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

letting the chief superintendent sit before he did the same. He supposed technically it was after lunchtime now, although he’d not managed to eat anything since breakfast.

‘How are things progressing with the Cecily Slater case?’ the chief superintendent asked.

‘More slowly than I’d like. I wish I’d been there at the start of the investigation. Seem to be going over a lot of old ground, finding out things that we should have known much sooner.’

‘Like the fact that she’s part of the Bairnfather dynasty, yes.’ The chief superintendent’s smile faded a little as she said this, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening.

‘You’ve heard that, then.’

‘I had a phone call. Someone who really should know better and could just as easily have called you, or Jayne. I think they were trying to make a point, and that pisses me off.’

‘Now you know why I never wanted to be a DCI. It’s bad enough trying to carry out an investigation when there’s hardly any evidence. We don’t need people telling us to be careful about upsetting rich folk.’

‘Nevertheless, we do need to be careful. And you especially. Your reputation on that front isn’t exactly . . . stellar.’

McLean opened his mouth to protest, then his brain caught up with him. She had a point. He didn’t like it when people misused their power and privilege to avoid the consequences of their actions, and he really didn’t like it when they put unnecessary obstacles in his way in an attempt to protect reputations that weren’t worth a damn anyway. He closed his mouth before saying so, though. Elmwood had already put her neck on the block reinstating him; he owed her at least a little understanding.

‘Good. I see you get my point,’ she said, and the smile returned. Only this time there was an altogether more predatory look to it. ‘And to that end, there’s something I need you to do for me.’

It sounded a touch ominous, and something of that must have shown on his face. The chief superintendent gave a short, mocking laugh. ‘Oh, it’s nothing like that, Tony. Dear me, no. But I do need you to represent Police Scotland, and particularly Edinburgh CID at various functions going forward.’

‘Functions?’ McLean tried to keep the horror out of his voice, but might have failed.

‘Don’t worry. I’m not sending you in to meet the Freemasons alone or anything like that.’ The chief superintendent held her hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. ‘There are a number of liaison committees, statutory bodies and the like. And we have a need for representation at charity events, local business forums – you know. Functions.’

McLean said nothing. There was nothing he could think of to say.

‘There’s a kind of unofficial rota among the senior officers. If an invitation comes in and the CC doesn’t like the look of it, he passes it down to me and the other chief superintendents. We pass it on to each other or anyone else we think might be suitable. Sometimes we’ll double up if necessary. That’s where you come in.’

‘Me?’ McLean finally managed to gather his wits. ‘But I’m just a DI.’

Elmwood’s smile reminded him of a nature documentary about sharks he’d seen in the months of his suspension from active duties, broad and threatening and containing far too many teeth.

‘Yes, you’re only a DI in rank, Tony. But you’re time-served. One of our most experienced detectives. And more than that, people have heard of you. They want to meet you. And that takes the pressure off.’

There was something more to it than that, he could tell. Even if he wasn’t quite sure what. It made sense too, in a mad, twisted kind of way. If he was the centre of attention at whatever function it was the chief superintendent had in mind, then all the talk would be about the sensational horror of the cases he’d investigated, and none of it would be about the need for budget cuts, or complaints about too many Strathclyde officers getting free with their stop and search powers when they were shipped across to Edinburgh to walk the beat.

‘Do you have any particular function in mind?’ He stopped himself from adding ‘ma’am’ at the end, and there was no way he was going to call the chief superintendent ‘Gail’.

‘I knew you’d understand.’ She reached out and patted him gently on the arm, and McLean felt horribly like a small boy being admonished by matron. Except that this matron was much the same age as him, and he wasn’t a small boy. Why did she make him feel so uncomfortable?

‘Where’s the cat now?’ Elmwood asked as she stood up. It took McLean a moment to understand the question, coming as it did so far from the left of field. He was slow to stand, almost tipping his chair over in the process.

‘The cat,’ she continued. ‘The one you were bringing in for interrogation? Or taking to the vet’s or whatever? I presume it’s off to the local shelter for rehoming now.’

‘I . . .’ And now McLean felt unaccountably awkward again. ‘Actually, it’s at my place. Seemed easiest in the long run, and it’s not as if I’ve a lack of space.’

That brought another smile, few teeth this time but predatory all the same. ‘That’s what I like about you, Tony. You attend to the little things, the seemingly unimportant details. Keep up the good work.’

Then she strode from the room and was gone.

McLean stared at the open office door for long minutes after the chief superintendent had left, unable to quite parse what had happened. On the face of it, he was being roped into more of the police liaison work he had studiously avoided over the course of his career. Part of him understood that it was necessary to meet the politicians and community bigwigs who had a vested interest in the way Police Scotland ran. Part of him even understood that these kinds of meetings usually took the form of social events, dinners, charity fundraisers and the