The Rat Stone Serenade: A DCI Daley Thriller by Denzil Meyrick

Author:Denzil Meyrick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780857908957
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2016-04-06T23:00:00+00:00

25

More looked down at his wife as she slept on the couch by the roaring fire. He stroked his chin and sighed, reaching once more for the phone in front of him. He had covered her with a blanket and now stared, deep in thought, as her long dark lashes flitted in the light of the flames.

The whisky he was drinking was straight, the undiluted spirit stinging his throat as he gulped another mouthful. Why did I agree to this, he thought, as he passed his hand through his greying hair, tugging at it in desperation. ‘You fucking fool,’ he whispered under his breath.

He answered the phone almost as it rang, anxious not to wake her, but even more concerned to speak to the caller.

‘Are you alone?’ the man on the other end asked in a low voice.

‘Yes. Well, my wife is here but she’s asleep.’

‘Listen very carefully. The situation has changed. You will have to do what we talked about.’

‘But how? The place is crawling with police now – the whole village is.’

‘The cops are stretched. They can’t get more manpower to the area because of the weather. We’ve taken a few extra steps to keep them off our back and it’s about to snow again.’

‘Shit, mate. So me and the guys are stuck here with no way out?’

‘Come now, that’s not the kind of stuff I expect from a man of the cloth. There’s always a way out, trust me.’

‘Yeah, sure, but maybe not the way I want to go.’

‘Relax, Reverend More. Take another few glasses of whisky, but be ready for a call tomorrow. We can do this, but you’ve got to play your part.’ The call ended.

‘Shit,’ snapped More, making his wife stir again in her sleep. He put down the phone, picked up his glass and walked over to her. ‘I’m doing this for us, honey,’ he said quietly, stroking her hair. The whisky burned his throat as he drained the glass.

Scott was in the passenger seat of a police Land Rover, Pollock at the wheel. Daley had demanded he go for a check up at the hospital in Kinloch after his brush with incineration. He was deep in thought as he stared through the window, watching large flakes of snow settling on the glass only to be brushed away by the windscreen wipers.

The brief euphoria of being rescued from the flames of the Blaan bonfire had receded rapidly when the old coat had been removed from the charred body that Daley had thought was him. It had been surreal watching his friend begin the process of mourning his death – humorous, even. But then, as the adrenalin and whisky in his system had started to fade, the cold reality dawned that one day the man burned to a cinder or shot dead on the beach would indeed be him.

‘Penny for them,’ said Pollock.

‘Och, ever get the feeling that it was time you moved on? How long have you been in this job – about the same as me, likely?’

‘Aye, I would say so.

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