Night Watcher (33 page)
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Wind whistled along the platform at Dundee Railway Station, but he did not feel the cold. There were other passengers, but they paid no heed to him, a shabby man with a backpack, waiting for a train. No doubt they would keep their distance. People seemed to do that with him. Not that he minded for he was a solitary man.
His mission was complete, maybe not in the way he originally planned it, but it was complete nonetheless.
To begin with he thought he had failed. The death of the woman had been unexpected. He should have been the one to strike her down, but that was not to be. Someone else had a prior claim – someone who was more of a devil than she was. Only he had not seen it right away.
He knew he was there for a purpose. To strike down Satan’s chosen one. He was God’s tool. If he was unable to deliver the woman to God then there had to be another. He had to identify the one that God wanted.
God was testing him.
The chosen ones had always been women. That was what led him astray. He had been looking in the wrong place, and that was why he had tried to mould the other one into becoming Satan’s chosen one.
He should have listened to his inner voice. The one that told him she was kind and good. Instead he had looked for all the evil aspects in her character. And he had found them.
It was only at the final moment that he had come to understand. The moment after he struck down the man. The moment when his hand had been raised to strike her down.
The flash had almost blinded him and he’d had to close his eyes. The gift had already been given. It had not been a woman who was Satan’s chosen one this time. It had been a man.
God was testing him.
And so he had let her live. It would have been easy to end it for her in the seconds before the window crashed out onto the street, but he had held back. He had watched her go in a blinding flash of light.
God had been testing him.
It had been easy to slip away. He had left Neil’s boiler suit hanging on a hook in the basement, donned his tramp’s rags, crept out of the store by his secret way and sat in the alley until the police moved him on.
Neil would not be missed. They would simply replace him with someone else and it would be as if Neil never existed. Well, in a way he had not.
The tramp would not be missed either. No one misses a tramp.
The train drew into the platform. He got on and settled in a corner seat. Glasgow was a big city. There were bound to be many of Satan’s chosen ones there.
It was time to continue with God’s work.
* * *
Also by Chris Longmuir
Dundee
Crime Series
NIGHT WATCHER,
Kindle and Smashwords Editions
DEAD WOOD,
Print edition published by Polygon
Historical Sagas
A SALT SPLASHED CRADLE,
Kindle and Smashwords Editions
Short Stories
GHOST TRAIN & OTHER STORIES,
Kindle and Smashwords Editions
OBSESSION & OTHER STORIES,
Kindle and Smashwords Editions
About the author
Chris Longmuir was born in Wiltshire and now lives in Angus. Her family moved to Scotland when she was two. After leaving school at fifteen, Chris worked in shops, offices, mills and factories, and was a bus conductor for a spell, before working as a social worker for Angus Council (latterly serving as Assistant Principal Officer for Adoption and Fostering).
Chris is a member of the Society of Authors, the Crime Writers Association and the Scottish Association of Writers. She writes short stories, articles and crime novels. Her first book, Dead Wood, won the Dundee International Book Prize and was published by Polygon. She designed her own website and confesses to being a techno-geek who builds computers in her spare time.