Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller)

by Neal Martin

  "Declan, no—"

  "It's your fault I'm dead! Your fault I was a monster!"

  "No—"

  "Fucking coward! Fucking useless coward!"

  Edger awoke from the dream with a start, unsure at first of where he was. His eyes went to the burning oil lamp on the floor, and then he looked around the room, finally realising he was in the cottage in Donegal. He looked at his watch. 9:57 p.m. Closing his eyes again for a moment, he took a few deep breaths, the memory of the dream still fresh in his mind, the emotions driving it all too raw. He wiped cold sweat from his face.

  Then he heard a noise outside. He sat forward in the armchair, his hand going inside his coat, closing around the butt of the Beretta. Outside, there was a crunch of gravel.

  Someone was out there.

  Edger got to his feet and took the Beretta out of its holster. Moving out of the living room, he went to the hallway and then to the back door. Quietly, he unlocked the door with the key that was in the lock, then he opened the door, wincing as it creaked on its hinges. He opened the door just enough to slide himself through and get outside. Aiming the 9mm out in front of him, he crept over the stony ground, around the side of the cottage where he peeked around the corner.

  There was a car parked behind his own. Too dark to see exactly what kind of car. He shook his head. How the hell did he not hear a car approaching? Or maybe that was what woke him out of his dream. It didn't matter now.

  There was a dark figure hovering around the front of the cottage, trying to peer through the living room window, the light from the oil lamp inside barely penetrating the curtains over the glass.

  Edger stepped around the corner and moved quickly towards the figure. "Don't fucking move!" he shouted, stopping a few feet from the figure, who stood with their back to him. "Hands in the air! Now!"

  The figure raised their hands slowly. "Easy there, Mr Edger."

  Edger frowned. He recognised the voice. "Black?"

  Detective Inspector Black turned around, his face barely visible in the darkness. "We need to talk, Edger," he said.

  "I could have shot you." Edger was sitting in one of the armchairs in the living room of the cottage. Black sat opposite him, dressed in a suit and a long dark overcoat. His clothes seemed to hang on him, like they didn't fit him anymore, and his face was pale and drawn, a thick growth of stubble covering half of it.

  "Lucky for you, you didn't," Black said, reaching into his jacket for a packet of cigarettes.

  "You do know you can't arrest me. We're over the border."

  "I'm well aware of that. That's not why I'm here."

  "How'd you even find me?"

  "A bit of sterling detective work." Black popped a cigarette in his mouth and offered one to Edger, who declined and took his tobacco tin out of his jacket, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. "It's what I do. What happened your shoulder?"

  "I got shot," Edger said, as he rolled himself a cigarette. "It tends to hurt when that happens."

  "Who shot you? You're brother?" Black lit his cigarette. "Where is your brother anyway?"

  Edger lit his own cigarette and stared at Black. "Why are you here, Detective?"

  Black crossed his legs and flicked ash from his cigarette into the cold grate of the fire. "I'm dying, Edger," he said with barely a trace of sadness in his voice. "Lung cancer. Riddled with it apparently. I've a couple of months left in this shitty world of ours before I drop out for good."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. It still doesn't explain why you're here instead of spending the remainder of your time with your family. You said you had daughters."

  "I do. But I'm not going to burden them with this until I really have to. I've caused them enough pain over the years. I'm sure you understand."

  Edger nodded. He did understand. If it was him dying, he wouldn't expect Kaitlin to suffer along with him for months either. "So you're here instead. Are you even still a cop?"

  "I am, for the time being. Until I can't hide the fact that I'm sick anymore, which won't be long." He leaned forward in the chair, rested his elbows on his knees. "That's why I want to help you while I still can, Edger."

  "Who says I need help?" Edger asked, blowing a stream of smoke towards the fireplace.

  Black smiled. "Let's not fuck about here, eh? Thanks to your brother, I think you're mixed up in something. Dark and dangerous shit that I just might know something about."

  Edger narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean? What do you think I'm mixed up in?"

  Sitting back in his chair, Black said, "It started with that vile prick, McGinty. You see, I know what he's all about, what he's into. I just couldn't understand why you were sent there to kill him. I figured it was because of just who he is, being the Lord Mayor and all." He laughed, then stopped when he had to suppress a cough. "A fucking joke, him being the Lord Mayor of Belfast. A paedophile visiting schools." He laughed again, shook his head. "Anyway, then I arrest you, even though I wouldn't have minded if you'd blown that cunts head off. But I'm a copper, so I couldn't let you do that.

  "So then I'm about to charge you at the station and my boss, he calls me into his office and tells me I have to release you without charge. Orders from on high, he says. You can imagine my frustration."

  "I noticed," Edger said.

  "Thing is, Harry, you're not the first guilty man to be mysteriously set free. There have been others over the years, others that I know are all connected to something that I've never been able to penetrate. A club or a cult of some kind. I thought for a while that maybe you were part of that."

  "What changed your mind?"

  "You did," Black said, reaching for his cigarettes again, making Edger think it was no surprise the man had lung cancer given the amount he seemed to smoke. "You didn't strike me as the type to belong to a cult. You were a soldier for a start, and you've only been back in this country for a year or so. That made it unlikely you were part of anything. Besides, the men I'm talking about, their all high up types. Rich. Privileged. Arrogant bastards to a man. Then of course, I find out it was your supposedly dead brother who kidnapped your daughter."

  "That still doesn't explain why you think that had anything to do with this secret club or cult you keep mentioning."

  "Like I said, I don't know that much about these people, but I've heard rumours. Terrible rumours that involve child abduction, torture and abuse." He stared at Edger as if to see if anything was registering. "I had a hunch your brother was abducted years ago by these people. Maybe that's why he wanted McGinty killed. I still can't figure out why he kidnapped your daughter, though."

  "That was personal, Detective," Edger said. "But you're right about the other stuff. My brother was taken by these people. He was tortured, abused. Brainwashed apparently. Turned into some kind of assassin."

  Black's eyes widened. "Brainwashed?"

  Edger nodded. "Sounds far fetched, but I believed him when he told me."

  "Jesus Christ. The cunts are even sicker than I thought. Did your brother tell you anything else?"

  Edger stared at Black, still not sure if the man was on the level with him or not. Was he just here to fish for information, or did he genuinely want to help? "You should know that these people are after me. They want me dead. Why do you think they had me released from police custody? McGinty told me himself the second time I paid him a visit."

  "Are you trying to scare me off?" Black laughed. "I'm dead anyway. At this point, a bullet to the head would be a blessing for me."

  "Fair enough, I suppose."

  "Like I said, I'm here to help. These bastards have been getting away with their evil deeds for too long. Before I leave this world, I want to stop them for good. Leave this place less of a shit hole than when I came into it, you know what I mean? My kids are still going to be around when I go, Edger."

  "I get it," Edger said nodding, thinking of his own daughter. "That's why I'm going after them, to protect my daughter. And to stop anyone else ending up like my brother did."


  "So where is your brother now?"

  "Dead."

  Black didn't seem too surprised by this admission. "You killed him?"

  Edger shook his head. "They did. Tried to kill me and my daughter as well. Three of them. Assassins, I assume, just like my brother was."

  "I take it that's how you got shot."

  Edger nodded again.

  "And I take it you killed these assassins?"

  "I did."

  Black smiled. "You're a tough bastard, Edger. You should have joined the police force. I wouldn't have minded a colleague like you, instead of the career-minded fools I usually ended up working with."

  "My da was a cop. I saw what it did to him."

  "So you joined the Foreign Legion instead. Were you running from something?"

  "You have to be running from something to join the Legion?"

  "You tell me."

  Rolling another cigarette, Edger said, "I just wanted to join the army. Get away, especially after Declan was taken. But I ended up loving every minute of being a Legionnaire."

  "How long did you serve for?"

  "I finished my five year contract. Became a Caporal. Could have become a Sergent but decided not to stick around."

  "Why, if you loved it so much?"

  Edger sighed. "Politics. It started in Sarajevo. The Legion was there as peacekeepers under NATO command. I didn't like putting my life at risk and not being able to protect myself properly, nor do much about the insurgents that kept trying to kill us there. Our hands were tied.

  "Then the Legion itself started changing. The traditions that made it what it was began to get dropped. I didn't agree with that, so I left."

  "It's always the politicians who fuck things up for the soldiers on the ground," Black said. "I get where you're coming from. I've put up with the same shit for years in the force."

  "You didn't leave though."

  "No," Black said, shaking his head. "I didn't. Many times I wish I did though."

  "We live with the choices we make."

  "True."

  Edger threw his cigarette butt into the cold grate of the fireplace and stood up. "I have something in the car for you."

  Black looked up at him. "A new set of lungs by any chance?"

  A smile creased Edger's lips. "No. I'll be back in a second."

  Edger went out to the car and retrieved his brother's laptop from the back seat, along with the bottle of Glennfiddich, and brought them inside. He handed the laptop to Black.

  "What's this?" he asked, seeming more interested in the bottle of whiskey Edger still held.

  "That was my brother's laptop. I haven't looked at it yet. You might as well check it out, put your detective skills to good use. I have a feeling there might be information on there we can use."

  Black eagerly received the laptop, the cop in him obviously excited at the prospect of uncovering evidence. "What are you going to do?"

  Edger cracked open the bottle of Glennfiddich, and took a large swallow from it, before handing it to Black, who gratefully accepted it. "I'm going to bury my brother."

  Black's eyes widened. "Jesus, you brought his body with you?"

  "Why do you think I'm here?" Edger said, and walked outside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The ground behind the cottage was hard and stony. An oil lamp placed on the ground provided scant illumination as Edger used the pick axe to break through the hard surface, breaking up an area of about six feet by four feet. It was tough going, as he used the point of the pick axe to pull up the grassy sods of earth. Once he had broken through the surface, he began to use the spade to dig down into the earth, slicing into the densely packed soil, cutting out rectangles of stony muck. He made it down about a foot before the soil turned to clay, and he had to use the pick axe again to break through it. When he had broken the sticky clay into chunks, he used the shovel to excavate them, putting them in a pile either side of the hole he was standing in.

  Despite the cold, windy weather, sweat drenched Edger's body and he ended up stripping off his jacket, and then his top, to reveal his bare torso. The heavy labour was made harder by his injured shoulder. Every swing of the pick axe, every cut with the spade, every downward thrust with the shovel soon became agony for his shoulder. His progress was considerably slowed by having to stop and rest all the time, allowing the pain to subside in his shoulder before carrying on for another short time and then stopping again.

  It went on like that for hours until he had dug down four feet, then he stopped completely, sat down in the freshly dug grave, and stared up at the stars in the amazingly clear sky above him, the wind blowing down around him, cooling the sweat on his glistening muck stained torso. He sat inside the grave for a good fifteen minutes, taking in large gulps of cool night air, his head tilted back as he took in the spectacular starscape in the darkness above him.

  By rights he should have been lying in a grave long ago. Dead. It sometimes kept him up at nights, the thought that he should be dead. Once, while in Cambodia, he stepped on a landmine, his boot pressing the detonator all the way down before he realised what he had done. The only thing that saved him was the fact that the internal mechanism had rusted, which meant the landmine didn't go off when he took his foot off it. There was also the time his squad got pinned down by snipers in Sarajevo. Four of his squad were killed that day, before they finally located and killed the sniper. Then of course there was the time, just over a year ago in Iraq, when the convoy he was protecting got ambushed. It was a sheer miracle he had gotten out of that one alive.

  As he sat in the dirt staring at the spectacular stars in the sky above, he began to wonder if he was doing the right thing going after the people who killed his brother. By all accounts the club or cult or whatever it was that these people belonged to, was a powerful one with a lot of reach. What made him think he could take it all down alone?

  Only he wasn't alone anymore, was he? He had Detective Black on his side now. Black who was apparently dying from lung cancer. Was the cop prepared to do what had to be done? Was he prepared to kill if necessary? Going by his attitude inside the cottage, Edger was sure that Black knew full well what he was getting into, otherwise he wouldn't be there. If he wasn't as bent on retribution as Edger was, Black would still be in Belfast trying to find a way to arrest Edger again.

  Edger wondered if Black had found anything on Declan's laptop. He hoped so. They needed something to point them in the right direction. If it came to it, they could always pay McGinty a visit, force the paedophile to talk. Which the more Edger thought of it, the more it seemed like a good idea. At least he wouldn't have to worry about the cops this time.

  His body was beginning to get cold and stiff, so he climbed out of the grave he had dug and walked topless to the front of the cottage where the Fiesta was parked. He hesitated a moment before opening the boot, knowing the sight that would greet him would be far from pleasant. Grim faced, he popped the lid on the boot and stared in at his brother's folded up corpse, trying to ignore the smell that wafted out at him. Rigor mortis had obviously set into the body, making it stiff and awkward to remove from the confined space of the boot. It took a fair bit of tugging and forcing of stiff limbs before Edger was finally able to drag the corpse of his older brother from the boot of the Ford Fiesta.

  The pain in his shoulder had all but disabled the use of his right arm, so Edger mostly had to use his left to drag Declan's corpse around to the back of the cottage, stopping when he had the body at the edge of the freshly dug grave.

  Edger stood for a moment to get his breath back, wincing at the now immense pain in his right shoulder. He wasn't even sure if he would be able to refill the grave with such pain.

  You'll do it. Even if you have to do it one-handed. You will bury your own fucking brother.

  He picked up the oil lamp and knelt beside the corpse, hovering the lamp over his dead older brother's ashen face, trying not to look at the gaping hole in his skull. His brother looked older than
he should have been. He was only a year older than Edger, but Declan looked closer to his fifties, and not just because he was dead. His short hair was almost completely grey, as was the stubble on his chin and cheeks. His forehead was deeply lined, and there was a maze of cracks under his eyes. The deep scar running down the left side of his face didn't help matters either.

  It was almost surreal for Edger as he looked down at his brother's face. The last time he saw that face, Declan was just sixteen, bright eyed and fresh faced. A kid.

  Now that kid's face in Edger's memory had been transformed into the aged, worn face he was looking at now. It broke Edger's heart that he had missed all the years in between. Broke his heart that Declan had been out there all along, not dead, but forced into a life of terrible servitude. The life of a slave.

  "I should have kept looking for you," Edger said to this brother's corpse. "I shouldn't have given up on you."

  Hot tears ran down Edger's cold cheeks, and he wiped them away, took in a deep breath and steadied himself.

  Then he noticed the scar tissue around his brother's neck and he knelt closer to examine it. Dozens of scars intersecting each other, like someone had repeatedly sliced him with a knife.

  Edger shook his head in disgust. The scars didn't seem to stop as they travelled down beneath the sweater his brother was wearing. Edger put the oil lamp on the ground for a moment while he rolled his brother's sweater up to reveal the naked torso beneath. He picked up the oil lamp again and hung it over the revealed waxy flesh of his brother's chest and stomach.

  "Oh Jesus…" he said, his face aghast at the damage done to his older brother's body.

  Edger turned away and vomited, the half digested remains of the burger he ate earlier hitting the grass by his feet. He wretched until nothing more came up, wiped his mouth with his bare forearm, then sat for a moment with his eyes closed, taking deep breaths through his nose until his stomach settled again.