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

to McLean’s desk. Her movements weren’t hurried; the word languorous sprang to mind. As if she were exhausted by the day’s events, which was very possible.

‘Sit, please.’ She waved an elegant hand at him, and McLean settled himself back into his office chair. For some unaccountable reason he felt glad to have the solidity of his desk between him and his new boss.

‘No Mrs McLean waiting patiently for you to come home?’ Elmwood asked after an awkward silence.

‘I’m not married.’ McLean held up his hand to show the absence of any rings. Something like surprise flitted briefly across the chief superintendent’s face before she smiled broadly.

‘A man like you? I’d have thought they’d be queueing round the block.’

‘I have a partner. She’s in Africa at the moment, though. Part of a team of forensic archaeologists working on mass graves in Rwanda. She flew out a few weeks back.’

‘So you’re all alone. That must be . . . lonely.’ Elmwood stared at him with her piercing grey eyes and McLean began to understand what the mouse feels like as the owl screeches in from the night sky.

‘Was there something you wanted?’ he asked, keen to get whatever this was over with. The chief superintendent didn’t answer straight away, but instead stared at him, the lightest of frowns furrowing her brow as if she were trying to find the right words.

‘You’ve been a detective here, what? Twenty years now?’

McLean nodded his head once. ‘Something like that. I don’t want to think about it too much, really.’

The chief superintendent’s face lit up with a smile at his joke. ‘We all get older, Tony. But unlike most, you’ve been happy to stick at what you do best, right?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of background reading of my own, and I know you didn’t want to be promoted to DCI. All that nasty business with Forrester and his son. Quick thinking in a crisis, but you got bumped up to where you didn’t want to be.’

‘Well, I got this office out of it, so it’s not all bad.’

Another one of those smiles. The chief superintendent had a way of making you feel like her entire concentration was focused on you, McLean noticed. It should have been pleasant, but he found it deeply unsettling.

‘It’s a nice office. Good view, I’m told. When it’s not dark before six. It’s handy too. Just along the corridor from my own.’

Was there a note of flirtation in her voice? McLean didn’t want to read so much into it. She wasn’t that long in the job, and he knew very little about her past life in the Met. She wore no rings either, so no Mr Elmwood anywhere in the mix. Too focused on the job to ever settle down? That wasn’t his problem. The chief constable wouldn’t have chosen just anybody for the post. At least he hoped so.

‘Is that useful? I mean, we have phones.’ He gestured at the heavy plastic console on his desk.

The chief superintendent’s smile was more shark-like this time, her teeth startlingly white and straight. ‘Of course. But I need to know I’ve got an ally here, Tony. Someone I can trust. It’s not easy coming into a new station, a new country even. Yes, I’ve done my homework, and I’ve a good team of officers working with me. But I need someone to bounce ideas off, someone to run things by before I make a fool of myself in front of the police authority or heaven forbid the Minister.’

McLean couldn’t help thinking the speech was too well rehearsed to be entirely sincere. He also wasn’t quite sure he wanted such a role. But he wasn’t so stupid as to think he could say no.

‘I’m sure I’d be happy to give advice if you feel the need for it,’ he said, hearing the sound of his own grave being dug with each word. The chief superintendent’s smile broadened into a wide grin as she stood up in a graceful, fluid motion.

‘Splendid. I knew we’d get along fine.’

And without another word, she strode out of the room, leaving the empty chair behind like some kind of territorial marker.

‘Looks like it’s just you and me again.’

McLean placed his briefcase on the kitchen table, following up with the bag of takeaway curry he’d picked up on the way home. It was later than he’d have liked, but Mrs McCutcheon’s cat never seemed to mind. A sure sign that winter was not far off, she had taken up her habitual place in front of the Aga. Reasonably confident the cat wouldn’t help herself to his supper, McLean went through to the hall and leafed through the day’s post. There wasn’t much, but a hastily scribbled postcard with a picture on the front of the hills behind Kigali reminded him of the last time Emma had gone travelling. He hoped she’d be home before Christmas, not away for two years again.

He had finished half of his curry and put the rest away for the next day, much to the horrified indignation of Mrs McCutcheon’s cat, and was pouring himself a second beer when he heard a noise outside. Headlights swept the darkness through the window, the sound of car tyres crunching on the gravel of the drive. McLean went to the front door, opening it just in time to see the departing rear lights of a taxi and the large, bulky shape of his unexpected visitor.

‘Rose. This is a surprise. Come in, please.’

Madame Rose, fortune teller, Tarot reader, antiquarian bookseller and purveyor of occult curios, smiled broadly as she stepped into the hall. She had dressed for cold weather, wrapped in a coat that a Russian Tsar might have worn through a Saint Petersburg winter, even though she’d presumably come all the way from her home in Leith comfortably warm inside the taxi.

‘Tony. It’s been too long.’

Now that she mentioned it, McLean realised it was true. He couldn’t remember when he’d last spoken to the