The Last Witness by Denzil Meyrick

wall-mounted ashtray in order to exercise their habit. He reflected on how much the world had changed. What would his granny have thought about not being able to smoke in a pub? He remembered her clearly, sitting on her favourite seat at the bar, a Capstan Full Strength always drooping from her mouth as she gossiped with her fellow regulars. His face broke out into an impromptu smile at the memory. She had been his touchstone, his anchor in what had been a childhood blighted by drink, drugs and violence.
    He remembered the day she died. He had felt as though suddenly and without warning the world had become small, cold and hostile. He stayed in his room for three days, notwishing to see or communicate with anyone. Something in him had changed; he emerged on the fourth day having promised himself he would never be as vulnerable and alone again. Then, and every day thereafter, he had hardened his heart and banished his loneliness; thoughts of his grandmother had receded and had gradually become associated with Scotland’s collective nostalgia for sad songs, Hogmanay and times past.
    It was nearly one in the morning, and the radio was playing Gerry Rafferty as one particularly booze-laden night owl staggered out into the cold. He briefly heard the dull murmur of drunken conversation and a refrain from the jukebox before the door swung shut. He watched the man fumble in his pockets, take a cigarette from a packet in his hand, and place it between his lips. A lighter flared then guttered, momentarily illuminating his face. The man stood unsteadily, arching his back as he drew deeply on the tobacco. He replaced the cigarettes and the lighter in his pocket and muttered something barely audible to himself, before hunching his shoulders and taking his first faltering steps towards home.
    The man in the car smiled as he turned off the radio, released the car’s handbrake, then, with the dull clunk of an old gearbox, put the vehicle into first and pulled slowly away from the kerb.
    If the pedestrian noticed the car as it idled past him, he didn’t falter from his head-down plod. As he progressed down the street, the chunky sole of his boot caught a broken section of the pavement, making him trip and swear.
    The driver slowed to a stop thirty yards in front of the staggering figure, switched off the engine and lights and exited the Honda. He stepped onto the pavement, towards the man moving haltingly past a row of empty, boarded-up shops.
    They were only a few feet apart when the man from the car, in a darting motion, flunged towards the pedestrian and thrust a broad-bladed hunting knife into the unsuspecting man’s belly. A look of horror suffused the dying man’s face as he clawed at the knife handle, and a trail of steaming urine threaded from his ankle down his boot and onto the pavement.
    The attacker didn’t bother to remove the knife from the man’s stomach, merely pushed him backwards, turned on his heel, and strolled back to his car before driving sedately away.
    Blood bubbled at the mouth of the man lying on the cold dark pavement; the desperate tremble of his hands as they clawed at the handle of the hunting knife, slowed, then stopped.
    After what had been a frosty night, Daley had to drive gingerly down the driveway that led from his house to the main road. He made a mental note to call Liz and tell her how slippery the conditions were when he got to the office.
    The view across the loch and down to the town was magnificent: the sky was an almost Caribbean blue and the light from the sun glinted off the frosted hillsides and played on the mirror-still surface of the loch. Everything felt clean, fresh and renewed. But bold and bright as it was, Daley still had the heater blasting into the car, keeping the two policemen warm as well as dispelling the ice which slid slowly down the windscreen.
    Daley’s heart was still heavy, and as he looked across at his DS, slumped gloomily in the passenger seat, he recognised that