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.