I kept tight, but I was pissed. I was pissed at being hunted again by these bastards. I felt my anger boil in my chest. If I was going to die here, I wasn’t going to be the only one.
‘Mr Lennox … please.’ He sighed and let go of Downey, who stood, his shoulders hunched, as if suspended by an invisible wire. Strachan now stood with Downey on one side, Fraser on the other. ‘Do you know the Fairbairn-Sykes Timetable of Death, Mr Lennox?’ He spoke loudly but did not shout. He knew I was somewhere on the pier. ‘Standard issue for commando and SOE operatives. He reached inside his jacket and slipped something from his belt. Not a gun.
‘Number One …’ Strachan held the F-S fighting knife, the same type with which my attacker had been armed, to the inside of Paul Downey’s arm, ‘the brachial artery. Depth of cut, just half an inch. Loss of consciousness, fourteen seconds. Death, one minute thirty seconds.’
I could hear Downey sob; see his shoulders shake. With lightning speed, Strachan moved the knife to Downey’s wrist. ‘Number Two … radial artery. Depth of cut, only one quarter of an inch. Slightly slower action, however and a smaller target, so I’ve never gone for it myself. Loss of consciousness, thirty seconds. Death, two minutes.’ He paused. ‘Now, Mr Lennox, please show yourself, or my demonstration might become more explicit.’
I stayed put. If he was going to kill Downey, he was going to kill Downey. I just had to work out how to get the three of us out of there. I heard noises closer to me.
Strachan sighed again. ‘All right, Mr Lennox. Do you know I’ve demonstrated these knife strikes more often than I can remember? All through the war. Now we come to the really quick kills. Number Three …’ The knife flashed and was at the side of Downey’s neck. ‘The carotid. Depth of cut, one and a half inches. Loss of consciousness in just five seconds. Death within twelve seconds. Mr Lennox?’
The guy to my right was getting really close. I slipped the Webley from my belt.
‘Now this brings me to my favourite of all strikes …’ Strachan arced his arm up, again so fast that Downey didn’t even flinch, and the blade of the commando knife was angled down resting just behind where Downey’s collar bone would be. ‘The subclavian. The gladiator strike. Depth of cut two and a half inches. Unconsciousness in two seconds. Death in three and a half. Like I said, my favourite of all cuts.’
With that, his hand arced again, the blade flashing in the dark. But this time it was away from Downey. It looked no more than a tap on the shoulder, but I could see the blade had sunk deep into Fraser’s body and was pulled free in the same sliver of a second. The lawyer sank to his knees, without uttering a sound, a dark bloom soaking his white shirt. He toppled, face down, onto the pier.
‘Now, Mr Lennox. I will give you this boy. I will let him leave here tonight to go on running and hiding and living in fear. But my price, Lennox, has to be you.’
I had a fix on the heavy searching on the far side of the pier and at that moment, the second goon emerged from behind the pile of crates next to me. His head was wrapped in bandages and from what I could see from his face, he wasn’t going to be modelling knitting patterns. He was the goon whose features I’d rearranged the night of our nature trek in the woods.
‘I’m here,’ I said quietly and stood up. I shot goon two in the bandages. I heard the percussive crack of a bullet passing close to my head and I fired at the other goon before he could improve his aim. He took it in the belly and doubled up, dropping his gun and screaming.
I aimed at Strachan, but he pulled Downey in front of his body as a shield, holding the F-S knife at the youth’s throat. And as I had just seen, he knew how to use it. There was no fear or panic in Strachan’s movements, just efficiency.
The goon behind me was still screaming, so I went over and kicked his gun out of reach. Strachan did nothing while I checked on the other goon. The bandages around his head were soaked crimson. He’d used up all the oxygen he was ever going to use.
I walked back towards where Strachan held Downey.
‘You all right, Paul?’ I asked.
‘I’ve wet myself,’ he said tearfully. ‘Please don’t let him kill me, Mr Lennox. Please don’t let him.’
‘What about it, Strachan? You said you’d let the boy go in exchange for me.’
‘That’s not quite the bargain it was, Mr Lennox, considering you have that gun.’
‘It’s the only bargain you’ll get. Let’s face it, if you kill Downey, I’ll kill you. Let him go and we can talk.’
‘By talk, do you mean bargain?’
‘If there’s one thing you should have learned about me by now, Mr Strachan … do I call you Mr Strachan? Or Joe? Or Colonel Williamson?’
‘Whatever you’re most comfortable with.’
‘Well, if there’s anything you should have learned about me, it’s that I’m pragmatic.’ I turned my attention to Downey. ‘Now, Paul, I want you to listen to me very carefully. If Mr Strachan here lets you go, I want you to run and keep running. No police. You tell nobody what happened here, ever. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mr Lennox.’
‘If you want to live without having to look over your shoulder for Mr Strachan, he’ll have to be convinced that you’re no threat to him. You forget what happened here and get as far away from Glasgow as you can, and don’t come back. You got it?’
‘Yes. I swear.’ He turned his head as far as Strachan’s grip would allow. ‘I promise, mister. Honest.’
‘Well, Strachan. What about it?’
Strachan let go his hold on Downey, who stood frozen for a moment, shocked and unsure what to do.
‘Go, Paul,’ I said and tried to keep the urgency from my voice. ‘Run. And remember what I said. Tell nobody anything, about what happened here, about Fraser, about Strachan, and especially about me.’
He nodded furiously, staggered a few steps forward away from Strachan, then broke into a run.
‘I suggest we tie this up quickly,’ I said once we were alone. Behind me, the goon with the burst gut had stopped screaming and was now making the low, harsh snoring sounds that herald the way out. ‘I’m guessing someone, probably the night watchman at the yard, maybe heard the shots.’
‘So you really want to bargain?’ said Strachan. ‘I thought that was all bull. Well, I’ll bargain. And I’ll tell you, I could always use a man like you.’
‘My job was to find out what happened to you. I was hired by your daughters. As far as I can tell, my business with them is concluded. And handing you over to the police isn’t my concern. Although I have to tell you they offered a handsome bounty.’
‘I’m sure I can recompense you for your loss. More than recompense you.’
‘I was counting on that.’ I smiled.
‘Could we perhaps dispense with the artillery?’ Strachan nodded towards the Webley.
‘Oh, I’m afraid not. At least not yet. I’m not that green.’
‘I can see you are indeed not, Mr Lennox. But as you say, time may be pressing. What do you want?’
‘The truth. That’s all. I think any business relationship should be based on trust. So, I want to know, how did you manage to pull the whole Colonel Williamson stunt?’
‘No stunt, Lennox. Henry Williamson is who I am. Who I became. I’ve lived this way for so long that Joe Strachan with his vulgar little ways is a stranger to me.’
‘And the real Williamson?’
‘Long gone. Let me explain something. Back in the First War, I saw the main benefit of class and privilege. The main benefit is that there is always someone to do things for you. The lower classes. And in a war like the Great War, they do the dying for you. That was the biggest benefit: keeping you out of harm’s way. So, if I wasn’t the part, I could play the part.’
‘Your little excursions impersonating officers?’
‘It started as impersonation, but then I found that I sank into it rather too well. When I was caught, I became an embarrassment to the army. The act I put on was so convincing that I kept it going throughout the trial. It really threw them. A cockney or a scouser or someone with a heavy Glaswegian accent — it was easy to put someone like that in front of a firing squad, but if you talked like an officer, then it was a bad show to put you against a wall. They knew I was putting it on, but they couldn’t see past it, or hear past it. So when I was asked if I had anything to say before sentencing, I said that I did not want my family shamed by me being branded a coward … as if my family would give a tinker’s damn about me. I asked if, instead of facing a firing squad, I could be sent on dangerous missions over the wire. Missions where I would inevitably, eventually, die in action.’