If what we appear to know of Freddie ‘Stakeknife’ Scappaticci is true, then he becomes yet another British agent within the IRA whose persona and lifestyle would have presented even John Le Carré with a conundrum.
For, how do you weave a web of Karla-like complexity around a chap whose evenings were more likely it seems to have been taken up with watching animal porn than gazing into his soul to the background of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2? Or seeking within a well-thumbed copy of Kant’s Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals for the reason ‘why’?