Thanatos looked at his glass and knocked the contents back in full, and then he leaned back in his chair, indicating that his tale was told.
Colin couldn’t imagine what living a double life like that for so long must have done to him; he wondered how many demons were still lurking in the poor devil’s mind.
CHAPTER 9
Alastor — was the avenger of evil deeds, specifically, familial bloodshed. The Greek tragic writers use his name to designate any deity or demon who avenges wrongs committed by men.
“I was born in 1954 in Aldershot. My father was in the British Army and I joined as an officer after University in 1975. I was stationed in Detmold at the Lothian Barracks with the 4th Armoured Division. I did two tours of Northern Ireland; Londonderry in ’77 and Belfast in ’79 both of which were well before Thanatos came over for his stint.
The MoD had at last woken up to the fact that this was a guerrilla war and had put into place special counter terrorist training and a covert role for us soldiers. We were starting to get a handle on things; but oh so slowly. We had already lost the best part of fifty soldiers since the Troubles had begun and the Provisionals still had a couple of hundred gunmen and several dozen ‘godfathers’.
One thing was evident however; the pictures on the wanted posters in the operations rooms were of younger and younger kids. They looked as hard as nails! A look of hatred and ill-will emanated from those faces.
Inside the barracks we scarcely saw the light of day during our four month tour; we may as well have been on a submarine. There was always the threat of mortar bombs raining down and flattening our quarters. We were in bandit country but we maintained a level of professionalism, discipline and excellent morale throughout. It was inspiring to a young officer like me.
I got married in ’82 and moved into married quarters with Jennifer at Detmold. The Eighties and Nineties were happy times for us there; I soldiered on, literally and we started looking forward to me getting out of the Army and moving back to England. I had an idea that I’d like to teach and Jenny came over to stay with her parents for a while and started looking at houses near their place in Yorkshire.
We’d never managed to have children but just the two of us seemed enough, if you know what I mean. Anyway, things kicked off in the Middle East and everything went pear shaped. The Iraq business escalated to the extent that we were sent out there in May ’04 as part of the First Mechanised Brigade and Jenny flew back to Yorkshire from time to time to cope with me being away. There were plenty of wives in Germany to get together with, but she wasn’t keen on all the screaming kids around her ankles when she went to visit them.
On September the twenty third I got the call; Jenny was dead. Her parents had gone out for the evening and she herself was under the weather according to her mother, so had gone to bed with a book. The police told me she was stabbed several times in the chest; the intruder obviously thought the house was empty having seen the car pull off the driveway. Hearing someone moving around inside the house Jenny must have got up and confronted them. There were signs of a prolonged struggle inside the house.
Whoever it was that lashed out with a knife and took my wonderful wife from me was never caught. It was just a burglary gone wrong as far as the police were concerned. The intruder left empty handed; if he had stolen something, tried to sell it for quick cash to buy drugs, then the police said they might have tracked him down. As it was the investigation stalled within weeks.
I tried to throw myself into my work but it was difficult to find a reason to carry on; I kept asking the police what was happening with Jenny’s case and it got to the point where I think they were on the verge of charging me with wasting police time!
I left the Army at the end of ’06 and started to look into the possibility of teaching; although my heart was no longer in it. Six months later I saw the advert in The Times and knew, instinctively, that this was what I was looking for; a way to strike back at the criminals and get this country back on the right track!”
Erebus thanked Alastor for his contribution and invited the final member to take the floor. Colin watched as the only non-military man stood up alongside the old man by the fireplace.
CHAPTER 10
Minos — the judge of the dead of the Underworld
“I am fifty six years old and I retired four years ago having spent a lifetime in the legal profession. My wife Claudia and I had three children; twin girls and a boy. Our daughters are both married with children of their own. However, five years ago our son Harry committed suicide; he was nineteen. Harry was a first class student who excelled in physics, chemistry and mathematics; he was on a gap year before going to Cardiff University. He played a lot of sport and had a wide circle of friends. We were at a loss to understand why he would take his own life.
Claudia found him in bed at our home in Maidstone late one morning; he was usually up and about with places to go, people to see, you know what teenagers are like. She shouted for me to come upstairs and we tried to resuscitate him; we called for an ambulance immediately but Harry was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The post-mortem and toxicology tests indicated that he had high levels of a particular drug in his system. There were indications that he had been drinking alcohol too, plus they found traces of cocaine. It was too much to take in. We knew he enjoyed a drink when he socialised, but we had no inkling he was using cocaine; as for what killed him it was incomprehensible.
When the police examined his computer they found that Harry had been visiting online forums and researching how to end his life. He had trawled the internet to find a site where he could order supplies of the very same drug that is used for lethal injections in the States. They traced the invoice to a Chinese firm who sent the drug in liquid form to Harry with no checks on what on earth he was going to do with it!
The coroner had no option but to return a verdict of suicide. We assume that Harry had a sudden crisis of confidence, an inexplicable fear of the future, something he couldn’t share with us his parents, or with his many friends. It was a tragic waste.
Suffice to say that over the decades, either as a prosecutor or on the bench as a judge, I have seen a steady increase in the number of criminals and an equally steady decline in the degree of justice that the courts have been able to mete out. My life now is centred on dealing with those that seek to manufacture and peddle drugs of any kind and bringing them to face the appropriate level of justice.”
CHAPTER 11
The room fell silent as Minos finished the final story of the night. The time was late and Colin wasn’t the only one to be feeling the effects of a long day.
“Well Phoenix” said Erebus “there you have it. Those are our stories and our code names. As far as possible they were chosen to fit our circumstances. The Olympus Project was formed in order to give us closure, in modern parlance and to set about redressing the balance for the shortcomings of the justice system.”
“It offered a chance to take revenge too?” suggested Colin.
“Perhaps dear boy, but who could blame us?” said the old man, looking frailer than Colin had seen previously.