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

‘Could I possibly have a word with her? I had . . .’ He was going to lie and say plans, but before he could get the word out, Helen had interrupted him again.

‘I’m afraid she’s over at Gartcosh in meetings all day. You could try her mobile, but I suspect it will be switched off. You know how annoyed the chief constable gets when he’s interrupted.’

Bloody marvellous. McLean rubbed at his forehead as if that would make the inevitable easier to accept. It didn’t really help.

‘Seven o’clock, Detective Inspector. It shouldn’t last more than a couple of hours.’ Helen’s voice was cheery but insistent, and he was beginning to reconsider the merits of her smile. Before he could say anything more however, she had hung up, leaving him with a quiet hissing on the now dead line.

He sat there, head in hand, phone to his ear, for what felt like an age but was probably only a few tens of seconds before a light knock at the open door distracted him. For a moment he wondered whether it was Helen come down the corridor to apologise for her rude behaviour, but instead he was greeted by a worried smile from Detective Sergeant Harrison.

‘Morning, sir. Hope this isn’t a bad time?’ She put a light inflection at the end of the sentence as if she meant it as a question, or had turned Australian.

‘Nothing I can’t cope with.’ McLean put the phone receiver back in its cradle. ‘Morning, Janie. This about the building site accident you texted me about at crack of sparrow?’

‘Aye, sir. Didn’t know whether to call you out or just let you know. Decided I could handle it for now, but you might want to have a look for yourself. It’s . . . weird.’

‘Weird?’ He tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. There’d been too much weird about recently and the last thing he needed was even more. ‘Remind me where it was again?’

‘Up Liberton Brae. You know, the new apartment block?’

McLean did. It was an eyesore, but then so was the building he was sitting in. ‘How bad?’

‘One dead. Name of Don Purefoy. He’s . . . was the sales rep for the development. Nobody’s really sure why he was out on site last night, but the poor sod got crushed by a rockfall. One of those big steel mesh things filled with boulders?’

‘Gabions?’

‘Aye, that’s the word. Seems one of them failed, spilled out all the rocks just as Purefoy was walking past. Talk about bad timing.’

‘And you suspect it’s more than just an accident?’

‘Well that’s the thing. I’ve spoken to site security and the head engineer. They can’t see how it can be deliberate, and looking at it I can see what they mean. Guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And these were big rocks, see?’ Harrison held her hands wide enough to explain how they might easily have killed a man.

‘But you don’t like the smell of it, right?’

‘I guess it all just looked too neat. The way it happened. When they found him he was on his back, arms wide. Huge boulder on his chest, a couple more either side of him. But somehow the rockfall managed to miss his head.’ A slight shudder ran through Harrison’s frame. ‘And there was no blood, no shattered bone. You’d think it’d be like a car crash, but no. Looked more like that one big rock had been placed on top of him. Only there’s no way it could have.’

McLean rubbed at his face, finding a rough patch on his jawline the morning’s hurried shave had missed. He’d be a right mess come the evening. Ah well, that’s what happened when you sprang surprises on him, and the sooner the chief superintendent worked that out, the better.

‘We’ll need a report for the PF anyway, so might as well get started on that. I take it Health and Safety are investigating too?’

‘Arrived just as I was leaving, sir. As did the pathologist.’ Harrison checked her watch. ‘Body should be at the mortuary by now. They had to bring in heavy machinery to move the boulder first.’

McLean took a moment to gather his wits. They needed another investigation like a hole in the head, but he was prepared to trust Harrison’s instinct on this. If she thought something was amiss, then he wasn’t about to stop her finding out what, and how. It’s what he would have done, regardless of whatever his superior officers told him.

‘OK, Janie. Gather up as much intel on the dead man as you can. We can decide how to proceed once the post-mortem’s done.’ He stood up, shrugged the stiffness out of his shoulders and came to join her at the door. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see someone in the basement.’

The noise and bustle decreased to almost nothing as McLean descended into the bowels of the earth, a welcome silent calm falling over him with each step downwards. How much nicer it would be if he could leave all the office politics and unnecessary bureaucracy behind, find himself a permanent desk in the Cold Case Unit. Spend his time poring over dusty archives and chasing down long-forgotten clues.

‘The Detective Inspector returns. There goes my morning.’ Ex-Detective Superintendent Charles Duguid looked up from whatever he’d been reading, slowly taking off his spectacles like some disappointed teacher as McLean stepped into the room. Maybe working live cases upstairs wasn’t so bad after all.

‘Grumpy Bob not in?’ he asked, scanning the empty desks.

‘Detective Sergeant Laird has gone off in search of decent coffee.’ Duguid picked up his mobile phone, glanced at the screen, then put it back down again. Presumably checking the time, since there was no chance of a signal surrounded by so much stone and so deep underground. ‘He’s a creature of habit, so I reckon he’ll be another five minutes. Was there anything in particular you wanted him for? Only he’s meant to be sorting out the witness statements for