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

hands. ‘You didn’t come here to talk about me though, did you? It was the bloke with the ruptured testicle and the wrenched knee, right?’

‘The same. And if he had a friend with a broken nose and fingers, I owe you big time.’

‘Might take you up on that.’ Alison reached into the pocket of her nurse’s uniform and pulled out a thin sheaf of printed A4 sheets, placed them face down on the table and slid them over as if she were in some spy movie and any moment now James Bond was going to walk in and sweep her off her feet. He could do worse, Janie thought. Ali had always been pretty, even if the exhaustion on her face was doing its best to hide the fact.

‘That’s technically confidential information, so you didn’t get it from me. Two men, I’d say late thirties, early forties? Came in around ten last night. I didn’t deal with them myself, that was Cara. She says they told her they’d been drinking, slipped on the steps at the top of Fleshmarket Close, and tumbled down them together. It’s plausible. Happens more often than you’d think. One bloke loses his footing, grabs at his mate for support, the two of them end up at the bottom with broken bones.’

‘So they might have been telling the truth then?’ Janie asked. Fleshmarket Close wasn’t so far from the place where Izzy said she’d been attacked, but it wouldn’t have been much fun getting there with a ruptured testicle and blown out knee.

‘It’s possible. Cara reckoned they were hiding something, though. They said they’d been drinking, but they didn’t seem all that drunk. Not like the usual evening crowd we get to patch up. And the one with the injured bollock? That’s not something I’d associate with falling down the stairs. That’s a Saturday night brawl kind of injury. Come to think of it, so’s a busted knee.’

‘Well, if they’re who I think they are, they were both taken out by a teenage girl not a lot taller than me. They thought she was an easy target.’

It was perhaps a measure of how tired Alison must have been that she barely raised an eyebrow at this. ‘Well good for her. Friend of yours, I take it?’

Janie considered the question for a while before answering. She hardly knew Izzy DeVilliers, and yet the young woman was crashed on her couch right now. There was something about her Janie couldn’t help but admire. ‘Aye. I reckon so.’

30

McLean had been to the Crime Campus at Gartcosh a couple of times since its opening, but it wasn’t somewhere he felt the need to visit often. It was too far from his usual stomping grounds, for one thing, and it represented a very different approach to policing from the one he was accustomed to. Then again, crime had evolved in directions nobody could have even dreamed of when he had still been a beat constable. The internet had barely been a thing back then, and yet now maybe half of the crime they dealt with was directly linked to the web. Even everyday criminals used smartphones and encrypted emails, and the old boundaries between countries had all but dissolved away.

A case in point was the theft to order of high-end cars, as he was finding out at far greater length than he would have cared to know. Detective Inspector Maurice Ackerley of the National Crime Agency was part of a team tracking down a gang who operated throughout the UK and Europe, sourcing expensive and exotic machinery.

‘Your car would have been in a container and on its way to Africa or China before you’d even noticed it was gone,’ he said, as they stood in an incident room that looked more like the starship Enterprise than somewhere organised crime was investigated. Banks of computer equipment lined the walls, far more modern than anything McLean’s team had access to, and in one corner a massive screen showed an electronic map of the greater Glasgow area.

‘It has a tracker in it.’ McLean knew this was what Ackerley wanted him to say; he wasn’t an idiot after all. The DI came across as extremely proud of his technical facilities.

‘Ah, but those are easily traced and disabled. And I’ve no doubt you thought your Alfa Romeo was well protected by its alarm and immobiliser, and yet they proved no more of a problem to overcome than the lock.’

McLean tried to ignore the hint of triumph in Ackerley’s voice, as if the DI was impressed with the ingenuity of the thieves. Almost as if he respected them. He glanced across to where the chief superintendent was standing by the door, and tried not to smile at her raised eyebrow and ever so slightly rude hand gesture.

‘That much would seem obvious,’ he said. ‘Along with the fact that the wee toerag who stole the car might have had all the technology he wanted, but he still didn’t know how to drive.’

Ackerley’s animated excitement evaporated in an instant, his whole body slumping like a teenager asked to take the rubbish out. ‘That’s what doesn’t add up,’ he said. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong. Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio. That’s not your average policeman’s ride. Five hundred horsepower through the rear wheels?’ He made a little ‘poof’ noise and flicked the fingers of both hands open to indicate an explosion. ‘Plenty of them parked backwards in hedges when they first came out. But these guys . . .’ and now he turned towards the big screen, even though it didn’t show anything that might indicate the gang stealing expensive cars to order. ‘They know how to drive, Tony. They’re some of the best. They don’t show off. They steal the car, then get it as quickly and safely to their lock-up as possible.’

‘Well this one obviously hadn’t read the script. You know who he is? Was? Whatever.’

Ackerley tapped his keyboard. The big screen changed to a profile page, and finally McLean got