like her.”

  She stepped through to the bedroom.

  He followed.

  She extended a hand toward the girl on the bed.

  The girl looked up, no more than a glance, but enough to see that she still had her soul. They had not yet stolen it. She could still be saved.

  Silently, he thanked the Lord on high.

  13

  T HE OTHERS HAD been waiting when Herkus and his friends pulled up in the old BMW. The moron Sam drove, the Glock’s muzzle pressed against the back of his seat. Darius lay in the trunk. He had given a pained sigh when Herkus told him to get in.

  Now Darius and Sam sat side by side, each bound by cable ties to a chair. Herkus stood over them, blowing into his cupped hands to warm his fingers. The others, Matas and Valdas, stood silent against the roller door. They were good men, Herkus had known them since his army days, and they would back him up, no matter what happened here.

  He’d called Arturas on the way, told him he had the two men on the way to the lockup. Arturas had said to do whatever was necessary, to hell with whomever it upset.

  The lives of these two men were now worth shit, which gave Herkus solace.

  The lockup was as cold inside as it was outside, one of two dozen identical buildings on an abandoned industrial estate that lay to the north of the city. It had belonged to someone called McGinty. Herkus had been told in hushed tones that a crooked cop had been killed here by a madman called Fegan, and the planned housing development that was to replace the complex of storage buildings and commercial premises was indefinitely put on hold as a result.

  Herkus regarded each of the men in turn. Sam was as stupid as his idiot brother, both cheap hoods with a big-name organization behind them. No wonder Arturas held his business partners in the Loyalist movement in such contempt; if this was the standard of their personnel, then God help them all.

  Darius was a different animal. He was not the brightest of Arturas’s men, that wasn’t under question, but he had heart. And real physical strength. A mountain of a man, bigger than Herkus, even.

  So whom should he start with? For a moment, he thought it should be Darius. Show Sam how serious this situation was. But on the other hand, Darius was too useful. At least for the moment.

  Sam, then.

  Herkus tore two strips off a tissue. He rolled each into a ball and jammed them into his ears. He took the Glock 17 from his pocket and pressed the muzzle against Sam’s forehead.

  “Where is Tomas?” he asked.

  “Jesus,” Sam whined. “I don’t know, I swear to—”

  Herkus squeezed the trigger and shouted, “Bang!”

  Sam screamed, and a dark stain spread on his lap.

  Herkus laughed. “Other thing about Glock 17,” he said. “No round in chamber, no bang.”

  He pulled back the slide assembly.

  “Now it goes bang,” he said.

  Herkus placed the muzzle against Sam’s forehead.

  Liquid trickled to the floor.

  “Where is Tomas?” Herkus asked.

  “He’s dead!” Sam cried. “She killed him.”

  Herkus’s heart sank. He closed his eyes.

  “Who killed him?” he asked, opening them again.

  “The girl,” Sam said. “She had a piece of glass, off a mirror. She stabbed him in the throat. We panicked. We stuffed her and the body in the trunk of the car. We drove out to the harbor to get rid of them. She got away. We left Tomas there on the side of the road.”

  He looked up at Herkus, his eyes wide and wet. “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry. We didn’t know what to do, we were scared, I’m sorry, oh God, I’m—”

  Herkus squeezed the trigger.

  The back of Sam’s skull exploded.

  Darius wept.

  Herkus placed the muzzle against his old friend’s forehead.

  “Tell me everything,” he said.

  14

  ARTURAS STRAZDAS PRESSED the red button on his phone before Herkus finished speaking. He stared at the display, but saw nothing.

  Tomas dead.

  Killed by a whore.

  Abandoned at some roadside like a dog.

  Strazdas roared and threw the phone at the wall. He burned inside, his heart incandescent. He grabbed fistfuls of his own hair and pulled until his scalp screamed. He formed a fist with his right hand and struck his forehead and temples again and again until he staggered, dizzy like a drunk, into the wall.

  But still, the fire would not dim.

  He tugged at his left shirtsleeve to expose his forearm and closed his teeth on the pale flesh.

  Oh, the pain, white hot and fierce, at last blotting out the anger. His mind found balance. He eased his jaw open, tasted metal.

  The shame hit hard, like a punch to his gut. He had never, would never tell a living soul about his anger. How sometimes it made him hurt himself. How, now and then, he bruised himself. How, albeit rarely, he occasionally drew his own blood.

  Strazdas breathed hard, in through his nose, out through his mouth, until his heartbeat settled in his chest. He went to the suite’s bathroom and turned the cold-water tap on the washbasin. Leaning against the black marble, he held his forearm beneath the stream and watched the red streaks run down to the drain.

  He cursed himself.

  Ten years or more he’d been doing this. Always out of the blue, always over as soon as it began. First the anger, then the pain to drown it out, then the shame.

  Once, in his Brussels apartment, the housecleaner had seen him slap his own face and bite the back of his hand. She had asked if everything was all right. He had said yes, everything was fine, not to worry.

  Her body had never been found.

  Strazdas tore off half a dozen sheets of toilet paper, wadded them into a ball, and pressed them against the bloody ellipse. He straightened and looked at himself in the mirror. A handsome man, he had been told. Thick dark hair and blue eyes. Good skin, fine features.

  He spat at the mirror.

  Saliva sprayed and dripped down the glass.

  Arturas Strazdas knew he was unwell, but had no idea how to get better. Often it seemed his life played out before him, and he was a spectator of his own days. He had never had a woman he hadn’t paid for, he had never had a friend who didn’t fear him, and he knew he would die alone.

  He had always known he would bury his brother.

  Oh God, Tomas.

  Strazdas grabbed a hand towel and wiped spittle from the mirror, avoiding his own gaze in the reflection. He dropped the towel in the basin, walked to the bedroom, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  Tomas, dead.

  What did grief feel like? Strazdas had never knowingly experienced it. When he got word from an uncle that his father had died, he had played the part of the mournful son, but deep down, he had rejoiced. He had never wept over the passing of another.

  Strazdas closed his eyes, reached inside himself, searched for any sense of loss. Something nestled there, in his heart, that might have been a keening for his brother. But it was matched by the relief that he would never have to deal with Tomas’s catastrophes again. And that in turn was dwarfed by the anger at his own kin being snuffed out by a whore.

  There, seize
on that, take hold of the anger.

  Surely a real human being would feel anger at the murder of his brother? Yes, they would. Murdered by a whore. Strazdas took hold of his rage and brought it close to his heart.

  Don’t call until you’ve found him, his mother had said.

  “I found him,” Strazdas said to the empty room.

  He had to call her. Tell her what happened. He thought about waiting until he had more information, but it would do no good. She would resent every second he held the knowledge from her and punish him for it. Every minute he spared himself the act of telling was a minute of fury earned from her.

  He stood, walked to the suite’s lounge, retrieved his mobile phone from the floor. A crack or two in the casing from the impact against the wall. He opened the contacts list. Her number was stored under Laima. He would never call her that to her face, of course, but it felt foolish to have “Mother” in one’s collection of phone numbers.

  Before he hit the dial button, he mopped up white powder from the glass desktop with his fingertip. He worked it across his gums, relishing the cool numbing sensation that followed.

  Now, dial.

  Strazdas listened to the tones as the mobile connected to the apartment in Brussels. His mind’s eye pictured the large, open living area, and the telephone on the elegant side table next to the plush couch he had bought for her. He saw her switch on lights in the darkened apartment, walk to the phone, reach for the handset, her eyes blurred by sleep and tears.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “It’s me.”

  Silence for a moment, then, “Tell me.”

  “Tomas is dead,” he said.

  A distorted clatter as the phone fell to the apartment floor. A strangled cry, like an animal caught in a trap. He listened for a minute or more, choked sobs and keening wails, until it stopped like a needle lifted from the groove of an old vinyl record. She lifted the phone again.

  “How?”

  Strazdas told her all of it. About the whore, how Tomas wanted to break her in, how she cut his throat with a shard of glass, how Darius and that idiot he ran with tried to dump the body in the water, and how the whore got away from them.

  When he was done, he listened to her steady breathing. Eventually, she said, “Kill her.”

  “I will,” Strazdas said.

  “Make sure the bitch suffers for what she did to my boy,” she said.

  He was a child again, shamed because he’d wet his bed, red imprints of her hard hand against the skin of his legs. “I will,” he said.

  “And anyone else who was responsible, anyone who gets in your way. Do you understand me?”

  Or a young teenager, caught with his fingers in his trousers, her mouth slashed wide in disgust. “Yes,” he said.

  “Kill them all.”

  His bladder ached. “Yes.”

  A hard click, and she was gone.

  He ran to the bathroom.

  15

  A WHITE TOYOTA VAN approached, its headlights flooding the shadows beneath the bridge. Galya flattened her shivering body against the pillar, concrete icy cold on her cheek.

  The van slowed, the driver’s window lowered, showing the occupant’s moon face.

  Galya stepped away from the pillar, letting the light find her. The driver smiled. He reached for the passenger door, opened it, turned back to her.

  “Come on,” he said.

  * * *

  HE HAD COME to her in the afternoon. She had given him a glance as he entered the room, ushered in by Rasa, and turned her gaze downward.

  Rasa spoke to him in English, saying, “Enjoy her. She is new. Never been touched.”

  She closed the door, leaving him alone with Galya.

  He lingered at the other end of the bedroom, his eyes like points of black oil on his round face, his coarse dark hair swept back from his forehead, a thick beard surrounding the red slit of his mouth. A pink scar carved a line from the center of his forehead to the outer edge of his right eyebrow. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, maybe forty. Galya examined him in the corner of her vision.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Galya tried to reply, but only managed a thick murmur in her throat.

  “Can I sit down?” he asked.

  Galya moved closer to the bed’s headboard. She felt his weight on the mattress. It rocked her like a boat on a sickly wave. She did not look at him, but she sensed his attention on her bare skin. Without thinking, she placed one forearm across her breasts, the other down between her thighs so her hand cupped her knee.

  “My name’s Billy,” he said.

  Galya did not respond.

  “Am I really the first client?” he asked.

  Galya swallowed, her lips tight together.

  “So no one’s touched you yet?”

  Galya studied the patterns on the faded wallpaper.

  “Good,” he said. “Then it’s not too late.”

  He kneeled on the floor, facing her, like a suitor asking for her hand in marriage.

  “I can help you,” he said. His accent was soft and soupy, not hard and angular like the men who owned this flat. English, maybe, she couldn’t be sure.

  Galya lifted her eyes to meet his. His gaze locked solid on hers, his expression firm and truthful.

  “If you can get away from here,” he said, “I can help you.”

  Galya went to speak, but closed her mouth when she realized she had no words for him.

  “Please believe me,” he said. “I can help you. If you can get out of here, don’t tell anyone where you’re going, I can help you get back home. What’s your name?”

  Galya shook her head.

  “My name’s Billy Crawford,” he said. “I’m a pastor. A Baptist pastor, but I haven’t been placed with a church. Instead, I help girls like you, help you get away from this. Do you understand?”

  He reached for Galya. She pulled away.

  “It’s all right, I won’t hurt you,” he said, as if he were calming a trembling puppy. “Look.”

  He held a fine silver chain before her eyes, a cross dangling from it.

  “For you,” he said. “So Jesus will protect you.”

  He went to place it over her head. She flinched.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, lowering his hands. The cross settled in his lap. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I know you’re scared. I know you don’t want to be here. You don’t, do you?”

  Galya wanted to shake her head, tell him no, she didn’t want to be here. Instead she turned her eyes away.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m here to help you. I can help you get back home, away from these people.”

  Away.

  Such a big word. So big there were many ways to say it in Russian. Away, like she wanted to get away from Mama’s farm. Like she wanted to leave her village. To be free of the things that bound her there. To go to another place and have a life of her own.

  Those notions seemed foolish now, but the word still weighed as heavy. She wanted to be away from here more than she had ever wanted anything before.

  So when he reached again, she dipped her head, allowed him to place the chain around her neck. The cross lay cold on her skin. She touched it with her fingertip, felt the hard angles.

  “Jesus will protect you,” he said. “He will protect you, and He will help you get away from these people. Do you understand me?”

  Galya nodded once.

  “Good.” A smile split his moon face. He took her hand and put a piece of paper in her palm, a string of numbers written on it in pencil, each digit impossibly neat. “When you get away from here, call me. Understand? Call me. I can save you.”

  He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and left her alone in the room. Galya stared at the paper and the numbers printed on it. She lifted the cross from her breast, turned it in the light, brought it to her lips, kissed it.

  Hard, quick footsteps approached from beyond the bedroom door. Galya bunched up the piece of paper and stuffed it bene
ath the pillow on the bed beside her. She lifted the chain over her head, ready to stash it with the phone number, but the door opened. Galya clenched her fist around the cross as Rasa entered and asked, “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Galya said.

  “That’s right,” Rasa said as she approached the bed. “Nothing.”

  “He just—”

  Rasa’s open hand struck Galya’s cheek, the impact followed by heat, heat followed by pain. “Nothing. You didn’t do a thing for him.”

  “He only wanted to talk,” Galya said as her throat tightened with tears. She held up the cross. “Look. He gave me this.”

  Rasa’s hand lashed out again, leaving its stinging mark on Galya’s other cheek. “Men don’t want to talk,” she said. “Men want to fuck. You ungrateful little bitch, after everything I’ve done for you.”

  Galya could hold the tears back no longer. “But he didn’t want—”

  She cried out as Rasa grabbed a fistful of hair and hoisted her to her feet. “They only want to fuck. That’s all you’re here for.”

  Rasa threw her against the chest of drawers, sending makeup and lotions spilling. The mirror teetered on its stand before tipping and crashing to the floor, shards scattering.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Rasa said, marching to the door. “Clean it up.”

  Galya got to her knees as the door slammed shut. Pieces of broken mirror lay around her. She wept as she gathered them up and dropped them in the small bin that sat by the chest.

  Maybe the kind man could save her. Maybe he couldn’t. It didn’t matter either way, not if she couldn’t get away from here, away from Rasa and the men she had sold Galya to. Soon another man would come, a man who wasn’t kind, and she would have to do things for him. Her stomach soured at the idea.

  Galya reached for the largest piece of glass, long like a blade, and saw the cross and chain lying curled upon it.

  * * *

  “I’LL TAKE YOU to my house,” Billy Crawford said as he put the van in gear and moved off. “You’ll be safe there for now. Put your seatbelt on.”

  Galya did as she was told. He noticed the deep red on her clothing and her hands.