‘Get your brother the terrorist to protect you. His name’s… Billy, isn’t it? Only you can’t do that, can you? Because you haven’t got a brother called Billy. Or a brother called Tony, if it comes to that.’ The detective pauses. ‘You haven’t got anybody, Ian. You’re a nobody. These stories of yours… that’s all they are, stories. Come on now, it’s time you were home. Your mum will be worrying.’
‘She got a new washing machine last week,’ Ian says softly. ‘The man who delivered it, he said sorry for being so late. He’d been stopped at a checkpoint.’
It is quiet in the interview room. Quiet for a long time, until Ian begins weeping, weeping for the brother he’s just lost again.
The Hanged Man
The killer wandered through the fairground.
It was a travelling fair, and this was its first night in Kirkcaldy. It was a Thursday evening in April. The fair wouldn’t get really busy until the weekend, by which time it would be missing one of its minor, if well-established, attractions.
He’d already made one recce past the small white caravan with its chalkboard outside. Pinned to the board were a couple of faded letters from satisfied customers. A double-step led to the bead curtain. The door was tied open with baling twine. He didn’t think there was anyone in there with her. If there was, she’d have closed the door. But all the same, he wanted to be careful. ‘Care’ was his by-word.
He called himself a killer. Which was to say that if anyone had asked him what he did for a living, he wouldn’t have used any other term. He knew some in the profession thought ‘assassin’ had a more glamorous ring to it. He’d looked it up in a dictionary, found it was to do with some old religious sect and derived from an old Arabic word meaning ‘eater of hashish’. He didn’t believe in drugs himself; not so much as a half of lager before the job.
Some people preferred to call it a ‘hit’, which made them ‘hit men’. But he didn’t hit people; he killed them stone dead. And there were other, more obscure euphemisms, but the bottom line was, he was a killer.
And for today, the fair was his place of work, his hunting ground.
Not that it had taken a magic ball to find the subject. She’d be in that caravan right now, waiting for a punter. He’d give it ten more minutes, just so he could be sure she wasn’t with someone – not a punter necessarily; maybe sharing a cuppa with a fellow traveller. Ten minutes: if no one came out or went in, he’d make himself her next and final customer.
Of course, if she was a real astrologer, she’d know he was coming and would have high-tailed it out of town. But he thought she was here. He knew she was.
He pretended to watch three youths on the firing range. They made the elementary mistake of aiming along the barrel. The sights, of course, had been skewed; probably the barrel, too. And if they thought they were going to dislodge one of the moving targets by hitting it… well, best think again. Those targets would be weighted, reinforced. The odds were always on the side of the showman.
The market stretched along the waterfront. There was a stiff breeze making some of the wooden structures creak. People pushed hair out of their eyes, or tucked chins into the collars of their jackets. The place wasn’t busy, but it was busy enough. He didn’t stand out, nothing memorable about him at all. His jeans, lumberjack shirt and trainers were work clothes: at home he preferred a bit more style. But he was a long way from home today. His base was on the west coast, just down the Clyde from Glasgow. He didn’t know anything about Fife at all. Kirkcaldy, what little he’d seen of it, wouldn’t be lingering in his memory. He’d been to towns all over Scotland and the north of England. In his mind they formed a geography of violence. In Carlisle he’d used a knife, making it look like a drunken Saturday brawl. In Peterhead it had been a blow on the head and strangulation, with orders that the body shouldn’t ever be found – a grand and a half to a fishing-boat captain had seen to that. In Airdrie, Arbroath, Ardrossan… he didn’t always kill. Sometimes all that was needed was a brutal and public message. In those cases he became the postman, delivering the message to order.
He moved from the shooting range to another stall, where children tried to attach hoops to the prizes on a carousel. They were faring little better than their elders next door. No surprise, with most of the prizes oh-so-slightly exceeding the circumference of each hoop. When he checked his watch, he was surprised to find that the ten minutes had passed. A final look around, and he climbed the steps, tapped at the open door, and parted the bead curtain.
‘Come in, love,’ she said. Gypsy Rosa, the sign outside called her. Palms read, your fortune foretold. Yet here she was, waiting for him.
‘Close the door,’ she instructed. He saw that the twine holding it open was looped over a bent nail. He loosed it and closed the door. The curtains were shut – which was ideal for his purpose – and, lacking any light from outside, the interior glowed from the half-dozen candles spaced around it. The surfaces had been draped with lengths of cheap black cloth. There was a black cloth over the table, too, with patterns of sun and moon embroidered into it. And there she sat, gesturing for him to squeeze his large frame into the banquette opposite. He nodded. He smiled. He looked at her.
She was middle-aged, her face lined and rouged. She’d been a looker in younger days, he could see that, but scarlet lipstick now made her mouth look too large and moist. She wore black muslin over her head, a gold band holding it in place. Her costume looked authentic enough: black lace, red silk, with astrological signs sewn into the arms. On the table sat a crystal ball, covered for now with a white handkerchief. The red fingernails of one hand tapped against a tarot deck. She asked him his name.
‘Is that necessary?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘It helps sometimes.’ They were like blind dates alone in a restaurant, the world outside ceasing to matter. Her eyes twinkled in the candlelight.
‘My name’s Mort,’ he told her.
She repeated the name, seeming amused by it.
‘Short for Morton. My father was born there.’
‘It’s also the French for death,’ she added.
‘I didn’t know,’ he lied.
She was smiling. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know, Mort. That’s why you’re here. A palm-reading, is it?’
‘What else do you offer?’
‘The ball.’ She nodded towards it. ‘The cards.’
He asked which she would recommend. In turn, she asked if this was his first visit to a psychic healer – that was what she called herself, ‘a psychic healer’: ‘because I heal souls’, she added by way of explanation.
‘I’m not sure I need healing,’ he argued.
‘Oh, my dear, we all need some kind of healing. We’re none of us whole. Look at you, for example.’
He straightened in his chair, becoming aware for the first time that she was holding his right hand, palm upwards, her fingers stroking his knuckles. She looked down at the palm, frowned a little in concentration.
‘You’re a visitor, aren’t you, dear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Here on business, I’d say.’
‘Yes.’ He was studying the palm with her, as though trying to read its foreign words.
‘Mmm.’ She began running the tip of one finger down the well-defined lines which criss-crossed his palm. ‘Not ticklish? ’ she chuckled. He allowed her the briefest of smiles. Looking at her face, he noticed it seemed softer than it had when he’d first entered the caravan. He revised her age downwards, felt slight pressure as she seemed to squeeze his hand, as if acknowledging the compliment.
‘Doing all right for yourself though,’ she informed him. ‘I mean moneywise; no problems there. No, dear, your problems all stem from your particular line of work.’
‘My work?’
‘You’re not as relaxed about it as you used to be. Time was, you wouldn’t have considered doing anything else. Easy money. But it doesn’t feel like that any more, does it?’