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

‘For starters, he’s using Tommy Fielding as his personal and business lawyer. Nothing wrong with that on the face of it, but it’s a coincidence and I’m not overly keen on those. There’s also the Bairnfather Trust itself. I don’t know the full details, really need Lofty to look into that, but it was set up originally to avoid death duties on that massive pile of a house and the estates surrounding it. Lots of old families have done the same down the years, I’m not going to argue the morality of it. All I know is that the trust is extremely wealthy. It owns the hall, not Lord Bairnfather. It also owns the Scotston Hotel in Fountainbridge, and I dare say a great deal else as well. Two people controlled how that money was invested, Cecily Slater and Lord Reggie there. As long as they both agreed, then everything’s fine. But if old Cecily decided she didn’t like the way things were going? I’d say that was starting to look like motive.’

‘You think he’d kill his own aunt?’ Stringer asked.

‘Not with his own hands, no. And not without cast-iron deniability either. Men like him don’t make that kind of mistake. And think about the murder. Cecily Slater was beaten almost unconscious before having petrol poured on her and being set alight. That’s rage at work, not some hired hit man.’

‘Which goes against what you’re saying then, doesn’t it?’ Stringer said, then added ‘Sir,’ for good measure in case he’d overstepped his authority.

‘On the face of it, yes. Slater’s murder being so brutal makes it seem unplanned. Spur of the moment. Except that she was an old lady who lived on her own in a cottage in the middle of the woods. She barely interacted with anyone, so it’s hardly likely she’d have pissed someone off enough for them to track her down, beat her up and burn her to death. There had to be a reason she was chosen, same as there had to be a reason for the violence used against her.’

Stringer shook his head slightly. ‘I don’t understand where you’re going, sir.’

‘OK. Bear with me here. This is wild speculation based on a few things I’ve heard recently. Someone’s been stirring up men’s rights activists. Radicalising them, forming them into a loose army of angry men all nursing a grudge against women. You know what an incel is, right?’

Stringer nodded slowly. ‘Aye. Involuntary Celibate. What we used to call Billy No-Mates. Like those nutters in the States who go and shoot up nightclubs and schools and stuff.’

‘The same. I reckon it was a bunch of them who killed Cecily Slater. It would have been the final part of their indoctrination. A rite of passage if you like. Once your anger’s been stoked that high, once you’re that committed, there’s no turning back. You’ll do anything for your cause.’

‘Makes a sick kind of sense, I guess.’ Stringer sounded like he was having a hard time getting his head around the idea, which McLean took as a positive sign.

‘The thing is, though, why her? And why now? You might argue that she was an easy target, but she was also unknown to almost everyone. Look how hard we’ve tried to build a background on her. Weeks of work and we’ve virtually nothing. So how did our incels know about her?’

‘And you think it’s to do with Lord Muck there? His trust fund?’

McLean shrugged as Stringer eased the pool car into the station car park and alongside Emma’s little Renault ZOE, still sipping electricity from its charging point. ‘It’s all very circumstantial and tenuous right now, but it’s the best we’ve got.’

‘Isn’t the whole case meant to be going to review and then to the archives anyway?’

‘Aye, it is. And I’m not happy about that. Seems hasty. Pressure from high up to sweep everything under the carpet. And you’d think Lord Bairnfather might be upset that we’ve not found his dear aunt’s killers, but I get the impression he’d be happier if the whole thing went away too.’

McLean climbed out of the car, shivering at the change from the warm interior to the bitter chill wind that whistled around the high walls of the building. He had almost reached the back door, hurrying to get out of the cold, when his phone started buzzing away in his pocket. He pulled it out, saw Harrison’s name. Juggling with screen and security keypad, he almost dropped the phone on to the concrete steps, but managed to catch it and slap it to his ear as he pulled open the door.

‘McLean,’ he said, somewhat unnecessarily.

‘Sir. Harrison here. Are you anywhere near the station?’

‘Just heading up the stairs to my office now. Did you get my message about setting up a meeting with Fielding’s law firm?’

‘Aye, sir. About that. You might want to hold off on it for a wee while.’

McLean looked behind him to see DC Stringer push through the door. He was staring at the screen of his own phone, frowning. ‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘It’s Fielding, sir. He’s dead.’

52

McLean had Stringer drive him back across town to Fielding’s address, which was just as well since there was nowhere to park anywhere nearby. A forensics van, a couple of squad cars and Angus Cadwallader’s British Racing Green Jaguar were parked on a double yellow line outside the soulless modern glass-walled apartment block, and a pair of uniformed constables were busy diverting pedestrians from the front door.

‘Morning, sir. It’s the third floor you’ll be wanting,’ one of the constables said to him before he could even present his warrant card. He struggled to remember her name, even though he knew she was friends with Harrison. Settled for a nod of the head and ‘thanks’, before going inside.

The ground floor of the building was given over to high-end retail space, on one side an expensive office furniture showroom, on the other what McLean would have called a barber’s shop, except that