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

at the clock over the door, disappointed to see that it was barely noon yet. A long afternoon lay ahead of her before shift end, and she had a horrible feeling she wouldn’t be going home then either. ‘How did we even find out about this? The pathologist reckons she’d been dead a week and nobody noticed.’

‘Local farmer delivering her groceries, apparently. Talk about being cut off, eh? There’s an old track goes right up to the cottage, but the bridge collapsed a few months back and everything has to come in by tractor.’

Janie made a mental note to add interviewing the farmer to the list of actions already piling up. ‘Guess we’d better speak to him. And find out who else has been there recently.’

‘Who’s SIO on this then?’ Blane asked as he laboriously tapped at the keyboard.

‘We don’t even know if it’s suspicious yet, Lofty. Nothing at the scene to suggest it wasn’t just a horrible accident. Let’s see what the post-mortem brings up, aye?’

‘You know when that’ll be? Don’t want to waste too much time on this if it’s no’ suspicious. I’ve enough work for two as it is.’

‘Doctor Cadwallader said he’d let me know, but it might be a few days. Just need to make sure we’ve all the background on the poor old dear before then. I’ll take what we’ve got to DI Ritchie soon as she gets back in from wherever she is right now. She can decide whether to make our lives more difficult than they already are.’

‘You reckon we’ll get any more officers soon?’ Blane asked. It was a question that bounced around the echoing walls of the near empty CID room most days. The team hadn’t exactly been large to start with, but they’d lost two detectives since the summer. One retired, one . . . well, who knew? Maybe they’d all be reassigned to other teams within the Specialist Crime Division. Still nominally based in the city but tasked wherever there was an investigation needing their skills. Or maybe there would be yet another reorganisation and something entirely new would rise from the ashes.

‘Kirsty’s asked. Many times. Doesn’t help that they’re still arguing over who’s going to be the new station chief here. Nobody wants to make any staffing decisions until the top spot’s filled.’

‘Well maybe I have some good news for you then.’ Blane clicked once more, sending whatever he’d been doing to the printer. He pushed back his chair, swivelled it around to face her. ‘Word is the new boss starts next week. Apparently she’s coming up from England. The Met, no less.’

‘She?’

‘That’s what Jay says.’ Blane nodded towards DC Stringer’s desk, empty since he was on late shift and wouldn’t be in until it got dark. ‘He’s been known to get it wrong from time to time, mind you.’

‘Not on something like that.’ Janie followed Blane to the printer, busily churning out twice as many pages as they’d asked it for. ‘Wonder what persuaded her to come north.’

‘Probably hit the glass ceiling down there. Reckoned she’d have more chance of promotion if she moved. Either that or she really likes haggis and whisky.’

‘You’re such a cynic, Lofty.’ Janie grabbed the first few sheets from the printer and started flicking through them. Not much detail at all. Cecily Slater, so much a recluse that nobody noticed when her house caught on fire. Too old and frail to save herself from burning to death. What a horrible way to go.

‘What’s the plan of action?’ Blane asked.

‘Write it all up and pass it on. We’re only lowly constables, after all.’

3

It was only a slap, for fuck’s sake. You couldn’t even see the bruise once she’d stuck some make-up on. What’s all the fuss about?

Gary sits at the table in the stuffy meeting room and manages, for once, to keep his mouth shut. His suit smells of mothballs and doesn’t fit properly. He’s not worn it since . . . Christ, it would have been Bazza’s wedding. That was some party, right enough. He frowns as he remembers that was where he first met Bella, too. Shame Bazza’s marriage didn’t last more than a couple of years. Trish walked out on him, right enough. Dozy bitch.

‘. . . could be looking at a custodial sentence, Mr Tomlinson.’

Something in the lawyer’s words cuts through his meandering thoughts. Annoying, expensive wee shite that he is, the man’s supposed to know what he’s doing, but that doesn’t sound right.

‘You what?’

‘I said that you could be looking at a custodial sentence, Mr Tomlinson. Jail time, in other words. According to Miss MacDonald, her injuries were quite severe.’

It takes Gary a while to work out who the lawyer’s talking about. Miss MacDonald. Makes her sound like a school teacher and not the useless junkie waster she is. MacDonald’s her mam’s name, not her da’s. But then they never married either, did they? Far as he knows nobody’s ever called her anything except Bella.

‘Barely touched her. She’s putting it on just to make me look bad.’

The lawyer says nothing for a moment, and Gary reckons the slick fuck’s trying not to sneer. This whole thing’s getting out of hand, making him angry. He shoves his hands into his lap, fists clenched, right leg jiggling up and down as he tries to keep a lid on it. He needs to get out of this room with its shiny wooden table and metal frame chairs, its weird modern art on the walls and that smell of desperation and fear.

‘Mr Tomlinson. Gary.’ The lawyer’s trying to put on a reasonable voice now, but it makes him sound like the wee kids in the school playground he and Bazza and Big Tam used to pick on for their lunch money. Gary tenses, lifts his chin so he can stare at the man down his nose.

‘I barely touched her.’

‘So you have said, and I’m sure it’s true. However.’ The lawyer flips open the thin folder he has with him, picks through some of the pages until he finds what he’s looking for. ‘Miss