Free Stolen Souls by Stuart Neville Page B

apartment. He held the envelopes he’d taken from the postman he’d intercepted downstairs.
    “You look like shit,” she said.
    “Thanks. Ellen up yet?”
    “Half an hour ago,” Susan said, leading the way to her kitchenette. “She’s in Lucy’s room. I was just about to make breakfast for them. Coffee?”
    “Please,” he said, taking a seat at the table.
    He set the mail addressed to Susan to one side and opened his own. One bill, an overdue notice, and a card with an An Post stamp and a Finglas postmark.
    Susan spooned instant granules into two mugs and poured boiling water over them. Without asking, she added two sugars to his, stirred, and set the mug in front of him.
    “Take it easy for ten minutes,” she said. “Ellen’s happy playing anyway.”
    Lennon smiled in thanks and took a sip.
    The Christmas card was a cheap supermarket job, all gaudy colors and saccharine sentiment. He looked inside and felt his nerve endings jangle.
    The only mark it bore was the letter T, two lines intersecting as if drawn by a child.
    He stared at it, his mind racing through possibilities. A sick joke, maybe. Or perhaps he misunderstood, the shape etched on the card being nothing other than the pair of scrawled lines they appeared to be.
    Susan hovered by his side, asked, “What’s wrong? You’re shaking.”
    “Nothing,” he said. He closed the card, the image of the Traveller’s knowing grin burning in his mind.
    Lennon had arrested him after a botched attempt at kidnapping Ellen at the Royal Victoria Hospital. He remembered the taunts, the cackling, the madness of him. The Traveller had escaped custody with, Lennon suspected, DCI Dan Hewitt’s help, and tried again. He succeeded, taking Ellen and Marie from a place Lennon thought was safe, and brought them to a house owned by a revenge-driven old man called Bull O’Kane.
    Marie never left that house, and until now, Lennon was sure the Traveller hadn’t made it out either.
    Of course he hadn’t, Lennon told himself. They’d scoured the place, found more than half a dozen bodies in the smoking ruin. There was no way the Traveller could have gotten out of there alive.
    A hoax, there was no other explanation, perhaps another of Dan Hewitt’s connivances.
    Lennon’s mobile rang, and he said a silent thank you for the interruption before answering.
    It was Sergeant Darren Moffat, the duty officer. “Just wanted to give you word on something,” he said. “Two bodies found in a lockup in D District, near Newtownabbey, about forty-five minutes ago. An officer at the scene recognized one of them straight away. A real likely lad called Sam Mawhinney.”
    Lennon tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder and tore the card into small pieces. Susan watched as he stood and dropped the scraps into the bin.
    “And what’s this got to do with me?” he asked, willing himself to forget about the card and concentrate on Moffat’s information. He retook his seat and pressed his fingertips against his forehead in an attempt to rub away the ache of fatigue.
    “The name rang a bell,” Moffat said. “Took me a few minutes to figure it out. I’d been pulling information for Sergeant Connolly this morning, the arrest records for that Lithuanian fella that got killed last night.”
    Lennon tensed. “And?”
    “Sam Mawhinney, and his brother Mark, were arrested along with Mr. Tomas Strazdas on one occasion. An assault in that wee park by the cinema on Dublin Road.”
    “Christ,” Lennon said.
    “Quite a coincidence, eh?”
    “Yep,” Lennon said. “Anyone ID the other body?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Who’s the senior investigating officer on this?”
    “That’ll be DCI Keith Ferguson. You want him to give you a call?”
    “Yep.” Lennon hung up.
    Susan sat down opposite. “Trouble?”
    Lennon nodded over his coffee mug.
    “Will it wait until you get some sleep?”
    “Probably not,” Lennon said.
    A movement at the window caught his attention. Snowflakes,