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

‘Any idea why CID need to get involved?’ He stared out the window at the darkness that was just beginning to melt away. The nights were fair drawing in now, mornings coming later and later. Soon he’d be leaving for work and coming home in the dark.

‘Not CID, sir. You in particular. Word came in from the chief superintendent’s office, apparently.’

‘That’s a bit irregular, isn’t it?’ The question was out before he realised he’d spoken it. ‘Sorry, Sandy. That’s unfair. I know you’re just the messenger. Send me the details and I’ll head straight there from home.’

He hung up, put his phone down on the bedside table and wandered into the bathroom. By the time he was showered, dressed and ready to go, the name and address had arrived in a text. Little else to go on, which was strange. In the kitchen, Mrs McCutcheon’s cat looked up at him from her spot in front of the Aga. The other cat was nowhere to be seen, but when McLean pulled out a chair, it shot off in surprise. He was about to put the kettle on and see if the bread wasn’t too spotty for toasting when his phone buzzed the arrival of another text.

Thx for taking this case. Swift report would mean a lot to me. Update as soon as you get in. Gail.

He stared at the screen for a long time. He didn’t have the chief superintendent’s personal number in his address book, so his phone hadn’t tagged who the text was from. Plain enough to see from the message, though, and again highly irregular. McLean slid the handset back into his pocket, considering his options. He could go to the station, gather what information he could about this mysterious dead man beyond his name, address and the fact he was somehow connected to the deputy chief constable. Or he could go straight to that address and assess the situation for himself. Report back to Elmwood as requested, and maybe she’d stop picking on him as company for all her social engagements. Chance would be a fine thing, but if he dragged his feet over it she’d make his life even more miserable.

He grabbed his coat and Emma’s keys, took one last look at the kitchen and decided breakfast could wait.

‘Looks like you two are on your own for the day,’ he said to the cats, now both curled up in front of the Aga. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

Once again, McLean was thankful for Emma’s little Renault as he manoeuvred the car into a parking space his old Alfa would have fitted into about as well as the shop window that had killed it. He showed his warrant card to the uniformed constable guarding the front entrance to a nondescript modern terraced house. It was still early enough that there weren’t too many people about, lights on in the other houses suggesting that, unlike him, normal people were having breakfast before heading out to work.

‘Pathologist’s not long here, sir.’ The constable stood aside to let him in through the already open door. McLean nodded his thanks and stepped inside.

A narrow hallway didn’t so much greet him as crowd his senses. McLean was no great student of architecture, but he was fairly sure whoever had designed this house hadn’t been either. It had quite clearly been built with a price in mind, and a low one at that. At least for the developer. Given the way house prices were going in the city these days, and the location of this particular terrace, the house was worth considerably more than the constable guarding it would be able to afford.

An open flight of stairs climbed to the first floor, the hallway continuing past it to a pair of doors. Immediately to his left, another door stood open, revealing a depressingly small living room. Like many of its kind, it was dominated by an overly large flat-screen television, which served only to make the space feel even smaller than it really was. As did the handful of people clustered around an armchair whose back was to the door. McLean recognised Tom MacPhail. Standing a little further back, clearly uncertain what she should be doing or why she was even there, one of the new intake of detective constables watched nervously. The relief on her face as she saw him enter was palpable, if mixed with a certain trepidation.

‘DC Mitchell, isn’t it?’ McLean said as the constable edged around the room to greet him. She was much the same height as him, but bent her head and rounded her shoulders to make herself smaller in a manner that reminded him of Lofty Blane. Her dark skin and short, almost shaven, black hair marked her out both in the room and back at the station, where faces tended to be either pasty white or sunburned angry red.

‘Yes, sir. Cassandra,’ she helpfully reminded him. ‘Although people call me Cass.’

‘As long as they believe you when you tell them what the future holds.’

The uncertain look returned, which suggested to McLean nobody had taught her Greek mythology. Something for another day, perhaps. He turned his attention to the pathologist, bent over as he peered at something in the chair.

‘OK if I come in, Tom?’

‘If you think you can fit,’ MacPhail said. ‘Shouldn’t be long here, mind you.’

McLean inched a little more into the room. From where he stood he could see the top of a man’s head, thinning hair beginning to go grey. A hand lay on the arm of the chair, its fingers taped up with white gauze and a splint to keep them straight. The sight of it sent a little shiver of worry through him, and he stepped carefully around the pathologist until he could see the man full on.

The thinning hair had been neatly trimmed at the front, framing a face that had seen battle fairly recently. Dark black bruises bulged under each of his staring