What Will Burn, by James Oswald, part two: The fact she was here meant at least one person had died...

The stench hit her long before she reached the crime scene.

At first it was a lingering unpleasant scent on the air, but as she climbed the steep path from the woods, so it developed into something worse. Burned carpets, chemical reek and the unmistakable aroma of overdone barbecue. And underneath it all, a fug of decay that didn’t sit with the bustle and activity around her.

Detective Constable Janie Harrison had attended enough fires in her short career as a police officer to know the usual unpleasant smells, and this place had them all. The fact that she was even here at all meant at least one person had died, but the question she found herself asking was when, rather than who and how.

She should really have been with a detective sergeant of course, but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Never enough detectives, always too much to do.

‘Is it far?’

The words were out before she could stop herself, and it left her with a feeling of having said ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

A false memory from a hundred or more dull car trips to the seaside or some boring ancient battlefield. Some kids might have reacted to that upbringing by taking to a sedentary life, and Janie had almost been one of them.

‘Not much further, no.’

The forensic technician who had met her at the roadside wasn’t one she’d met before. Or at least not one Janie could easily recognise from all that was visible of her face. Her overalls, hood tied tight, left little to go by. Harrison wore similar, although as yet she’d not pulled up the hood. The day was too warm for that, the air in the trees humid with the

threat of yet more rain. Summer had been long and hot, but it was gone now, autumn making up for lost time.

The buzz of forest insects gave way to a hubbub of noise as they left the trees and entered a clearing straight out of a children’s fairy tale. It was hard to believe the city was only a few miles away, although if she concentrated, Janie thought she could hear the dull roar of the bypass.

Her attention was dragged away from idle musings by the cottage that stood a dozen or so metres away. Quite what such a building was doing up here in the hills she

had no idea. Perhaps it had been a gamekeeper’s lodge or something, which would mean there was a huge mansion nearby, a great estate that would have built a tiny house out of well-cut stone and slate. She wasn’t sure of the area, so it might well have been that the mansion house had long since gone, only this more humble dwelling left.

Fire had taken hold at some point, then apparently given up, leaving far more of the building intact than she’d been expecting, or indeed than the heavy smell suggested. Janie followed a marked path up to a point where a small section of wall had collapsed outwards, splitting the roof open to reveal a burned mess inside.

‘Reckon it’s more or less safe as long as you keep to the middle.’

The forensic technician who had shown her this far seemed reluctant to go any further. Janie could sympathise; fires were never pleasant, especially when people were involved.

She picked her way along the route marked, careful not to turn her ankle on fallen rubble from the wall collapse. A couple of white-suited figures crouched beside the remains of an old stuffed armchair, not much left of it but springs and scorched wooden frame. At the same time as she noticed the battered case beside them, the older of the two turned. He frowned, looked past her as if expecting to see someone else, then returned his gaze to her and smiled in recognition.

‘Detective Constable Harrison. This is a pleasant surprise.’

‘Doctor Cadwallader.’ Janie nodded as the other figure turned. ‘Doctor Sharp.’

‘I take it you’re alone?’ Cadwallader asked.

‘Aye. We’re a bit short-staffed at the moment, what with Gru... DS Laird retired and, well.’ She shrugged.

The pathologist knew as well as any what the situation was.

‘Still not sorted?’

He gave her a sympathetic smile and a shrug.

‘Well, you’d better have a look at our poor victim here before we move her, then.’

It was only as he said the words that Janie realised the blackened mess lying at the feet of the pathologist and his assistant was not, in fact, the remains of a burned feather bolster cushion...

What WIll Burn, by James Oswald, is published by Wildfire, £16.99, on Thursday 12, February

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