Knife Edge (2 page)

7.10 A.M.

    The noise from the Datsun's heater was irritating him.

    It needed fixing.

    The constant rattling pissed him off.

    The weather pissed him off.

    Being stuck in the car at this time in the morning pissed him off.

    There wasn't much that didn't piss him off if he was honest.

    Sean Doyle leaned forward and pushed a cassette into the car stereo, twisting the volume knob. Music filled the car, loud and threatening.

    
'Almost called it today…'

    Doyle slid down in his seat, one foot propped against the dashboard. He flicked some mud from the side of one cowboy boot trying to remember how long ago it had been since he'd cleaned the boots.

    
'Turned my face to the void, along with the suffering…'

    The trail of people passing by on either side of the road, heading for work, or wherever, was still little more than a trickle. It wouldn't become a stream for another hour or so. Some looked in at him, others seemed more intent on trying to walk down London Road while glancing back over their shoulders in the direction of number ten.

    From where he sat, Doyle had a clear view of the house.

    
‘And the question, why ami?…'

    It was a simple red-brick dwelling with a white porch and white-framed windows. There were no lights on inside. The sodium glare of street lights reflected in the glass like a candle flame in blind eyes.

    Doyle flipped open the glove compartment, pulled out a packet of hard-boiled sweets and popped one into his mouth.

    There were more cassettes in there, tape cases, a crushed box which had once held a McDonald's fruit pie, a few balled-up pieces of paper with scribbles on them.

    And a box of 9mm shells.

    Just the usual shit.

    
'So many times I've tried and failed, to gather my courage, reach again for that nail…'

    Doyle reached for the box of ammo and slid it open. He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a spare magazine for the Beretta. Slowly, he began to feed shells into it.

    
'Life's been like dragging feet through sand, and never finding a Promised Land…'

    Each of the bullets was hollow-tipped.

    Doyle also wore a holster around his left ankle, hidden by his jeans and boot. In it nestled a.45 PD Star. The pistol was less than four inches long but Doyle had its six-shot magazine loaded with hollow tips too.

    It would take the back of a man's head off from twenty yards.

    He knew it would because he'd seen it do just such a job.

    How many times?

    A dozen? Two dozen?

    He'd lost count.

    Who fucking cared?

    Doyle certainly didn't and if he didn't, it was for sure no other bastard was going to.

    He had no idea how many men he'd killed over the years. With guns, with knives. With his bare hands. He knew some of their names, others were just faces.

    He'd been close enough to some of them to smell them, to look in their eyes. To see that combination of fear and pain.

    Pain.

    The constant companion.

    Death was part of his job.

    As a member of the Counter Terrorist Unit, Doyle had seen it in more guises than he cared to remember for more years than he could be bothered to recall.

    How long?

    Five years? Ten?

    A hundred?

    He smiled to himself.

    For every death he'd dispensed, he'd seen one. A colleague, innocent men and women, sometimes children.

    And her.

    The only one he'd ever really cared for.

    Georgie.

    He pushed the last shell into the magazine and dropped it into his pocket.

    
Fuck it.

    He closed his eyes momentarily and she was there.

    She was always there, especially in quiet moments. He hated the nights more than ever now. Thoughts of her came to him in the lonely stillness and even though he fought to keep those thoughts at bay they battered against his consciousness.

    She'd been dead more than eight years now.

    Hadn't she?

    
You should know. You held her that night, you looked into her eyes. You felt her blood on your hands. You smelled her.

    'Fuck it,' Doyle hissed under his breath and reached for another cassette, jamming it into the stereo, turning the sound even louder.

    
'I hope the end is less painful than my life…'

    Doyle saw movement in his rear-view mirror and turned in his seat.

    The paper boy was about twelve, maybe younger. A tall lanky lad who was standing looking towards number ten London Road.

    He could see figures moving about on the path in front of the house.

    Uniformed figures.

    Doyle swung himself out of the car and the boy looked at him with an expression coloured by fear.

    Doyle ran a hand through his long hair, sweeping it back from his forehead. The cold wind sent it lashing back around his face.

    'You got any spare papers in there?' he asked, nodding towards the boy's bag.

    The paper boy looked at him blankly

    'I want a paper,' Doyle told him.

    
I need something to pass the fucking time.

    The boy shook his head.

    'Do you deliver to number ten?'

    The boy nodded.

    Doyle held out a hand. 'I'll have theirs. They won't be needing it today.'

    The paper boy hesitated a moment then reached into his bag and handed the
Mirror
to the counter terrorist who took it and slid back behind the wheel.

    He turned to the sports pages and began reading.

    The paper boy stood motionless for a moment longer then tapped on Doyle's window. 'What's going on?'

    'Nothing for you to worry about,' Doyle said. 'You'd better deliver the rest of those papers.'

    'Are you sure number ten don't want theirs?' the boy persisted.

    'Trust me,' Doyle said, watching as the boy nodded and rode off.

    The counter terrorist glanced first at his watch then at number ten London Road.

    The house was still in darkness.

    Doyle sighed irritably.

    How much longer?

MEDIATION

Broadcasting House, Belfast

    As the lift descended, William Hatcher looked across at the young woman standing opposite him.

    She was in her early twenties he guessed, perhaps younger.

    The same age as his own eldest daughter, he mused.

    The young woman had a clipboard clasped firmly to her chest and, as the lift descended slowly, she never took her gaze from the line of numbers above the door, each one lighting in turn as the lift fell from floor to floor on its even journey.

    Hatcher coughed, cupping one hand over his mouth.

    The young woman still didn't look at him.

    'Thank you for coming in,' she said finally, still staring fixedly at the row of numbers. 'I know you must be busy at the moment.'

    'You could say that,' Hatcher said, a small smile on his lips.

    'Have you done many interviews before?'

    He raised his eyebrows.

    He'd been a Unionist MP for the past six years, he'd done his share.

    'Did I sound like a novice?' he chuckled.

    The woman's cheeks coloured but still she didn't even glance his way.

    'No, I meant, well, you know… with the peace settlement coming off and that…' She was struggling for the words but Hatcher intervened to help as she stumbled.

    ‘I've done two already today,' he informed her. 'I've another four to go.'

    'All in Belfast?'

    He shook his head, realising then that she wouldn't notice the gesture as she was still gazing at the numbers above the lift door.

    'All over,' he told her.

    The lift finally bumped to a halt at the ground floor and only then did the young woman look at him, glancing at him sheepishly and smiling. She ushered him from the lift and together they walked along a short corridor towards reception.

    'How long have you been doing this job?' he asked her.

    'This is my third day,' she told him. 'I just take guests in and out, get tea and coffee for people, that kind of thing. Nothing important.'

    'What's your name?'

    'Michelle.' Her cheeks coloured once more.

    'Well, Michelle, I'm sure you'll do a fine job,' Hatcher told her, handing her his clip-on Visitor Pass as he reached reception.

    Two uniformed security men were standing on either side of the exit, both of whom nodded affably in Hatcher's direction as he passed.

    'Mr Hatcher,' said Michelle quietly, lowering her voice almost conspiratorially. 'Can I ask you something?'

    For the first time she looked directly into his eyes and he noticed how clear and blue her eyes were.

    Hatcher was a tall man and she was forced to look up at him.

    He nodded, waiting for the question.

    'Is there really going to be peace?'

    Hatcher hesitated a second, transfixed by those blue orbs which had been so hesitant to focus on him earlier but which now seemed to burn right through him.

    'Yes,' he said finally, hoping that he'd injected the right amount of sincerity into his voice.

    She smiled.

    'Thank you for coming in, ' she said in a practised tone before she turned away and walked back towards the lift.

    Hatcher nodded towards his driver who was already on his feet and heading for the exit doors which he pushed open for the MP.

    The two men stepped out onto the pavement.

    'How long before the next interview, Frank?'

    The driver looked at his watch. 'An hour and a half,' he said, as he opened the back door of the Mercedes for Hatcher to slip inside.

    'Stop off somewhere on the way,' the MP told him. 'We'll get a sandwich and a drink, shall we?'

    The driver smiled, closed the door and hurried around

    to the other side, pausing a moment as a van passed by close to the Mercedes.

    Hatcher reached into his inside pocket and glanced at his itinerary for the day, squinting at the small print, muttering to himself as he had to retrieve his glasses from the glove compartment.

    Forty-six years old, eyesight going. What was next? The hair?

    He smiled and flipped open the compartment.

    It was then that the car exploded.

    The blast was massive, violent enough to lift the Mercedes fully ten feet into the air, the rear of the vehicle flipping over slightly.

    The driver was blasted off his feet by the detonation, hurled into the street by the concussion blast.

    The Mercedes disappeared for a second, transformed into a blinding ball of yellow and white flame, pieces of the chassis hurtling in all directions before the remains of the vehicle thudded back to the ground, one wheel spinning off.

    Cars screeched to a halt in the street, and one of the security guards from the BBC building ran to the door shielding his face from the flames, which were dancing madly around the obliterated remnants of the car.

    He saw something glinting near his feet, something hurled fully twenty feet by the ferocity of the explosion.

    It took him a second to realise that it was a wrist watch.

    A moment longer to grasp the fact that it was still wrapped around what was left of William Hatcher's left arm.

7.26 A.M.

    Doyle knew he may as well be dead.

    Perhaps if he'd had the guts he'd pull one of the pistols he wore, stick the fucking barrel in his mouth and finish it here and now.

    End of story.

    He flicked through the paper again.

    He'd read the print off the fucking thing once. He could remember every headline, every pointless story. It was the usual bullshit. Politics. Gossip. Exclusives.

    The country was recovering from the recession.

    Bollocks.

    Some tart from a TV soap was marrying a talentless one-hit wonder who'd just had a number one record.

    Bollocks.

    A celebrity was confessing how drink and drugs had almost wrecked his career but now he was cleaning up his life.

    Bollocks.

    Doyle tossed the paper to one side.

    It was all shit.

    Life was shit.

    There had been a story in there about the peace in Ireland, mention of a United Ireland. An end to the troubles.

    Doyle took a drag on his cigarette.

    After all these years it was actually over.

    Wasn't it?

    So where does that leave you?

    Doyle had even heard rumours that the Counter Terrorist Unit was to be disbanded. It was superfluous to requirements now. Its members were to be pensioned off. Discarded.

    He sighed.

    What the fuck was he going to do?

    It was all he knew. All he'd known for so many years. Where did he go from here? What did life have to offer him now that the fighting was finished?

    It was something he'd considered briefly and, each time, the realisation had troubled him.

    He was finished without it and that only angered him more.

    Retire at thirty-seven. Sit on your arse and count your scars. Sit in your flat and go slowly insane until the day came when the only course of action was to suck on the barrel of a.44.

    Over the last twenty years he'd faced death so often, risked his life more than any man should have to, but the prospect of that final ending had never frightened him. For the last eight years, since Georgie had gone, it had seemed preferable to the emptiness, the loneliness.

    Doyle had never been afraid of dying but the thought of being discarded, of having outlived his usefulness, was almost unbearable.

    There was something inside him, a cancerous rage which gnawed at him and found appeasement in the violence of his work. With that work gone he could see little future. Could see no way of fighting off that anger which both fuelled him and fed off him.

    Better off dead than discarded.

    He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray then pulled it free and emptied the contents out of the side window, all over the road.

    His back ached.

    It felt as if he'd been sitting in the car for hours and, again, he checked his watch, as if by constantly gazing at the Sekonda he would accelerate time itself.

    There were still no lights on in number ten London Road.

    The only movement was outside.

    The sky was still dark, still mottled with bloated rain clouds.

    Every now and then droplets would hit the windscreen and Doyle watched them trickle down the glass.

    He lit up another cigarette then leaned forward and turned up the volume of the car stereo.

    
'… all of the people who won't be missed, you've made my shitlist…'

    A car drove past but Doyle hardly heard the engine above the thundering stereo.

    There were fewer vehicles heading down the street now and he wondered if the road had finally been closed at either end but decided that wasn't the right tactic.

    Things had to look relatively normal outside to anyone peering into the street.

    A white van approaching from behind him, moving slowly. Doyle watched it in his rear-view mirror, counted two people in the front. A man was driving, a woman seated next to him was pointing.

    The counter terrorist squinted in the gloom and noticed that she was gesturing in the direction of number ten.

    He took a long drag on his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs.

    
'… all the ones who put me out…'

    The van had stopped about twenty yards behind where Doyle was parked.

    
'… all the ones who fill my head with doubt…'

    He saw the driver clamber out, wander around to the rear of the van where a second man climbed free into the street. The woman was walking ahead of them, glancing back and forth as if searching for something.

    Doyle shook his head and swung himself out of the car.

    He wondered what had taken them so long.