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

The chief superintendent reached out and placed a hand on his knee, just briefly. More the lightest of pats than anything else, but McLean did his best to hide the flinch at her touch. He was still trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, but it was hard to ignore the evidence, especially when he’d been trained to notice such things. The deputy chief constable was a welcome change from her predecessor in many ways, but at least McLean had understood Teflon Steve.

‘Why is it that whenever someone begins a sentence “with respect” it’s actually the complete opposite that they mean?’

‘Probably because it’s considered rude to be frank.’ McLean focused his attention on the chief superintendent where before he had been doing his best to avoid her gaze. The expression on her face didn’t fill him with great joy. This was a game for her, he could see, and right now he was doing exactly what she wanted him to.

‘I’d be horrified if I thought my officers were holding back on me, Tony. Be frank. I won’t be upset.’

OK. If that was how she wanted to play it. ‘You’ve never been a detective, have you, ma’am?’ He posed it as a question, even though he already knew the answer. Neither did he give her time to speak before he carried on. ‘I know we can have a bit of a reputation for being difficult, us plain clothes coppers. We don’t keep an eye on the budgets as much as you’d like, I’m sure. And we’ve a tendency to get a bit fixated sometimes. It’s part of the training. So you can imagine how anything that distracts us from the task in hand can be a bit annoying. Especially if there’s no obvious good reason for it. Like today’s trip and last night’s so-called function.’

Something like irritation flickered across the chief superintendent’s face then, but she kept it well hidden. For a while there was nothing but the roar of tyres on road and the whistle of wind around the car’s wing mirrors. Then she hitched a smile on to her face that would have done a politician proud.

‘I can sort of see your point, Tony. Really, I can. But you hit the nail on the head right there. Specialist Crime has a tendency to think of budgets as a distant second priority, if it thinks of them at all. But we live in a world of finite resources, sadly. Cuts are everywhere, and they’re only going to get worse.’ And now she leaned in close, her hand back on his knee but not lightly this time. ‘And that’s why I need you by my side. So I can fight off the accountants and the Police Authority when they come demanding we keep chipping away at the costs. I need someone who’s been at the coal face to remind them that it’s not pounds and pence, but people’s lives.’

It was a good speech, he had to admit. Even if it was all bollocks. McLean held the chief superintendent’s stare for a moment longer, then looked pointedly down at her hand. She followed his gaze and a moment later removed it, sliding away to sit more comfortably in her seat with the faintest flicker of a smile playing across her lips.

‘Think about it, Tony. You and me, we could do great things together.’

McLean let his head tip back and stared at the cloth lining the roof of the car. He didn’t need his years of experience to hear the unspoken threat. Sure, they could do great things together, but she could also make his life hell if he continued to spurn her advances.

31

‘What exactly are we here for, Janie?’

Detective Sergeant Harrison sat in the driver’s seat of the pool car and watched the house across the street. Beside her, Detective Constable Jay Stringer wasn’t exactly fidgeting like a bored child, but it came close. They’d been parked up for half an hour now, and he either needed to go to the toilet or had actual ants in his pants.

‘This, according to our records, is the house of Christopher Allan,’ Janie said.

‘Aye, I know that. An’ I know you want to talk to him. So why are we sitting here staring at the place and not chapping on his door?’

It wasn’t a bad question, although Janie didn’t feel she needed to answer it straight away. Instead she posed her own question. ‘What do you make of it? The house?’

‘The house? How?’

Stringer’s comment wasn’t particularly helpful, but it was also accurate. Christopher Allan, it appeared, lived in a nondescript semi-detached bungalow on the outskirts of Colinton where it bumped up against Dreghorn to the south. A row of near-identical pebble-dash harled bungalows arced in a shallow curve towards the main road. Each of the buildings had a short stretch of front garden, many of which had been paved over to provide off-street parking. Judging by the cars, it was a relatively affluent area. More expensive than a detective sergeant’s salary might stretch to, certainly.

‘It’s not exactly the kind of place you’d expect a mugger to live, is it?’ she said.

‘Not a street mugger, no,’ Stringer conceded. ‘Maybe a banker though, and they’re a bit like muggers, when you stop and think about it.’

Janie smiled at that. Jay wasn’t bad company. A lot less surly than Lofty Blane these days, for sure. She hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble when someone higher up the command chain found out what she was doing here. Unless, of course, what she was doing here went well, in which case they’d probably get away with it.

‘So this is where your man lives? With the broken bollocks?’

Janie was about to explain what a ruptured testicle actually was, wondering all the while how a man might not know that when she did. Before she could speak, the front door opened and a woman stepped out. From a distance she