What Will Burn

by James Oswald

  25

  McLean had been going to say that it would be better if they conducted the interview in private, but as he looked around the room he realised that they were the only people there. Even the bar staff had left, silent and efficient, with no sign of any order having been given. With a little shrug, he indicated that it would be acceptable, then waited for Bairnfather to take a seat before sitting down himself. DC Blane sat a little further from the table, and took out his notebook. He hadn’t said a word, not even responding to Bairnfather’s observation about his height. Not a fan of the aristocracy, then.

  ‘First off, Lord Bairnfather, I’d like to offer my condolences. It must have been a terrible shock to find out that your aunt had passed away.’

  Bairnfather’s face slumped. There was no other way to describe the way his genial smile fell into a grimace, taking his cheeks and chins with it. His whole body seemed to sink in on itself as if he’d been overinflated and someone had pricked him with a pin.

  ‘Poor dear Sissy,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Who’d have thought.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Saw her? A month or two back, I suppose? I don’t come up here as much as I used to. So much going on in London. All around the world, in fact. I was in Tokyo when I got the news.’

  ‘Did you visit her at the cottage, or did she come here?’ Through the corner of his eye, McLean could see Blane taking notes, his expression one of deep irritation. Or maybe that was what he looked like when he was concentrating.

  ‘The cottage? Heavens, no. Haven’t been there since I was a boy. It’s . . .’ Bairnfather paused a moment, his jowls wobbling ever so slightly as he shook the thought away. ‘No. Sissy would come up to the hotel whenever I was in town, and we’d have a meal together. Other than that I didn’t have much to do with her.’

  ‘You’re both beneficiaries of the Bairnfather Trust, I understand.’

  ‘The trust?’ Bairnfather looked momentarily confused by the question. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I don’t really gain much from it. I mean, there’s an income, of course, and I’ve a suite of rooms here at the house. But as I said, I spend most of my time in London these days, and my business interests bring in far more.’

  ‘It would have been the bulk of Lady Cecily’s income though, wouldn’t it? And the cottage was her home?’

  ‘Oh, she wouldn’t have liked being called Lady Cecily. No, no, no.’ Bairnfather shook his head with studied emphasis. ‘As I understand it, she lived very frugally. Didn’t have a car, or even a mobile if you can believe that. She always loved the old gamekeeper’s cottage though. I’ve not been to see it yet. Is it badly damaged? I understand it was set on fire.’

  ‘What will you do with it now?’ McLean left Bairnfather’s question deliberately unanswered.

  ‘Do with it? Why, rebuild it, of course. If we can. It was special to her, and that needs to be preserved.’

  ‘Why was it special to her, do you know? Surely growing up in a house like this would have been far more of an adventure.’ McLean raised both hands towards the ornate plasterwork on the ceiling a good twenty feet above them.

  ‘Oh, Sissy hated this house. At least, I always assumed it was the house she hated. But it might have been Grandpa, of course. Her father.’

  ‘Why did she hate her father?’

  ‘Is this really relevant to her death, Inspector? I mean, Grandpa died when I was twelve. Hate to admit it, but that was a bit more than fifty years ago. That’s old history, unlikely to be of any relevance, wouldn’t you say?’

  McLean hesitated before answering, aware that he’d allowed his curiosity to get away from him. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Bairnfather. I have to confess that we’ve not managed to find much in the way of forensic evidence to help identify who might have killed your aunt. That’s why I’m trying to ascertain a motive, and for that I need to get to know her. You’re right though, her childhood’s unlikely to be relevant. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted her dead? Any enemies she might have had?’

  That brought the ghost of a smile back to Bairnfather’s face, but it lasted only a moment before the weary slump dragged his features down again. ‘She was ninety years old, Inspector. I’ve no doubt she’d pissed off a fair few folk in her life. Sissy could be difficult at times. But if anyone wanted her dead, they’d have been as well waiting a year or two. She didn’t have long left. Told me as much the last time we dined together.’

  ‘Was she unwell?’

  ‘Frail would be the word I’d use. She was still as sharp as a pin, mentally. But her joints had all but seized up with arthritis and she struggled to move around. I suggested she might want to move somewhere a little less remote. It didn’t have to be the hotel, we could have found her a place in the city. But she was adamant. Wouldn’t be moved out of that cottage unless it was in a box.’

  ‘Have you any idea why she was so . . .’ McLean searched for the right word ‘. . . attached to the place?’

  Another slight smile passed briefly across Bairnfather’s face as he recalled some cherished memory. ‘Ah now, there’s a story, Inspector. You’ll understand this was long before my time, of course. Sissy was born in 1931, you see. She was my grandpa’s second child. My father was almost ten years older than her, and there was a whiff of scandal about the whole thing. My grandmother, Lady Maude, had been estranged from him for a while by then. They lived in separate wings of the house and never attended social functions together.’

  The mention of social functions reminded McLean of his engagement that evening with the chief superintendent. He managed to suppress the urge to check his watch. They still had plenty of time.

  ‘You think maybe she wasn’t his child?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Grandma never admitted anything, but she had her own coterie of friends, and I think my grandpa was happy enough to pursue his own interests. She’d given him what he wanted, after all, an heir to keep the Bairnfather name alive. Anything else was fair game, as far as he was concerned. Perhaps with the emphasis on game.’

  ‘Sounds a bit Lady Chatterley to me,’ DC Blane said, reminding both McLean and Lord Bairnfather of his existence. So quietly had he been sitting off to one side taking notes, he’d almost managed to become invisible. An impressive feat for such a large man.

  ‘Quite, Constable.’ If Bairnfather was upset at the insinuation, he didn’t show it. ‘There was a gamekeeper in the cottage at that time, and Grandma was noted for spending far more time with the workers on the estate than with those of her own social standing. I couldn’t say whether the gamekeeper was Sissy’s father. It’s possible, although I always thought she looked a lot like my grandpa but without the violent temper. She certainly had the Bairnfather nose.’

  ‘So why the whiff of scandal then?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Well, she was visiting the gamekeeper’s cottage when she went into labour, you see. For whatever reason, I have no idea. But they decided it would be unwise to move her, so Sissy was born there, in the front room if the stories are to be believed.’

  A little shiver ran down McLean’s spine at that. Like someone was walking on his grave, as his own grandmother had been fond of saying. There was a horrible symmetry to the old woman dying in the same room in which she had been born.

  ‘I suppose that might account for her reluctance to leave,’ he said.

  ‘It put a strain on my grandparents’ relationship too. Grandpa never really took to Sissy, but then he wasn’t all that keen on any women who answered back. Thought she should have found herself a nice duke or earl and got herself married, but she wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Not interested in marriage, or not interested in men at all?’

  Bairnfather cocked his head to one side at that question, something of a knowing look in his eyes. ‘I’m really not sure, Inspector. Some people aren’t interested in either. Not th
e way I suspect you’re meaning, at least.’

  ‘You were fond of her, though. And she of you?’

  ‘More so than my own parents. I was never anything but a disappointment to them, even if I’ve made the estate profitable and saved the hall from going the way of so many of Scotland’s historic buildings.’ Bairnfather looked at his watch, the first sign that he wasn’t completely happy with the interview. Time to wrap things up then, at least for now.

  ‘I won’t keep you much longer,’ McLean said. ‘But there was just one thing. Does the name Burntwoods mean anything to you?’

  For the tiniest of instants, Bairnfather went very still. It was the smallest of tells, but McLean had been trained to see things like that.

  ‘Burntwoods? No, I don’t think so. Should it?’

  ‘Not particularly. It was just something we came across when doing background checks on your aunt. Ancient history and probably not important.’ McLean stood up, Blane rapidly doing the same. It took Lord Bairnfather a little longer to get to his feet, the look on his face slightly more worried now than when he had first entered the room.

  ‘I’ll be here for a while, I expect. Sorting funeral arrangements, the trust, all that. Please keep me up to speed on developments, Inspector.’

  ‘I will, sir. And if I have any other questions, I’ll let you know. Thank you for agreeing to see us.’

  Bairnfather nodded once at McLean, once at Blane, not offering a hand to be shaken this time. Then he turned and walked out of the room.

  No sooner had Lord Bairnfather left than a pair of waiters reappeared, one heading to the bar, the other collecting the coffee tray.

  ‘Come on then, let’s get out of here before they bring us a bill.’ McLean set off for the front entrance, the detective constable following on behind. He waited until they were both in the car before speaking again.

  ‘What did you make of all that, then? Particularly the last bit.’

  Blane started the engine, checked his mirror even though there was nothing but grass and trees behind them, and pulled away from the parking space. ‘For someone who professed to care more for his aunt than his parents, he seemed remarkably relaxed about her having been beaten and burned to death. And I’ve no idea what Burntwoods is, but he knows and doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  It occurred to McLean then that Blane wouldn’t know about the house near Dundee, or anything else that had come from the box he and Harrison had found at the gamekeeper’s cottage. ‘Cecily Slater spent most of her childhood at Burntwoods. There’s not much information about the place, but we think it was possibly some kind of refuge.’ As he said the words, he recalled the old insane asylum at Rosskettle, south of the city. It had been part of NHS Scotland by the time it was closed, but long before that it had been a privately run hospice. An insane asylum, yes, but also somewhere wealthy families sent their problem children to prevent them becoming a social embarrassment. Could Burntwoods have been something similar before the war? It didn’t quite square with the somewhat sketchy history of the place Duguid had given him, but it might be worth pursuing.

  ‘Something tells me that Lord Bairnfather knows she was sent there and why,’ McLean continued. ‘He wasn’t particularly embarrassed about her possibly being illegitimate, maybe even the daughter of one of the estate workers. He was almost proud about her having been born in that cottage. And yet he didn’t want us to know about the place she was sent to when she was a child.’

  ‘To be honest, sir, I thought he was making the whole thing up.’

  ‘Everything?’ McLean asked.

  ‘Aye, well. Maybe not everything. But he came across as . . . I don’t know. Insincere?’ Blane waited for a car to pass the end of the hotel drive, then pulled out on to the main road, his swift acceleration making the tyres chirp in protest.

  McLean went over the conversation in his head. It was true Lord Bairnfather had been keener than most to share old family gossip, but he had seemed genuinely saddened by his aunt’s death. In that restrained, undemonstrative way that was beaten into you at the worst private schools.

  ‘I think you’re perhaps being a bit hard on the man. Not everybody wails and gnashes their teeth when a relative dies, you know. Not in public, anyway.’

  The detective constable glanced in McLean’s direction, the car drifting slightly towards the roadside as he did so.

  ‘But I asked for your opinion, and I’m grateful for it, honestly,’ he said hurriedly, nodding his head at the windscreen and an oncoming bend. Blane seemed to get the message, correcting their course a little aggressively.

  ‘I just expected him to be, I don’t know, a bit angrier?’ the detective constable said after a few moments’ concentrating on negotiating the corner. ‘If it was my aunt was killed like that, I’d be screaming blue murder at us to find her killer. He’s only turned up today and she’s been dead for weeks.’

  Put like that, McLean had to admit that Blane had a point. On the plus side, it seemed unlikely that Bairnfather would be making a complaint to the chief constable about their behaviour. At least, not yet. But they hadn’t gathered as much information about Cecily Slater as he’d hoped.

  ‘You’re right, Lofty. But we need to tread carefully with Lord Bairnfather.’ McLean heard the unspoken deference to power in his words. ‘Not that he deserves kid gloves more than anyone else, but he can make our jobs difficult if he wants to.’

  ‘Aye, sir. Private law. That’s what privilege means, doesn’t it? One rule for them an’ another for us?’

  ‘If he’s guilty of anything, I’ll find it, Lofty. I don’t do favours for friends of the chief constable, especially not where murder is involved. But we need to be subtle about it. Follow the money, of course. We need to find out everything we can about the Bairnfather Trust and Cecily Slater’s financial interests, but we mustn’t let Lord Bairnfather know that’s what we’re doing. And we need to look into Burntwoods too.’

  ‘You think it’s really relevant, sir? I mean, it was a very long time ago.’

  ‘And yet she kept mementoes of it for her whole life. And it spooked her nephew when we mentioned it. Someone who, as you’ve pointed out already, is not exactly prone to emotional outbursts.’

  Another few moments of silence as the road roared along underneath them. ‘I’ll add it to the list of actions, sir.’ Blane was clearly trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice, but not entirely successfully.

  ‘Cheer up, Constable. It’s got to be better than accountancy, aye?’

  Blane nodded his head slightly in agreement, but the fact he didn’t say anything suggested to McLean that perhaps the detective constable was having second thoughts about that.

  26

  A light shower of rain dampened the shoulders of his jacket as McLean stepped out of the taxi and crossed the road to the North British Hotel. The massive building loomed over Waverley Station, solid and immovable. It wasn’t his favourite place to visit, for the very reason he was entering it now. This was where functions happened, where he was supposed to be polite and sociable, to mingle and make small talk when all he really wanted to do was sit alone with his thoughts.

  An elderly gentleman in the uniform of a concierge directed him through to the main ballroom. McLean checked his watch as he walked along the wide corridor, hoping he wasn’t too late. He didn’t want to be here, but neither did he want to get on the wrong side of the new chief superintendent.

  ‘Ah, Tony. You’re here. Excellent timing.’

  The voice came from behind him, and as he turned he almost did a double take. Elmwood came down the corridor like a catwalk model, elegant and effortless. She wore her police uniform, with all the unnecessary shiny bits associated with her rank, but somehow she managed to make it look almost glamorous. She’d let down her hair from the tight bun she wore at work, and as she came closer he caught a whiff of expensive perfume. Her
whole stance was different, as if this were some fun social event and not important police business. He was glad he’d asked Lofty Blane to drop him at home so he could shower and change before coming out, but even so he felt dowdy and unclean in Elmwood’s presence.

  ‘Ma— Gail,’ he corrected himself. ‘I thought this was a meeting of the Safe Streets Committee.’

  Elmwood smiled, white teeth flashing behind lipstick just the tasteful side of gaudy. ‘Meeting is such a utilitarian word. Yes, we’re meeting people. But there isn’t an agenda. I don’t need you to take minutes. Someone’ll give a short presentation, I’m sure, and then it’s all about getting to know who’s who. Mostly I think everyone wants to meet me, since I suspect they all know each other already. Shall we?’

  She indicated the room, and for a horrified moment McLean thought she wanted him to take her arm. Instead he strode to the door and opened it for her.

  ‘Come on, Tony. Let’s get something to drink. You do drink, don’t you? Christ, I need one. These functions are always a lot easier with a little alcohol to lubricate proceedings.’

  McLean looked around the vast ballroom, echoing to the sound of a few dozen voices. Chairs had been lined up in front of a small podium with a lectern on it and a projector screen behind. A couple of liveried hotel staff stood at a table lined with champagne flutes. Outside, the last light of the day had fled, leaving only an orange glow diffracted by the rain on the tall windows.

  ‘Do you have anything soft?’ he asked, as a waiter appeared, holding a tray laden with champagne. ‘I’m driving,’ he added by way of pathetic excuse.

  ‘Rookie error, Tony.’ Elmwood leaned past him to take a glass, tipping half of the champagne down her throat in a most unladylike way. ‘Grab one and hold it for me. Might as well make yourself useful, eh?’

  He did as he was told, as the chief superintendent drained her first glass and took up another.

  ‘Christ, I needed that,’ she said, as she led him over towards the podium and a small group of people. ‘A whole day stuck in a stuffy office over at the Crime Campus, listening to boring old farts going on about five-year projections and budget management. I can see why you never wanted to give up being a detective.’