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

but McLean wasn’t entirely sure it was any better than the shark. He dabbed at the damp patch on his jacket with what had been a clean handkerchief as the two women fell into a conversation from which he was excluded. At any other time he might have taken offence, but for some reason he didn’t mind. He was about to make his excuses to them both and flee, when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and stared at the text on the screen, a message from DS Gregg.

Urgent we locate you. Please call control or phone me direct. Incident at Tollcross. Hope you’re not involved.

He was just about to text back asking what she was on about, when the chief superintendent spoke to him. ‘It’s about to start, Tony. You coming with us?’

‘Something’s come up.’ He held up the phone and gave her an apologetic shrug. Beside her, Mrs Saifre’s stare was as inscrutable as a wall.

‘Go on, then. I’ll catch up with you later.’

McLean would have thanked her for the dismissal, but she’d already turned away. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he fled the room.

‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’

McLean held his phone tight to one ear, straining to hear over the noise. He’d called DS Gregg as soon as he’d left the ballroom, and then walked down the corridor straight into an entrance foyer seemingly full of loud, chattering tourists.

‘Oh, thank Christ you’re OK, sir. I thought you were dead.’ DS Gregg’s voice sounded almost like it was breaking.

‘Dead? How? I’m at the North British with the chief superintendent.’ He didn’t add that being dead would probably have been preferable, especially once he’d discovered it was a Dee Foundation event. Gregg’s worried tone suggested she was being serious.

‘Report just came in ten minutes ago. Bad car accident at Tollcross. Officers at the scene said the driver was killed instantly, and the index is . . . well, it’s your car, sir.’

McLean frowned, even though there was nobody around to see him. ‘But my car’s parked in the station car park.’ At least it had been when he and DC Blane had left for Bairnfather Hall in a pool car. ‘That place is meant to be safer than Fort Knox.’

‘Aye, about that.’ Her initial worry gone, now DS Gregg sounded embarrassed. ‘Duty sergeant’s doing his nut in. Got half the station going over the CCTV, but as far as we can work out, some wee scrote just walked through the back gate, climbed into your car and drove off like he had the keys. Whole thing done in less than twenty seconds. Nobody saw him, and everyone assumed you’d gone home.’

McLean shoved his hand in his pocket and felt the familiar weight of the key fob. He had a spare, but that was in a drawer at home, wasn’t it? ‘Who was driving? Do we know?’

‘Not yet, sir. Still waiting on confirmation from the officers attending.’

‘Where exactly did it happen?’ He could look it up as soon as he was off the phone, of course. Chances were there’d be news feeds and camera-phone footage on social media already. Bloody marvellous.

‘Corner of Lauriston Place and Tollcross. Apparently the car was going like the clappers, spun into a shop window. Lucky nobody else was hurt, to be honest.’

‘OK. Thanks for letting me know, Sandy. Not a lot I can do about it right now, so I’d better head back into the meeting. Copy me in on the RTA reports, would you? And any update on how the little bugger stole my car from under the noses of a few hundred police officers too.’ McLean hung up before DS Gregg could say any more, then turned back towards the double doors that opened on to the ballroom. He didn’t really have to go back in there, did he? Fate had given him a cast-iron excuse to leave. Even the chief superintendent couldn’t get too upset with him for running off after what had just happened, surely?

But then he had left her with Mrs Saifre, and that was never a good idea.

‘You going in?’

McLean startled at the voice, unaware that someone else had approached the ballroom doors. He turned to see a man walking towards him with the slightly harried posture of someone who knows they’re late for something important. As he came closer, McLean recognised him and reconsidered the whole doing a runner thing. Strange to think his name had come up in conversation only a few hours earlier in the day.

‘Mr Fielding. Surprised to see you here.’

The lawyer looked at McLean more closely for a moment when he heard his name. Recognition came more slowly for him, which was something of a compliment.

‘Detective Chief Inspector McLean, is it not?’

‘Just Detective Inspector.’ McLean reached out and opened the door. Beyond it, the noise suggested any presentation was already over and the serious hobnobbing had begun.

‘Demoted and forced to attend a Safe Streets Committee event. You must have seriously blotted your copybook.’

‘Our new chief superintendent needed someone to introduce her to the great and good of the city. Your guess is as good as mine as to why she chose me.’

Fielding had been about to step into the room, but he paused, blocking the doorway. ‘She? They put a woman in charge?’

Something about the way the lawyer said the word ‘woman’ immediately put McLean’s back up. He’d met Fielding before, and heard all about him. Knew he specialised in fathers’ rights cases and defending wife beaters. What was his little organisation called? Dad’s Army or somesuch. Surprising he hadn’t been sued for that, less so that the man himself was so instantly dislikable. What he was doing here was anyone’s guess.

‘I can introduce you, if you’d like. That’s what I’m here for, after all.’

Fielding stared at McLean for a moment longer than was polite, then shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’m here to see one person only.’ Without another word he stepped into