The Book of Souls (Inspector McLean #2)(105)

‘I was meant to be coming here to do a fire-risk assessment next week,’ Burrows said. ‘Looks like they could have done with it a bit earlier. How’d it start, did you say?’

McLean muttered something about candle flames and sweepings.

‘Christ, what kind of idiot would bring a candle into a place like this?’

McLean coughed, grimacing as pain spread across his chest. He’d barely recovered from the fire at his tenement, and now all this.

‘There was more to it, though. It went up way too quickly. And there were odd blue flames running up the walls. Never seen anything like it before.’

‘Blue flames? Tinged with yellow?’ Burrows had a thoughtful look on his face. ‘And you say it was hot before it started?’

McLean nodded.

‘What about a sulphur smell?’

McLean wasn’t sure what there had been. His memory was a mess. He really shouldn’t have been here at all; should have taken the day off. Maybe the month. Should have gone to the hospital, except that held more fears for him than this.

‘Aye, I think there might have been,’ he said. ‘Rotting eggs.’

Burrows looked around the ruined building, then turned and walked out into the wide compound surrounding it. McLean followed as the fireman strode over to the nearest patch of scrubland and began hacking away at the soil with his heel. After a while, he pulled up a lump of shiny black rock and sniffed it.

‘This whole area’s been mined for coal since Roman times. Probably before.’ He handed the lump to McLean. It was warm to the touch; hardly surprising given its proximity to the fire. When he lifted it to his nose, the unmistakable reek of sulphur caught his already sore throat. He dropped the rock and descended into a fit of coughing, culminating in a big wet ball of phlegm.

‘Sorry, I should have thought,’ Burrows said. ‘Smoke inhalation’s a wee bugger.’

‘What’s this got to do with anything?’ McLean asked once he’d managed to get his voice back. He kicked the dropped lump of coal.

‘Well, the ground round here’s riddled with old mine workings. Shafts, tunnels, you name it. And there’s a lot of coal still down there. Up Bilston way there’s a great store of it, filled in half the glen. But sometimes you get other stuff mixed up. Might be an old landfill tip, might just be gas pockets. Firedamp, you know? My guess is that’s what we had here. And an underground fire, too. Could have been burning for years and no one noticed. Heated everything up nicely, gas escapes up through cracks in the soil, hits the floor of the factory. The only place it can escape’s where the concrete meets the walls. Something sets it off, and there you have it, sheets of pale blue flame running up the walls. Must’ve been like being stuck in a huge gas cooker.’

‘And that would account for all the other old factory fires?’ McLean knew what the answer was going to be, but he asked anyway.

‘Er, no. Maybe worth having a look at the old geological maps and mine-works surveys. But ... no. Here, I can see it. In the city? No. And we don’t know what started any of those fires.’

‘The tramps lit a fire in the office of that factory over in Slateford,’ McLean said. ‘Strange you never mentioned it in your report.’

‘Didn’t I?’ Burrows pulled off his hard hat and scratched at his forehead. ‘To be honest, it could’ve slipped my mind. Winter’s not a good time for a fire investigator, you know.’

‘What, you don’t like the cold?’

‘No, inspector. There’s a lot of fires.’

McLean managed a smile, then an odd thought popped into his head.

‘It’s Burrows, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘The way you spell your name: B-U-R-R-O-W-S?’

The fire investigator looked a little confused, then said, ‘Aye, that’s right.’

‘Never been spelled O-U-G-H-S, you know, like Edgar Rice?’

The look on Burrows’ face was a mixture of confusion and concern. ‘Not as far as I know. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ McLean said. ‘Just a hunch.’

They found the remains of Sergeant John Needham about an hour later. At least, McLean suspected it was Needy; formal identification would have to be through dental records or DNA analysis of the charred bones. He was lying on his front, arms clutched around a pile of ash that was all that remained of his precious book. Most of his uniform had burned to nothing, melting into the mess that had been skin and fat and muscle. Even the gold chain he had been wearing around his neck was broken, links melted away to precious slag. But the heavy, round medallion that had been in the middle lay on the floor beside him.

Careful not to disturb the body before the pathologist arrived, McLean fished in his pockets for an evidence bag or latex gloves to pick it up with. It was then that he realised he had lost the thin strip of fabric, torn from Kirsty’s dress. He cast his mind back, trying to remember. He’d had it with him in the chapel, but what had he done with it after that? He remembered holding it in his fist, wrapped around his fingers. Then it was gone. Burned up in the fire. The last piece of her. Time to let her go?

Tears burned in his dry eyes then and he was forced to look away. Shoving his hands back into his pockets, McLean pushed himself upright, stepped back from the curiously peaceful body. The medallion lay where he had left it, undisturbed. There was still no sign of the pathologist. But as he walked away from the scene, he realised that he no longer cared about the investigation. Someone else could deal with all that. He’d had enough.