A heavily built woman emerged from the kitchen carrying a bucket of soapy water and proceeded to wash the tiled floor with a mop.
The cafe now smelt of soap suds and frying bacon.
The former counter terrorist looked around for any No Smoking signs, saw none and lit up.
So that’s itYou’re finished.
He drew heavily on the cigarette.
Out of work. Discarded. Unwanted. Sacked.
It didn’t matter which description you used, it amounted to the same thing.
Game over.
He glanced at his watch, wishing the pubs were open. Wishing he could walk into one, sit himself at a bar and drink until the world disappeared in a haze.
Why not just drive home? There’s booze there.
The initial feeling of fury he’d felt upon leaving CTU headquarters had subsided into something he’d experienced only once or twice before in his life. A feeling of utter helplessness.
He knew that no matter what he did or said, there was nothing he could do to change his fate. It was over. Everything he had ever known. Everything he’d trained, suffered and sweated for had been taken away from him at the whim of some fucking politician.
Had all the pain and loss over the years been for this? To be told he could no longer do the job he loved. The job he was made for?
The only job he could do?
He took another drag on his cigarette, the knot of muscles at the side of his jaw pulsing angrily.
The woman mopping the floor moved to his table. She reached for the small disposable ashtray but Doyle shook his head and she moved away.
No one had ever beaten him in his life. Every man or woman he’d ever set out to hunt down, he’d caught. All those who’d tried to kill him he’d killed first.
He’d survived bomb blasts, bullet wounds, knife cuts and God alone knew what else. But what weapons could not achieve, a few words had.They had destroyed him more completely than a bullet in the head.
Where do you go from here?
He looked at the woman with the mop.
Cleaning fucking floors?
Doyle drew on his cigarette then ground it out in the ashtray. He lit another then ordered more coffee. No rush. He had nowhere
to go and the pubs didn’t open for another half hour.
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND:
Daniel Kane drove the white into the triangle of pool balls and watched as they spun off in all directions. The sound reverberated around the inside of the pub for a moment. Seeing he hadn’t potted anything Kane took a step away from the table and reached for his drink.
The Huntsman had only been open for an hour or so and aside from Kane and his three companions, there were just two customers. One was sitting at the bar running a nicotine-stained index finger over a copy of Sporting Life, the other was sitting in one of the booths near the main doors sipping at a pint of Murphy’s.
They’re making fools of us,’ Kane said, his face set in hard lines.
‘They have been ever since that fucking Good Friday Agreement,’ Ivor Best added, walking around the pool table, trying to spot his next shot.
At thirty-two, Best was four years Kane’s junior. A tall, wiry individual with jet-black hair which was receding rather too quickly for a man of his age.
Kane was shorter but more powerfully built. Apart from his cleft chin the most immediately noticeable thing about him was the scar that ran from just below his left earlobe along the line of his bottom jaw. The result of a car accident twenty years earlier. Kane, however, was content to allow those who believed it to be the legacy of a fight to cling to their illusion. In the part of Belfast where he’d grown up reputations were respected and if some of his own was built on hearsay then so be it.
Like Best he had been active within the Ulster Volunteer Force for the past twelve years. Unlike his other three companions he had yet to serve a prison sentence. Some thought he was just lucky. Kane put it down to his intelligence and organisational abilities. Things that made him valuable in his chosen field.
He watched as Best took and missed his shot.
‘Five more of those Fenian bastards are released at the end of the week,’ Best hissed. ‘And they expect us to accept it?’
‘What choice have we got?’ The question came from a chair pulled close to the pool table. Jeffrey Kelly picked at fingernails already bitten to the quick and waited for an answer.
‘We might not have a choice but nobody says we have to fucking like it,’ Best replied.
‘Which prison are they being released from?’ George Mcswain wanted to know, rolling himself a stiletto-thin cigarette.
‘Maghaberry,’ Kane said quietly, potting a ball. He walked around the table and chalked the end of his cue.
‘Look, I don’t agree with it any more than the rest of you,’ Kelly said. ‘But if it brings peace then what the hell.’
‘You think the fucking IRA will stop just because their men are being released from prison?’ Best snapped. ‘All the British government is doing is giving them back their best fucking soldiers.’
‘I agree, look what they did to that bus earlier in the week,’ Mcswain noted.
That wasn’t the Provos,’ Kelly offered. That was the Real IRA.’
‘What fucking difference does it make?’ snarled Best. ‘People were killed. Our people.’
‘Whose side are you on anyway?’ Mcswain wanted to know.
Kelly glared at him and got to his feet. ‘Fuck you,’ he roared, his gaze fixed on Mcswain.
The man seated at the bar turned and glanced briefly in the direction of the raised voices.
The barman also looked across as he dried glasses.
They won’t stop,’ Kane mused, lining up another shot and sinking the ball.
The ceasefire, giving up their weapons. It’s all bollocks. You all know that,’
snapped Best. The only ones who can’t see it are the fucking politicians.’
The other men nodded in agreement.
‘Well, I’m not giving in to a bunch of fucking Fenians,’ Best continued.
‘Quite right, Ivor,’ Kane murmured, surveying the remaining pool balls contemplatively.‘What do you think we should do?’
Best could only shrug. ‘What can we do, Danny?’ he wanted to know.
Kane drew back the cue and prepared to take his shot. ‘We can hit back at the IRA the only way they understand,’ he said.
He struck the white ball with incredible power. When it slammed into a red, the noise was like a gunshot.
Kane stood up slowly and looked at his companions one by one. Something unspoken passed between them.
Kane smiled malevolently.
LONDON:
Doyle could barely open his eyes. He groaned and attempted to sit up.
‘Fuck,’ he croaked, his throat feeling as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
It felt as if someone was trying to batter their way out of his skull using a pickaxe, and for fleeting seconds he had absolutely no idea where he was. But he didn’t really care.
Only gradually did he realise that he was home. Somehow (Christ alone knew how) he’d made his way back to his flat the previous evening (afternoon, evening, night?) and obviously blacked out in the chair.
There was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the floor close to him; some of it had dripped out on to the carpet.
What a waste.
Again he tried to open his eyes, this time to slightly better effect.
The thunderous headache intensified as he got to his feet and blundered towards the kitchen. Only then did he realise he was still wearing his leather jacket and boots.
Must have crashed out straightaway.
Doyle tugged off the jacket and dropped it on to the floor then he stumbled into the kitchen and spun the cold tap. As the water gushed into the sink he cupped handfuls of it and splashed his face. It helped a little but he knew what he had to do to help clear this fucking hangover.