Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) (4 page)

The man in the baseball cap sitting by the window got up from his seat just as Kaitlin took her iPhone out of her pocket to check her Snapchat. She glanced briefly up at the man, but he didn't look at her as he strolled past to the counter. She heard him ask the Korean man for something, then he strolled back to his table a moment later with something in his hand, though she couldn't see what. She was just being nosey anyway. Her mother was always telling her not to be staring at people, but she couldn't help it. People fascinated her. The way they behaved, some of the strange things they did. Her mum said she would make a good behavioural psychologist one day. Kaitlin turned her nose up at that. She wanted to be a writer when she grew up, like her favourite author, J.K. Rowling. Kaitlin had read all the Harry Potter books half a dozen times, never tiring of the magic to be found amongst the pages of those books. That was one thing her and Harry had in common, a love of books, though sadly not Harry Potter. He kept promising to read them one day, but he hadn't yet. She still held out hope that he would though, then they could discuss how great they were. Harry liked grown up books, like the one he got her to read,
Heart Of Darkness
. It was okay, but Kaitlin didn't really get it. She remembered her mum frowning when she saw her reading it, though she never took the book from her, like she did the horror novel she caught her reading one day. Too much violence for little girls, her mum had said.

Harry came walking down the stairs just as the food was being served. He was like a giant and she wondered if she would ever be as tall as him. She already knew she was quite tall compared to most of the girls in school. Some of the boys slagged her off for it, calling her Olive Oil. She had to ask one of her friends what that meant when she first heard it, and her friend showed her a Popeye video on YouTube. Kaitlin didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the time. Thankfully, the name didn't really stick. Most of the boys at school looked at her for other reasons anyway. Kaitlin knew she had her mum's good looks, and so did the boys at school know as well apparently.

Sitting opposite her, Harry eyed the food on the table like a hungry wolf. Kaitlin always figured Harry would have to eat a lot to maintain his huge size. Not that his size intimidated her or anything. He was like a friendly giant in her mind, and between his big muscles and the fact that he was a soldier, she always felt safe around him.

"Looks good," he said, picking up his knife and fork after taking a mouthful of coffee.

"It is," Kaitlin said, already chewing on a piece of sausage, which she first dipped into her runny fried egg.

"So how is school going?" He was referring to the fact that she had just started secondary school a week ago.

"Okay." Kaitlin cut off a piece of potato bread and smeared it in beans before putting it in her mouth. "I'm still getting used to it. They have a nice library."

"That's good. What are you reading at the moment? Not Harry Potter again…"

"No. I finished reading Harry Potter last month. I won't read it again for another while." She sucked on the straw of her strawberry milkshake. "I'm reading the Hunger Games at the moment."

Harry shook his head. "Never heard of it."

"You've never heard of the Hunger Games? Seriously?"

He shook his head again as he chewed on a piece of bacon. He appeared to have cleared half his plate already, while she had barely put a dent in hers. "We are so renting the movies tonight then."

"There's films?"

"Of course."

"They any good?"

"I've only seen the first one. It was pretty bad ass."

He looked at her funny. "Bad ass?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." He shook his head and drank a few mouthfuls of his coffee.

"What?" she asked, a half smile on her face.

"Nothing. When I was in Iraq, I used to hear the American guys say that all the time."

Kaitlin went silent for a moment. "What was it like over there, Harry?"

In the six months they had been getting to know one another, Harry had rarely spoken about his time as a soldier, which she found weird because her mum had told her Harry had always been a soldier, right up until he came back home a year ago. Kaitlin knew he used to be in the Foreign Legion, that much he told her, even though she had never heard of the Foreign Legion before. When he told her about it, she thought it strange that people from other countries would join a French army. But Harry told her it wasn't like that, that Legion soldiers helped people all over the world, not just French people. It made her feel somewhat proud that her Dad was off helping people all those years. She wasn't sure that it made up for him not being around when she was growing up however. She still struggled to understand why he stayed away for so long, despite both her mum and him explaining his reasons to her, which she barely understood.

"It was very hot," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck, like he was somehow feeling the heat of Iraq on him right now. "Lots of flies. They liked the heat and the…"

"The what?"

His face scrunched up like he was in pain. "Nothing. You don't need to hear about over there, sweetheart. I was there helping people, that's all."

"Mum said you were a mercenary."

Harry stared at her for a second. "I've never been a mercenary. I was a private contractor. There's a difference."

"What's the difference?"

Weirdly, he took a long, shuttering breath, and then closed his eyes for a second.

Kaitlin frowned. "Are you okay? We don't have to talk about…"

"I just feel a bit…woozy, that's all. Probably the heat in here."

"It's not that warm." She still had her coat on.

"Must just be me then." He pushed his plate to one side, food still left on it, and held his coffee cup in front of him.

She changed the subject, thinking she may have upset him calling him a mercenary. "So, Mum told me the other day you had a brother. Is that right?"

Harry looked stunned for a second, like she had slapped him in the face.

"I'm sorry. Mum said you might not want to talk about it. I was just curious…"

"No, sweetheart," he said. "It's not that. It's just…not many people know about Declan."

"That was his name?"

"Yeah."

"Mum said he was—" Kaitlin stopped when she saw all the colour drain from Harry's face, like something had sucked all the blood out of it in the space of two seconds. His eyes seemed to roll around in their sockets for a moment before he refocused and stared at his empty coffee cup on the table.

"There's something…" He looked confused for a moment, then he turned and looked over his shoulder at the man sitting by the window.

"Harry? What's happening? Are you alright?" Kaitlin dropped her knife and fork as pangs of fear stabbed through her confusion. Something was wrong.

Harry gripped the table as he struggled to hold himself up. "Kaitlin," he barely managed to say.

Her face contorted with anxiety. She wasn't sure what to do. What was happening to him? Was he sick? But he seemed fine a minute ago. "What do I do, Harry?" she said, tears in her eyes now.

"Run," Harry whispered, just before he fell out of his chair and landed unconscious with a heavy thud onto the wood floor.

Run? Why would he want her to run?

She started screaming instead.

Blutwolf watched from the table by the window as Edger fell out of his seat and landed on the floor like a felled giant. The sedative he had put in Edger's coffee while Edger was upstairs in the restroom took a little longer to work than expected. It was a special concoction he had acquired on his last trip to South America, used by a tribe of Native American Indians to knock out monkeys so they could kill them easier. Given Edger's size, it was difficult to work out just how much of the sedative was needed, and for a few moments, Blutwolf worried that he hadn't dosed Edger's coffee enough. But then Edger fell to the floor and the girl started screaming. Blutwolf smiled to himself.

He got up and rushed to the fallen man on the floor, playing the concerned citizen, and asking the clearly traumatised girl—who was kneeling over her father crying—what had happened.

"I…I don't know," the girl said, whose name he already knew to be Kaitlin. "He just…he just collapsed…"

The Korean cafe owner emerged from behind the counter, having heard the girl's screams. He asked what was wrong in broken English as he stared down at the unconscious man on the floor of his cafe.

"Phone an ambulance, please," Blutwolf said, satisfied to see the Korean man scuttle off into the back of the cafe out of sight.

Blutwolf, wearing a long black coat as well as the black baseball cap, glanced at the windows at the front of the cafe. He would have to be quick in case any more customers came in. He didn't want to have to spill blood, but he would if necessary, with the suppressed Beretta inside his coat. He positioned himself behind the girl as she leaned over Edger, crying her little heart out, obviously thinking her daddy was dead or dying. Blutwolf took advantage of the girl's distractedness and took a syringe out of his coat pocket. Then he went around behind the girl and with practised swiftness, he put a hand over her mouth and stabbed the needle of the syringe into the side of her neck, flooding her system with Ketamine before she could even think to struggle. Within seconds, the girl fell unconscious into his arms. Blutwolf put the empty syringe back in his coat pocket, before scooping the girl up in his arms and immediately heading for the front door of the cafe.

Behind him, he heard the Korean man shout something, but Blutwolf ignored him. As he neared the door with the girl in his arms, a man and a woman entered the cafe, frowns of confusion on their faces as they saw him coming towards them. "Medical emergency!" he shouted. "Move!"

Shocked, the man held the door open for him. "Is she alright?"

"She will be." Blutwolf moved quickly through the door and headed down the street a bit, where the blue Ford Mondeo was parked. He kept his head low as people on the street stared at him, but no one tried to stop him as he calmly carried the unconscious girl to the car. He held her up with one arm as he used the other to open the back door of the car, then he carefully laid the girl down in the back seat. She would be out for a while. Long enough for him to get out of the city so he could secure her properly.

"Do you need help?" he heard someone say behind him, but he ignored the person as he cantered around to the driver's side door and got into the car. As he started the engine, he saw the Korean cafe owner standing out on the street, along with the couple who passed him on his way out. The three of them were shouting and pointing to the car.

Blutwolf pulled his baseball cap down low on his forehead, gunned the engine of the Ford Mondeo and drove off at a fast pace.

CHAPTER FIVE

When Edger opened his eyes he didn't know where he was. A blinding pain in his head made him groan like a sick dog. Then he heard a voice that sounded far away, like it was coming down a tunnel at him. "Try and be still," the voice said. "You've been drugged, Mr. Edger."

Drugged?

He opened his eyes to see a strange face hanging over him. A man with a light goatee beard. "I'm with the paramedics," the man said. "You need to lie still until your equilibrium returns or—"

Edger sat up. As soon as he did he wished he hadn't, because his head began to spin horribly, which was followed up with a terrible nausea that immediately made him vomit.

"Jesus!" a different voice said, as Edger emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor and over a pair of shoes that were positioned next to him. When he finished vomiting he felt better. His head began to clear.

And then he remembered. "Kaitlin!" he said.

"Kaitlin?" yet another voice said. "Is that the girl who was with you, Mr. Edger? Was she your daughter?"

Edger stood up on shaky legs, helped by one of the paramedics. It was then that he realised he was still in the cafe on Botanic Avenue. As well as the two paramedics, there was two cops from the Police Service of Northern Ireland standing in front of him. "Where's my daughter?" Edger asked the cops. Somewhere amid the fog in his head was the answer to that question. He just couldn't find it yet.

"We don't know," one of the two cops said, a young guy with blond hair and a pockmarked face who looked straight out of the academy. "We were hoping you could tell us what happened here."

"Mr. Chan, the owner of the cafe, said another man abducted your daughter," the other cop said, a woman in her late twenties. "Is that true, Mr. Edger?"

Edger never answered them. He was thinking back to when he had been sitting with Kaitlin earlier. Then it hit him, the terrible realisation that came upon him, that he had been drugged. He remembered knowing the man sitting behind him had something to do with it, though Edger had no clue who the man was, or what he wanted with Kaitlin.

"Mr. Edger," the female cop said. "It would be in your interests to co-operate with us so we can try and locate your daughter for you."