minutes walking uphill we reached an ugly church shaped like a vast stone barn with an undersized steeple. A wrought-iron fence formed a tight square around a clustered churchyard of headstones, some tilted, a few broken. This was Scottish Protestantism given solid form: forbidding, sinister, bleak, hard.
‘Kirk o’ Shotts…’ explained Mr Morrison. He was reduced to outlines and shadows in the half-light. I looked around me. No one in sight. This was as good a place as any to do your killing. I cursed myself for not having had a go at him earlier. Now he would be ready for me if I came at him.
‘Take it easy.’ Mr Morrison seemed to read my mind. ‘I know this is a secluded spot for a killing, but that’s not why I brought you here. Listen, can I dispense with this?’ He raised the sliver of blade and snapped it back into its handle before pocketing it. ‘Please don’t give me any trouble, Mr Lennox. I brought you here for your benefit, not mine.’ He walked across to a corner of the churchyard and eased up a broken piece of headstone that had sunk into the mossy grass. ‘I have a particular affection for this place,’ he said, retrieving a tobacco tin from the concealed depression under the stone. ‘This was — still is — the Great Road between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In the fifteenth century this was a dangerous highway to travel, mainly because of Bertram Shotts. He was a highwayman who was reputedly also a giant. Seven foot tall. Some say eight. He was supposed to have had a hideaway near the Kirk. The place is supposed to have taken its name from him.’ Mr Morrison removed a folded envelope from the tobacco tin and put it unopened into his pocket. ‘Of course he wouldn’t have been a giant, but people like to make their villains larger than life. Literally. I’m sure you’ll agree I have a reputation that is more impressive than my physical presence.’
‘Why bring me up here? Other than for an I-could-give-a-fuck history lesson.’
‘It’s a quiet place to talk and I had to pick up my mail. This is how my clients tell me they have a job for me. They leave a time and a telephone number in the tobacco tin for me to call and I call it. I have several such “mailboxes”, but this one is a favourite. It’s a difficult place for the police to stake out, being so elevated and exposed. Of course some of my clients, the Three Kings for example, have a more conventional and direct line of communication with me.’ He pointed across the valley to where a needle of ironwork pierced the almost-dark sky. ‘Things are changing, Mr Lennox. They put that up about five years ago. Television transmitter. That’s the future, apparently. Things are getting more sophisticated. More technological. The police too.’
‘I still don’t get why I’m here.’
‘First of all, I want you to know how to get in touch with me.’
‘Living in Glasgow, I could do with a half-decent tailor. Sometimes it’s difficult for my landlady to find a plumber.’ I rubbed my chin in sarcastic thoughtfulness. ‘But no… I don’t think I ever really have much call for a contract killer.’
Mr Morrison looked at me blankly. He had described his sociopathic lack of emotion. It obviously extended to any sense of humour. ‘No, no
… I don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I have a proposition for you, like I said. I wanted you to know how to contact me if you needed. But I’ll come back to that.’
‘Oh good,’ I said, again with undetected irony.
‘The main reason I wanted to talk to you is because I have some information which I think you’ll find interesting. About a week ago I had a project to undertake for Mr Sneddon. When I was taking the brief he told me that you were looking into the Tam McGahern killing for him. Trying to find out who’s behind it. It wasn’t me, by the way.’
‘If you brought me up here to tell me that you could have spared me the hike. I knew that already.’
‘That’s not what I have to tell you. About two and a half weeks ago there was a number left in one of my mail collection points. It wasn’t one that I recognized. I work for an established clientele and don’t tout for business. As I said to you on the train, Mr Lennox, I am a hunter rather than a stalker, but I am more than capable of the odd bit of detection. I have contacts… people upon whom I can call for paid favours. None of whom, by the way, have any idea what it is I do for a living, although they probably have guessed it’s less than legal. Anyway, I had the number checked out by one of these contacts — one who works for the GPO. He told me the number belonged to a public call box in Glasgow. In Renfield Street. Whoever had left the message was being very careful to avoid being traced. Obviously, because it was a call box, they had left a specific time for me to call.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. Of course not. It could have been a police trap. So instead of calling, I hung around in Renfield Street with a view of the public telephone. Right enough, five minutes before the appointed time a smallish young man went into the call box. It could have been a coincidence, of course, but when another man started to tap impatiently on the glass, the young man opened the door and grabbed the waiting man by the collar and obviously made some kind of threat. The other man scuttled off.’
‘Yeah, but you’re talking about Glasgow. That’s a normal conversation.’ I took a cigarette from my case and lit up, offering Mr Morrison one: I thought it best to keep his hands busy. As I lit the cigarette for him his round, fleshy little face glowed in the sudden light. Given all the time in the world to place him in a profession, hit-man would never have come up. That was probably why he was so successful.
‘No. This was my man. He hogged the ’phone box for half an hour. He was the person I was clearly expected to contact.’
‘Did you recognize him?’
‘No. But I recognized his type. He was an underling. Again, another distance that whoever was trying to hire me was placing between him and me. I could tell he wasn’t my potential client from the way he dressed and the way he looked frightened when he didn’t get the call he had been told to take.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Like I said, smallish, maybe a couple of inches taller than me. Cheap suit. Oily hair in what I believe is popularly called a “Duck’s Arse” style.’
‘Dirty blond?’
There was a pause and I guessed Mr Morrison was frowning in the dark. ‘You know him?’
‘Knew him. If he was who I think he was, then he’s no longer with us,’ I said, and had a nauseating thought about Scotch pies. ‘I think he may have been a gofer called Bobby. Worked for Tam and Frankie McGahern.’
The sky was dark-blue and velvet behind the looming black form of Kirk o’ Shotts. Morrison’s face and the mirrors of his spectacles were again briefly illuminated as he drew on his cigarette. ‘That would fit. I followed him from Renfield Street all the way back to a spit-and-sawdust place in Maryhill.’
‘The Highlander?’
‘Yes. I told Mr Sneddon about this little experience and he told me that the Highlander was run by the McGaherns.’
‘Doesn’t that breach your client-contractor confidentiality?’
‘The McGaherns weren’t my clients and were never going to be. Like I said, I don’t work for just anybody. But, as you know, killing isn’t always a refined art. Glasgow is full of men who would take a life for you for twenty pounds. Or less. I’m a specialist and I cost a lot to hire. If the late Mr McGahern had wanted to use my services then it must have been something special. Out of the ordinary.’
I thought about what Morrison was saying. I also thought of John Andrews’s faked accident. Maybe that had been planned weeks before. Maybe something was planned for me.
‘Mr Sneddon wanted you to know this. He would have told you himself but I said I wanted to talk to you about another matter.’
‘This proposition of yours.’
‘Exactly. You see, Mr Lennox, we plough parallel furrows. In an odd way we are colleagues, both independent, both working for mainly the same people. The difference is you are a stalker, I am a hunter. As such we could share the kill. As you can imagine, my anonymity is paramount. I do everything I can to remain invisible and the only reason I have exposed myself to you is because I see the potential for partnership. On certain cases, that is. You see, sometimes my observation of marks, following them and establishing patterns of movement, et cetera, exposes me to the risk of discovery. But you are a natural stalker who’s at home in the shadows and an expert at tracking people down. My proposition is simple: a fifty-fifty split on any kill we work together on.’
I dropped my cigarette butt onto the ground and crushed the spray of orange sparks with my shoe. I looked at the small, dense silhouette of the bank manager killer.
‘Thanks for the offer but no. I’m not interested in that kind of work,’ I said, trying to make my tone decisive. ‘I don’t want any part of your business.’
