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

Taking his phone out again, McLean tried Harrison’s number. Once more, straight to voicemail. Inside, he tried the light switch, but nothing happened. Not good. He knew he should go back, wait for the squad car that was surely on its way by now, but there was that faintest scent of smoke, and could he hear something? He trained the soft LED glow of his phone’s torch ahead of him so that he could step inside without fear of tripping over again.

The laundry room felt cold, the fog from outside having seeped in through the slightly open door. As he moved further into the house, so the temperature rose and the air began to feel dry. McLean stepped into the kitchen and played the torch around, revealing a large room with modern fittings that somehow looked bare. He almost dismissed it as being the minimalist work of some grossly overpaid interior designer, and then he noticed that there were no chairs around the table.

A noise from the doorway distracted him, something creaking in the narrow passage that led from the kitchen to the hall. McLean pointed the torch that way, but its beam cast too little light to see much. He crossed the room on light feet, tense as he listened for any more sounds, but there seemed to be only the general creaking expected of an old building.

The light switch by the door didn’t work, and now he thought about it, McLean couldn’t hear any telltale hum from the large American-style fridge across the room. Someone had cut the power. Was it Elmwood herself? Had she done a runner? But why leave the back door unlocked, then? Why switch off the power?

McLean shook the thoughts away. There was nothing to be gained from playing the hero; the events of the summer and all the idiotic blame-spreading fallout from them had taught him that. He tapped off the torch light, slid his phone in his pocket and started to retrace his steps.

A low moan echoed in through the other door. The one that led to the front hall. McLean froze, tensed, straining his ears to hear. The noise came again, human, suffering. What the hell was going on?

Moving slowly, fingers brushing the wall to help him navigate the almost total darkness, he stepped silently out of the kitchen and along the corridor. There should have been a couple of antique side tables, memory told him, but his hand passed through empty space. There should have been old paintings hanging on the walls, but they were not there. Someone had cleared everything out of the corridor, along with the chairs from the kitchen.

Another door stood ajar, blackness beyond it almost complete. McLean knew it led to the basement, but in the darkness he could sense nothing. Then that low moan came again, wounded and woozy. He edged past the open door, carried on until the corridor opened out into the hall. There was a little more light in here, the reflected glow of the city coming in through the glass cupola three stories up. Even so, the scene made no sense.

Furniture had been dragged from every room, pictures ripped from the walls, chairs heaped one atop another in a huge pile that reached almost to the edges of the hall. Even if it hadn’t been fast approaching Guy Fawkes night, McLean would have recognised the stack for the pyre that it was. And there, at the top of it, in the place of the infamous would-be regicide, gagged and bound to a sturdy bed frame, was the chief superintendent.

‘The actual fuck?’

McLean mouthed the curse, even as he was moving towards the stack, searching for a way to get to the chief superintendent and cut her down. She still wore her work clothes, but her face was a mess, black around her nose that was almost certainly blood, and dark bruising under her eyes. Judging by the size of the pyre, she must have been out cold for hours, but now she was slowly coming around.

Another low moan forced its way past the gag in her mouth. Her head swayed as she tried to take the weight of it, and as she raised her chin, McLean saw a thin strip of something tight around her neck. A recent conversation came back to him then, taking tea with Madame Rose and Mirriam Downham. The tradition in Scotland to throttle the accused so that they were unconscious before burning them to death for the crime of witchcraft. Whoever had seen to Elmwood was not practised in the art, then.

Skirting around the edges of the pyre, he pulled out his phone and hit the screen to call Harrison again. It went straight to voicemail. What the hell was she playing at? McLean killed the call and turned towards the front door. He could unlock it, let her in along with the back-up that must surely be here by now.

A man stood directly behind him, face sheened with sweat, hair matted with it. His wide eyes were mad and bloodshot, and he carried a bottle of what looked like white spirit in one hand. McLean barely had time to react before the punch came out of nowhere, a jab to the face boxer-style. It caught him on the turn, snapping his head back and spinning him around to sprawl on the ground among the broken picture frames and smashed chairs. His phone slipped out of his grasp, skittering away into the darkness. Before he could even begin to rise, before he could even shout for help, the air whooshed out of him as the man kicked him hard in the stomach. McLean rolled away as best he could, trying not to vomit as he gasped for air. He needed to shout, alert Harrison to what was happening, but it was all he could do to even breathe.

He sensed the next kick more than saw