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

reaction to prescription painkillers. There’s nothing to suggest his death was anything other than an unfortunate accident. Despite his rock and roll background, we didn’t find any evidence he’d been supplementing his medication with something illegal, so you needn’t worry yourself on that score. I’ll have the post-mortem results by tomorrow at the latest, and a report for the PF by the end of the same day. It will, of course, come to you first. Is that OK, ma’am?’

Elmwood stared at him for long seconds, her face unreadable, but not friendly. Finally she nodded, once, and with the minimum of movement possible. It was enough for McLean. With an even more minimal nod of his own, he turned and left.

His meeting with the chief superintendent still weighing on his mind, McLean strode back to his office and slumped into his chair. The reports and paperwork piled around his desk were things he needed to attend to, but it was hard to focus on anything. Not when he knew that woman was only a few tens of metres away.

He should have seen the game she was playing from their first meeting. Looking back, it was painfully obvious, and yet also unbelievable. He’d been grateful to her for cutting through the Gordian knot of internal investigations, Professional Standards hearings and all the political pressure being brought to bear to punish him for the Anya Renfrew case. The demotion had been meaningless; a small pay cut he of all people would barely notice, and a big drop in responsibility when it came to strategising and forward planning. No wonder he’d ignored the warning signs; Gail Elmwood had ridden in like a knight in shining armour to rescue him.

And now she was calling in the favour, since he was clearly not going to respond to her incessant flirting with him.

Frustrated, he pulled the nearest folder to him and flipped it open. For a moment he couldn’t recall the details of the case, but then it started to fall back into place. The estate agent, Don Purefoy. Crushed to death by a rockfall on his building site. The post-mortem report confirmed that he’d died from asphyxiation due to the weight of boulders pinning him to the ground. His ribs had been cracked, but otherwise his body had been left remarkably unscathed. The few photographs in the report made that abundantly clear, as Purefoy’s head showed no signs of damage whatsoever. There had been no obvious sign of foul play, but it was clear from Angus’s terse prose that he considered the circumstances unusual. DS Harrison had conducted preliminary interviews with the two people who had found the body, and she had compiled this report on his death for the Procurator Fiscal. Which reminded him he needed to have words with the detective sergeant, both a ticking off and a warning to tread very carefully where the chief superintendent was concerned. He reached for his phone, about to call her, when something else caught his eye.

Putting the report to one side, he flicked through the piles on his desk until he found another one. Steve Whitaker, spontaneous human combustion victim. The photographs in the report reminded him of the scene itself, and he could almost smell the burned flesh. Again, Angus had been cautious with his post-mortem results, although this time it was more obvious why. It was possible, given the right combination of circumstances, for a body’s subcutaneous fat to act a bit like the wax in a candle. That was the best available explanation for the extremely uncommon but certainly real phenomenon. His best bet, and the conclusion of the report, was that Whitaker had fallen asleep drunk and managed to set himself on fire in such a way that only his torso burned. Not his head, lower legs, arms or indeed the chair in which he had been sitting. Crucially, there were no obvious signs of foul play. Same as with Purefoy, and now with Brian Galloway.

There had to be a connection between all three men. His gut told him there was. He just needed to look at them all the right way. Or maybe get a fresh pair of eyes to look at them for him.

Gathering up the two reports, McLean left his office and went in search of a spare detective. There was no sign of either DI Ritchie or Detective Superintendent McIntyre, which probably meant they were both in important meetings somewhere. DC Stringer and DS Gregg were both on their phones when he stuck his head into the Cecily Slater incident room, so he ducked out again before either of them noticed. He briefly considered going across to the offices of the Sexual Crimes Unit and speaking to DCI Dexter, but this wasn’t really connected to her line of work, and Vice was usually even more busy than Specialist Crime. He could see if anyone was in the Cold Case Unit down in the basement, but he’d leaned on them too much already.

In the end, McLean’s feet took him to the CID room and its mess of desks assigned to the detective constables and sergeants in his own division. For a long time the room had felt like a classroom the day after term’s ended, but now it was beginning to fill up again. There weren’t any actual detectives there; that would have been too much to hope for. But the once-empty desks now bore evidence of occupation. Elmwood had promised them new DCs, and McLean had even met a couple of them. They were too new to be any use to him right now, though. He needed someone with a few miles under their belt.

‘You looking for anyone in particular, sir?’

Hidden away at the back of the room, her body obscured by a large flat-screen computer monitor, McLean hadn’t noticed DS Harrison until she stood up. He didn’t want to admit that he’d been looking for her in particular, but there weren’t any other officers who knew