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

‘Death would have been fairly swift once she was set alight.’ Cadwallader’s words dragged Janie’s attention back to the work in hand just in time for her to see the pathologist studying something that was most likely a lung.

‘Swift?’ she asked, then her brain caught up. ‘Set alight?’

‘The marks on her trachea and lungs show damage consistent with inhalation of flames. The shock would have killed her quickly. Not saying she wasn’t in considerable pain, mind. She’d been given a thorough beating beforehand.’

‘Beaten?’ Janie took a step forward again, the better to see. Then wished she hadn’t.

‘Several of her ribs are broken, and there are fractures in her arms too. She’s dislocated a hip, although that could have happened falling from her chair. Damage from the fire has masked the external bruising, but it’s there all the same. Poor old dear was thoroughly worked over, then someone dowsed her in some kind of accelerant – my guess would be petrol – and set her on fire. I think we can rule out accidental death on this one.’

‘Shit.’ The word was out before Janie could stop herself, her brain too busy catching up with the ramifications of this discovery.

‘Shit indeed,’ Cadwallader said. ‘I don’t much fancy your job, my dear.’

‘Have we got a clearer idea how long she’d been lying there before we found her?’ Janie asked.

The pathologist looked at her in much the same way as her old history teacher had done when she’d got the dates wrong in a test. Then he shrugged. ‘There’s a few indicators we can use, maggots, flies, that sort of thing. We can narrow it down further with some other tests, but as I said when we found her, I’d say she’d been lying there for a week.’

A week for the rain to wash away forensic evidence. Janie shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, felt the familiar weight of her phone. She’d come here hoping to get some more facts before writing it all up and moving on. Well, now she had those facts and more. She had a horrible feeling this case wasn’t going to be so easy to solve, either. She’d not been in plain clothes long, but she’d worked enough weird cases to recognise the signs. And of course she’d worked those cases with DCI McLean, whose reputation for attracting the strange and unsettling was well deserved.

‘Any news about our mutual friend the detective chief inspector?’ Cadwallader asked, as if he had read her mind. It surprised Janie that he’d not mentioned him before. Or, indeed, called the man himself since they were meant to be close friends.

‘Still on suspension. Professional Standards weren’t at all happy with what he did over the summer. I’ve seen him a couple of times going into interviews, but they’re dragging their feet about something.’

‘I suspect that will be the wealthy and influential people he embarrassed looking to extract their pound of flesh.’ Cadwallader put down the scalpel he’d been waving around and focused his full attention on her. ‘Young Tony has a habit of making enemies of the most well connected.’

‘I thought the Complaints were meant to be above that kind of thing.’ Janie knew how foolish and naive she sounded even before the last of her words were out.

‘Oh, I’m sure they are, my dear. But they’ll be feeling the pressure too. Still, he’s got broad shoulders. He can cope, and meantime nobody’s turning the heat on you and your colleagues. You can be thankful for that.’

Janie looked away from the pathologist, her gaze sliding back to the battered and burned remains of the old woman. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but the DCI must have protected the rest of the team from the fallout. She’d given the briefest of statements to Professional Standards, and that had been the last of it.

‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon,’ she said, and hoped that she wasn’t wrong. ‘I have a feeling this case is going to be right up his street.’

The room swarmed with a press of uniformed bodies, the noise almost too loud for such an early hour. For a moment Janie wondered if the news about Cecily Slater had preceded her up the hill from the mortuary. But even if it had, there wouldn’t have been this many officers needed or assigned, surely. No, this was something else entirely, and it made finding a senior detective to talk to almost impossible.

She edged into the room and slipped through the throng as best she could, scanning the press of bodies until she spotted the hunched form of Lofty Blane. It took a while to reach him, such was the crowd. She hadn’t realised there were this many officers still assigned to the station, but then she saw several support staff in the mix. Even so, there couldn’t have been anyone on shift missing. Heaven help them if there was a fire alarm.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked once she’d managed to attract Blane’s attention. Taller than most of them by at least a head, the detective constable had a way of shrinking in on himself to avoid attracting attention. It was effective, but also seemed to render him remarkably deaf sometimes, and the general noise didn’t help.

‘New station chief’s called a meeting. Going to introduce herself.’

Janie stood on tiptoes, frowning as she stared across to the far side of the room. Without a chair for her to stand on, it was hard to see whether any senior officers were yet present.

‘Could she not have done it in shifts? What if someone turns up in reception and there’s nobody there to help?’ What if I’ve just found out our fortnight-old accidental death is actually a murder and we need to get the investigation escalated as quickly as possible?

Blane merely shrugged, and before Janie could say anything more, a commotion at the front quietened down the mob. A group of senior officers had entered through the doors at the other end of the room and