What Will Burn

by James Oswald

  ‘You’re probably right. She’s waited a week already, after all. I’ll email you the results as soon as I have them.’ Cadwallader paused a moment as if considering something before adding: ‘On one condition.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Call me Angus. “Doctor Cadwallader” is such a mouthful.’

  Janie wasn’t sure whether to recoil or laugh, so she said nothing, and after a moment the pathologist gave her a little nod and headed off along the path, his faithful assistant Doctor Sharp trotting along behind him.

  ‘According to the records I can track down, the cottage is part of the Bairnfather Estate. Council says it’s occupied by a Cecily Slater. Born fifth July 1931. No one else at the address, so I guess it was just her there on her own.’

  Back at the station, DC Harrison sat on an uncomfortable office chair in the CID room, trying not to feel dwarfed by the imposing bulk of DC Lofty Blane. It wasn’t his fault that he was six foot eight to her five foot six and a bit, but she still couldn’t get used to someone being quite so large. He made up for it by being a genius forensic accountant, and something of a wizard with computers, even if his hands splayed wider than the keyboard and his fingers sometimes hit four keys at a time.

  ‘Do we know anything else about her? Next of kin? GP?’

  ‘Give me a moment, Janie. We’re not exactly overstaffed here.’

  ‘Sorry, Lofty. It’s been a bad day.’ Janie glanced up at the clock over the door, disappointed to see that it was barely noon yet. A long afternoon lay ahead of her before shift end, and she had a horrible feeling she wouldn’t be going home then either. ‘How did we even find out about this? The pathologist reckons she’d been dead a week and nobody noticed.’

  ‘Local farmer delivering her groceries, apparently. Talk about being cut off, eh? There’s an old track goes right up to the cottage, but the bridge collapsed a few months back and everything has to come in by tractor.’

  Janie made a mental note to add interviewing the farmer to the list of actions already piling up. ‘Guess we’d better speak to him. And find out who else has been there recently.’

  ‘Who’s SIO on this then?’ Blane asked as he laboriously tapped at the keyboard.

  ‘We don’t even know if it’s suspicious yet, Lofty. Nothing at the scene to suggest it wasn’t just a horrible accident. Let’s see what the post-mortem brings up, aye?’

  ‘You know when that’ll be? Don’t want to waste too much time on this if it’s no’ suspicious. I’ve enough work for two as it is.’

  ‘Doctor Cadwallader said he’d let me know, but it might be a few days. Just need to make sure we’ve all the background on the poor old dear before then. I’ll take what we’ve got to DI Ritchie soon as she gets back in from wherever she is right now. She can decide whether to make our lives more difficult than they already are.’

  ‘You reckon we’ll get any more officers soon?’ Blane asked. It was a question that bounced around the echoing walls of the near empty CID room most days. The team hadn’t exactly been large to start with, but they’d lost two detectives since the summer. One retired, one . . . well, who knew? Maybe they’d all be reassigned to other teams within the Specialist Crime Division. Still nominally based in the city but tasked wherever there was an investigation needing their skills. Or maybe there would be yet another reorganisation and something entirely new would rise from the ashes.

  ‘Kirsty’s asked. Many times. Doesn’t help that they’re still arguing over who’s going to be the new station chief here. Nobody wants to make any staffing decisions until the top spot’s filled.’

  ‘Well maybe I have some good news for you then.’ Blane clicked once more, sending whatever he’d been doing to the printer. He pushed back his chair, swivelled it around to face her. ‘Word is the new boss starts next week. Apparently she’s coming up from England. The Met, no less.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘That’s what Jay says.’ Blane nodded towards DC Stringer’s desk, empty since he was on late shift and wouldn’t be in until it got dark. ‘He’s been known to get it wrong from time to time, mind you.’

  ‘Not on something like that.’ Janie followed Blane to the printer, busily churning out twice as many pages as they’d asked it for. ‘Wonder what persuaded her to come north.’

  ‘Probably hit the glass ceiling down there. Reckoned she’d have more chance of promotion if she moved. Either that or she really likes haggis and whisky.’

  ‘You’re such a cynic, Lofty.’ Janie grabbed the first few sheets from the printer and started flicking through them. Not much detail at all. Cecily Slater, so much a recluse that nobody noticed when her house caught on fire. Too old and frail to save herself from burning to death. What a horrible way to go.

  ‘What’s the plan of action?’ Blane asked.

  ‘Write it all up and pass it on. We’re only lowly constables, after all.’

  3

  It was only a slap, for fuck’s sake. You couldn’t even see the bruise once she’d stuck some make-up on. What’s all the fuss about?

  Gary sits at the table in the stuffy meeting room and manages, for once, to keep his mouth shut. His suit smells of mothballs and doesn’t fit properly. He’s not worn it since . . . Christ, it would have been Bazza’s wedding. That was some party, right enough. He frowns as he remembers that was where he first met Bella, too. Shame Bazza’s marriage didn’t last more than a couple of years. Trish walked out on him, right enough. Dozy bitch.

  ‘. . . could be looking at a custodial sentence, Mr Tomlinson.’

  Something in the lawyer’s words cuts through his meandering thoughts. Annoying, expensive wee shite that he is, the man’s supposed to know what he’s doing, but that doesn’t sound right.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I said that you could be looking at a custodial sentence, Mr Tomlinson. Jail time, in other words. According to Miss MacDonald, her injuries were quite severe.’

  It takes Gary a while to work out who the lawyer’s talking about. Miss MacDonald. Makes her sound like a school teacher and not the useless junkie waster she is. MacDonald’s her mam’s name, not her da’s. But then they never married either, did they? Far as he knows nobody’s ever called her anything except Bella.

  ‘Barely touched her. She’s putting it on just to make me look bad.’

  The lawyer says nothing for a moment, and Gary reckons the slick fuck’s trying not to sneer. This whole thing’s getting out of hand, making him angry. He shoves his hands into his lap, fists clenched, right leg jiggling up and down as he tries to keep a lid on it. He needs to get out of this room with its shiny wooden table and metal frame chairs, its weird modern art on the walls and that smell of desperation and fear.

  ‘Mr Tomlinson. Gary.’ The lawyer’s trying to put on a reasonable voice now, but it makes him sound like the wee kids in the school playground he and Bazza and Big Tam used to pick on for their lunch money. Gary tenses, lifts his chin so he can stare at the man down his nose.

  ‘I barely touched her.’

  ‘So you have said, and I’m sure it’s true. However.’ The lawyer flips open the thin folder he has with him, picks through some of the pages until he finds what he’s looking for. ‘Miss MacDonald was seen by her GP a few hours after the alleged assault. She referred her to the hospital for X-rays, which showed fractures to the jaw and skull consistent with repeated punching.’

  ‘I slapped her once. An’ only ’cause the stupid bitch wouldn’t shut up when I asked her to.’ Gary’s fists are on the tabletop before he realises what he’s doing. The lawyer lets out a small yelp of surprise, rocks back in his seat even though he’s well out of reach.

  ‘Please, Mr Tomlinson. I’m on your side here. Just laying out the case that’s been presented to us.’ He has his papers in his hands, held close to his chest like a shield. It’s pathetic.

  ‘There’s no fucking
case. Just her lies, aye?’

  ‘Well, see . . . It’s not quite as clear-cut as that, I’m afraid. Miss MacDonald could very well press charges, and in the current political climate a guilty verdict might see you in jail. You might be lucky, get a sympathetic jury, but cases like these they tend to believe the . . . ah . . . victim.’

  For a moment Gary wants to flip the table, maybe give the lawyer a good kicking, then storm out of the building. All this talk of fractures and victims and fucking jail. It’s doing his nut in. He gave her a slap, that was all. She’d been moaning at him that much she deserved it, right enough. And all he wanted her to do was go and quiet the wain down. Poor wee thing needed changing maybe, or a feed. What fucking use was a mother if she couldn’t feed and change her own wain?

  ‘What can I do then?’ he asks once the urge to break things has lessened. The lawyer’s face brightens a little at this, the tension sagging out of his shoulders as he manages a weak smile.

  ‘Well, as it happens, I’ve had some communication with Miss MacDonald’s solicitor, and she is prepared to not pursue charges.’

  ‘Not . . . ? What does that mean?’ Gary’s leg stops its incessant jiggling and he leans forward, arms on the table, paying attention.

  ‘It means you’d walk away with nothing but a caution. No trial, no jail time. You’d keep your job.’

  ‘Aye, there has to be a catch, right? She’s wanting somethin’.’

  The lawyer puts down his papers again, looks Gary straight in the eye. ‘Indeed she is, Mr Tomlinson. You and Miss MacDonald are not married, but you have a daughter?’

  ‘Aye, Wee Mary. She’s named after my nan, see?’

  Something like a grimace passes over the lawyer’s face. It puts Gary back on edge.

  ‘Well, as I say, Miss MacDonald is prepared to let the assault go, but only if you agree to cut all ties with her and the child.’

  Gary’s leg’s started tapping again, his hands balled into fists. ‘You . . . She wants what?’

  ‘Think about it, Mr Tomlinson.’ The lawyer’s got his wheedling school kid voice on again. ‘If you’re found guilty of assault you will go to jail. It’s very likely the court will deny you visiting rights even after your sentence is served.’

  ‘But . . . She cannae do that. Mary’s my wain too. I’ve rights, ken? And that bitch is no’ fit to be a mother either.’

  ‘I’m truly sorry, Mr Tomlinson. But in these cases the overwhelming majority of times custody is given to the mother. If it went to court you would almost certainly lose, and we would be right back here where we are now. I know it seems very unfair, but believe me when I say you can save yourself a great deal of heartache, pain and money if you take Miss MacDonald up on her offer.’

  ‘But my wain. My Wee Mary.’ He’s helpless, he knows. Like the lawyer says, the bitch has got him over a barrel. Courts’ll believe her any day, and if the stuff he and Bazza got up to when they were still lads gets out . . . Gary feels the wetness in the corners of his eyes and that brings on the anger even more. ‘She cannae do this to me,’ he says, but now that snivelling tone is in his own voice and he knows that the bitch can. She has done. Shafted him good and proper.

  He sniffs, runs the back of his hand across his nose and then sniffs again. This is not over yet. Not even close.

  ‘Where do I sign, then?’

  4

  Janie Harrison had never been all that fond of the city mortuary, and especially not first thing in the morning. There was no real reason why she had to attend this examination either, except that in the days since the old lady’s burned remains had been found, she’d grown increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of it being no more than an undiscovered accident. So when the pathologist’s email had appeared, informing her that Cecily Slater would be the morning’s first examination, she had replied letting him know she’d be there.

  Angus Cadwallader himself greeted Janie at the door. ‘Come through, my dear. We’re all ready to go.’

  He led her down the squeaky clean corridor and into the examination theatre, where the body had been laid out on the central table and covered with a white sheet. As she stepped into the room, Janie caught the whiff of burned meat on the air, despite the extractor fans working harder than normal. It was maybe lucky she’d skipped breakfast. She approached the table with slightly less enthusiasm than the pathologist, and then took a step away as Doctor Sharp pulled back the sheet, her hand going up to her nose instinctively.

  ‘Yes. Burned bodies are never much fun, and this one has the added bonus of having started to decompose. Thank the lord for the colder weather, eh?’ Cadwallader switched from charming to serious in an instant, setting about his job with all the professionalism and deft speed that had no doubt kept him in the position for so long. Janie watched and listened as he noted various aspects of the body, took another step back when the scalpel came out. It wasn’t really necessary to be here, and yet something compelled her to witness this.

  ‘Death would have been fairly swift once she was set alight.’ Cadwallader’s words dragged Janie’s attention back to the work in hand just in time for her to see the pathologist studying something that was most likely a lung.

  ‘Swift?’ she asked, then her brain caught up. ‘Set alight?’

  ‘The marks on her trachea and lungs show damage consistent with inhalation of flames. The shock would have killed her quickly. Not saying she wasn’t in considerable pain, mind. She’d been given a thorough beating beforehand.’

  ‘Beaten?’ Janie took a step forward again, the better to see. Then wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Several of her ribs are broken, and there are fractures in her arms too. She’s dislocated a hip, although that could have happened falling from her chair. Damage from the fire has masked the external bruising, but it’s there all the same. Poor old dear was thoroughly worked over, then someone dowsed her in some kind of accelerant – my guess would be petrol – and set her on fire. I think we can rule out accidental death on this one.’

  ‘Shit.’ The word was out before Janie could stop herself, her brain too busy catching up with the ramifications of this discovery.

  ‘Shit indeed,’ Cadwallader said. ‘I don’t much fancy your job, my dear.’

  ‘Have we got a clearer idea how long she’d been lying there before we found her?’ Janie asked.

  The pathologist looked at her in much the same way as her old history teacher had done when she’d got the dates wrong in a test. Then he shrugged. ‘There’s a few indicators we can use, maggots, flies, that sort of thing. We can narrow it down further with some other tests, but as I said when we found her, I’d say she’d been lying there for a week.’

  A week for the rain to wash away forensic evidence. Janie shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, felt the familiar weight of her phone. She’d come here hoping to get some more facts before writing it all up and moving on. Well, now she had those facts and more. She had a horrible feeling this case wasn’t going to be so easy to solve, either. She’d not been in plain clothes long, but she’d worked enough weird cases to recognise the signs. And of course she’d worked those cases with DCI McLean, whose reputation for attracting the strange and unsettling was well deserved.

  ‘Any news about our mutual friend the detective chief inspector?’ Cadwallader asked, as if he had read her mind. It surprised Janie that he’d not mentioned him before. Or, indeed, called the man himself since they were meant to be close friends.

  ‘Still on suspension. Professional Standards weren’t at all happy with what he did over the summer. I’ve seen him a couple of times going into interviews, but they’re dragging their feet about something.’

  ‘I suspect that will be the wealthy and influential people he embarrassed looking to extract their pound of flesh.’ Cadwallader put down the scalpel he’d been waving around and focused his full attention on her. ‘Young Tony has a habi
t of making enemies of the most well connected.’

  ‘I thought the Complaints were meant to be above that kind of thing.’ Janie knew how foolish and naive she sounded even before the last of her words were out.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they are, my dear. But they’ll be feeling the pressure too. Still, he’s got broad shoulders. He can cope, and meantime nobody’s turning the heat on you and your colleagues. You can be thankful for that.’

  Janie looked away from the pathologist, her gaze sliding back to the battered and burned remains of the old woman. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but the DCI must have protected the rest of the team from the fallout. She’d given the briefest of statements to Professional Standards, and that had been the last of it.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon,’ she said, and hoped that she wasn’t wrong. ‘I have a feeling this case is going to be right up his street.’

  The room swarmed with a press of uniformed bodies, the noise almost too loud for such an early hour. For a moment Janie wondered if the news about Cecily Slater had preceded her up the hill from the mortuary. But even if it had, there wouldn’t have been this many officers needed or assigned, surely. No, this was something else entirely, and it made finding a senior detective to talk to almost impossible.

  She edged into the room and slipped through the throng as best she could, scanning the press of bodies until she spotted the hunched form of Lofty Blane. It took a while to reach him, such was the crowd. She hadn’t realised there were this many officers still assigned to the station, but then she saw several support staff in the mix. Even so, there couldn’t have been anyone on shift missing. Heaven help them if there was a fire alarm.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked once she’d managed to attract Blane’s attention. Taller than most of them by at least a head, the detective constable had a way of shrinking in on himself to avoid attracting attention. It was effective, but also seemed to render him remarkably deaf sometimes, and the general noise didn’t help.