Something Special About the Man With The Rifle at the End(SPOILERS)

So the man with the rifle is seen travelling on the train with Carter up from London to Newcastle, in the credit sequence early on. (He doesn't have a rifle in view of course, but we are meant to remember his face.)

Near the end, we meet him again , awakened from sleep with a woman and strongly identified by the ring on his finger (so that at the end, we will recognize him as much from the ring as from the early train sequence.)

The shooter -- though evidently sent from the gang down in London -- is given his orders from Newcastle crime kingpin Kinnear. I assume that the London gang told Kinnear that if Carter got too out of line -- Kinnear should call the hit man.

We never hear Kinnear's EXACT orders to the hit man...but comes the end of the film, we see them carried out: the hit man kills Carter, from a great distance, on the beach at the precise moment that Carter is throwing his shotgun into the sea having clubbed Eric to death with it.

And here is what interests me: the hit man with the rifle doesn't kill Carter until AFTER Carter has killed Eric...until AFTER Cartner has completed his personal mission and killed the man who killed his brother.

It almost makes you think that Kinnear was a "compassionate executioner" of Carter, telling the hit man:

"Now I will need you to take out Carter tomorrow morning after I send Eric to him -- but if possible, why don't you want until Carter has taken out Eric and then do your job?"

Thus, Kinnear allows Carter to feel the personal satisfaction of killing Eric...and Kinnear has allowed Carter to kill Eric and remove an unstable member of his own gang.

Makes sense to me.

Except for poor Kinnear: He never realized that Carter had, that same night that Kinnear was calling the hit man, set up Kinnear to take the fall with the cops for all manner of crime and the specific overdose of the hooker.

Irony upon irony.