Knife Edge Read Online Free

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        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.
        

UNIFICATION
        
    Portadown, Northern Ireland
        
        Major John Wetherby dropped the files on to the top of the desk, the thump reverberating around the room.
        Wetherby was a tall, powerfully built man with pale, pinched features, his hair greying slightly at the temples. He stood with his back to the other two men in the room, both of whom looked first at the officer then at the files.
        The younger of them, Captain Edward Wilton, reached for the top file.
        'Read it,' said Wetherby without turning round, and Wilton hesitated for a moment, as if fearing his superior possessed eyes in the back of his head, before he realised the Major must have seen his reflection in the glass of the window. 'Read them all,' Wetherby continued, his tone subdued.
        Wilton began flicking through the file.
        His colleague merely sat, hands clasped on the top of the table, gazing at his superior's back.
        Captain James Armstrong