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

only Gary, but changed. Something has opened his eyes to how things really are. Without another thought, he stands, turns and walks out of the shithole that is all the witches have left him. He knows what needs to be done.

54

‘How is it we didn’t know that the young loon who stole my car lived in the same apartment block as Tommy Fielding? The same bloody floor.’

McLean stood in Detective Superintendent McIntyre’s office, back to the window wall and the grey winter skies outside. For once the office door was closed, the only officers present him, McIntyre, DCI Ritchie and DS Harrison. They’d seen Fielding’s body off to the mortuary an hour earlier, Cadwallader promising he’d get to it as soon as was practicable and let them know the outcome. His initial estimate of time of death, given as grudgingly as ever, had been sometime around midnight, which took a bit of the heat off Elmwood, but not all of it.

‘We haven’t been watching Tommy Fielding, Tony. He’s not been part of any investigation until you suddenly started taking an interest.’ McIntyre sat at her desk, leaning back until her head almost touched the wall. ‘I’m still not entirely sure why you did that anyway.’

McLean looked to Harrison for back-up, then realised that was unfair. ‘We should have been watching him, though. We should have interviewed him and the other partners in his law firm the moment we knew they were handling Cecily Slater’s affairs. He had her file in his apartment.’

‘Which you’ll get to look at in due course, Tony.’ McIntyre was annoyingly calm where McLean felt agitated. Something was about to break, he could feel it. Even if he couldn’t say what, or how he knew.

‘The more important question right now is what we’re going to do about the chief superintendent.’ Ritchie sat at the conference table, Harrison next to her. McLean knew he should take a seat too, try to calm down and look at the situation rationally. For some reason he was finding that hard to do right now.

‘Where is she now?’ he asked.

‘Gartcosh, sweet-talking our friends in the NCA. She’s not due back until late afternoon, so we’ve a bit of time to work out our strategy.’ McIntyre stood up, crossed the room to the conference table and pulled out a chair. ‘Sit down, Tony. You’re looming. If you start pacing, I’ll start calling you Dagwood.’

McLean smiled, even though the jibe stung, and did as he was told. Only once the four of them were seated did the detective superintendent speak again.

‘The way I see it, we’ve a suspicious death on our hands, and the last person to see the deceased alive was our own station chief. Is that right?’

‘Fielding’s death might not be suspicious,’ Ritchie said. ‘And I’m sure Gail’s got a perfectly good explanation for her visit last night. She was only there for an hour.’

McLean held his tongue. He knew that Elmwood had treated Kirsty well. Apart from her strange obsession with him, the chief superintendent had treated pretty much everyone in the station well. Now wasn’t the time to wade in with accusations.

‘There’s still the matter of his connection to Cecily Slater.’ Harrison filled the silence that had followed Ritchie’s input, and McLean was pleased to see that the detective sergeant felt confident enough to do so. He’d not have had the nerve when he was her age. But back then chances were none of the officers in this room would have been women, and the air would likely have been filled with cigarette smoke too. Small changes, but none of them for the worse.

‘What are you smiling about, Tony?’ McIntyre’s voice cut through his wandering thoughts.

‘Sorry, Jayne. Just thought of something from way back. Not relevant.’

‘Well concentrate on the matter in hand. You can start by explaining to me exactly what the connection is between your dead woman in the gamekeeper’s cottage and Tommy Fielding.’

Where to start? ‘We know his law firm were dealing with all her legal matters,’ he said. ‘They held her will. Unchanged, apparently, since it was drawn up by Carstairs Weddell in 1984, after her brother died. Given that Carstairs Weddell are still one of the top law firms in the city, especially when it comes to dealing with families like the Bairnfathers, it strikes me as a bit strange Cecily Slater would have taken her business away from them.’

‘Who were the beneficiaries of the will?’ McIntyre asked.

‘Just her nephew. Lord Reginald. And since she never nominated a successor, he gets to decide who’s appointed to her post on the board of the Bairnfather Trust, too. My guess is he was going to get Fielding to do it.’ McLean clasped his hands together, wished he had more information and less speculation. ‘I think this all comes down to money. It usually does.’

McIntyre raised an eyebrow at that, but nobody said anything so McLean carried on.

‘I don’t begin to understand how these things work – I’d need Lofty to look into that and I’m not about to bother him just now. But the fact is that Lord Bairnfather stands to take control of the trust that manages the family estate. I don’t think he particularly needs the money, but his aunt’s veto on what the trust could and couldn’t do? What if she were about to pass that on to someone else? Someone her nephew couldn’t control?’

‘Mirriam Downham.’ Harrison made it a statement, not a question, but then she looked straight at McLean with an expression that confirmed his suspicion she’d make a good detective chief superintendent one day. ‘Is that not quite a leap?’ She paused and then added: ‘Sir?’

McLean almost laughed. ‘Complete speculation, but we’ve got nothing else to explain why she was killed. We know she had told Downham she was going to put her affairs in order. And yet the will provided to us by DCF Law is more than thirty years old.’

‘So, what?’ McIntyre asked. ‘You think Fielding saw what she was