What Will Burn

by James Oswald

  McLean opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again as the chief superintendent began to speak over him.

  ‘And what bloody idiot came up with the name “Crime Campus”, eh? Makes it sound like some kind of training ground for crooks. Mind you, seeing some of your colleagues that’s maybe not far off the mark.’

  He was spared the need to make any comment on this by the arrival of the chairman of the Safe Streets Committee, a man called Alan Forbes. McLean only knew these two facts because the man introduced himself. As he scanned the growing crowd, he saw very few faces he recognised, and none he could put an actual name to. If his presence here was meant to be a means of introducing the chief superintendent to the great and good of Edinburgh, then they’d picked the wrong man.

  ‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t Tony McLean. Of all the people I expected to bump into here, you were most certainly not on my list.’

  Ice water dripped down his back as he heard the voice. He didn’t need to turn to know who was speaking. There was only one person whose simple existence put his teeth on edge.

  ‘Mrs Saifre.’ He spoke the words before facing her. ‘What brings you to town? I wouldn’t have thought safe streets were a high priority for you.’

  McLean had to remind himself that the woman standing in front of him was in her sixties at least. She looked not a day over thirty-five, face immaculately made up, raven-black hair worn long so that it waved past her shoulders. Her black cocktail dress suited her perfectly, but the whole effect was ruined by the hint of irritation in her eyes.

  ‘Jane Louise, please, Tony. Mr Saifre died a very long time ago. Tragic, really. And it’s the Dee Foundation that is concerned with safe streets. Most of my work these days is in the charity sector. Had you not noticed?’

  McLean had noticed. The Dee Foundation seemed to be everywhere these days, putting resources into things that government should but didn’t. If he hadn’t had run-ins with her in the past, he might even have fallen for Mrs Saifre’s saintly behaviour, but he had and he wouldn’t.

  ‘Ah, Tony. There you are.’ Another female voice behind him reminded McLean that he wasn’t at the function alone. Mrs Saifre’s perfectly drawn eyebrow arched as she looked past him to greet the chief superintendent. Then she focused back on him with the kind of smile a bleeding diver might see on the face of a great white shark.

  ‘Mrs Saifre, this is Gail Elmwood, our new chief superintendent. Gail, this is Mrs Saifre. She’s . . .’ McLean ran out of steam. He could hardly say ‘the devil incarnate’, even if that was what he thought of the woman.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Saifre.’ Elmwood held out a hand to be shook.

  ‘Tony’s such a tease. I don’t really go by Mrs Saifre these days. It’s Jane Louise.’

  Watching the chief superintendent’s face, McLean could see the cogs turning as she put the pieces together. How many glasses of Dee Foundation champagne had she downed?

  ‘Jane Louise Dee?’ The chief superintendent rounded on McLean, her drink spilling on his jacket with the motion. She slapped him lightly on the arm with her free hand in a manner far too familiar for his liking. ‘Tony, why didn’t you tell me?’ She turned her attention back to Mrs Saifre again, this time managing to keep the much-diminished liquid in her glass. ‘I was so hoping to meet you tonight. Can’t say what a pleasure it is. The Dee Foundation’s work with young offenders is held up as a shining example down in the Met.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Mrs Saifre had a different smile for the chief superintendent, but McLean wasn’t entirely sure it was any better than the shark. He dabbed at the damp patch on his jacket with what had been a clean handkerchief as the two women fell into a conversation from which he was excluded. At any other time he might have taken offence, but for some reason he didn’t mind. He was about to make his excuses to them both and flee, when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and stared at the text on the screen, a message from DS Gregg.

  Urgent we locate you. Please call control or phone me direct. Incident at Tollcross. Hope you’re not involved.

  He was just about to text back asking what she was on about, when the chief superintendent spoke to him. ‘It’s about to start, Tony. You coming with us?’

  ‘Something’s come up.’ He held up the phone and gave her an apologetic shrug. Beside her, Mrs Saifre’s stare was as inscrutable as a wall.

  ‘Go on, then. I’ll catch up with you later.’

  McLean would have thanked her for the dismissal, but she’d already turned away. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he fled the room.

  ‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’

  McLean held his phone tight to one ear, straining to hear over the noise. He’d called DS Gregg as soon as he’d left the ballroom, and then walked down the corridor straight into an entrance foyer seemingly full of loud, chattering tourists.

  ‘Oh, thank Christ you’re OK, sir. I thought you were dead.’ DS Gregg’s voice sounded almost like it was breaking.

  ‘Dead? How? I’m at the North British with the chief superintendent.’ He didn’t add that being dead would probably have been preferable, especially once he’d discovered it was a Dee Foundation event. Gregg’s worried tone suggested she was being serious.

  ‘Report just came in ten minutes ago. Bad car accident at Tollcross. Officers at the scene said the driver was killed instantly, and the index is . . . well, it’s your car, sir.’

  McLean frowned, even though there was nobody around to see him. ‘But my car’s parked in the station car park.’ At least it had been when he and DC Blane had left for Bairnfather Hall in a pool car. ‘That place is meant to be safer than Fort Knox.’

  ‘Aye, about that.’ Her initial worry gone, now DS Gregg sounded embarrassed. ‘Duty sergeant’s doing his nut in. Got half the station going over the CCTV, but as far as we can work out, some wee scrote just walked through the back gate, climbed into your car and drove off like he had the keys. Whole thing done in less than twenty seconds. Nobody saw him, and everyone assumed you’d gone home.’

  McLean shoved his hand in his pocket and felt the familiar weight of the key fob. He had a spare, but that was in a drawer at home, wasn’t it? ‘Who was driving? Do we know?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. Still waiting on confirmation from the officers attending.’

  ‘Where exactly did it happen?’ He could look it up as soon as he was off the phone, of course. Chances were there’d be news feeds and camera-phone footage on social media already. Bloody marvellous.

  ‘Corner of Lauriston Place and Tollcross. Apparently the car was going like the clappers, spun into a shop window. Lucky nobody else was hurt, to be honest.’

  ‘OK. Thanks for letting me know, Sandy. Not a lot I can do about it right now, so I’d better head back into the meeting. Copy me in on the RTA reports, would you? And any update on how the little bugger stole my car from under the noses of a few hundred police officers too.’ McLean hung up before DS Gregg could say any more, then turned back towards the double doors that opened on to the ballroom. He didn’t really have to go back in there, did he? Fate had given him a cast-iron excuse to leave. Even the chief superintendent couldn’t get too upset with him for running off after what had just happened, surely?

  But then he had left her with Mrs Saifre, and that was never a good idea.

  ‘You going in?’

  McLean startled at the voice, unaware that someone else had approached the ballroom doors. He turned to see a man walking towards him with the slightly harried posture of someone who knows they’re late for something important. As he came closer, McLean recognised him and reconsidered the whole doing a runner thing. Strange to think his name had come up in conversation only a few hours earlier in the day.

  ‘Mr Fielding. Surprised to see you here.’

  The lawyer looked at McLean more closely for a moment when he heard hi
s name. Recognition came more slowly for him, which was something of a compliment.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector McLean, is it not?’

  ‘Just Detective Inspector.’ McLean reached out and opened the door. Beyond it, the noise suggested any presentation was already over and the serious hobnobbing had begun.

  ‘Demoted and forced to attend a Safe Streets Committee event. You must have seriously blotted your copybook.’

  ‘Our new chief superintendent needed someone to introduce her to the great and good of the city. Your guess is as good as mine as to why she chose me.’

  Fielding had been about to step into the room, but he paused, blocking the doorway. ‘She? They put a woman in charge?’

  Something about the way the lawyer said the word ‘woman’ immediately put McLean’s back up. He’d met Fielding before, and heard all about him. Knew he specialised in fathers’ rights cases and defending wife beaters. What was his little organisation called? Dad’s Army or somesuch. Surprising he hadn’t been sued for that, less so that the man himself was so instantly dislikable. What he was doing here was anyone’s guess.

  ‘I can introduce you, if you’d like. That’s what I’m here for, after all.’

  Fielding stared at McLean for a moment longer than was polite, then shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary. I’m here to see one person only.’ Without another word he stepped into the room and began moving through the crowd.

  McLean stood in the doorway a moment longer, aware that as yet he’d not been spotted by anyone. Idle curiosity had him scanning the people, looking to see who it was that Tommy Fielding had arranged to meet. It wasn’t important though, and the sight of the chief superintendent and Mrs Saifre laughing at some shared joke reminded him of just how little he wanted to be here. Stepping back into the corridor, he closed the doors and set off in search of a taxi to take him home. Elmwood was a grown woman, a chief superintendent. She could look after herself.

  27

  The major incident room hummed quietly, but not through any great activity on the part of the team at work. Earlier it had been flies buzzing against the window, but now that it was dark outside they’d given up and the task of making an irritating noise had been handed over to the dying fluorescent lights sunk into the false ceiling. Over in the far corner by the water cooler one was flickering and blinking in a manner that made Janie glad she wasn’t an epileptic. Or particularly susceptible to migraines. It was making her tetchy all the same.

  ‘Has anyone been on to maintenance about that bloody light?’ she asked as she cut and pasted a chunk of useless information from one window to another, putting together a background report on the man whose dead body she had seen first thing that morning.

  Mr Donald Purefoy had not led the most interesting of lives, his only brush with the law a half a dozen speeding tickets spread over just enough time that he never quite lost his licence. He’d been briefly married, two kids, divorced for a couple of years now. Janie had spoken briefly with Katie English, the ex-Mrs Purefoy, who hadn’t exactly been upset by the news. Neither had she seen Purefoy in over a year, since moving to Aberystwyth to lecture at the university. Katie had doubted she’d make the trip up for any funeral, or that the children would even notice the further absence of their father. Yet another sad tale that left Janie wondering why people bothered hitching up in the first place.

  Frustrated, it took her a while to notice that nobody had answered her question. True, she hadn’t been expecting anyone to actually do anything about the lights; that was something she’d have to sort out in the morning herself. A non-committal grunt from Jay at the desk opposite might have been nice, though. Only, when she looked up, DC Stringer was nowhere to be seen. Neither was anyone else for that matter. She pulled out the earbuds that didn’t actually block out any noise, but did stop people from bothering her unnecessarily, stood up and glanced around the room. Empty.

  ‘Where the hell is everyone?’

  It struck her as she walked around the unmanned desks that asking such a question in the circumstances was a bit stupid. She pulled out her phone, swiped the screen to see if anyone had messaged her. There was nothing, but the numbers at the top told her it was past shift end. The night shift should have been in by now, though, so that didn’t explain why the room was empty.

  Outside, the corridor looked like something from a horror movie. Nobody in sight, another pair of fluorescent lights blinking and buzzing at the far end. Janie was almost spooked, but then a familiar face rounded the corner.

  ‘You heard the news?’ Constable Amy McKay had come up through training with her, but stuck to uniform when Janie had made the switch to CID. Plain Amy, the other recruits had called her, which was unfair. But then coppers could be cruel.

  ‘What news?’ A slight shiver of worry ran through her at the possibilities. Something bad enough to empty the incident room, but not bad enough anyone would interrupt her.

  ‘The Detective Inspector. His car. There’s been a horrible crash up at Tollcross.’

  The shiver turned to an icy block in the pit of her stomach. ‘DI McLean?’ she asked, although none of the other DIs would have been described by the car they drove. The car she had, in a roundabout way, helped him buy. ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Paramedics are trying to save the driver, but he went through the windscreen. It’s a miracle no pedestrians were hurt.’

  Janie’s mind raced. And then something occurred to her. ‘I thought the DI was at that Safe Streets do with the chief superintendent this evening.’ She pulled out her phone and checked the time again. ‘Why would he be driving through Tollcross? You sure it’s his car?’

  Amy shook her head, looked at Janie as if she was daft. ‘Someone nicked it, see? Right out of the car park here. Duty sergeant’s spitting blood. Got half the station looking at CCTV and the other half being questioned about what they might have seen.’

  ‘So he wasn’t driving it, then?’ Janie struggled to keep up.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘DI McLean, Amy. He wasn’t driving the car when it crashed? He wasn’t anywhere near it?’

  ‘Far as I know.’

  ‘Has anyone told him?’ She didn’t much fancy the task herself.

  ‘The sergeant’s giving him a call, but you know what he’s like for answering his phone, aye?’

  Janie gave her a weak smile. ‘Aye, you’re right enough there. Thanks, Amy.’

  She went back to the major incident room, logged into her computer again, and searched for any information on the crash. There wasn’t much logged on the system, but a quick Google search brought up the news fast enough. There was no denying it was the boss’s car, although from what she could see in the shaky camera-phone footage, it wasn’t going to be his car for much longer. Christ, it must have been going at some speed.

  Janie picked up her phone, tapped the screen until the number came up, then hovered her thumb over the call icon. It had been instinct to get in touch, but did she need to really? It wasn’t as if there was anything she could do right now, and by the morning they’d have more information to go on.

  She switched the phone off, slipped it into her pocket, then logged out of the computer and grabbed her coat from the back of her chair. Some of the night shift were beginning to filter into the room now, Sandy Gregg bringing everyone up to speed. Not that there was a lot for them to do. Most of the chatter seemed to be about the DI’s car anyway.

  Janie slipped away unnoticed, let herself out the back door and walked through the car park to the road. Glancing up, she saw the CCTV cameras covering every inch of parking space and marvelled at the balls of a thief who could stride in as bold as brass and steal the nicest car in the place. Cheeky sod. Not that it had done him much good.

  A light squall of rain kicked up out of nowhere as she made the walk to Nicolson Street for a bus. Janie pulled her collar up, wishing she’d brought
a hat. Winter was coming, as that mad telly series Manda went on about kept saying. Still, it would be nice to get home to the flat, have a bite to eat and curl up on the sofa for some mindless viewing. If she could get her mind to switch off for a moment, that was.

  She was so wrapped up in her thoughts, Janie almost didn’t notice the footsteps behind her. They weren’t heavy or threatening, but they were coming closer. Not quite a run. She shoved her hand deep into her pocket, made a fist around her bunch of keys. Not tonight. Not any night. She didn’t need this shit.

  Whirling around at the last moment, she pulled her hand out of her pocket, swinging down and back in readiness to land a punch. The figure hurrying towards her wasn’t a mugger though. Quite the opposite. She looked like someone had attacked her already. And she was familiar.

  ‘Janie? Janie Harrison? Thank fuck for that.’ The young woman’s English accent was the final clue.

  ‘Izzy?’ Janie shoved her keys back in her pocket and went to grab the young woman before she fell down. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

  The Southsider wasn’t Janie’s favourite pub, but it had the benefit of being close. She led Izzy inside, a wave of warm air washing over them and bringing with it the familiar pub smell of stale beer and body odour.

  ‘You look like you need a stiff drink,’ she said, as she guided the young woman to a seat in the corner, miraculously free of punters at this early stage of the night’s drinking. ‘Sit there and I’ll get you something, aye?’

  Izzy did as she was told, but didn’t say what she wanted. Janie went to the bar and ordered two glasses of wine. Whisky might have been better, but it was still a bit early for that, and the pay rise that came with her promotion wouldn’t hit her bank until the end of the month. It occurred to her as she carried the glasses back to the table that Izzy – Isobel DeVilliers – was probably one of the richest people in the country. Hadn’t she inherited a share of her dad’s billions?