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

McLean then that Blane wouldn’t know about the house near Dundee, or anything else that had come from the box he and Harrison had found at the gamekeeper’s cottage. ‘Cecily Slater spent most of her childhood at Burntwoods. There’s not much information about the place, but we think it was possibly some kind of refuge.’ As he said the words, he recalled the old insane asylum at Rosskettle, south of the city. It had been part of NHS Scotland by the time it was closed, but long before that it had been a privately run hospice. An insane asylum, yes, but also somewhere wealthy families sent their problem children to prevent them becoming a social embarrassment. Could Burntwoods have been something similar before the war? It didn’t quite square with the somewhat sketchy history of the place Duguid had given him, but it might be worth pursuing.

‘Something tells me that Lord Bairnfather knows she was sent there and why,’ McLean continued. ‘He wasn’t particularly embarrassed about her possibly being illegitimate, maybe even the daughter of one of the estate workers. He was almost proud about her having been born in that cottage. And yet he didn’t want us to know about the place she was sent to when she was a child.’

‘To be honest, sir, I thought he was making the whole thing up.’

‘Everything?’ McLean asked.

‘Aye, well. Maybe not everything. But he came across as . . . I don’t know. Insincere?’ Blane waited for a car to pass the end of the hotel drive, then pulled out on to the main road, his swift acceleration making the tyres chirp in protest.

McLean went over the conversation in his head. It was true Lord Bairnfather had been keener than most to share old family gossip, but he had seemed genuinely saddened by his aunt’s death. In that restrained, undemonstrative way that was beaten into you at the worst private schools.

‘I think you’re perhaps being a bit hard on the man. Not everybody wails and gnashes their teeth when a relative dies, you know. Not in public, anyway.’

The detective constable glanced in McLean’s direction, the car drifting slightly towards the roadside as he did so.

‘But I asked for your opinion, and I’m grateful for it, honestly,’ he said hurriedly, nodding his head at the windscreen and an oncoming bend. Blane seemed to get the message, correcting their course a little aggressively.

‘I just expected him to be, I don’t know, a bit angrier?’ the detective constable said after a few moments’ concentrating on negotiating the corner. ‘If it was my aunt was killed like that, I’d be screaming blue murder at us to find her killer. He’s only turned up today and she’s been dead for weeks.’

Put like that, McLean had to admit that Blane had a point. On the plus side, it seemed unlikely that Bairnfather would be making a complaint to the chief constable about their behaviour. At least, not yet. But they hadn’t gathered as much information about Cecily Slater as he’d hoped.

‘You’re right, Lofty. But we need to tread carefully with Lord Bairnfather.’ McLean heard the unspoken deference to power in his words. ‘Not that he deserves kid gloves more than anyone else, but he can make our jobs difficult if he wants to.’

‘Aye, sir. Private law. That’s what privilege means, doesn’t it? One rule for them an’ another for us?’

‘If he’s guilty of anything, I’ll find it, Lofty. I don’t do favours for friends of the chief constable, especially not where murder is involved. But we need to be subtle about it. Follow the money, of course. We need to find out everything we can about the Bairnfather Trust and Cecily Slater’s financial interests, but we mustn’t let Lord Bairnfather know that’s what we’re doing. And we need to look into Burntwoods too.’

‘You think it’s really relevant, sir? I mean, it was a very long time ago.’

‘And yet she kept mementoes of it for her whole life. And it spooked her nephew when we mentioned it. Someone who, as you’ve pointed out already, is not exactly prone to emotional outbursts.’

Another few moments of silence as the road roared along underneath them. ‘I’ll add it to the list of actions, sir.’ Blane was clearly trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice, but not entirely successfully.

‘Cheer up, Constable. It’s got to be better than accountancy, aye?’

Blane nodded his head slightly in agreement, but the fact he didn’t say anything suggested to McLean that perhaps the detective constable was having second thoughts about that.

26

A light shower of rain dampened the shoulders of his jacket as McLean stepped out of the taxi and crossed the road to the North British Hotel. The massive building loomed over Waverley Station, solid and immovable. It wasn’t his favourite place to visit, for the very reason he was entering it now. This was where functions happened, where he was supposed to be polite and sociable, to mingle and make small talk when all he really wanted to do was sit alone with his thoughts.

An elderly gentleman in the uniform of a concierge directed him through to the main ballroom. McLean checked his watch as he walked along the wide corridor, hoping he wasn’t too late. He didn’t want to be here, but neither did he want to get on the wrong side of the new chief superintendent.

‘Ah, Tony. You’re here. Excellent timing.’

The voice came from behind him, and as he turned he almost did a double take. Elmwood came down the corridor like a catwalk model, elegant and effortless. She wore her police uniform, with all the unnecessary shiny bits associated with her rank, but somehow she managed to make it look almost glamorous. She’d let down her hair from the tight bun she wore at work, and as she came closer he caught a whiff of expensive perfume. Her whole stance was different, as if this were some fun social event and not important police business. He was glad he’d asked Lofty Blane to drop him at