The little man laughed raucously, to show that the joke was done. Shadow smiled and nodded to show that he knew it was a joke.
“What are you drinking? Lager? Same again over here, Jennie love. Mine’s a Lagavulin.” The little man tamped tobacco from a pouch into his pipe. “Did you know that Scotland’s bigger than America?”
There had been no one in the hotel bar when Shadow came downstairs that evening, just the thin barmaid, reading a newspaper and smoking her cigarette. He’d come down to sit by the open fire, as his bedroom was cold, and the metal radiators on the bedroom wall were colder than the room. He hadn’t expected company.
“No,” said Shadow, always willing to play straight man. “I didn’t. How’d you reckon that?”
“It’s all fractal,” said the little man. “The smaller you look, the more things unpack. It could take you as long to drive across America as it would to drive across Scotland, if you did it the right way. It’s like, you look on a map, and the coastlines are solid lines. But when you walk them, they’re all over the place. I saw a whole program on it on the telly the other night. Great stuff.”
“Okay,” said Shadow.
The little man’s pipe lighter flamed, and he sucked and puffed and sucked and puffed until he was satisfied that the pipe was burning well, then he put the lighter, the pouch, and the penknife back into his coat pocket.
“Anyway, anyway,” said the little man. “I believe you’re planning on staying here through the weekend.”
“Yes,” said Shadow. “Do you…are you with the hotel?”
“No, no. Truth to tell, I was standing in the hall when you arrived. I heard you talking to Gordon on the reception desk.”
Shadow nodded. He had thought that he had been alone in the reception hall when he had registered, but it was possible that the little man had passed through. But still…there was a wrongness to this conversation. There was a wrongness to everything.
Jennie the barmaid put their drinks onto the bar. “Five pounds twenty,” she said. She picked up her newspaper, and started to read once more. The little man went to the bar, paid, and brought back the drinks.
“So how long are you in Scotland?” asked the little man.
Shadow shrugged. “I wanted to see what it was like. Take some walks. See the sights. Maybe a week. Maybe a month.”
Jennie put down her newspaper. “It’s the arse-end of nowhere up here,” she said, cheerfully. “You should go somewhere interesting.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” said the little man. “It’s only the arse-end of nowhere if you look at it wrong. See that map, laddie?” He pointed to a fly-specked map of Northern Scotland on the opposite wall of the bar. “You know what’s wrong with it?”
“No.”
“It’s upside down!” the man said, triumphantly. “North’s at the top. It’s saying to the world that this is where things stop. Go no further. The world ends here. But you see, that’s not how it was. This wasn’t the north of Scotland. This was the southernmost tip of the Viking world. You know what the second most northern county in Scotland is called?”
Shadow glanced at the map, but it was too far away to read. He shook his head.
“Sutherland!” said the little man. He showed his teeth. “The South Land. Not to anyone else in the world it wasn’t, but it was to the Vikings.”
Jennie the barmaid walked over to them. “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “Call the front desk if you need anything before I get back.” She put a log on the fire, then she went out into the hall.
“Are you a historian?” Shadow asked.
“Good one,” said the little man. “You may be a monster, but you’re funny. I’ll give you that.”
“I’m not a monster,” said Shadow.
“Aye, that’s what monsters always say,” said the little man. “I was a specialist once. In St. Andrews. Now I’m in general practice. Well, I was. I’m semiretired. Go in to the surgery a couple of days a week, just to keep my hand in.”
“Why do you say I’m a monster?” asked Shadow.
“Because,” said the little man, lifting his whisky glass with the air of one making an irrefutable point, “I am something of a monster myself. Like calls to like. We are all monsters, are we not? Glorious monsters, shambling through the swamps of unreason…” He sipped his whisky, then said, “Tell me, a big man like you, have you ever been a bouncer? ‘Sorry mate, I’m afraid you can’t come in here tonight, private function going on, sling your hook and get on out of it,’ all that?”