The Blood of Crows Read Online Free

seemed pointless. At some point today he would be summoned to a meeting about the breach of health and safety protocol, and he would just have to button it and not argue. To get his promotion he needed a clean sheet.
    He thought about going out to the machine for a coffee to wake himself up, but the coffee here was terrible – the asbestos at the old station posed the lesser health risk. Asbestos or not, he wished they were back at Partickhill with Costello to moan at. He wished she would text him on her way in, asking Do you want anything? He wouldn’t even mind if she nicked all the chocolate Hobnobs and stuck them in her drawer.
    Anderson smiled to himself.
    ‘You look happy, DI Anderson. Are you sure you work here?’ asked DC Wyngate, who had come equipped for the day with a tact bypass.
    ‘Yes, unfortunately. Are there any Hobnobs in the tin?’
    ‘It’s the Partick biscuit tin and we are not allowed to touch.’
    ‘So much for team spirit,’ said Anderson.
    Wyngate picked up the printouts from Anderson’s desk. ‘They look like three charmers. Known associates of Biggart?’
    ‘No idea yet, but stick them up on the wall.’
    Once Wyngate had made sure the A4 sheets were on the wall in perfect alignment, he sat down and flicked open his spiral-bound sheaf of papers. ‘I heard about last night, sir. It sounds a bit grim.’
    Anderson nodded. ‘It was.’
    Wyngate found the page he was looking for and passedit to Anderson. ‘It’s the forensic fire investigator’s report on the Biggart incident. Do you want to read it? It makes very interesting reading.’
    ‘Paraphrase for me. Please.’
    ‘Well, they mocked up Biggart’s front room and the fire damage in some fancy computer program, just to confirm their suspicions.’
    ‘Good for them.’ Anderson looked at the floor plan of the fire scene in Apollo Court, as the building was named (in honour of its previous life as a cinema). Small crosses and odd symbols dotted the plan. He wondered how quickly he could get away to see O’Hare at the mortuary, then go home. It was too bloody hot in the office.
    Wyngate placed a single sheet in front of him with a key for the symbols on it. ‘Are you going to the funeral this afternoon?’
    ‘Nearly. I’m going to the morgue. I have to look at Mr Biggart. So, this is where he died.’ Anderson looked at the plans, the position of the body. ‘Sorry, what funeral?’ he asked as an afterthought.
    ‘A retired constable, Tommy Carruthers, died last week.’
    ‘Did he work here?’
    ‘Presume so. Loads of the Partick boys are going.’ Wyngate angled his head to make sure nobody was listening. ‘He flung himself out his living-room window. Three floors up.’ He looked up at his boss. ‘Did you not hear about that?’
    ‘Must have passed me by. But no, I’m not going. I’ve to meet O’Hare at the mortuary in an hour … to deal with this …’ He tapped the report for emphasis. ‘I think Mr Biggart is still in residence in a drawer there. And as far asI’m concerned, he can stay there until the winter when he can be put out to feed the birds.’
    ‘At least he’d be some use then,’ Wyngate said cheerily. ‘Fiona Morrison wants you to phone her if anything about this confuses you.’
    ‘So, tell me what it’s all about.’
    The constable started pointing at the plan with the tip of his pen. ‘Door there, window there, body in that corner. The usual scenario would be that Billy here is pissed, smoking, falls asleep in his chair, drops cigarette, is overcome by fumes and gets toasted. This is different. Biggart staggers a bit before the smoke gets him, in his bare feet, wearing a shell suit.’ Wyngate held his pen up. ‘So, Billy is found by the window, over here, and the source of the fire is to the right of the door, over here.’ He tapped the diagonally opposite corner on the plan. ‘The positioning is important. Petrol and rags were set alight here in the corner and the window above the