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

He goes through to the bar feeling slightly naked now that he’s shed his outer skin. Fair play, the young lad hid his sneer at the cheap nylon parka, but Gary knows he sticks out here. Everyone’s wearing suits, even some of the women. He’s never backed down from a fight in his life, but this place gives him the heebie-jeebies. The urge to turn tail and flee is strong; he’d even consider leaving the parka behind.

‘You must be Gary.’

The voice takes him by surprise, as much that someone who isn’t being paid to serve customers here might talk to him as that they know his name. He turns to see one of the suited men not more than a couple of paces away from him. Taller by half a head, thinning hair and the beginnings of a paunch even his expensive suit can’t hide. He looks like the sort of lawyer you’d find defending the villain in a movie. Slick. That’s the word.

‘Mr Fielding?’

‘Call me Tommy, please.’ The suited man holds out a hand, and after a moment Gary takes it. The shake is firm, Fielding’s other hand coming around to clasp Gary’s elbow in that over-familiar way posh folk have. Only he’s not posh, not really. There’s an edge to his accent that’s working class, even if the man has made a lot of effort to hide it.

‘Tommy, aye.’ Gary retrieves his hand, resists the urge to wipe it on his jeans. Fielding’s handshake was firm, but his palm is damp with sweat. ‘Baz— Barry said he’d spoken to you.’

‘Poor old Bazza.’ Fielding shakes his head. ‘But we’re here to talk about you, not him. Here, let me buy you a drink.’

Gary’s confused as he follows Fielding to the bar. He doesn’t act like a lawyer, and when was the last time one of those offered to pay for anything? True, this might be softening him up before the kill, but it doesn’t feel like that. They take their drinks – a pint of posh lager for Gary, a double malt ruined by being poured over ice for Fielding – and sit down in a cosy alcove away from the hubbub. Not that the bar’s all that busy, mind. The prices they charge it’s hardly surprising.

‘So. Bazza tells me you’ve lost access to your daughter. Mary, isn’t it?’

Gary’s halfway through a mouthful of lager when Fielding says this, and swallows it badly. ‘You done your homework,’ he says, choking on the words.

‘Not really, no.’ Fielding shakes his head slowly, a thin smile on his lips. ‘It’s just a story I’ve heard all too often. There you are, trying to be the best father you can for your wee girl, and then all of a sudden it’s all taken away. Just like that.’ He snaps his fingers, the noise of it cracking in the air like a bone breaking.

‘Aye, well. It’s no—’

‘It exactly is, Gary. And don’t let them tell you otherwise.’ Fielding’s leaning in close now, eyes alive. ‘Let me guess. Lawyer came to you with an ultimatum. Give up all rights, or she presses charges and you go to jail, right?’

‘I—’

‘They didn’t give you time to think about it, did they, Gary? Just shoved the paper in front of you and bullied you into signing on the dotted line. Next thing you know, you’re on the street, no one to turn to, and no hope of ever seeing your daughter again.’

‘Well—’

‘That’s how they operate, Gary. How they get away with it. The court system is loaded against people like you and me.’

‘I— you?’ Gary finally manages to get a word in.

‘My boy. Jim. He’s almost twenty now, can you believe that? His mother tried to take him away. Succeeded for a while, but I fought back, right? Took it all the way to the Supreme Court. Learned a fair bit about how the system works against us while I was at it.’

‘And did you . . . ?’

‘Win?’ Fielding picks up his glass and stares at the melting ice cubes for a moment before answering. ‘Aye. After a fashion. I got my visiting rights back. It was a hollow victory, though. She’d poisoned his mind against me. The lies she told that I’ve only found out recently, now he’s grown.’

Gary reckons there’s more to it than that, but he doesn’t say anything. His head’s still reeling from the cascade of events. How a simple slap has ended up with him here, talking about Supreme Courts and visiting rights and Christ only knows what else. Fielding swirls the remains of the whisky around for a moment before knocking it back, ice cubes clattering against his teeth. When he puts the glass down again, he fixes Gary with a determined stare.

‘You want to get your wee girl back, right? Want to be able to visit her whenever you choose, even if she’s living with . . .’ Fielding pauses as if the words ‘her mother’ are too hard to say. Gary knows the feeling.

‘Is that even possible?’

Fielding picks up his glass, stares at it and then over at the bar. ‘Trust me, Gary. Anything’s possible if you put your mind to it.’

10

A heavy dampness hung in the air, somewhere between fog and rain, it played havoc with the automatic sensor for his windscreen wipers as McLean drove west out of the city on the Balerno road. He’d not been this way for a while, but nothing much seemed to have changed. A marked difference from most of the other arterial roads, where ribbon development was spreading from the city like a metastasising cancer.

Beside him in the passenger seat, Detective Sergeant Harrison stared at her phone, occasionally tapping the screen as she used its navigation app to try and find the address they were looking for. Mains of Bairnfather Farm hadn’t shown up on the system built into the Alfa Romeo for some unaccountable reason. Perhaps because the whole area was a maze of single-track roads that seemed to be taking you in the