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

felt a cold stare on his neck. Turning, he saw a black cat sitting on the wall, motionless as a statue until it realised it had been seen, at which point it started to lick a nonchalant paw. When he turned back, the door was already open.

‘Tony, how lovely to see you. Do come in, come in.’ Madame Rose beckoned him inside. McLean allowed himself to be led through the large hall and then up the stairs to the first floor. The last time he’d been in the living room here it had been to see an old gypsy woman and a young Syrian refugee. He briefly wondered what had become of them. Good things, he hoped.

‘Settle yourself in, why don’t you? I’ll see about some tea.’ Rose barely did more than open the living room door before hurrying off, leaving McLean to his own devices.

The room was large, with an extravagantly high ceiling, but like everywhere else in Madame Rose’s house, it was cluttered with a bizarre collection of what he could only describe as stuff. Her business card described her as a fortune teller and tarot reader, but also a dealer in occult curios, and this was clearly where most of them ended up being stored until some equally eccentric buyer could be found for them. Glass-fronted bookcases lined three walls, some filled with books, others with things McLean had no ready name for. At least the middle of the room was only filled with overlarge furniture. Two figures sat on a sofa with their backs to him; a third emerged from the depths of a large, leather, wing-backed chair that had been angled towards the fire.

‘Tony. Wondered when you were going to show up.’ Unexpected, but not unwelcome, Amanda Parsons came up and gave him a hug. By the time she released him, the other two people had stood up to greet him too. One he’d been working with until quite late in the day already, which meant the other one must be Izzy DeVilliers.

McLean hadn’t really known what to expect, but the woman who stared at him through narrowed eyes was not it. She was young, he knew. Not yet nineteen if the dossier he’d scanned was up to date. A child of the twenty-first century. And yet those eyes had seen far more than her short life should have allowed. She was dressed in a mess of loose-fitting casual gear that made her look like a refugee from the Greenham Common protest camps. Her hair was a vivid shade of red, and if she’d paid to have it cut she should probably be looking for a refund. He guessed she’d probably done it herself with the first pair of kitchen scissors she’d managed to get her hands on. Either that or she’d shaved her head a month past and was now letting it grow out. The only thing missing from her uniform was any sign of tattoos, which was hardly surprising given how little of her skin was uncovered. Neither did she have any piercings, which was the thing he found most surprising. A nose stud seemed to be almost compulsory these days.

‘Izzy, this is the boss. Detective Inspector McLean.’ Harrison confirmed his suspicion of her identity, not that there had been any uncertainty.

‘Ms DeVilliers. Thank you for agreeing to meet.’ He held out a hand to shake, but she made no move to reciprocate so he let it drop back down again.

‘Tea, anyone? Or would you prefer something a little stronger?’ Madame Rose bustled in through the door at precisely the right moment to defuse the awkwardness. Izzy’s intense and uncomfortable stare slid off McLean like a bucket of cold water and latched on to the medium. Its unfriendliness softened a little, but didn’t disappear entirely.

‘I’m driving, so tea’s fine for me, thanks,’ McLean said. Madame Rose stepped past him, carrying an enormous tray laden with teapot, cups, a jug of milk, bowl of sugar, plate heaped high with home-baked biscuits, and an enormous chocolate cake. Despite what must have been a considerable weight, she hefted the whole thing with little obvious effort, weaving an intricate path through the furniture until she reached a suitably clear table and set the tray down.

‘Tea it is, then.’ Madame Rose smiled at everyone in the room, quite deliberately choosing to ignore the tension boiling off Izzy. ‘Let’s all sit down and have a nice wee chat.’

It didn’t take McLean long to realise that he was the problem. Izzy sat on the smaller of the two sofas, close to DC Harrison, her entire posture defensive. Manda Parsons had retreated back to her comfortable armchair by the fire, leaving him and Madame Rose the larger sofa. He’d tried a little small talk to reduce the tension, but that clearly wasn’t going to work on the young woman. Having heard her story from others, he could understand why.

‘Did Janie explain why I wanted to talk to you?’ he asked, after his comments on the Edinburgh music scene had been met with stony silence. Harrison started to open her mouth to reply, but stopped herself just in time.

‘Something about the two twats who tried to jump me on the Royal Mile?’ Izzy smiled at the memory, an improvement over her habitual scowl, albeit short-lived.

‘You reckon they’d been sent by Tommy Fielding. Why did you think that?’

‘Duh. Because nobody else would try and drag me into a side street for a laugh, would they?’

McLean noticed she said ‘side street’ and not ‘close’. Izzy’s accent was English, and while she was trying to sound like she’d lived her life on the wrong side of the tracks, the posh slipped through occasionally.

‘Did they say anything when they grabbed you?’

‘Don’t really remember, do I? Too busy fighting for my life.’

‘Seems you made quite a good accounting for yourself. The way I hear it, Christopher Allan will likely always walk with a limp, and the other one, Brian Galloway? Well, he won’t be walking anywhere