What Will Burn

by James Oswald

  Harrison gave him a look that was half knowing, half incredulous. ‘You think he’d have anything to do with this?’

  ‘Maybe not him directly. Families can be weird that way though, and rich families tend to be the worst. I don’t know what the set-up with the hotel is, how the Bairnfather Estate trust works. Could be any number of reasons why one beneficiary might want to get rid of another, great-aunt or no.’

  ‘I’ll get Lofty to look into it. He’s the best when it comes to numbers.’ Harrison folded her coat neatly and placed it in the boot so it wouldn’t stain the leather seats. ‘You want me to drive, sir?’

  McLean handed her the keys, not quite sure when it was he’d decided he preferred being chauffeured to driving himself. Perhaps it was the car, with its ridiculously over-powered engine. He found himself unaccountably yearning for the simplicity of his old GTV. Or maybe he was yearning for the past it represented.

  Shaking his head at the stray thought, he closed the boot and walked round to the passenger door. Inside, the car was warm and dry, the seat welcome after being on his feet for a while. He pulled the door closed, strapped on the seat belt, and only then noticed that Harrison hadn’t climbed in behind the wheel. She’d opened the door, just a crack, and then stopped.

  ‘You’re letting the cold air in, Sergeant,’ he said, half joking. Harrison didn’t respond, so he craned his neck forward to see where she was looking, then followed her gaze to a point a few yards off, beside the path that climbed up from the forestry track to the clearing. And then he saw it, sitting still as a statue, staring with that intense gaze that went right through to your soul. A black cat. Not large like Mrs McCutcheon’s cat, who had grown portly on an exercise regime that consisted mainly of sleeping in front of the Aga. It had sheltered as best it could from the rain under a frond of bracken, but even so its coat was slick with wet. As he watched, it lifted a front paw, licked it, and then wiped its face a couple of times.

  Not quite knowing why he did so, McLean unclasped his seat belt and opened the car door. As if it had been waiting for his invitation, the cat stopped cleaning itself, stood up and trotted over. It had the decency to shake the worst of the water off its back, then leapt gracefully into his lap. He held out a suspicious hand, but the cat only nudged it once, marking him with its scent, before curling up into a neat black ball.

  ‘Umm . . .’ Harrison peered in through the now fully open driver’s side door, her uncertainty as evident as McLean’s own.

  ‘It’s not the first time this has happened to me,’ McLean said. ‘Guess we’ll need to stop off at a vet on the way back to the station.’

  14

  ‘Boss wants to see you, Gaz.’

  Big John’s words are the last thing he needs to hear. He’s only just got in, still bleary eyed and sore from another sleepless night on Bazza’s couch. Gary knows he can’t stay there much longer, but finding anywhere in this city’s a nightmare these days. When did it all get so expensive? And the council couldn’t give two fucks he’s been kicked out of his own home. Still got to pay the rent, mind. Fucking child support for a kid he’s not even allowed to see any more.

  ‘He say what it was about?’ Gary thumps the corner of his locker with the heel of his hand to get the door opened. Who needs a padlock when the fucking thing’s almost welded itself shut? Cheap piece of foreign shit.

  ‘No’ Stevie. He’s away up at the new site. It’s Sheila in charge now.’

  As if Gary’s day couldn’t get any worse. He pulls the door open, shoves his bag inside on top of the pile of hi-vis gear and his steel-capped boots, then slams the door hard shut again.

  ‘Fuckin’ marvellous. What genius puts a woman in charge of a site like this, aye?’ He’s not expecting an answer, and doesn’t get one. As Big John trudges off towards the building site, Gary rolls the stiffness out of his shoulders, runs a hand through his hair and heads for the admin block.

  They’ve been on this site a couple of years now, and everyone knows the project’s winding up. The heavy concrete work for the foundations and main structure is done. Now it’s the turn of the sparkies and plumbers, the glass boys and those mad bastards who do the tiling. Detail work to make the new St James’s Centre all shiny for the public. Gary doesn’t do detail. Rebar, concrete pumps and hard graft, that’s his thing.

  ‘Come in.’ The voice from the other side of the frosted glass door is all wrong when Gary knocks. He’s known Stevie Tanner the best part of a decade now, since he started work out of school. They’ve been on the same jobs that whole time, so how come Stevie’s away and Gary’s still here? He knows he’s not the sharpest pencil in the box, but he’s not stupid either. With a sigh, he pushes open the door.

  Sheila’s sitting at Stevie’s desk. She’s old. At least forty, with a face like she’s sucking a lemon while someone pulls her hair. Not that she’s got much of that, mind. Cut short on top, shaved around the sides. She reminds Gary of those uppity lesbian bitches camped outside the hotel where he met Mr Fielding.

  ‘Ah, Mr Tomlinson. You’re here. Have a seat.’ Sheila’s voice is never friendly, but now it’s colder than the wind coming in off the Forth. Gary sees the chair, set up in front of the desk, and knows exactly what’s coming. He’s still too craven to refuse her command though, even if he hates himself for it.

  ‘As you know, Mr Tomlinson, the main structural work on this site is all completed now. Barring a few corrections, and the addition to the basement levels that team four are working on, there’s no more concrete pouring work to do.’

  Get on with it, you bitch, Gary wants to say. He can’t though. He’s struck dumb by the dawning realisation of what’s happening.

  ‘We’ve moved a few workers to other sites, but there’s not as much building work going on at the moment, so we’re having to restructure our workforce. To that end, I’ve been tasked with carrying out performance appraisals of all staff.’ She’s had her hands folded on the desk in front of her, and now he sees they’ve been partially covering a thin folder. His name is printed across the top. Fuck.

  ‘I’m afraid your score is at the bottom of the list, considerably below the average. We can’t afford to carry any baggage in these straitened times, Mr Tomlinson, so I am afraid we can no longer offer you employment here.’

  Her words are all strange. Gobbledegook. He can’t see properly. ‘The fuck?’

  ‘There’s no need for that kind of language, Mr Tomlinson. You will receive a generous severance package and a reference that’s frankly better than you deserve, judging by your appraisal score.’ Now Sheila opens the folder, takes out a sheet of paper from the top, swivels it around and pushes it across the desk towards him.

  ‘You . . . You’re firing me?’ Gary’s mind, never the fastest, is struggling as if it were wading through recently poured concrete.

  ‘We’re ceasing your employment, yes. Effective immediately. Don’t worry though, you’ll get a month’s pay regardless.’

  ‘I . . . whut?’ Gary’s still wading through concrete, but now his anger’s beginning to burn. Before he’s even managed to stand though, the office door has opened and two of the site security guards are directly behind him. He knows them, Ted Sillars and Mac Henderson. He’s drunk with them on a Friday evening, swapped dirty jokes. Fuck, he’s even seen Mac a few times in the stands at Tynecastle. But now they’re all business. Don’t even look embarrassed about it, the fuckers.

  ‘Thank you for being so understanding, Mr Tomlinson.’ Sheila stands up, the thin folder clasped in her hands like a shield. ‘You can collect your personal belongings from your locker, and then these two gentlemen will escort you to the gates.’ She sticks out her hand, and for a mad moment he thinks she wants him to shake it. Then she nods at his chest and the lanyard hanging around his neck. ‘Your security pass, please.’

  And just like that, he’s fired.

  Interlude

&nbs
p; A cold wind blows in across the Tay, bringing with it the smell of burning wood from the salmon smokers and the silty tang of the mudflats. High clouds hide a weak sun, and out across the water the port of Dundee can be seen as a smudge of dirty air blurring the Sidlaw hills. There will be rain later on, she knows. A storm from the North Sea to make life yet more miserable for these people. She won’t be around to see it, although there is scant comfort in that knowledge.

  ‘Agnes Carter. You have been found guilty this day of the foul practice of witchcraft. Your sentence as decreed by King James himself is that you be burned at the stake. Do you renounce your evil, reject the worship of the devil and take the Lord into your heart?’

  The man’s a fool, but he’s a dangerous fool. Head addled with power and a little learning. He understands nothing, and yet she’s the one tied to a pole, surrounded by wood dowsed in oil. The smell of it makes her senses spin. Easy enough to just do as he says, but then if she’d been that kind of person she’d never be in this situation in the first place.

  ‘Will it do me any good?’ she asks. ‘If I sing praise to the Lord, will you cut me down and send me on my way, sir?’

  He startles at her voice, perhaps not expecting anything from her, perhaps thinking she will rant and rail, curse him in strange tongues. How many women has he executed now? Him and his like, travelling the land, sowing discord and mistrust, finding small grievances and building them into stories of horror these superstitious folk accept without question. Gullible people, so easily swayed and controlled. They blame her for their misfortune even though they’ve brought it on themselves. Will they stop and wonder, once she’s gone and nothing has changed, that they might not have been wrong about her? She doubts that very much.

  ‘The Lord is forgiveness.’ The witchfinder steps towards her pyre, one hand clutching his leather bound bible. With the other he draws his sword from its scabbard, and she can see well enough how sharp he has honed its edge. ‘Recant your sins and I will send you to him swiftly.’

  ‘Not much of a choice then, is it.’

  She is trying her best to keep the fear and panic from her voice, but even she can hear the tremble. They will kill her here, and it will be painful. There is nothing she can do about that though. No one is going to ride to her rescue, and even if she were to escape the ropes that bind her to this stake, the mob would rip her apart before she could take more than a dozen paces. They have gathered with the morning, their numbers growing until it is clear nobody tends the livestock or tills the fields for miles around. The forge will go cold, the loaves in the bakery fail to prove, and the blacksmith and baker both will blame her. The farmers will blame her for the weather and the fishermen for their poor catches. Same as they have blamed her for every little thing that has gone wrong in their lives even as they have turned to her for help with their ailments.

  ‘Well, do you recant, witch?’

  She looks at the man in surprise. Had she really forgotten he was here? She has let her mind wander too soon. It would be easy enough to sing his song, take an easy death, quick and clean. Except that she no more believes in his mercy than she does his intelligence. This is a show for the people, not an exercise in leniency for her. He wants to extract a confession and repentance from her so that he can show them he is in charge, doing the Lord’s work. And the king’s. Well, they will all be disappointed this day.

  She fixes him with a stare that would stop a rampaging bull. ‘A plague upon you, and all of your kind. I cannot recant that which I have never done, and neither will anything I say change your blinkered mind.’

  He recoils as if her words sting. Good. She wants him to remember this day. May it haunt him for what remains of his short and miserable life. He says nothing, but sheathes his sword and then beckons for the torch. For one slow breath she thinks he is going to prolong the moment, perhaps give her one more chance to play his game. But instead he merely shrugs before setting the pyre alight.

  15

  McLean was on his way to his office, carrying his canteen spoils of freshly brewed coffee and still warm chocolate muffin, when he heard his name being called. He stopped walking, took two steps back until he could see in through the open door to where Detective Sergeant Sandy Gregg stood, one hand clasped over the mouthpiece of her desk phone as if the mute button had never been invented.

  ‘Were you wanting me?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, sorry to shout, sir, only I saw you passing and thought you’d want to know about this.’

  McLean doubted that. Unless it was news that someone had handed themselves in with a signed confession and hard evidence they’d murdered Cecily Slater. Chance would be a fine thing.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘There’s a dead body. Basement flat in Meadowbank. First officer on the scene called it in as – and I quote – “bloody weird”.’

  ‘Weird how?’

  ‘Something about the body being almost burned away, but no real damage to the room? To be honest, sir, he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.’

  McLean dragged his gaze away from the telephone handset. Gregg must have been about to call someone, rather than having them on hold while she spoke to him. Maybe it’d been him she was going to call. ‘Who’s the officer?’

  ‘Sergeant Gatford, sir. Which is why I thought I’d bring it to your attention. Don’s usually steady, even if he should have retired years ago. He sounded fair spooked on the phone. Said it was the sort of thing you’d know how to deal with.’ Gregg put the emphasis on the pronoun, just in case McLean missed the point.

  ‘You got an address?’

  Gregg finally put the handset back on its cradle and peeled a Post-it note from the stack sitting beside the phone, then stuck it to the side of his coffee mug. At least her handwriting was neat. She held up a hand before McLean could get his next question in.

  ‘Tied up with stuff at the moment, sir. And I’ve a case review with DI Ritchie starting in ten minutes.’

  McLean looked around the CID room, remembering a time when it had bustled with detectives. Now most of the desks were empty, but not all of them. A lone figure near the back was trying to hide behind his monitor, but there was no way someone so tall could shrink enough not to be seen.

  ‘You busy, Constable?’ he asked as DC Blane gave up the fight and sat straight.

  ‘Nothing that can’t wait, sir.’

  ‘OK then. Sort out a pool car and I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.’ He looked at the coffee and muffin. Still fresh and warm. He’d been hoping to savour them while getting up to speed on what needed doing today. Best laid plans and all that. ‘Better make it ten.’

  Tucked in under the shadow of Meadowbank Stadium, the tenements of Cambusnethan Street were in the main tidy, although they might also have been described as tired. A century and more of Auld Reekie’s smoke had blackened the stone facades, and the mixture of old-fashioned sash windows and more modern uPVC replacements marked out the different ownership of the individual flats as clearly as any signpost. It wasn’t hard to find the address they were looking for; a stream of white boiler-suited forensic technicians were ferrying equipment from a pair of battered vans, past a police cordon and in through a gap in the railings where they disappeared down into a basement. McLean was glad he’d parked on Lower London Road and walked the rest of the way. No one was going to drive down the length of the street any time soon.

  ‘You got the message then, sir. Good.’ Police Sergeant Don Gatford met them at the cordon tape with a smile that was a mixture of relief and nervousness. McLean hadn’t worked directly with the man for many years, but he was a solid and reliable officer.

  ‘What have you got for me, Don? The message said weird.’

  ‘Aye, and I don’t think I can describe it. Dead body, burned, but there’s no sign of a fire in the room.’

  ‘You think they were killed elsewhere and brought here?�
�

  Gatford shrugged his shoulders, gave a tiny shake of his head. ‘I don’t think so, sir. Best if you see for yourself.’

  ‘Do we know who it is?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Gatford looked relieved to be back on familiar territory. He pulled out his notebook and leafed through the pages until he found the details. ‘Mr Stephen Whitaker. Lives alone, neighbours don’t see much of him, don’t really know anything about him, but then he lives in the basement with its own entrance, so it’s no’ like he’s chatting wi’ folk in the hallway.’

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘That was a neighbour. Old wifey lives on the ground floor, above his flat. Went to complain about the smell and found him . . . well, you’ll see. Pathologist’s down there just now if you’re wanting to talk to him.’

  McLean turned to DC Blane, a full head taller than both him and PS Gatford. Most Edinburgh tenements had high ceilings, but not in the basement flats. ‘Why don’t you two go and get a statement from the neighbour, OK? I’ll see if I can find a boiler suit that fits, and go see what all the fuss is about.’

  The smell had been foul ever since he had begun the climb down the stone steps outside, a horrible fug of burned meat and rancid fat that brought to mind bad house fires and worse barbecues. As he stepped through the door, McLean gagged at the reek of it, so powerful it was almost impossible to breathe.

  Nothing about the basement flat was big, and the front room was no exception. The back wall was taken up by the most minimalist of galley kitchens; a sink, single electric ring cooker and microwave. Shoved against the side wall, a narrow table was covered in empty pizza and kebab boxes, half-crushed beer cans and other detritus. A single wooden chair had been pushed underneath the table, and the only other place to sit beside the floor was an elderly armchair next to the window. It hadn’t been put there to make the most of the view, which was made up entirely of rubbish that had blown or been thrown into the gulley between the pavement and the tenement.