A Winter Grave

Chapter Seventeen

A soft knocking at the door slowly penetrated the layers of fatigue that had wrapped themselves around his consciousness. Like a man rising from the deep, he broke the surface and opened his eyes to be greeted by a grey light that filled the room. He turned his head a little to the side. Through the window he could see low-lying clouds, bruised and battered, hanging from a turbulent sky, and big white flakes of snow drifting down beyond the glass.

For the second night he had slept in his clothes. He scratched the whiskers that bristled across his unshaven face and blinked the sleep from his eyes.

The knocking at the door came again. Louder this time. And a voice from the other side of it called, ‘Mr Brodie?’ A voice he didn’t recognise. He sat up too quickly and felt momentarily giddy.

‘Just a minute,’ he growled.

Slowly he swung his legs around to put his feet on the floor and stood up. He crossed to the sink and sluiced his face with cold water, then lifted his head to see the wreck of the man he’d become staring back at him from the mirror with bloodshot eyes.

He opened the door to find a short, thick-set man with a silvering beard standing in the hall. A blue fleece was dragged over a green chequered shirt. He was almost completely bald, and clutched a patterned woollen hat in his hands. Brodie could see the shock in wide-set blue eyes as he took in the state of the police officer who opened the door. Behind his embarrassment, a smile returned to friendly eyes. ‘Mr Brodie.’ Not a question. He thrust his right hand towards the policeman. ‘Calum McLeish.’ Brodie shook it. ‘I’m on the mountain rescue team with Robbie. Electrical engineer. Work up at the hydro plant. Robbie asked me to come over to see if I could repair a severed charging cable.’

Brodie had forgotten all about it. ‘Give me two minutes,’ he said, and closed the door in the other man’s face.

They drove around to the football pitch in McLeish’s dark blue pickup truck, making fresh tracks in thick, wet snow. The sky hung low, still spitting snowflakes into the chill morning air and obscuring the peaks that surrounded them. Through snow-laden trees, he saw the houses of the village grouped around the head of the loch, reflecting in slate-grey water. There was barely a breath of wind to disturb its mirrored surface. And nary a sign of life.

Brodie had tried his iCom before leaving the hotel, but there was still no signal. McLeish had watched, fascinated. ‘New comm kit?’ he said.

Brodie nodded.

‘Very cool.’

But Brodie shook his head. ‘Not worth a damn if there’s no signal.’

When they reached the eVTOL, McLeish jumped down into the snow, his breath billowing about his head as he pulled on his waterproof jacket. He leaned into the back of the truck to retrieve a toolkit from the flatbed and heaved it up over the side wall. Then he stood gazing admiringly at Eve. ‘She’s a fine beast,’ he said. ‘Not ridden in one of those before. Smooth, is it?’

‘Unless you’re flying through an ice storm.’

McLeish grinned. ‘Aye, well, that wouldn’t be very comfortable in anything airborne. Where’s the cable?’

It was buried under the new snow. Brodie grabbed the end at the eVTOL and started pulling it up as they headed towards the pavilion. ‘Don’t these things usually have contactless charging?’ McLeish said.

Brodie grunted, barely able to keep a civil tongue in his head. ‘Do you see a contactless charger around here?’

But McLeish maintained his good humour. ‘Good point.’

Finally the cut end of the cable pulled itself free from the snow, and Brodie crouched down to search for the other end.

‘Is it still plugged in?’ McLeish said.

‘It was the last time I looked.’

‘I’ll go and unplug it, then. Be unfortunate if we both ended up fried for breakfast.’

The very thought of breakfast made Brodie heave, and he stood up, breathing deeply, as McLeish walked over to the pavilion to unplug the cable. When he came back and examined the cut ends, he shook his head.

‘Someone took their life in their hands cutting through this. Must have had well-insulated wire-cutters.’ He looked up at Brodie standing over him. ‘Why didn’t he just unplug it?’

‘Presumably so it couldn’t just be plugged in again.’

‘Aye, right enough, I suppose, if the object of the exercise was to stop the battery from charging...’ He opened his toolbox, set in the snow beside him. ‘I can do a temporary repair to get it charging. But it’ll need to be handled with care, and best keep it clear of the snow. Don’t want water getting in and shorting the thing.’

Brodie stood watching as McLeish stripped back the cable from either side of the cut ends to prepare the wires for reconnection. ‘How long have you been on the mountain rescue team?’ he said.

‘Since I was a teenager, Mr Brodie. My dad was the team leader then. Taught me everything there was to know about the mountains.’

‘So you’re from the village?’

‘Born and bred. Nowhere else I would rather live. Especially in this day and age. I’ve seen some changes in the world in my time, as I’m sure you have, too. Most of them for the worse.’

Brodie nodded. ‘You were part of the team that brought down the body, then?’

McLeish looked up from his repair. ‘I was that, Mr Brodie. I’ve brought a few bodies down from the mountains over the years, but never saw anything like that before. What a helluva job it was getting him out of the ice.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d have any thoughts about what he was doing up there?’

McLeish shook his head. ‘Not a one. And from everything I hear, he was a rank novice. I mean, superficially he had the right gear and everything, but from what I could see, it was all brand new. His boots, for example. No wear on them at all.’

Brodie crouched down beside him and watched him work the wires for several minutes, before he said, ‘If you were going to go up the mountain and wanted to leave your car as close as possible to the start of the climb, where would that be?’

McLeish looked up from his work and thought about it. ‘Depends which way you were going to go up. I mean, there’s an easy way, and a hard way. But the easy way’s a long trek and the hard way’s the quickest way down.’

And Brodie thought, that’s how he and Addie had done it. The long way up, the fast way down. Faster than he’d have liked. ‘Do you have a map?’

‘Aye, in the pickup.’

‘Could you show me?’

‘No problem.’

They returned to the truck and McLeish retrieved a map from the glovebox, spreading it out on the passenger seat.

‘Here,’ he said, pointing out the route that Brodie and Addie had followed up into the trees from the Grey Mare’s car park. ‘Easy way up.’ Then traced a finger along the route that father and daughter had taken to come down off the mountain. ‘Hard way.’ He looked at Brodie. ‘I take it we’re talking about Mr Younger?’

Brodie nodded acknowledgement.

‘Well, then, as a novice, it would make sense for him to take the easy way up.’

‘Yes, that’s what Archie McKay said.’

‘McKay? You’ve been talking to that blowhard, have you?’

‘So had Mr Younger, apparently.’

McLeish raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Had he now? Archie certainly kept that one to himself. And what advice did the old bugger give him?’

‘Same as you, Mr McLeish. But apparently Younger told him he didn’t have time to take the long way round. Being a novice, maybe he didn’t realise just what a tough climb the short route would be.’

McLeish snorted. ‘Aye, well, he wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake.’

Back at the hotel, Brodie forced himself to eat the two fried eggs with Lorne sausage that Brannan had prepared for breakfast, and drank nearly a whole carton of orange juice.

Then he returned to his room to wash and change, and gazing at his ravaged face in the mirror, decided that a shave might make him feel better. He had just laced up his climbing boots and was pulling on his North Face when there was a knock at the door. He thought it was probably Brannan with news of Joe Jackson. ‘Yeah?’

The door opened and Addie stood framed in the doorway. For a young woman who always seemed so sure of everything, in that moment she looked very uncertain. He straightened up and gazed at her with an ache of regret somewhere deep inside.

She said, ‘Robbie told me about Dr Roy. I wanted to come last night, but he said you might not be very... receptive.’

He forced a smile. ‘He might have been right.’ He paused. ‘Why would you want to come anyway?’

He saw a tiny shrug of her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. Seemed like such a shitty thing. I suppose I just wanted to say sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘No. I mean... just sorry for all that’s happened. To Dr Roy and everything.’

He looked away. ‘She was a nice lady. Lost her husband a while back. Had two young kids, too.’ He felt himself choking up again. ‘She didn’t deserve that.’ He zipped up his parka. ‘I could use your help if you have time.’

‘With what?’

‘I’m going to look for Younger’s car.’

‘You know where it is?’

‘No. But I figure he probably drove it as close to the start of the climb as he could get. If he took the route that you and I did, that would be the Grey Mare’s car park. And it’s not there. So...’

‘He would have taken the old military road,’ Addie said, ‘if he was going the other way.’ She paused. ‘But it would be crazy for a beginner to attempt that route up the mountain.’

‘Aye,’ Brodie said. ‘Just the sort of thing someone who didn’t know any better might do. But to be fair to him, he did actually get to the summit.’

‘If he’d left his car somewhere on the road, it would have been seen.’

‘Maybe.’ He picked McLeish’s map off the bed and traced the line of the old military road. ‘It looks like there’s some kind of off-road area here.’ He stabbed a finger at it. It was well above the stream that ran down through the trees and eventually tumbled over the rocks at Grey Mare’s Waterfall. ‘I don’t want to have to go the long way round and follow the road up to it. Can you guide me through the trees from below?’

She sighed, pressing her lips together. He knew that look. That forced concentration when she was undecided about something.

He said, ‘One way or the other, I’m going. But it might make things easier if...’ He let his voice trail away.

She gave him a hard look with her mother’s eyes. ‘Since you never answered me the last time, I’m going to ask again. Why are you here, Dad? Really? It’s not for this, is it?’ She waved an arm vaguely around herself. ‘Some missing person. A murder enquiry. I mean, do your bosses even know I’m your daughter?’

Grudgingly he shook his head.

‘I didn’t think so.’

‘I volunteered.’

She forced a breath of deep frustration through her lips. ‘Why?’

‘There’s stuff I have to tell you.’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

‘I know you don’t. But you have to.’

‘I don’t have to hear anything from you.’

‘Yes, you do!’ His suddenly raised voice startled her. ‘Addie, I’ve held things inside of me for the last ten years. Mostly guilt.’

‘And now you want to offload it on to me.’

‘No.’ He was shaking his head slowly, internalising some buried pain. ‘I’ll take my guilt with me to the grave.’ He turned penetrating blue eyes on her. Eyes that were filled with something she had never seen before. Something she couldn’t define. But they were almost chilling in the way they violated all her outer defences. ‘There are things I need to tell you. Things you need to know.’ He hesitated. ‘And I need to tell you now, because...’ He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

Something in his desperation caused her heart to skip a beat. ‘Because what?’ And perhaps because she feared the answer, she provided one for herself. ‘Because it’ll make you feel better?’

All the fight went out of him. She saw him go limp, and his gaze drifted away to some far-off place. ‘Because if I don’t tell you now, I never will, and you’ll never know the truth.’

Now she really was afraid to ask. Her voice was very small. ‘Why?’

His eyes flickered up to meet hers and she saw the defeat in them. ‘I’m dying, Addie. Be lucky if I have six months.’ He managed a sad chuckle. ‘If you can call that luck.’

The silence that lay between them was the same silence that had remained unbridged for ten years. Addie gazed at him for a very long time before she leaned over to pick up the map from the bed and said, ‘Tell me on the way up.’