‘The police were absolutely miles off with the dates. I shot him in the neck and wrapped him up in chains and dumped him in the middle of the river. But that was in Twenty-nine, not Thirty-eight. I actually felt quite badly about the whole business, so I let him keep my cigarette case, as a gesture, so to speak. I had another case made, identical, by the same goldsmith. I have to say I never thought old Henry would ever be found, and certainly not after such a long time. But the fact that everyone thought it was me was an added bonus. Joe Strachan is dead, Mr Lennox. Now, can we remove ourselves from this sorry little tableau, before someone finds us here?’
‘You’re going nowhere, Strachan. Despite your phoney accent and ersatz refined manner, you’re nothing but a common, low, Glaswegian thug. No matter what you do, you’ll never wash off the stench of the Gorbals. Drop the knife or I’ll let you have it now.’
‘You disappoint me, Mr Lennox,’ he said. The F-S knife clattered on the cobbles of the pier. ‘You’re not as bright as I thought you were. Tell me, what exactly are you going to do? You can’t hand me over to the police. For a start, I’m dead, remember? Officially I’ve been at the bottom of the Clyde for eighteen years. And secondly, how are you going to explain your involvement with the deaths of Frank Gibson, Billy Dunbar and these poor unfortunates scattered around here? No, Lennox, you don’t have much of a choice in this. So let’s do a deal. I know you won’t talk, and I’ll pay for your silence and my peace of mind.’
I sighed, and was surprised how weary my sigh sounded. We both knew where this was going; we both disbelieved everything the other said. The night was cooling and the wake of a ship that was now long passed broke against the pier. I kept my eyes fixed on Strachan because he was someone you kept your eyes fixed on, but I was aware of the shadowed shapes and distant navigation lights of ships and tugs sliding silently by, far out on the black Clyde behind him. Every journey comes to an end and this journey had been rougher than most, and it had brought me here: to the end of a Glasgow pier with the killers and the killed.
I looked at the man before me. Strachan must have been pushing sixty, but not in the way people were sixty in Glasgow. In Glasgow, sixty was elderly. Broken by hard work and harder living. Strachan’s comparative youthfulness and fitness spoke of a life a universe removed from Glasgow. A life he was desperate to return to, unscathed and unsullied by everything that had happened. I thought of my own life here, in Glasgow, and a life left behind in Canada a wartime ago. The unfairness of it made me feel sick. Strachan had paid for his second chance with the pain and blood of others.
‘So you just get to walk away?’ I said eventually. ‘And what about the trail of death and misery you’ve left behind you? I’m expected to let that all go? Just forget about the innocent people you’ve killed simply to preserve the fiction of your fake existence?’
‘Like I said, Lennox, you have no choice. Let it go. Let
‘He doesn’t even know for sure you’re alive. I don’t think he’s even sure that he really is your son.’
‘Then it’s time for a father-son reunion to put his doubts to rest. You know I’m right. You know everything I’m saying is right.’
‘That’s true,’ I said and nodded respectfully. ‘What you’ve said is all true. And do you know what the truest thing is?’
‘What?’ He was smiling now, knowing he had beaten me down with his logic.
‘The truest thing you’ve said is that you’re dead. As far as everyone is concerned you’ve slept the deep, dark sleep at the bottom of the river for eighteen years.’
‘Your point is?’ he asked, the smug smile still on his face.
‘That this isn’t murder.’
I shot him in the face. Right in the middle of his smug smile. My second and third bullet hit him in the chest and the life left him before he toppled backwards, off the pier and into the river.
‘Sleep well, Gentleman Joe,’ I said.
I used my handkerchief to wipe down the Webley before I threw it as far as I could into the dark.
I heard it splash, somewhere far out in the inky Clyde.
