Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) (6 page)

"You better tell me what the fuck is going on, Harry," she demanded. "Or I swear, I will stab you with one of those knives over there."

"Whoever took Kaitlin is obviously trying to get at me," he said.

"Well that much is fucking obvious. Why though? What have you done, Harry?"

He held his hands out helplessly and shook his head. "That's the thing, Gemma. I haven't done anything. I can't think why anyone would want to do this."

"There must be a reason and you had better fucking think of it. We need to let the police know."

"They already know. They were at the cafe. Besides, I don't think the police will be much help."

"What? Why not?"

"What are they going to do, Gemma? They can't do anything until we know who's done this."

This just gets worse.

Again, she felt her anger rise, underpinned by a feeling of helplessness that made her want to throw her glass at the man she saw as being responsible for this terrible situation she now found herself in. This was something that only happened in movies and foreign countries, not here in Belfast, not to her little girl.

Then she remembered something. "Do you think this could have anything to do with your brother?"

Harry gave her a sharp look. It was something they had only ever spoken about once, just before they were married. He refused to talk about it ever again after that, but now, she had no qualms about bringing it back up. "Why would this have anything to do with Declan?"

"Because your brother was kidnapped, Harry, that's why. Don't you think there might be some connection there?"

"No, Gemma, I don't."

"Why not?" she asked, exasperated.

Harry stared at her, obviously doing his best to remain calm. "That was twenty-six years ago, for a start."

"So what? Who's to say it isn't the same people?"

"Because they didn't fucking take Declan to get at me, that's why. I was fifteen at the time. You're forgetting they tried to take me as well."

"That's right," she said. "You got away. Declan didn't."

"What is
that
supposed to mean?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. It just seems like too much of a coincidence, that's all. Your brother is kidnapped, then your daughter is…kidnapped as well." She wiped fresh tears from her face.

"That's all it is, Gemma. A coincidence. I don't know who took Declan. No one does. He's—"

"He's what, Harry? Dead? Is that what you were going to say?"

Harry sighed. "Whoever took Kaitlin has nothing to do with whoever took Declan. If that was the case, they would have taken me instead. Someone else wants to get at me through Kaitlin."

Gemma bit her lip so hard that she tasted blood in her mouth. "If she dies, Harry…"

"She won't."

"You don't know that!" she screamed back. She felt herself on the verge of hysteria, and it took everything she had for her to draw back from the edge and keep herself anywhere near calm.

"Look," Harry said in a soft voice. "The best thing we can do at this stage is to wait on the kidnapper to make contact, which he
will
do."

"You're sure about that? How many phone calls did you get from your brother's kidnappers? How many, Harry?"

He closed his eyes for a second and shook his head.

"That's right. None. You just never heard from your brother again."

Harry walked forward then and grabbed her firmly by the arms. "Listen to me," he said, his eyes boring into her. "You need to stay calm, for Kaitlin. We are going to get her back."

She twisted out of his grip and pulled away from him. "So what now? We just sit around and wait while Kaitlin is out there? God knows what they are doing to her…oh Jesus…" She ran to the kitchen sink and threw up into it, feeling like her whole insides were being ripped out of her. When she felt Harry's hand on her back she immediately sprang up and swiped his arm away. "Get the fuck away from me!" She stared at him, spit and vomit around her mouth, until he backed off. He looked hurt, upset, but she didn't care. She didn't care that Kaitlin was his daughter too and that he was probably as devastated as she was that someone had taken her. Gemma just couldn't see past the notion that everything was his fault. Someone kidnapped Kaitlin to get at him. Harry inserted himself into their lives in the first place. It was all on him.

"Okay," he said after a moment. "I have to ask this, Gemma. Could this be related to you in anyway?"

She was dumbfounded. "Are you kidding me?"

"No. I just need to eliminate the possibility."

Despite herself, she thought it over. It didn't take her long to conclude that no one hated her enough to kidnap her daughter. "Like I said, Harry. This is all on you."

He nodded, knowing she was telling the truth. "The police are going to be contacting you soon. They know who I am. Just tell them whatever they want to know."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to see John, try to figure something out. Wait for the kidnapper to make contact. If the police ask, you don't know where I am. I need time to sort this out."

"That's it? You're just going to leave me here?"

"What you want me to do, Gemma? I have to do something."

"I'm going with you."

"No. It's best you stay here and deal with the police when they come."

She shook her head. "And what am I supposed to tell them?"

"The truth. That you don't know anything."

"Fuck this," she said. "I can't do this. I feel like I'm losing my mind here…" She grabbed her head with both hands and squeezed tight, like it would help somehow. It didn't.

"As soon as I hear anything, I'll call you," he said. He stood looking at her for another moment, like he wanted to say something to make her feel better, but they both knew there was nothing he could say that would make the situation any better, so he turned and left without saying another word.

When he was gone, Gemma lay down on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor and sobbed at the possibility of never seeing her daughter again.

Or worse, that her daughter might end up dead.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Edger left his ex-wife's house feeling worse than when he went in. As expected, the news of Kaitlin's abduction had all but crushed Gemma. He knew how strong she could be however, and he was counting on that strength to get her through this nightmare situation. His own guilt was crushing him just as much. When he was speaking to Gemma, he deliberately left out the fact that he had felt like he was under surveillance for the last couple of weeks, maybe even longer than that. In any case, it had only been the last two weeks that he had gotten any sense that someone was watching him from afar. Not all the time, but enough of the time to raise his hackles. Of course, he couldn't have been sure, which is why he didn't do much about it. A few times he had taken counter measures while driving, even going as far as doing a bug sweep of his apartment, but he found nothing. Whoever was following him, they were good, because he never caught sight of them once. Apart from last night, when he had noticed the glowing ember of a cigarette across from the river at his apartment. But that could have been anybody. How was he to know his daughter was about to be abducted? Regardless, the guilt was eating him up. All of his training and experience, he should have known. He should marked the guy sitting behind him in the cafe. But again, it was just a guy, a guy that gave no indication he was about to steal Edger's daughter away.

As he drove towards the office in Donegal Square, Edger thought about the man in the cafe. Who the hell was he? And what did he have against Edger? The guy had a baseball cap on, and never once looked up at Edger in the cafe, so Edger didn't even get a proper description of the guy. Nothing about him rang any bells. Maybe the cops would get something from surveillance cameras in the cafe, if indeed the cafe had any. Edger didn't recall ever seeing any inside the place. He knew there was cameras on some of the other businesses on the street, so maybe they would have caught something. If not the guy's face, then a car number plate. Every instinct Edger had though told him that the kidnapper was a professional. The whole thing was too well planned for an amateur. Drugging Edger's coffee like that, sitting right behind him as he waited on the drug to do its work, then abducting Kaitlin in broad daylight on a busy street. That took balls, and nerves of steel. Only someone experienced could have pulled that off without fucking it up. But again, who?

Edger phoned Rankin before he arrived at the office in Donegal Square, glad when Rankin picked up the office phone. "John, it's me," Edger said, trying to squint away the headache that still thudded at his head. A leftover effect from whatever drug was in his coffee. "I've got a situation here. I need your help."

"Of course, Harry," Rankin said immediately. "What is it?"

Even though he had no doubt Rankin would help him, Edger was still relieved to hear him say that he would. "It's Kaitlin, John." He paused, hardly able to say the next words. He had to force them out. "She's been kidnapped."

There was silence on the other end as Rankin took in what Edger just told him, then he said, "Christ, Harry."

"I'm almost at the office. I'll see you shortly."

Edger put his phone back in his coat pocket and drove faster towards Donegal Square.

John Rankin put the phone down and sat back in his chair in shock. He couldn't believe what he just heard. Poor Kaitlin, was his first thought. He couldn't imagine the trauma she was probably experiencing right now. His second thought was: What the fuck has Harry done to warrant someone kidnapping his daughter?

Right from the moment he first met Harry Edger, Rankin knew the man was a dark horse, a man with a lot of experience, and possibly with a lot of secrets. When Rankin interviewed Edger a year ago for the job of investigator and security operative, Rankin's first impression was that Edger was a dangerous man. Not just because of his massive size, which was enough to intimidate even the hardest of people, but because of the look in the man's eyes. It was a look that said he had seen the worst of mankind, the horror in the world that few people ever got to see, never mind live to tell about it. Edger had seen it all, and going from some of the stories he told to Rankin in private, Rankin knew Edger should have been killed on more than a dozen different occasions. Yet he wasn't killed. He had managed to survive some truly awful situations, situations that had killed tougher men before him. That alone made Edger a dangerous man, but also a highly capable one, and one who knew how to get the job done and done right. Rankin knew, in that initial interview, that he wanted a man like Edger on his team. Such men were hard to come by, and considering the type of work the job entailed, Rankin hired Edger straight away.

But there was also something about Edger that bothered Rankin. Edger was hiding something, something he didn't want anyone else to know about. In his initial interview, it transpired that Edger had joined the Foreign Legion when he was just eighteen. Rankin had met more than a few Legionnaire's in his time, and almost without exception, every one of them joined the Legion because they were running from something, or because they wanted to leave their old lives behind them for some reason.

"So why did you join the Legion?" Rankin asked Edger in his interview.

Edger answered without hesitation. "I wanted to be a soldier."

Rankin smiled and nodded. "Come on, Harry. Tell me why you really joined up."

"I wanted to be a soldier."

Rankin stared at him a moment, trying to see what lay behind the stock response. Edger was a blank slate, hard to read. "Did you change your name?"

Edger shook his head. "I kept my own name."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to be anyone else," he said after a brief hesitation.

"That's why a lot of guys join the Legion, though isn't it? To get a new identity. Start over. Why not join the British or Irish army if all you wanted to be was a soldier?"

"The British army didn't appeal, for obvious reasons. I interviewed for the Irish Defence Forces."

"What happened?"

"They turned me down. Not educated enough, apparently."

"So the Legion was your only choice, is that it?"

"Something like that."

"Something like that?"

"I wanted to join the American Marines, but they only took US citizens. So yeah, the Legion was the only option I had left."

Rankin nodded, only half satisfied by Edger's answers. Rankin himself had spent nearly thirty years as a cop in the British military. He knew when someone was holding back information, and Edger was definitely holding back something, though Rankin couldn't figure out what. It almost made him turn Edger down for the job. Rankin wanted someone he could trust working for him, not someone with a dark past that made them unstable. But there was a certain honesty to Edger that Rankin appreciated, despite the feeling he had that Edger was hiding something. In the end, he gave Edger the job, and was given no cause to regret it any day since. Edger proved himself to be as capable as he came across in that interview, as well as hard working, loyal and dependable. In fact, Edger was one of the best operatives Rankin had ever had the pleasure of working with, either in the military or outside of it.