Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) (31 page)

"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.

When he felt ready, he turned around to take another look at his brother's wretched body. Under the lamp light, he took in the massive amount of scar tissue that had formed in raised lumps and lines all across Declan's torso, like a madly complicated subway map. In between the lines there were other forms of damage. Burn marks. Even pieces of missing flesh, leaving ghastly craters in the skin.

More hot tears fell from Edger's eyes and dripped down onto the cold flesh of his brother's decimated body. "What did they do to you, Declan?"

Edger rolled the body to the side so he could check his brother's back. The scar tissue was even worse there. So densely formed, it covered his whole back, leaving none of the original skin showing. Every part of his back, from the neck to the waist, was some form of thick scar tissue. Edger noticed the holes in the scarred flesh as well. When he looked closer, he saw teeth marks, like Declan had had lumps bitten out of him.

Boiling anger began to surge through Edger's body like hot lava. He quickly undid the belt on his brother's combat fatigues and pulled them down over his thighs.

More horrendous scar tissue, back and front.

His brother's entire body was a testament to the unimaginable torture he must have endured at the hands of men like McGinty, and the others in the photographs he had on the wall in the farmhouse. Sadistic men whose only motive was to cause as much pain and suffering to others—to children—as possible, in order to quench their own sick and twisted desires.

Edger threw his head back and let his boiling rage erupt from his mouth in a deep, guttural roar, a bloodcurdling sound that seemed to bounce of the night sky above him and carry on across the fields around him for miles. When he was done, he sank to both knees and cried over his brother's corpse, his tears fuelled by every ounce of guilt and shame he ever felt for abandoning his older brother when he most needed him. Tears that were now also mixed with rage, and most of all, the cold desire for revenge against the evil men who had taken without consent, and destroyed his older brother's body and soul.

Edger vowed to kill them all.

Every single one of them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Black was about to take another swig from the now half empty bottle of Glennfiddich when he heard the loud roar penetrate the thick stone walls of the cottage from outside. It sounded like the raging scream of some wild animal, although Black knew immediately it was Edger. Black's blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins when he heard it. He sat stock still, the bottle of whiskey half way to his lips, until the chilling sound dissipated, which seemed to take a long time indeed. Everything that Edger felt, everything that he intended to do, seemed to Black to be contained within that animalistic roar. No need for words. The almost unearthly sound said it all. It was a call to action. A baying for blood.