A Winter Grave

Chapter Twenty-One

As he climbed the slope from the football field to the hotel, he could smell woodsmoke carried on the wind, and saw curls of blue smoke whipped into the gathering storm from the chimney top above the bar. Brannan’s SUV was parked at the foot of the steps. For once, Brodie thought, there was someone home.

He kicked the snow from his boots on the top step and pushed open the door into the entrance hall. Brannan emerged from the bar. He must have been watching Brodie’s approach unseen from behind reflections on glass.

His smile was forced. ‘Internet’s back online. Mobile phones, too.’

‘Good,’ Brodie said.

But Brannan made a face. ‘We’re not likely to have them for long, though. Storm Idriss is scheduled to hit in a couple of hours, and it’ll probably take everything out again.’ He flicked his head back over his shoulder. ‘I was just trying to build up some heat in the bar. In case we lose power again, too.’ He laughed at his own optimism. ‘In case? I should say “when”.’

Brodie said, ‘You’ve spoken to Jackson?’

Brannan’s face clouded. ‘I haven’t had a chance.’

Brodie’s eyes turned dangerous. ‘Oh, yeah, cos you’re so busy here at the hotel.’

Brannan said quickly, ‘No, what I mean is, I haven’t been able to reach him, Mr Brodie. He’s at the plant. Won’t come off shift till six. There were no phones all morning. And it’s hard to get a call through to him there anyway.’

‘Then try harder.’

‘I will, I will... But, you know, I promised Joe confidentiality.’

Brodie took a step towards him. ‘If there’s no rendezvous arranged by close of play this afternoon, I’m going to arrest you for obstruction of justice, Brannan.’ He scrutinised the man’s frightened face. ‘Do you understand me?’

Brannan nodded.

‘Good.’ Brodie started for the stairs, then stopped and turned. ‘One other thing.’

Brannan eyed him warily.

‘What does he look like, this Joe Jackson?’

Brannan frowned. ‘I don’t—’

Brodie cut him off. ‘Just describe him to me.’

Brannan looked perplexed, then almost pained as he tried to pull an image to mind of the man he had spent half the day with just yesterday. The succession of witnesses over the years who had struggled to recall the details of events which had unfolded in front of their eyes meant that Brodie was no longer surprised by people’s faulty memories. ‘He... he’s tall. Probably six foot. Maybe a bit more.’ He raised a hand to his own balding head. ‘Losing his hair. Sort of gingery, going white.’ He was warming to his memory. ‘A wiry guy, not much meat on the bones.’

Brodie nodded. This was better than he had expected. ‘Talk to him,’ he said, and turned to run up the stairs.

In his room, Brodie unfolded his laptop on the dresser and booted it up. He took the SD card from his North Face and examined it in the light. Extended capacity. Ten terabytes. Enough for hours of 6K video. He slipped it into the card slot on the side of the laptop and opened it up on-screen.

Younger’s housekeeping had been poor. There were hours of recorded video that he hadn’t bothered to wipe. Fortunately there was a date stamp, so Brodie was able to fast-forward to the day the journalist went missing. It was 9 p.m. when the cameras on Younger’s car flickered into life and Brodie saw a figure approaching from the rear. A man wearing a hoodie and jeans, and to Brodie’s disappointment, a ski mask — aware of the possibility that he was being captured on camera. As he moved around the car, his image segued from one camera to the next. He tried each of the doors, but there was no way of getting into the car without breaking a window.

A hand came into close-up as the man turned away from the driver’s door, and Brodie stiffened. He froze the image and zoomed in on it. It was some kind of work glove. M-Pact Mechanix. Brown and tan, reinforced across the knuckles and along the back of each finger. With four distinctive horizontal slashes at each joint to allow for easy flexing. The same pattern that, with repeated blows to Younger’s head, had been imprinted in clear contusions in the flesh of his face.

Brodie switched applications and googled M-Pact. He found the glove in seconds. Impact Guard™ for shock protection. And TrekDry® material to keep hands dry. The reinforcement was provided by thermoplastic rubber, and something called EVA foam protected all the joints. Ideal for heavy mechanical work. Or mountaineering.

He switched back to the video and set it to play. The wearer of the gloves simply walked away, moving quickly out of shot. The cameras recorded for another thirty seconds, then stopped, and the image went black. There had to be more. Brodie waited.

When the recording restarted, an hour had passed, and the light had faded. The picture was grainy now. The movement which had triggered the recording was the arrival of another vehicle, which immediately doused its headlights. It swung quickly into position directly behind Younger’s car, and it was impossible to tell whether this was an SUV or a pickup. Even the colour of it was difficult to determine. Dark blue or green. Maybe even grey. Its driver had taken the precaution of covering the licence plate, but there were bull bars on the front.

Younger’s car juddered as the vehicle behind it engaged, then began inching it forward. The wheels would have been locked, but the superior power of the other vehicle easily pushed them across the gravel.

Suddenly the view from the rear cameras angled towards the sky, and all the images recording on to the SD card became blurred as the vehicle tipped down the slope, gathering momentum, and jarring as it struck several trees on the way down. It seemed to take an eternity to reach the bottom of the drop, but in fact was recorded as being fewer than five seconds. The downward progress of the car ended suddenly as the nose buried itself in the stream. The front cameras registered underwater pebbles worn smooth by eons as the cloudiness of the impact quickly washed away in the flow of the stream. The view back to the top of the slope revealed the distant silhouette of a man standing against the light of the stars. He waited for only a moment before turning away out of shot, and less than half a minute later, the recording stopped and the picture went black. There was no further video on the card.

Brodie was startled by a knock at the door. ‘Yes?’

It opened, and a hesitant Brannan took a couple of steps into the room. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr Brodie.’ And Brodie realised for the first time how quickly the light was fading. The cloud was almost black beyond his window, the afternoon light sulphurous, the wind rattling the window frame.

‘You spoke to Jackson?’

Brannan nodded. ‘He’s agreed to meet you on the proviso that you’ll keep his name out of it.’

‘There’s no way I can guarantee that, Brannan.’

Brannan made a face. ‘I thought that. But I’ll let you tell him.’

‘Is he coming here?’

Brannan shook his head vigorously. ‘No. He’ll meet you tonight. 8 p.m. On the north side of the loch. A couple of miles short of the power plant. Down off the road there’s a concrete bunker which provides an emergency escape from the storage tunnels below. I can show you on the map.’

Brodie sighed. ‘I’d rather he just came here.’

‘He won’t do that, Mr Brodie. Whatever it is he knows, whatever he told Younger, he’s scared. I mean, really scared.’

‘And how am I supposed to get there?’

‘I’ll lend you my SUV.’

‘You could just drive me.’

Brannan shook his head. ‘I have a large party booking in for Christmas this year, Mr Brodie. The organiser is calling tonight with details. I need to be here to take the call.’ He added quickly, ‘It’s only about a ten- or fifteen-minute drive.’

When Brannan had gone, Brodie sat in the gloom of his bedroom for several minutes, turning everything over in his mind. The autopsy, the gloves, the car in the ravine. Sita’s murder. It pained him every time he recalled the image of the pathologist folded into the cake chiller. Something she had found during the post-mortem had made her a target for the killer. Something that might reveal his identity, or the motive for Younger’s murder. But whatever it was she’d found, it was lost now. All her samples vanished, along with Younger’s body.

He checked that he still had internet and slipped on his iCom glasses. He would record his report and send it to Pacific Quay so that he didn’t have to engage. That way he could register every detail without interruption, right down to and including his rendezvous later with Joe Jackson. If Storm Idriss brought down power lines again, as Brannan predicted, it might be the last chance he had to report in before sometime tomorrow, or later.