back into Glasgow’s dark embrace.
The Glasgow train was quiet. The next scheduled service would have been full with office workers commuting back to Glasgow and the various stops along the way. I was still in that stupidly melancholic mood and I needed privacy to brood self-indulgently. One of the luxuries I afforded myself at my clients’ expense was to travel first- class. I found an empty compartment and settled into it, looking forward to an hour of solitary travel. Unfortunately a short, fat, balding businessman bustled in through the door in a plume of pipe smoke and piled his raincoat, newspaper, briefcase and himself onto the seats opposite.
‘Afternoon,’ he said.
I grumbled a response and he disappeared behind a fluttered wall of newsprint. At least it looked like I wasn’t going to be troubled with small talk. After a few minutes there was a great hiss of steam and the sound of the engine beginning to chug its way into motion and we were under way.
The world outside the window slid by slate-grey. I thought through everything I had on the McGahern killing. Unfortunately it didn’t take long. The businessman opposite had now folded his newspaper and set it on the seat beside him and began to read through a Country Life. He didn’t look like a shootin’ and huntin’ country type, more like a suburbanite. My idle curiosity cost me dear. He saw me looking at him and clearly took it as an invitation to strike up a conversation.
‘It’s good to get away before the rush,’ he said. He spoke with a Scots burr that was impossible to place as Glasgow or Edinburgh, working- or middle-class.
I nodded with a perfunctory smile.
‘Through in Edinburgh on business?’ he asked.
‘So to speak.’
‘Now, don’t tell me. Sorry, please indulge me for a moment. This is my little party piece: I guess people’s occupations and something about them from their appearances.’
‘Oh really?’ I said. Oh fuck off, I thought.
‘Yes… now you. You’re a challenge. Your accent is difficult to place exactly. I mean you’re clearly Canadian, not American. I’m guessing… and I could be wrong because your accent has become a little muddled… but no, I would say Eastern Canada. The Maritimes.’
‘New Brunswick,’ I said and was genuinely impressed. But not enough to continue the conversation.
‘Now, as to occupation…’ The little man with the little eyes behind his bank manager glasses was not to be put off by mere indifference. ‘What people do, that’s usually easy. But with you, I think we’re looking at something a little out of the ordinary.’ He paused and picked up his copy of Country Life. ‘Now here’s a question that always helps. I go hunting. Shooting mainly. There are two distinct types of people involved in the hunt. Or two distinct types of personality: the hunter himself and the stalker, who leads the hunter to the kill. Obviously sometimes the hunter stalks his own prey. But let’s pretend that we are after a deer, you and I. Would you see yourself as a stalker or a hunter?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said without thought. ‘Stalker maybe.’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s what I’d have you down as. Me, I’m a hunter, pure and simple. Mainly wild deer. Magnificent animals. Do you know what the most important quality in a hunter is? Respect for his prey. When I shoot a deer, I bring it down quickly. The trick is a maximum of two shots. To end life as swiftly and painlessly as possible. As I say, out of respect for the animal.’
I smiled wearily just as we passed through the blackness of the tunnel into Haymarket. The train stopped but didn’t pick anyone up. The engine exhaled a huge cloud of steam that drifted over the platforms. I felt isolated, trapped in this tiny capsule with the world’s most boring man.
‘It is remarkable, I think,’ he continued, looking out the window at a grey slideshow of Lothian scenery, ‘that we often turn out to be someone else. Not who we thought we were at all. Take me — I know what you’re thinking: an anonymous little man with no imagination and some kind of bureaucratic job.’
‘I-’ I started, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the drift of the conversation.
The strange little man cut me off. ‘It’s all right. That’s exactly who — what — I was. Or what I was destined to become. I am not an imaginative person. But what I didn’t realize was that, as a child, my lack of imagination wasn’t my only deficiency. You see, Mr Lennox, I found out at an early age that I didn’t feel things in the same way as others did. I didn’t get as happy as others, or as sad, or as frightened.’
I straightened in my seat. ‘How do you know my name?’
‘I’m not saying it particularly marked me out as being different,’ he continued, ignoring my question, ‘only I seemed to be aware of it, and my life would have followed a predictable course if the unpredictable hadn’t got in the way. By which, of course, I mean the war. But there again, you know exactly what I mean, Mr Lennox. You see, during the war, I discovered that my emotional deficiency was compensated for by an ability that others lacked. I could kill without compunction. Without thought or emotion or regret afterwards. I have a talent for it, you see. Just as some have a talent for music or art. My talent is as a killer. Something that is positively encouraged in the context of an armed conflict. I ended up being recruited into the Long Range Reconnaissance Group. I’m sure you’re aware of the group’s activity.’
‘Who are you? And how do you know my name?’ I started to stand.
‘Please, Mr Lennox. Sit down.’ With a movement so swift I almost missed it his hand darted into his briefcase. A very slender, very long switchblade snapped out of the knife handle. ‘Please, just sit down. And please be assured that, big and experienced as you are, any physical contact between us would have unfortunate consequences. I am very, very experienced with this thing.’
I sat down. I didn’t need to ask who he was again. I knew. What I couldn’t work out was how I could continue breathing with this knowledge. Like he said, I was big and experienced. If it came to it, I would take my chances. In the meantime I sat down and listened.
‘It was because of the skills I developed that I moved into the line of business I’m in now. A successful businessman. I have a wife and son you know, Mr Lennox.’
‘I didn’t. I don’t know anything about you, Mr Morrison. Other than your name isn’t likely to be Morrison.’
He smiled and laid the knife on the newspaper by his side, discreetly folding it over to conceal it. ‘I see… you think I’m going to kill you because you know too much, because you’ve seen my face.’
‘Something like that.’
‘I can understand that. German sailors believe in a small elf called the Klabautermann. He is invisible but brings good luck to those he sails with. But if you see the Klabautermann ’s face, you know you’re going to die. I have to admit that is the way I’ve always seen myself. But be assured that that is not the case here. Those I kill — human or animal — die quickly and most often without being aware that they are about to die. That is why I see nothing wrong in what I do. People die all of the time, in terrible pain from injury or illness. You will have seen for yourself the suffering of men in war. The agonies some die in. And not many passings from illness or accident are without great pain. But not my victims. Little or no pain. No foreknowledge and therefore no fear. So you see, Mr Lennox, if it had been my intention to kill you, you would have been none the wiser. You would be dead by now. And anyway, I chose this venue because it is ideal for a chat. If I had intended to kill you, I would have chosen somewhere with more immediate opportunities to distance myself from the act.’
‘At the moment I get the idea you’re trying to talk me to death. What is it you want, Morrison?’
‘This is about what you want.’ He smiled and the small eyes twinkled coldly behind his spectacles. I thought of how those tiny, ugly bank manager eyes had been the last thing so many people had seen. I could imagine their deaths the way he had described. A moment of shock. Of disbelief. Then a final gaze into those eyes.
‘However,’ he continued, ‘I do have a proposition of sorts to put to you. But we can discuss that later. Ah… our stop. Or at least my stop and I’m afraid I’ll have to prevail on you to accompany me part of the way. And, Mr Lennox, please don’t be silly. I also have a gun.’
We got off the train, Mr Morrison staying behind me with his raincoat draped over his arm to conceal the knife. It was a small station with two platforms and a siding. It sat on the edge of a small town in the middle of a landscape of unremitting moorland bleakness. It was getting dark now and Mr Morrison indicated the direction we should take from the station. I noticed we were heading away from the town and towards the empty uplands.
A thousand different images of a thousand different endings to our outing were spinning around in my head. Sure, Mr Morrison was known to be the best in the business, but by his own admission he took most of his victims unawares; I was very much aware of the little shit behind me, the stiletto blade still tucked under his raincoat. And sure, he had all kinds of combat experience, but so did I. And he was a little guy after all. After about fifteen
