Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller)

by Neal Martin

  Rankin's eyes widened in shock. "Fucks sake, Harry. I'm sorry."

  "Put it in an envelope and pushed it through Gemma's letterbox for her to find."

  "Christ. How's she holding up?"

  "Okay, considering. She blames me for all this. She's right."

  "Fuck off, Harry. You can't say that. You're being targeted by a psychopath. That's hardly your fault."

  "The cunt made it clear this was all to do with me."

  "Well," Rankin said. "Whatever you are supposed to have done, I'm sure it doesn't justify taking your daughter and…cutting her finger off because you didn't kill the Lord Mayor. Christ."

  Edger took a drag from his cigarette and blew a long plume of smoke out into the stairwell. "I went back to McGinty's house again after I phoned you. McGinty was waiting on me with a gun. Told me the only reason I was released from custody was so some group of people could kill me. Then the cops came and I had to run. That's why Kaitlin lost a finger."

  "Jesus, Harry," Rankin said, running a hand through his grey streaked hair. "This is getting out of hand."

  "Tell me about it."

  "Who are these other people supposed to be? Are they in league with the kidnapper?"

  "No idea. The kidnapper said my release had nothing to do with him." He took a last drag on his cigarette and crushed the butt underfoot. "But McGinty might be involved in some fucking paedophile ring. It could be them he's talking about. I don't know. I'm hoping the kidnapper tells me something when I call him."

  They went back to the office to find Donna there, standing by the window with Gemma, both of them holding coffee mugs. "Right," Edger said. "We can't leave this much longer. I need to phone this cunt now. You set up yet, Donna?"

  "I will be in a moment," Donna said, going to her desk in the corner of the room, sitting down and opening up her laptop. While she tapped away on the keyboard, Edger took the burner phone out of his jacket and flipped it open, half expecting to see some ominous message from the kidnapper on it, but there was nothing.

  Donna stopped typing and looked up at the three of them gathered around her desk. "Okay. I'm ready when you are, Harry. Try to keep him on as long as possible. I need a good minute."

  Edger nodded and looked at Gemma, before hitting the call button on the burner phone and setting it to speaker. He half expected the call to go straight to voicemail like it did the last time he tried to contact the kidnapper, but the phone rang this time.

  It was picked up on the third ring. "Harry," the kidnapper said. "Good of you to finally call."

  Edger and Rankin looked at each other in surprise. The kidnapper appeared to have ditched the voice changer. He was speaking in his own voice this time. Edger wasn't sure what to make of that.

  Gemma stood behind the desk next to Donna. She put a hand over her mouth when she heard the voice of the man who had taken her daughter.

  "What went wrong, Harry?" asked the kidnapper. His accent was strange. A mixture of Southern Irish and possibly American. Mid-Atlantic. He pronounced his "R's" the way someone from Northern Ireland would though.

  Edger stared at the phone in his hand for a moment, trying to see if he recognised the voice from anywhere, though he didn't appear to. "I fucked up," he told the kidnapper eventually. "Does it matter what went wrong?"

  "To me it does. I want to know why you didn't do all you could to save your daughter from the pain I had to put her through."

  Gemma shut her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet with tears.

  Edger clenched his jaw. "I'm doing all I can here. Let me talk to my daughter."

  "Kaitlin is still sleeping after the Ketamine I injected her with. She wisely chose the no pain option just before I cut her finger off."

  "Why are you doing this?" Edger gritted his teeth. It took all of his willpower not to scream down the phone that he was going to kill the man on the other end of it.

  "I told you why, Harry. There are people I want dead and I want you to kill them for me."

  "People? I thought it was just one."

  "The vile Mr Mayor is just one of nine people I want you to kill for me, Harry."

  Everyone looked at each other, including Donna, who stopped what she was doing to express her horror at what the kidnapper just said. Edger motioned for her to keep going. "Nine people? You think I'm some kind of serial killer?"

  "Well, you have killed people, Harry."

  "In the line of duty. That's different. I was protecting people."

  "And now you're protecting your daughter. What's the difference?"

  Edger shook his head. "Who are these people? What have they done to do you that you want them all dead?"

  "They each played their part in making me what I am today."

  "And what's that?"

  There was silence for a moment, then the kidnapper said, "A monster."

  Edger glanced at Rankin, who shook his head, a weird look on his face like he was rattled by the kidnappers words. "What do you mean?" Edger asked. "What did these people do to you?"

  "You'll find that out eventually, Harry. Once you kill them. What did you discover about our Mr Mayor, Brian McGinty?"

  "That he's a paedophile, probably involved in some child sex ring."

  "He's involved in something much worse than that."

  "What do you mean? He mentioned some other people to me, the ones who got me released from custody. Who are they?"

  "Very bad people," the kidnapper said, his voice sounding strange now, like he was drifting in his own little world. "It means they are on to me, as I expected. You had better watch your back too, Harry."

  "Why? What have I got to do with all this? I don't know any of these people. You could just kill them all yourself."

  "Harry," the kidnapper said. "Don't you know when you're being punished?"

  Edger couldn't help looking at Gemma, a rush of guilt coming over him. Was this all his fault after all?

  "I don't even know you," Edger told the kidnapper. "Who the fuck are you?"

  "I'm your past catching up with you, Harry. That's all you need to know for the time being."

  Donna signalled to Edger at that point. She had triangulated the kidnapper's location.

  Got you now, you bastard, whoever you are.

  "There's another envelope waiting for you at your apartment," the kidnapper said. "Another target. I also want McGinty finished off as well. You have twenty-four hours, or your daughter will lose her whole hand this time."

  The phone went dead.

  Edger looked at Donna. "Where is the bastard?" he asked her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  In the candle lit living room of the old farmhouse, Kaitlin McGuire's kidnapper sat on the floor with his back against the peeling wallpaper on one of the walls. In his hand was an unopened can of tuna. He held it while he took a small lock knife from the back pocket of his black combat fatigues, then he proceeded to use the knife to open the can of tuna, hardly noticing when the lid of the can, sharp as a razor, sliced into the bumpy scarred skin of his hand. When he had cut around the lid most of the way, he pulled the lid back, put the knife on the floor and started to eat the oily tuna fish from the can with the hand that was bleeding. Blood mixed with the lumps of tuna as he put them in his mouth and chewed while staring out the window to the yard outside the farmhouse. Cold, grey light filtered through the overcast sky outside, and the wind continued to create drafts throughout the house, causing things to bang and creak and whistle.

  As he absentmindedly chewed on the tuna fish, Blutwolf thought about Harry Edger, and the conversation he just had with the man on the phone. Edger was understandably confused about what was going on, but he would find out soon enough the full extent of Blutwolf's motives. Probably sooner rather than later. Going by the fact that Edger had been released from police custody without charge, and by what Edger had mentioned about McGinty, it was clear to Blutwolf that he would have to move his time-line along faster than he originally planned.

  The
y knew about him now. They knew he had gone rogue. Slipped his bonds somehow after the accident. The hold they had over him for so long was no more. He was a free man now, not that freedom meant much to him after everything.

  The important thing was that he was free to punish all those who had helped drag him down to hell.

  Providing they didn't get him first.

  He would have to be careful from now on. There would be human drones out there, like he once was, looking for him. And their only objective would be to kill him. Erase him, like he never existed.

  Blutwolf ate the last of the tuna with his bloody hand and then tossed the empty can to the floor. He stood up and went to the canvas bag in the corner of the room. Out of it he took a Beretta 96A1 pistol and suppressor, along with a shoulder holster. He put the holster on over his black T-shirt, then put the pistol inside the holster. Lifting a black jacket from off the floor, he slipped it on and zipped it up to cover the holstered pistol, then he put the suppressor in one of the pockets.

  As they were now on to him, that meant they knew about his kidnapping Edger's daughter, which meant they would now be targeting Edger as well, just in case he knew anything. That much was obvious when they used their clout to get Edger released from police custody. They wanted Edger dead, same as they wanted him dead. Lose ends. He had spent most of his life thus far tying up loose ends for them. Now he was one himself.

  Blutwolf didn't want Edger's punishment cut short by a bullet to the back of the head. He had installed a tracking device in the phone he gave Edger. He would pinpoint Edger's location and keep an eye on him from a distance, just in case anyone was tailing the ex-Legionnaire.

  He looked down at the open canvas bag and spotted the Smith and Wesson Bodyguard .380 nestled in its ankle holster. He would take it too. Experience had taught him it was good to always have a backup.

  When he bent down to get it, the living room window exploded in above his head, and he felt the unmistakable wind of a sniper bullet whizzing by and lodging itself into the wall behind him. Blutwolf pressed himself up against the window wall, his heart beating fast but steady.

  They had located him already.

  Shit.

  He couldn't be sure how many of them were out there, but he guessed there would be only one if his own experience was anything to go by. He always used to work alone.

  There was a blanket on the floor by his feet. He balled the blanket up and tossed it in front of the window. A second later, another bullet shot through the glass of the window and tore through the blanket before it even hit the floor, the bullet slamming into the wall opposite the window, causing a chunk of plaster to explode out.

  One shooter.

  Blutwolf edged over to the canvas bag and took out a Colt AR-15 A3 Tactical Carbine, which already had a fully loaded magazine in it. The rifle was complete with a Colt 4x20 scope. The shooter outside was most likely in the field somewhere to the front of the farmhouse. If Blutwolf could get to the old barn at the side of the farmhouse, he could wait for the shooter to show himself, and then take him out at a distance.

  Staying low, he moved quickly out of the living room carrying the rifle. When he got to the hallway, he stood up, and a split second later, hit the deck again when another bullet flew past his head, missing him by centimetres, before blasting into the wooden door frame of the kitchen just ahead of him. He had forgotten the shooter could probably see right through to the kitchen from his position outside.

  Blutwolf hunkered down and moved forward towards the kitchen again, his feet sliding along the rotten linoleum floor as he moved, the smell of mouse shit assailing his nostrils. He moved to the side of the door and stood up with his back against the wall. After he switched the safety on the rifle to the fire position, he moved quickly to the back door in the kitchen, pulling hard on it, as the wood had swollen with damp and was sticking on the linoleum floor. He got the door half way open and ran out to the back yard, which was just a large expanse of concrete with an old tin cow shed towards the back and a collection of rusting farm equipment to the left. Blutwolf ran to the right, keeping his head low, towards the old wooden barn with the red tin roof. He ran right around the back of the barn to the other side, then made his way carefully along it, stopping when he got to the corner.

  From his new position he could see the whole of the concrete front yard, past the old Vauxhall he had parked there, and beyond into the fields that surrounded the farm house. The field at the front of the house was full of rushes and large boulders, all of which offered plenty of cover for the shooter to hide behind. It would only be a matter of time before the shooter showed themselves in order to advance towards the house, believing that he was probably still inside.

  Blutwolf went down on one knee and shouldered the rifle, peering through the scope so he could search the field for the shooter. The Colt had a range of about 650 yards. The field beyond extended well back at least a thousand yards before a road cut through it. Beyond the road were more flat fields full of boulders. Theoretically, the shooter could be anywhere, perhaps further back past the road if they were using a powerful enough rifle. Blutwolf himself had taken shots before from nearly a mile away from his target, so it was conceivable the shooter was at that distance. If that was so, Blutwolf was taking a chance exposing himself by the barn, but as no shots had been fired at his position yet, he took this to mean the shooter was in fact in the front field somewhere, lying low, waiting for movement inside. When no movement came, the shooter would soon begin to advance forward.

  Sweeping the scope across the field, Blutwolf tried to locate the shooter's position, but no saw no sign of them. Either the shooter was further back or they were well hidden.

  Five minutes passed with no movement.

  Blutwolf continued to sweep the area for as far as the scope could see, which was roughly 600 yards.

  There was a large boulder near the centre of the field, about 350 yards from his current position. If it was him, he would be in behind the boulder somewhere as it offered the most secure cover.

  He kept his sights on the boulder for the next few minutes and then finally he saw movement as the shooter stood up from his laid down position, exposing his head.

  Got you now.

  Blutwolf lined the sight's cross-hairs up on the shooter's head. The shooter was a man, late twenties, dyed blond hair covered by a monkey hat. Dead eyes. Another drone for the cult. Soon to be a dead one.

  Taking a deep breath, Blutwolf exhaled slowly. In the pause between his next breath, he pulled the trigger, the stock of the rifle recoiling back into his shoulder. Through the sights he saw a cloud of dust appear beside the shooter's head as the bullet hit the boulder he was crouched behind.

  "Fuck!" Blutwolf said.

  The sights must have got knocked off in transit. He quickly adjusted them and aimed the rifle again.

  The shooter had disappeared. Probably slunk back behind the rock again.

  As Blutwolf kept his sights on the same position he had previously fired to a moment ago, a bullet slammed into the rotting wood of the barn just inches from his head. Splinters of wood exploded into Blutwolf's face, and he fell to the side just as another bullet dug into the concrete at his foot, sending up a shower of dust and dirt. He reeled back against the side of the barn, his heart rate still steady, his body free from adrenaline. His ability to generate adrenaline had been taken away from him a long time ago. There was no fear either. Just a situation that had to be handled. Nothing more.

  The shooter must have moved to the other side of the rock.

  Blutwolf swung the rifle around the corner of the barn and fired off two shots in the direction of the boulder, where he assumed the shooter now was. When he finished firing, he ducked around the side of the barn again.

  The shooter retorted by firing three shots into the barn. Two of the bullets went wide, exploding out the side of the barn a couple of feet from Blutwolf, but the last bullet went through the rotting wood of the barn and zinge
d past Blutwolf's face, the bullet so close he felt the wind of it on his skin.

  He couldn't hold his current position. It would only be a matter of time before one of the shooter's bullets found its target.

  Blutwolf fired another two shots from his current position, and then immediately pulled back and ran around the other side of the barn. As he made it around the barn, he heard shots being fired towards his previous position, just as he predicted. Crouching down, he peered around the corner of the barn.

  "Shit!" From his new position he couldn't see the shooter properly at the far side of the boulder. All he could see through the sights was the tip of the shooter's gun. If the shooter stayed there, there was no way Blutwolf would get a clear shot.

  He needed to draw the shooter out somehow.

  Blutwolf thought for a moment, then he aimed the rifle around the corner of the barn, drawing a bead on the shooter's position behind the boulder. He fired a shot that ricocheted of the boulder not far from where he knew the shooter was standing.

  Then he waited, his finger on the trigger.

  A few seconds later the shooter revealed himself from behind the boulder in order to return fire towards Blutwolf's new position. Before the shooter got a shot off however, Blutwolf had the other man in his sights, and he pulled the trigger on the rifle before the shooter could fire back.

  Through the sights, Blutwolf saw the other shooter's head fly back, a haze of crimson erupting from behind him as he fell back behind the boulder. Blutwolf continued to hold the rifle to his shoulder for another moment, his sights on the prone body of the shooter, whose legs stuck out from the edge of the boulder.

  When he was satisfied the other man was down, Blutwolf ran across the concrete and into the marshy field, running through the grass and rushes until he got to the boulder. He shouldered the rifle again as he came upon the body of the shooter, just in case the other man wasn't dead. The shooter's brains were splattered over the boulder however, and the green grass where his body lay was stained with blood.