What Will Burn by James Oswald (ebook reader web .txt) 📕

no idea which one is Fielding’s anyway. They’ve always met at the hotel.

It’s cold out, a fine drizzle working its way through his coat and deep into his bones, and yet he can’t stop staring up at the apartments. Out here is slightly less miserable than going home. Fucking damp little shithole’s not his home anyway. His home was taken from him and these fuckers pretended to care.

How long he seethes, Gary doesn’t know. The anger keeps him warm even as the smir slicks his hair to his head and drips begin to fall from the tip of his nose. And then the front door clicks open. She steps out, the woman, the copper, the witch. She looks one way, then the other, as if expecting someone to come and pick her up. Then with a little shrug, she heads in the same direction the three other women went.

In his mind, Gary rushes across the road and confronts her. Or he makes it to the door before it has swung shut, gets his foot in it at the last moment, goes up to Fielding’s apartment and has it out with him. Only he doesn’t know which one is Fielding’s apartment, and the door has already closed. The woman’s too far away to catch up with too.

Miserable, angry, not even enough spare change to catch a bus, Gary hunches his shoulders against the rain and slouches off towards Gorgie.

51

Early morning, and McLean was surprised to see the major incident room fairly bustling with activity. For a moment he thought that maybe some well-hidden clue had been unearthed and the investigation into Cecily Slater’s murder had gained new impetus. Then he noticed that a couple of IT technicians were unplugging computers and rolling up lengths of cable. An admin support officer was carefully wiping names and other unwanted comments off the whiteboards. Files were being packaged into boxes, ready to be shipped down to the basement and Grumpy Bob’s tender mercies. Everything was winding down.

‘Have you seen DS Harrison?’ he asked the first uniformed constable to come within range. He knew the detective sergeant’s shift had already begun, but she hadn’t been in the CID room either.

‘Think she went out with the new DCI, sir. Not sure where.’

McLean thanked the constable, cursing inwardly. He’d texted Harrison the night before to tell her about the connection between Fielding and Slater, or at least Fielding’s law firm and Slater. He’d hoped to have her set up a meeting with the other partners, but he couldn’t really complain if Kirsty had nabbed her before he got in. He remembered when Ritchie had first turned up in Edinburgh, a fresh-faced young detective sergeant looking to break out of the goldfish bowl of Aberdeen. He’d been her superior then, and now she was the one giving orders. Other officers might feel aggrieved at that, but somehow he found he didn’t really care.

The door clicked open and a tired-looking DC Stringer shuffled in, scratching a thoughtless armpit. He looked like he’d overslept and not taken the proper time or care to dress himself before rushing to work. It didn’t matter for what McLean wanted done.

‘Morning, Constable,’ he said, getting the startled reaction he’d hoped for.

‘Oh. Morning, sir. Late one last night and I slept right through the alarm.’

‘Boozing with your mates, was it?’

Stringer gave him a slightly shocked, slightly astonished look. ‘Don’t drink, sir. But I was with my mates, right enough. We were playing D&D and lost track of time. I’ll make it up at shift end.’

‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to come between a Paladin and his campaign. You can make it up by sorting us a pool car. I need to head out to Bairnfather Hall Hotel and have a word with His Lordship.’

Stringer stared a little longer than was perhaps necessary, eyes a little wide before he pulled himself together. ‘On it, sir. You want me to give you a call when it’s ready?’

McLean checked his watch, wondering how many other senior officers were in already. ‘Give me half an hour. I’ll meet you in the CID room.’

‘His Lordship is not receiving any visitors at the moment. Did you make an appointment?’

Apart from a little more discussion of Dungeons and Dragons than he’d perhaps wanted, the journey out to Bairnfather Hall had been uneventful and swift. A pity the same could not be said for their reception, once McLean had presented himself to the day manager and then passed on to Lord Bairnfather’s personal assistant.

‘Perhaps you could tell him that it concerns the murder of his aunt, Lady Cecily. I have new information about the case that he might want to hear.’

McLean hadn’t met the personal assistant before. This new barrier between him and what he wanted was a young woman in an unflattering business suit who had yet to give him her name. She wore her hair tied up in an intricate knot high on the back of her head, and stared at the world through a pair of rimless spectacles, all the while maintaining a look on her face of horrified disgust at what she was seeing.

‘His Lordship does not like to be disturbed whilst taking his breakfast,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if you could come back later?’

McLean took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out again slowly. ‘Or I could ask him to accompany me to the station for a more formal interview.’

The personal assistant held his gaze for just long enough to let him know that she wasn’t intimidated by him. Then she nodded minimally.

‘Come. I will inform him you are here.’ She turned away and strode off towards a door marked ‘Private: Staff Only’. McLean raised his eyebrows at DC Stringer, then the two of them followed.

Through the door was every bit as opulent as the part of the hotel frequented by paying guests, which made McLean think this was the Bairnfather family’s private suites rather than the route to the kitchens and staff quarters.