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

the way. It opened on to a single room bedsit, or what the estate agents would call a Studio Flat. It smelled of stale body odour and takeaway food, something more pungently rotten underneath like the bass note to a concerto of stench. An unmade single bed shoved in one corner, small single armchair and low table opposite the narrow dormer window that gave a stunning view of the taller tenement on the other side of the street. Behind the door, someone had artfully inserted the most basic of cooking facilities, and in the last corner, a small built-out cupboard housed a shower, sink and toilet.

‘Compact and bijou,’ Stringer said.

‘Nowhere to hide, at least. And the landlady said he’d been gone a while so it’s unlikely he’s popped out to grab his evening meal.’ Janie poked at an empty pizza box lying on the table beside an elderly laptop. Its screen was blank, but when she jabbed a button it lit up. A website showing a paused video news clip that seemed incongruous until she saw the sidebar of shame filled with images of scantily clad female celebrities.

‘What’s he been watching? Porn?’ Stringer crossed the room in two short strides, leaning down to get a better look at the screen. Janie found the cursor, clicked play.

‘Tommy Fielding, leading men’s rights activist and lawyer, was found dead in his Fountainbridge apartment by his cleaner early this morning . . .’

Janie tapped the trackpad and the video paused. ‘Well I guess he’s heard the news.’

‘Heard it and headed straight out. In such a hurry he didn’t even remember to lock the front door?’

58

‘This just come in from forensics, sir. I know Kirsty’s in charge, but I thought you’d want to see it.’

McLean had barely stepped into the major incident room, fresh from his walk back from the mortuary, when DS Gregg came bustling up with a sheet of paper. The rest of the room lacked the same sense of urgency, but then they had been packing up the Cecily Slater case for a couple of days now, so that was hardly surprising.

‘What is it?’ he asked, at the same time as he took the page and scanned it.

‘Fingerprint analysis of the mirror in Fielding’s bathroom. You know, the ghostly message?’ Gregg waved her hands around in a very loose approximation of something spooky, but McLean barely noticed. Top marks to the forensics team for turning it around so quickly. No doubt someone had made it clear that the chief constable himself was likely to be taking an interest in the case. It was just a shame that the results weren’t particularly helpful.

According to the report, the team had found remarkably few fingerprints around the bathroom, all of which seemed to belong to Fielding himself. The writing on the mirror appeared to have been done with one index finger, an almost perfect print picked out at the end of each letter where that finger had been lifted to move to the next one. The only problem was that the print was also Tommy Fielding’s.

‘He wrote it himself?’ McLean asked, even though he could see well enough.

‘Apparently.’ Gregg shrugged. ‘Is it important?’

McLean scanned the report again, searching for any mention of when the writing might have been done. The only indication of timescale was a small note at the bottom confirming that the cleaner had wiped down all the surfaces in the bathroom the morning before Fielding’s death. He remembered her telling him she cleaned every day, so she was obviously diligent about her work.

‘It’s odd. Not sure what to make of it, to be honest.’ He looked past Gregg, across the room, not seeing the faces he hoped to see. ‘Harrison and Stringer still out chasing up the men from the pub?’

‘Far as I know. The chief super’s back, though. Went straight up to her office. No’ sure if anyone’s spoken to her yet about . . . well.’

‘Have you seen Kirsty about?’ McLean asked. It was easier than approaching Ritchie’s office and risking an unprepared meeting with Elmwood. But that was just being stupid. McLean knew he had to grasp this nettle or risk getting stung. ‘Forget it, Sandy. I’ll go find her.’ He waved a hand at the incident room and the officers slowly packing things away. ‘Tell this lot they can knock off early. We’ll know better what’s going on by tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to have to put it all back together again.’

‘Aye, sir.’ Gregg accepted her new orders without question, bustling off to carry them out. McLean glanced around in case either Harrison or Stringer had magically appeared, but they were all still absent. He pulled out his phone and rattled off a quick text to Harrison as he left the major incident room and went in search of his new DCI.

He’d only made it halfway to her office when the shouting started.

‘I’ve never heard so much fucking rubbish in my life.’

McLean didn’t really want to go into Detective Superintendent McIntyre’s office, even though the door was open. A little further up the corridor, the chief superintendent’s secretary, Helen, was sitting at her desk, transfixed. McLean caught her attention, hooked a thumb at the door, and then raised both hands in a gesture he intended to mean ‘should I go in?’ but which could have meant anything. Or simply made him look like an idiot. Helen merely shrugged, then shook her head and held both hands up to indicate she wanted nothing to do with it. Fair enough, this was way above her pay grade.

‘You can’t possibly think I’d have anything to do with—’

McLean chose that moment to reach out and knock at the open door, much more loudly than he would do normally. The effect was instant, and more or less as he had hoped. The chief superintendent stopped shouting, but the expression on her face as she rounded on him was one of such fury he feared he might blister under its heat.

‘You’re behind this, aren’t you, McLean? What is the meaning