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

beside it with a name scrawled underneath. Peering closely, Janie saw that Tomlinson had been scrawled out, and MacDonald written underneath in black biro.

‘We know what Tomlinson’s bidey-in’s called?’ she asked, as she pressed the bell and heard a loud ‘ding-dong’ from inside.

Stringer shook his head, and before Janie could say anything else, the door popped open a fraction, held in place by a stout chain.

‘Whut youse want?’ A young woman peered through the gap at them, her brow furrowed in suspicion. Janie pulled out her warrant card and held it up.

‘DS Harrison. This is my colleague, DC Stringer. We’re looking for Gareth Tomlinson?’

The name turned the suspicious frown into a furious one. ‘He’s no’ here, is he. Fucker should be in jail for what he did to me, only that weasel lawyer said it’d be better if I just told him to go an’ never come back. Near enough broke my jaw, the bastard.’ She lifted a hand to the side of her face as if even though there was no obvious bruising any more the injury still pained her. Three months on, there was every possibility it still did, and the mental scars would take even longer to heal.

‘I’m sorry. We have his address still registered here.’

‘Aye, useless fucker can’t even get that sorted. What youse want him for? Gonnae lock him up this time?’

Janie shrugged. ‘Maybe. Depends what he got up to last night. You wouldn’t happen to know where he’s living now, would you?’

‘What am I? His fucking secretary?’ The young woman closed the door, and for a moment Janie thought she’d blown it. Then she heard the sound of the chain being unlatched, and the door opened wider.

‘Here.’ The young woman had fetched a pad from a table just inside the door and was scribbling something down on it. She tore the top page off and handed it to Janie. An address in Gorgie, and the same mobile number that she’d got from the lawyer, Scobie.

‘Thanks. And I’m sorry we disturbed you, Miss . . . MacDonald?’

The young woman’s gaze flicked in the direction of the doorbell, then back up to Janie. ‘Aye,’ she said, and then a small child’s wail began to echo through the flat. ‘Gotta go. That’s my Wee Mary wanting her feed.’

She made to close the door, then stopped at the last moment, bent down and picked something up off the floor. When she stood up again, she was clutching a small pile of letters, which she shoved in Janie’s direction. ‘Gi’ him those when you see him, aye? And tell him the next lot’s getting burned.’

57

‘Subject is male, Caucasian, fifty-four years old. One hundred and seventy-eight centimetres tall, eighty-three and a half kilograms in weight. Initial examination shows the body to be in reasonably healthy condition. Subject’s neck shows bruising and abrasion consistent with the silk necktie found tied around it at the scene of death. Petechial haemorrhages in both eyes are another indicator of asphyxiation by strangulation.’

McLean barely listened as his old friend worked diligently around Tommy Fielding’s body. Laid out on the cold examination table he didn’t look all that different to how they had found him in his bedroom, except that the tie had been carefully removed and taken away for analysis. What they might be able to determine from it was anyone’s guess, but his gut feeling was it would be inconclusive.

He kept on coming back to Melanie Naismith’s words. A team was even now raking through the store at the back of Tommy Fielding’s apartment block, in the vain hope the bags that the cleaner had dumped in the maintenance area had not made it as far as the industrial wheelie bins for collection. Or that nobody had emptied the bins in the past couple of months. Given the amount of rubbish piled up, it was just possible they might find the smoke-damaged clothes, even if McLean would have to buy Manda Parsons a case of whisky to make up for her having to rake through all that foetid waste. But even if they did find something, then what? He had a hypothesis, but it was far-fetched even by his normal standards.

‘Are you paying attention, Tony, or just standing in the mortuary because you like it here?’

McLean focused, aware that he’d allowed his mind to wander too far. Cadwallader had bent over the body, gloved fingers gently manipulating Fielding’s neck.

‘Sorry, Angus. A lot on my mind.’

‘Clearly.’ The pathologist straightened, grimacing as something in his back gave a click audible even over the hiss of the air conditioning. ‘As I was saying, the abrasions on the neck are consistent with the silk tie. There are however other marks, very slight bruising that suggests he may have been throttled first. Could have been rough sex play, but equally could have rendered him unconscious, then the tie was used to finish him off.’

‘Do you have an accurate time of death?’

Cadwallader sighed, perhaps a little over-theatrically. ‘I can give you a range, but nothing more accurate than within a couple of hours. Given the state we found him in, and the cause of death, I’d say somewhere between ten p.m. and midnight. Certainly no later than one in the morning.’

McLean opened his mouth to ask if Cadwallader was sure, then closed it again before he insulted his old friend.

‘Is that a problem?’ the pathologist asked.

‘We know he was alive at half-nine. Janie Harrison saw him leave the bar in the Scotston Hotel, and we’ve CCTV of him arriving at his apartment block not long after. The problem is he wasn’t alone.’

‘That would explain the fact he appears to have had sex before he died, which makes the onanism a little unusual.’ Cadwallader waved a hand at the dead man’s shrivelled genitalia. ‘We’ll swab for DNA, but if you already know who it was, then maybe it’s not necessary.’

McLean shook his head, wondering when life had become so complicated. ‘Oh, it’s necessary, Angus. Very much so. The person he was with? Who left