A Rattle of Bones by Douglas Skelton

Author:Douglas Skelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

29

Rebecca walked through the sunshine with shoppers and tourists milling around and the faint notes of a piper busking in the pedestrianised area of Church Street. She heard voices, laughter, life. She thought about Dodger and she thought about death, not in a morbid way and not dispassionately – she had experienced death but not enough to make her cold and hard.

Dodger had been forced to stare into the dark abyss of his own mortality and his life had stared back at him. He did not like what he saw. He had been a man of blood, a man of pain, but while he had lived that life he had not been aware he was wasting what was, in fact, a gift. It was only as he realised that there were only so many breaths a man can take, so many steps, so many smiles to give, so many tears to shed, that he realised this and, like many people before him, wished he had done things differently. He was a hard man, so he was a realist. He could not change what had gone before. The only thing he could do was try somehow to make amends.

‘I tried to get him to talk publicly about it,’ Jordan had explained as he rose from his desk, the sign that her time was up, ‘but he refused. Even then, when he knew that he didn’t have long, he was terrified of whoever had hired him to do the job.’

‘And he didn’t give even a hint as to who it was?’

Jordan had opened the door for her and stepped back to let her pass. ‘All he said was that if he talked, they would come after his family. Apparently he has a sister and a nephew here in Inverness and it seems they – whoever they are – knew that. He was adamant that he would not endanger his family. Whoever they were, they scared him even more than death itself.’

Rebecca’s immediate thought was of the security services. Maxwell had believed they were keeping tabs on him. But why? And would they really kill a high-profile man such as he? That’s conspiracy theory stuff. Wasn’t it?

And even if it was some shadowy government agency, would they really hire a cheap thug to carry it out? They would have professionals on their team for jobs like that.

Wouldn’t they?

‘And is this affidavit enough to help James Stewart?’ she asked.

‘On its own, probably not. The Crown would dismiss it, saying they have no opportunity to cross-examine Mr Dodge and put his claim under legal scrutiny. I told him we would need some form of corroboration. I think he knew that – he’d been around the system all his adult life.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘That there was something, but it would be someone else’s decision whether or not it should be taken forward.’

Rebecca was trying to imagine what this corroboration could possibly be, and who this someone else was, as she reached the door to her office.

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