Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller)

by Neal Martin

  She nearly choked on her drink. "What? Are you kidding?"

  "No, I'm not. I need information on Brian McGinty, the Lord Mayor."

  "Why?"

  Edger sat on the edge of the sofa beside her. "Fuck it, I'll take that drink." He reached over and grabbed the bottle of the table, put it to his lips and took a large swig.

  "Help yourself," Donna said, as she lit a cigarette. "I'll not offer you one as I know you roll your own. What's going on, Harry? Why the hell would you need me to hack the fucking City Hall? What makes you think I can even do that?"

  Edger put the bottle back on the table, the bourbon burning its way down into his stomach. "Are you saying you can't?"

  "No, but…"

  "But what?"

  "It's fucking Belfast Council, Harry. Are you forgetting I nearly went to jail once for hacking Queens University? I try not to do anything illegal anymore, unless Rankin asks me to."

  He had heard about her getting arrested for hacking the university system. Despite being a near genius when it comes to computers, Donna still manged to fail her degree in computer science because she spent all her student days partying. In a bid to change her final grade, she thought she would hack the system, and ended up getting herself caught. Only for the fact that her father was a well-connected barrister, she would have done time.

  Edger stared straight at her. "My daughter's been kidnapped, Donna."

  Donna stared back at him, incredulous. "Jesus, you're serious."

  "Yes."

  "Fuck, Harry." She put a hand to her mouth. "I'm so sorry. Do you know who took her?"

  "Not yet."

  "Do you know why she was taken?"

  "I don't know that either. To get at me for some reason probably."

  Donna sat back in the sofa, clearly dumbfounded.

  "I need this information," Edger said. "Kaitlin's life depends on it."

  "I don't get it, Harry. What does the Mayor have to do with this?"

  "It's best you don't know, Donna."

  She looked at him a moment, then drained the rest of her drink, putting the glass on the table. "Let me get my laptop."

  She arrived back a moment later with her laptop, which she placed on the coffee table, moving the Jack Daniel's bottle and a pewter skull ashtray to one side to make room. "What do you need to know?" she asked.

  "First I need a schedule for McGinty. I need to know where he's going to be over the next eleven hours. I also need his home address."

  Donna stopped typing and looked at him. "This doesn't sound good, Harry."

  "Like I said, the less you know the better. I'm doing this to get Kaitlin back, that's all."

  She nodded and started typing again. "This might take a while. I don't know what kind of security City Hall has."

  "I don't have much time," he told her. "So as quick as you can manage. Can you get into the Mayor's personal computer as well?"

  "What? Shit, Harry. I doubt it. If it's linked with the system, then maybe. I'll try."

  "Good girl. I appreciate this, Donna."

  "Hey, if it gets your daughter back…"

  Edger left her to it while he went outside to the car again so he could call Gemma. He lit a cigarette and sat smoking for a minute, staring through the window at the steadily darkening sky, which seemed to be promising heavy rain soon, going by the bulbous grey clouds that were gathering.

  When he finished his cigarette, he tossed the butt out the window and phoned Gemma on his mobile. "Gemma," he said when she answered. "Did the cops call yet?"

  "Where are you?" she asked him, her voice full of anxiety. "What's happening?"

  "I'm working to get our daughter back."

  "How?"

  "Look, Gemma, you have to trust that I'm doing all I can here."

  She sniffed loudly, sounding like she was crying. "Is that going to be enough?"

  He closed his eyes for a second. Edger knew she was in a dark place. So was he. But he needed to stay focused. He couldn't allow her to drag him into feeling as lost and helpless as she felt. "What did the cops say?"

  "They know something's up. That Detective Black, he's not going to drop this."

  "Did you tell him what I told you to tell him?"

  "Yes," she snapped. "They didn't believe me."

  "It doesn't matter. They have no evidence. As long as they stay away so I can do what I have to do."

  "And what are you going to do, Harry?"

  Edger was silent for a moment, then he said, "I'm not sure yet, but whatever I do, it's going be bad for the Lord Mayor, I guarantee you that."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Detective Inspector Paul Black sat at his desk in the CID incident room in Lisburn Station, a cup of lukewarm coffee in one hand and a pen in the other that he was tapping on his desk absentmindedly. Across from him sat Detective Sergeant Rosalind McKee. She was at her own desk, busy typing up a report on the unconfirmed abduction of twelve year old Kaitlin McGuire. She stopped typing for a moment and looked at him. "Let it go, Paul," she said. "If no one is co-operating, there's not much we can do."

  "That girl was kidnapped from that cafe," he said, banging the end of his pen hard on the desk. "We shouldn't be letting this go."

  McKee went back to typing. "Maybe not, but we've been told to concentrate on the other cases we have. We're understaffed here. Let's try and clear the cases we have evidence for."

  Black nodded. "This case is still bothering me."

  "Fuck them, if they don't want to be helped."

  "It's easy to see you've no kids anyway."

  "Fuck you, Paul. Don't make me out to be an uncaring bitch when I'm just following orders and doing my job."

  Black shook his head at her without her seeing. She would go far in the job. Already had in her short career so far. "Right, then," he said. "My shift is over. I'm—" A sudden coughing fit forced him to stop. He put a fist to his mouth as his chest heaved and his lungs brought up fluid that he swallowed back down again. When he had finished, he sat a minute longer, getting his breath back, and then he noticed a few specks of red on his desk. He wiped them away with his sleeve before McKee noticed.

  "Stop smoking, Paul," McKee said, without looking away from her computer screen.

  "See you tomorrow, Rosalind."

  Black made his way through the station and out to the car park inside the barracks. He paused, inhaling cold air into his burning lungs for a moment. Then he sighed deeply and walked to where his red Audi A3 was parked and got inside. He drove to the main security gate, waving at the uniformed officer manning the gate from inside the security booth. A few seconds later, the thick reinforced steel gates opened and Black drove out on to the busy Lisburn Road, heading for home.

  As he sat in traffic, staring at the drizzling rain hitting the windshield, he thought about the empty house waiting for him in Dundonald, the TV dinner and the bottle of whiskey, the shitty television programs turned on only to kill the unbearable silence in the house, the inevitable depressing thoughts about the life that grew more empty by the day thanks to the fact that he no longer had a wife and two kids in the house with him. That and the other thing that he spent most of his time trying not to think about.

  Fuck it.

  Instead of heading for Dundonald, he drove towards Stranmillis, stopping to pick up a half bottle of Bushmills from an off licence on the way. From there, he drove to the Lockview Road where Mr Harry Edger lived. Black stopped the car by the security gates that led into Edger's apartment complex. There was no sign of Edger's car, so he drove on down the road a bit, did a U-turn and parked his red Audi behind a white transit van about fifty yards down from the apartment complex, where he would be able to see everything that came and went through the security gates, including Edger's silver Skoda, if it ever turned up. Black turned the heating on in the car, cracked open his bottle of whiskey and settled back into his seat.

  Despite the bullshit Edger and his ex-wife tried to feed Black about their daughter being fine, Blac
k had no doubt whatsoever that Kaitlin McGuire was in the hands of some kidnapper somewhere. There was also no doubt in his mind that Edger had been told by the kidnapper to keep the police out of the situation. The kidnapper had probably threatened to hurt the girl if Edger involved the police. Black could understand Edger doing as he was told, but at the end of the day, a major crime had been committed. A girl had been abducted. As a policeman and member of the Crimes Investigation Department, Black had a duty to investigate, despite what his superiors had said about concentrating on other cases. Black had two teenage daughters of his own. If either of them were kidnapped, God forbid, he would want to know that experienced people were trying to get them back. Not some half-baked private detective with a military background who probably thought he was fucking John Rambo.

  Black had looked into Edger's background back at the station. Harrison Edger was an interesting character. His father was English, a cop with the London Metropolitan Police before coming to Belfast to live, where he worked in Special Branch. Black's own father had been in Special Branch also, so Black knew well the kind of work those guys did. Some of them were as shady as the paramilitaries and criminals they were supposed to be trying to stop. Their work also made them targets to Republican terrorists. Edger's father was blown up in a car bomb, lost both his legs. Ended up killing himself a year later with a bullet to the head from his service weapon. Black thought that must have been hard on Edger and the rest of his family. The mother died several years later after drinking herself to death.

  Then there was Edger's brother, Declan. He was apparently abducted one night while he was walking home with his younger brother, Harry. Black read the reports on the incident, and the investigating officers had said in their report they considered the incident to be terrorist related. They posited that Declan Edger had been abducted for some reason by the Provos. Like a lot of such cases, Declan Edger was never heard from again. Classed as one of the missing, he was declared dead seven years later, his body probably buried in some bog somewhere in Black Mountain. It happened. The Provos did it all the time, often refusing to give up the location of the bodies they buried. Half the time, they refused to even admit responsibility for the disappearances at all, as in the case of Edger's brother.

  It bothered Black a bit that someone in Edger's current situation was running around with a gun. Black had no doubt Edger would shoot his daughter's kidnapper if he ever found him, which would make Edger a murder suspect. Not that Edger would care, Black knew. As long as the ex-Legionnaire got his daughter back, that's all he would care about. Black himself would be exactly the same if it was one of his daughters.

  But Black was also a policeman who had sworn to uphold the law, and he would do that no matter what. There was no way he was going to let a man like Edger go on the warpath with a gun, not in his jurisdiction anyway.

  Yet even as Black sat and thought all this, he could hardly bring himself to hold the conviction to believe it all. Once upon a time he may have cared about being a cop and upholding the law, about keeping people like Edger in line. But all that changed three months ago when he went to the hospital with chest pains and found out he had fucking lung cancer. Riddled, the doctor said. That was the word he had used. Riddled with cancer. Reckoned Black had six months left. Maybe a year if he underwent treatment.

  Fuck the treatment.

  Black lit another cigarette. He rested his head back against the seat and took another swallow of his whiskey, wondering what the hell he was even doing there.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Edger was still in Donna Lennon's living room, pacing around as Donna continued to work at her laptop. It wasn't long ago that she took an angry phone call from her girlfriend, who was waiting for her at Lisburn train station. Donna spent a few minutes calming the angry girl down, all the while giving Edger looks. Edger had already said he would drive her into Belfast when she had finished. Before she told that to her girlfriend, Donna covered the phone with her hand and asked Edger if he wanted her to stay in case he needed her again. Edger had said no, go to the concert, so she nodded and told her girlfriend she would meet her in Belfast.

  Sometime later, Donna was finally able to access the information Edger was after. He went and sat beside her. On the laptop screen was the Lord Mayor's full schedule for that day. Edger looked at his watch. It said 5:56 p.m. Then he looked closely at the Mayor's schedule. Even though it was Saturday, Brian McGinty had internal council meetings right up to 7:30 p.m. After that, his schedule was blank, which meant he would probably go home after that, unless of course he had dinner plans, or some other private social engagement that Edger didn't know about. There was no way Edger was going to approach McGinty in a public place, not unless he absolutely had to. Better to get the man at his home, take it from there.

  "I need McGinty's home address," he said to Donna.

  Donna nodded, tapped a few keys and brought up the Mayor's address, which was near Andersonstown. "What are you planning on doing, Harry?" she asked.

  "Like I said, Donna. The less you know, the better. What kind of security system do you think the house has?"

  "You're planning on breaking in? What does the Lord Mayor have to do with any of this?"

  "I'm trying to protect you here, Donna. Take it from me, you don't want to be involved in this."

  "I'm already involved. I just hacked the city council for fucks sake. At least tell me why I did it."

  "No. Now what about the security system on the house? Can it be disabled?"

  Shaking her head, Donna said, "I don't know. Most systems are wireless, so theoretically you could probably jam the signal, but you would need a specialist device for that, which I obviously don't have."

  "Okay, forget about the alarm. Did you get into McGinty's personal computer yet?"

  "Yes, but there was nothing untoward on it. All work stuff. Not even any porn. If you're looking for dirt, you would have to check his laptop or home computer, both of which I can't access from here."

  Edger sat back on the sofa and thought for a minute. If he wanted McGinty, he would have to take the man at his house, which meant either grabbing him before he entered the house or waiting until he got inside, in which case Edger would have to break in or talk his way into the house. "Does McGinty have a wife or kids?"

  Donna tapped on the keyboard. "Just a wife. Maureen, fifty-eight years old. No kids."

  No kids in the house. That was something at least. "Alright, Donna," he said standing up. "Thanks for doing this for me. I'll drop you in the city now."

  "Are you sure you don't want me to stay here, give you operational support?"

  "No. You've done enough. Just meet your girlfriend and enjoy the concert."

  Donna closed the laptop and stood up, her head barely reaching Edger's chest. "Seriously? You expect me to have fun knowing your daughter has been kidnapped and you're going to be doing God knows what to try and get her back? Does Rankin know about any of this?"

  "He knows."

  "Is he helping you?"

  "I don't want him involved either. This is all on me."

  Donna grabbed a short leather jacket from off the back of the sofa and put it on. "I think you're foolish doing this on your own. We should all be working as a team What about the cops?"

  Edger shook his head. "No cops. Can't risk it."

  "I hope you know what you're doing, Harry."

  Edger dropped Donna off near Belfast city centre. Before she got out of the car, she told him she would keep her phone on. If he needed her for anything, all he had to was call her. Edger thanked her before driving off in the direction of his apartment. It was 6:20 p.m. He wanted to be at the Lord Mayor's house before McGinty got home, which didn't leave him much time if McGinty's schedule was anything to go by. Assuming McGinty went straight home when he finished up at city hall at 7.00 p.m., that gave Edger about an hour to get what he needed and drive to McGinty's home to wait on him.

  Darkness had fully descended on the city, and
the intermittent drizzling rain had turned to a constant downpour as Edger negotiated the heavy traffic out of the city centre, and then on towards Stranmillis and his apartment.

  When he got to the Lockview Road he used a remote control to open the security gates of the apartment complex, parked the car in the car park and walked quickly into the building. On the elevator that would take him to the top floor, Edger stood taking deep breaths, doing his best to contain the maelstrom of thoughts and emotions all vying for his attention. The thought he couldn't shake no matter how hard he tried was the thought of Kaitlin been held captive somewhere, scared to death, wondering what was happening to her, panicking that she was going to die. And all because of him, even though he had no clue as to why yet.

  When the elevator doors opened, Edger rushed down the hall to his apartment, opened the door and let himself inside. His first thought was to get the bottle of whiskey from the kitchen in the hope that it would settle his nerves a bit, but he dismissed the thought immediately. It wasn't whiskey that he needed, it was focus and clarity. Whatever pressure he was feeling, whatever fear was in him, he would use it to focus him on the mission at hand, just like he had done hundreds of times before as a soldier. He stood by the door for a moment, his eyes closed, regulating his breathing while he told himself to focus on the task at hand. That's how things got done, one thing at a time. Any thoughts of bad consequences were pushed to the back of his mind as he forced himself to stay in the moment.

  He went to the master bedroom and opened the door of the built in closet. On a metal pole hung the few clothes that he owned. A dark suit that he wore for close protection jobs, a leather jacket, a few shirts and T-shirts, a desert khaki uniform that he brought home from Iraq, and of course, his coveted Foreign Legion uniform, which was contained inside plastic sheeting. On a shelf above the rack, he spotted his white Kepi, the famous cap worn by members of the Legion. Edger took the Kepi of the shelf and held it for a moment, as if doing so would bring him strength and courage. Every time he saw the Kepi, he was transported back to Aubagne where he first experienced the awe as a new recruit seeing fully fledged Legionaries marching around the barracks in their full uniforms. He remembered how inspiring that was to him as an eighteen year old who wanted nothing more in the world than to one day wear that Kepi. Then he remembered the absolute pride he felt when several weeks later, he was handed his own white Kepi after passing basic training. He felt invincible at the time, part of an elite group of soldiers who were the best in the world at what they did.