The Last Witness Read Online Free PDF

go to protect their star witness, wondered – not for the first time – why he was doing the job he was. Would a grateful government resettle him and his entire family in a European destination of his choice with a self-filling bank account for the rest of his life? The answer was instant: no.
    Daley merely grunted as Scott informed him that he was going to take a toilet break, and left his glass box.
    He read on, to discover that MacDougall’s oldest son, Cisco, had quickly tired of the safe house in which the family had been placed – on an ex-army base near London – and jumped the wall one night. He was found with his throat cut in the stairwell of a Glasgow tenement two days later. Daley was mildly surprised that he had heard nothing of this at the time, though reasoned that, because of the circumstances, the revenge killing had probably been covered up. The top men of the Machie family may have been out of the way behind bars, but their legacy lived on.
    He turned another page, already feeling the tightness in his throat that presaged bad news.
    Then, almost inevitably, there it was. Frank MacDougall’s pleas to be relocated somewhere in Scotland had been reluctantly acceded to. He and his family had been given the new identity they had been promised, and sent to an isolated part of the mainland.
    Frank MacDougall had been living on a farm only nine miles from Kinloch for the last five years.
    Daley pushed the file away, rubbing his temples, trying to take everything in. As he was doing this, the door burst open, revealing his DS, who, not unusually, was swearing under his breath.
    ‘See they fuckin’ taps in that toilet,’ he said, rubbing at a large dark patch that had spread over the front of his light brown trousers with a paper towel. ‘As soon as ye turn the bloody things on, they go aff like a bloody geyser. I look as though I’ve pished mysel’.’ He stopped rubbing when he saw the look on Daley’s face and the discarded file lying on the desk before him.
    ‘Sit down, Brian,’ Daley said wearily. ‘I’ve got something more to tell you that you’re not going to like. Bring me that mug from the top of the filing cabinet, would you? I think I need a drink now.’
    Both detectives sat nursing their coffee mugs of malt whisky in silence.
    Daley could not believe that he was about to be flung back into what had been the most miserable time of his police career. He looked at Scott from under his brow; his friend was staring into his mug, swirling its contents around, deep in thought. Of all the police officers involved with the fight to bring JayMac and his crew to justice, they had loathed Brian Scott the most, and he had nearly paid the ultimate price for his efforts. Scott had grown up with many of the criminals, so in their minds, using the perverse logic that infused the criminal community, he was as big a rat as Dowie and MacDougall.
    The shrill ring of the telephone made them both jump. Daley answered, to be informed by the internal operator that Donald was on the line. He OK’d the call, pressed the conference button on the keypad and held his finger to his lips inan attempt to prevent Scott from muttering his usual oaths while he was on the phone to their superior.
    ‘Ah, Jim.’ Donald’s voice sounded loud in the glass box. ‘I take it that Tweedle-Dum has managed to perform the simple task I placed before him?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Daley, winking at his scowling DS. ‘In fact, he’s sitting opposite me at the moment.’
    Not in the slightest put off by this information, Donald continued seamlessly. ‘I hope he’s not smoking. I had the misfortune of having to travel half a mile in that coup of a car we foolishly let him drive – I very nearly died from a mixture of asphyxiation and botulism,’ he said sarcastically, almost inducing Daley to a sudden outburst of laughter as Scott made an obscene gesture at the telephone.
    ‘I’ve read and digested the contents, sir. Do you wish me