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

Elmwood glared at both of them, but McLean could see her considering the options. She was trapped and she knew it, but she also knew he and McIntyre were her best hope. Standing tall, she adjusted her uniform jacket, squared her shoulders, then without a further word, she strode to the door and left.

McLean was still waiting for the call from Elmwood’s driver to say that she had been delivered safely home when he heard a knock at his open office door. Glancing up, he saw DS Harrison standing half in, half out of the room.

‘I heard about the chief super, sir,’ she said. ‘Did you really threaten to throw her in a cell?’

‘One of these days I’ll find out who’s behind all the station gossip and kick them so hard they’ll not be able to sit down for a month.’ McLean shook his head. ‘And no, I did no such thing. We all agreed it was best if she went home, took a bit of leave while we sort things out.’

‘House arrest then,’ Harrison said. McLean was going to object, but then he remembered that after Elmwood had left McIntyre’s office he’d persuaded the detective superintendent to assign a uniformed officer to guard duty outside the Stockbridge house anyway.

He shrugged. ‘If that’s what we have to say to keep the papers happy, I’ll go with it.’

‘Just as well there’s someone on the door, anyway. I think we might have a problem.’

‘Oh?’ McLean sat up a little straighter.

‘Fellow by the name of Gary Tomlinson. He was in the bar with Fielding last night, and the day Izzy and her mates broke into the seminar. I spoke to his ex, and it seems Gary’s a bit free with his fists around women. Which is why she’s his ex and he doesn’t get to see their wee girl any more.’

McLean felt a tingle of something unpleasant on the back of his neck. ‘Go on.’

‘According to the other two who were in the pub, Fielding had got right pally with Gary these past couple of months. Spending a lot of time with him, promising to help him get access to his kid.’

‘Isn’t that what Fielding does? It’s kind of his thing. Was his thing, I should say.’

‘Aye, right enough. But this is where it gets weird. Apparently Gary got stiffed by the lawyer his ex used. Threatened he’d go to jail, then got him to sign away everything to have the charges dropped. But here’s the thing. There weren’t any charges. It never got that far. And the ex’s lawyer? He works for DCF Law.’

‘That doesn’t make sense. Why would Fielding’s firm screw this bloke over, then Fielding . . .’ McLean stopped talking as the pieces began to fall into place.

‘Aye. What better way to radicalise someone? Just like Izzy said.’

‘Did you speak to him? This Gary . . . ?’

‘Tomlinson, sir. And no. We went to his place. His new place. But he wasn’t there. According to the landlady he just upped and walked out. Left his front door open, lights on, laptop on the table showing a news bulletin about Fielding’s death.’

‘So he knows. I guess he’ll be upset. Maybe gone out to get pissed?’

‘And leave his flat unlocked? Door open? He was in the pub with Fielding last night, sir. Him and two lawyers Izzy identified for us. They all left before Gai— the chief superintendent arrived, but what if he’d not gone home? What if he was hanging around and saw her with him? With Fielding?’

McLean frowned, trying to squeeze all the different snippets of information into something resembling a sensible whole. ‘How would he know who she was, though? I mean, she’s not exactly high profile. You and I know her, but the average man on the street?’

Except that she was high profile. The English copper come to Edinburgh. Elmwood might not have known who Jo Dalgliesh was, but Dalgliesh sure as hell knew the chief superintendent. He picked up his phone, meaning to call her, then instead stood up and slipped it in his pocket.

‘Come on then. Let’s go pay our boss a visit.’

59

It’s almost as if he’s a different person.

Gary hadn’t understood before quite how much he had been suppressing his rage. Controlling it. Keeping it inside. All to stop the poor feartie women from feeling threatened. Well he’s done with that shite now. No more laughing at his weakness. They’ve pushed him too far, and now they’re going to pay.

She’s going to pay.

There’s a freeness in him as he walks the city streets, heedless of the damp haar that fills the air, the drops of water that glisten on every surface, reflecting the street lights and the glow spilling out of shop windows. He feels more alive than he has in days, months, years even. Without knowing why, he bursts out laughing, and the sound only spurs him on.

It is dark when he reaches her lair, although he has no memory of the journey. He doesn’t think about how he knew where she would be hiding; those kinds of questions are unimportant now. The street is quiet, as these rich streets always are. A few of the other houses have lights on, barely showing behind thick curtains or closed shutters, but hers is dark. She is in there, though. The uniformed police officer standing at the front door confirms it.

‘Wait,’ the voice in his head whispers. So he moves back into the shadows beneath the dripping branches of the trees, shoves his hands deep into his pockets, and waits.

It doesn’t take long. Or maybe it’s hours. Gary neither knows nor cares. The voice has given him purpose, and now he understands what it was that drove Fielding. These witches have become too powerful, infiltrated right to the heart of things. Like a cancer spreading through a body, unseen and deadly. And like a cancer it needs to be cut out before it spreads even further.

Burned out.

The barest sound reaches him in the shadows, a chirp as