Rattling the Bones by Ann Granger

I could see his hair was very fair and fine and clipped close to his skull. His eyes were open and stared at me. His small mouth formed a circle of surprise. I’d wanted to find him and now I had, but far, far too late for us to talk. I knew, with sinking heart, that he was dead; that this was only the outer husk of poor Duane. In that sense he wasn’t really there. The person had gone, departed on that final journey.
     
    My legs trembled and I sank down on to the chair placed for a visiting client before that scarred old ministry desk of Susie’s. Even now I can see the entire little office in my mind’s eye, every piece of rickety furniture, the steel-grey filing cabinet, the cobweb draped across the corner of the unwashed window-pane. Outside, on the window ledge, was a scruffy dark grey London pigeon with scaly feet and a wary yellow eye. It seemed to be looking in; perhaps it was. It could probably see me and hoped I’d open the window and scatter some breadcrumbs on the ledge. But to have an audience of any kind at that moment was an unacceptable intrusion into a scene that should have been private. For death ought to be a private matter, in my view. We all fancy ourselves surrounded by our nearest and dearest as we shuffle off the mortal coil but I know, from my dad’s death and later my grandma’s, that even if your loved ones are there, you are already cut off from them by a gradually thickening pane of glass, like that pane in the window. You can no longer reach across to them nor they to you. It is the most private moment of your entire existence, that time when you come to quit it.
     
    I could no longer reach out to Duane in any real sense. Physically I could have touched him, had I wished, but it would have been meaningless. He could neither have known nor responded. Yet had I arrived here, what? Half an hour ago? Perhaps even less? If I had, even now, at this very moment he and I would have been chatting or having some sort of conversation even if only an argument. He would probably have been accusing me of not telling him I was a professional and I would have been denying that I was any such thing. Duane, in that imaginary never-to-be held conversation, was jeering at me, demanding ‘Oh, yeah? Right, then, what are you doing here?’
     
    What the hell was I doing here? Why did it have to be me? And what was he doing here? That’s what I would probably have retaliated, had I arrived earlier and we faced one another now exchanging insults. The question now rephrased itself as ‘what was he doing here - like that ?’
     
    All this passed through my head in a mere couple of seconds. I heard my own voice uttering a low moan of distress. Initially it wasn’t a cry of fear, in shock though I was. I felt confusion and above all pity. I hadn’t liked him but he was a relatively young man and apart from outwitting me, he’d not done me any harm.
     
    Not until now. Now, whatever he’d been involved with, I was involved with it too. He had been a good detective. He’d tracked me down in some way and learned I worked occasionally for Susie. He’d come here in order to find me, confront me or leave a message for me. It could only mean trouble for me of some sort. Now at last I began to be afraid.
     
    I begged quietly and uselessly, ‘Please, Duane, don’t do this to me.’
     
    He was beyond obliging me. The small round open mouth seemed almost to be about to tell me what had led to this, but the communication had been terminally interrupted. He would have looked surprised had the film of death not already been dulling his gaze. His expression seemed to say, ‘This can’t be happening to me. It’s a big mistake. You want someone else.’
     
    Then, as I watched, the muscles of his jaw twitched as if he would speak, after all, and his mouth stretched in a ghastly yawn. I nearly jumped out of my skin and thought for a second or two that I was wrong, he wasn’t dead. I called to him,