Thank you for the feedback. I hear what you're saying, I think for me it was an attempt to try and build enough hints that a reader could build it up, but maybe that is too big a job for one short scene and there wasn't enough context to have a political intrigue. I agree with that actually. I am including Acheron in a world I am building and I think it will have to come later in the narrative.
I guess for me the story isn't so much about the intrigue though and the reader being into that, but it was just about the man and that events have happened and this is where he is now. It is sad because if he has done wrong or not, his end is what it is. In a way I didn't actually want the reader to know if he was a goody of a baddy as I would like all of my goodies to be baddies in ways and vice versa I suppose.