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

all the cases. And he needed to warn her about the chief superintendent’s threat, of course.

‘Actually, yes. It was something you said before we were interrupted earlier.’ McLean glanced around the empty CID room. Tempting though it was to speak in there, it was almost inevitable they would be interrupted. Likewise heading down to the canteen. And if he took Harrison up to his office, who knew what the gossips would make of it. Damn, but he hated how things like that got in the way of doing the job. ‘You busy right now?’

Harrison looked at him like he was mad or something. ‘Are you kidding, sir? I’m always busy. Nothing that can’t wait a while though.’

‘Well see if you can’t find us a pool car and meet me downstairs in ten minutes. I’ve got to go and speak to Mrs Galloway about her husband. You can tell me all about Isobel DeVilliers on the way there.’

‘Izzy?’ Harrison’s voice hitched up a half-octave. ‘What do you—?’

‘Not here, Janie. Sort out a car and meet me downstairs. I need to go and see Grumpy Bob first.’

37

The temperature rarely changed down in the basement where the CCU hid its offices, and in the height of summer it was a welcome relief from the sweltering heat of the glass-walled offices upstairs. Now that autumn was on the turn, the cool seemed somehow chilly, seeping into McLean’s bones. It must have been seeping into Grumpy Bob’s bones too, as the ex-detective sergeant sat at his desk with a small heater blowing away underneath. When he noticed McLean at the door, he rubbed his hands together and blew on them theatrically.

‘You should’ve retired to Florida if you wanted to keep warm in your old age, Bob.’ He stepped fully into the room, noticing as he did that there was no sign of Ex-Detective Superintendent Duguid.

‘Florida? Aye, I went there once with Mrs Bob. Before she decided she’d had enough of me. Too much sun for a man of my delicate complexion.’ Grumpy Bob closed the folder he’d been reading, took off his spectacles and slid them into the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Heard you were getting sweet-talked by our new chief superintendent. You want to be careful there. She’s trouble if you ask me.’

‘Funny you should mention that, Bob. I was coming to much the same conclusion myself.’ McLean crossed the room, pulled up a chair and sat opposite the detective sergeant. ‘She’s manipulative and doesn’t like being told no. Which is fine when she’s going up against the politicians for an increase in our budgets, less so when she wants me to follow her around wherever she goes, like a wee spaniel or something.’

‘You’ve tried, I take it? Telling her no.’

‘Just this very morning.’ McLean recounted the events, starting with his rude awakening before dawn, and ending with the chief superintendent’s veiled threat to his team. Grumpy Bob listened carefully, as was his way. When McLean had finished, the ex-detective sergeant got up slowly, walked across the room to where a coffee machine sat on top of a short filing cabinet, and poured out a single mug.

‘I’d offer you one, but I get the feeling you’re only here to ask a favour.’

‘You know me too well.’

Grumpy Bob returned to his desk, sat down. ‘So what are you going to do about her?’

McLean considered for a moment before answering. ‘That depends very much on what she’s trying to hide.’

‘And I suppose you want me to find out what that is, aye?’

‘To be honest, Bob, I’m surprised you don’t know already. There’s not much happens in this station behind your back.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, even though I’m not sure it is one. But I have to admit I’ve not found out much about our new leader as yet. No one’s got a bad word to say about her so far, but that’s probably because she’s not been here long enough to put too many folks’ backs up. And she’s shaken some more money out of the budgets, which goes a long way to gaining an officer’s deep and abiding loyalty, in my experience.’

McLean slumped in his seat. ‘Maybe it’s just me she’s got her eyes on, then. I could do without the attention, mind.’

‘That bad?’

‘Worse. We’re in the middle of a murder investigation, three more suspicious deaths on top of that, and she drags me over to Gartcosh with her so she’s not lonely in the car. And that Safe Streets Committee event. That was a bloody joke. If I’d been home like I was meant to be, my car wouldn’t have been in the station car park to get nicked, either.’

‘Aye, shame about that car. It was a bit flash, but much more comfortable than the old one.’

‘Maybe it’s nothing,’ McLean continued. ‘Like you say, she’s new in the job, still finding her feet. And she’s more pleasing on the eye than Call-me-Stevie. He never put his hand on my knee, though.’

Grumpy Bob almost spat out his coffee as he tried and failed to suppress a laugh. ‘Oh dear. She’s really not got any idea, has she?’ He turned serious again. ‘But that’s a problem I can see blowing up out of all proportion. Needs nipping in the bud, right enough.’

McLean stood up and returned the chair to the desk he’d found it under. ‘Have a chat with that infamous network of old retired detectives I’ve heard so much about, eh? There must be something the chief superintendent would rather wasn’t common knowledge. Not that I’d ever go public with anything, but she doesn’t need to know that.’

‘About earlier, sir. I’m sorry. I was out of line. I should have told you the moment Izzy came to me.’

DS Harrison had entirely failed to secure a pool car for the journey, and now she sat in the passenger seat of Emma’s little Renault ZOE. They’d driven in silence for about five minutes before she’d broken. Not that McLean had been trying to