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

‘Jayne, ma’am.’ He stepped into the room and then very deliberately closed the door behind him. Elmwood stood in the middle of the room, shaking in her rage. McIntyre was leaning against her desk as if prepared to scuttle behind it for safety should the need arise.

‘I’ve just been at the mortuary, getting the details on Mr Fielding’s cause of death.’

In the silence that followed he could hear the tick of the clock on the wall.

‘He was strangled. Possibly by the tie, by his own hand as it were. But there were other marks on his neck. Angus thinks someone could have choked him with their bare hands until he fell unconscious, then did the thing with the necktie to make it look like an accident. Auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong. Those are his preliminary findings. We’ll know more once all the tests are in. But I’ve known Angus a long time, and he’s usually right first time.’

‘I still don’t know—’

McLean held up his hand to stop the chief superintendent from speaking. ‘Before you say anything else, we know you were there. We know you met him in the Walter Scott bar around half nine, walked back to his apartment and stayed there until about half past ten. You were seen by multiple, reliable witnesses, and we have security camera footage from the apartment block lobby. Denying it isn’t going to help.’

‘I didn’t kill him. He was fine when I left. The bastard.’

‘That’s useful information,’ McLean said. ‘But until we can prove it, you are at the very least a person of interest.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ Elmwood looked from McIntyre to McLean, then back again. She held out her arms, wrists pressed together. ‘What are you going to do? Cuff me and throw me in a cell?’

‘I really don’t think that’s necessary, Gail. But you understand as well as I do that you can’t be anywhere near this investigation. Not until we know exactly what happened to Mr Fielding.’ McIntyre crossed the room, taking the chief superintendent’s hand. ‘We have to be seen to be doing everything right here.’

Elmwood almost flinched at the detective superintendent’s touch. She turned away and focused on McLean, the earlier anger gone now, replaced by earnest supplication. ‘Tony, surely you must believe I’m innocent?’

‘Fielding used you, back when you were a sergeant. You never forgave him for that.’ He couldn’t help himself, even though he knew it was mean to kick someone when they were down. ‘And yet you met up with him last night. Went back to his flat and had sex with him.’

‘Used me?’ Elmwood narrowed her eyes, staring at McLean as if she might be able to see his thoughts. ‘Is that the best gossip you could come up with?’

‘Well, maybe it went both ways. Mutual support with a bit of mutual loathing thrown in. Let’s just say the two of you have had a long and complicated relationship, shall we? Culminating in a . . . liaison last night.’ McLean enjoyed the flinch his choice of word brought. ‘Tell me, ma’am, do the words “with my dying breath I curse thee” mean anything to you?’

If he’d been hoping for a reaction, he was disappointed by the one he got. Elmwood’s face went from angry to confused far too quickly for it to have been an act. She knew nothing about the message on the bathroom mirror, so maybe she was innocent after all. At least of Fielding’s murder.

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she said eventually.

McLean told her about the writing, failing to mention the forensic conclusion that it was Fielding himself who had done it. ‘We’ve no evidence of anyone else entering the flat until the cleaner arrived the next morning. Fielding’s death is suspicious. We have to investigate, and you can’t be involved in any aspect of it. By all rights we should be calling in a team from another region to do this.’

‘So, what? I just go home and lick my wounds?’ Elmwood dropped herself into one of the chairs that had been pulled out from the conference table.

‘Actually, that would probably be the best idea,’ McIntyre said. ‘Go home, Gail. You can have a couple of days off while we run everything down and prepare a report for the PF. I doubt anyone will even notice you’re gone.’

McLean grimaced, not wanting to be the one to break bad news. ‘Actually, that might not be true.’

‘Oh?’ Elmwood tilted her head in an accusatory manner, which given what McLean was about to say was probably fair.

‘The press already know Fielding’s dead. And they also know about your history with him.’ He held up a hand to stop the chief superintendent before she could complain. ‘Not about last night, but about your history. London, all that stuff.’

Elmwood narrowed her eyes at him. ‘How is it you know this?’

‘Because one of Edinburgh’s finest muckrakers told me. The press have been digging into your past ever since you arrived. It’s what they do.’

‘Dalgliesh?’ McIntyre asked.

‘The same.’

‘And you’re one of this hack’s sources, are you?’ The ice in Elmwood’s voice would have chilled a perfect Martini.

‘We have history, but I don’t talk to the press without official sanction. I’ve not told Dalgliesh anything about you.’ McLean heard the defensiveness in his voice and hoped neither Elmwood nor McIntyre noticed it.

‘Go home, Gail. Let us do our job, aye?’ McIntyre said, and finally the chief superintendent relented.

‘Fine. But I want to be kept up to speed on developments, OK?’ She turned on McLean. ‘And if this Dalgliesh fellow so much as breathes any rumour, you can tell him I’m not afraid of suing, right?’

McLean nodded, feeling it unnecessary to point out that Dalgliesh was a woman. ‘We’ll need to post an officer outside your door.’

Now the heat came back into the chief superintendent’s face. ‘What? You think I’m a flight risk? Where the fuck would I go?’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary, Tony.’ McIntyre stepped in to calm things down. ‘I’m sure Gail will be happy to call