A Winter Grave

Chapter Thirty

Brodie had no sense of there being a moment when he drifted off to sleep, and he was startled to be awakened by the sound of a door opening.

Addie stood in the hall, kitted out as if she were intent on climbing a mountain. Her hair was tucked up under a dark blue woollen hat, and she clutched Cameron in her arms. He wore a parka and welly boots and mitts, and a cagoule that folded around his neck to keep him warm, his sleepy little face peering out from behind soft grey fabric.

Brodie blinked and realised there was light seeping in from beyond the curtains.

‘The storm’s passed,’ Addie said. ‘It’s light enough for us to go.’

He struggled to his feet. ‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep.’

She said, ‘Like you didn’t need it.’

He struggled into the anorak he had borrowed from Brannan, and heaved Robbie’s old weekend pack on to his back. He felt the weight of the laptop in there, and Sita’s samples, and all the additional burden of responsibility that rested on his shoulders for getting his family out of here.

Addie held out a box of cartridges. ‘Some additional rounds in case you need them.’

He took the box and stuffed it in his pocket. He said, ‘Don’t you think about anything except keeping Cameron safe and getting him to the eVTOL. Let me worry about Robbie.’

Outside, the snow lay thickly over everything, deep and unbroken, robbing the world of definition. There was light in a clearing sky, and in the absolute stillness that settled across the village and the mountains in the wake of the storm, all that could be heard was the dawn chorus. Birds emerging from wherever it was they had taken shelter, to greet the new day. Oblivious to the fear that stalked the streets of this tiny settlement.

Brodie stood in the doorway, clutching the rifle across his chest, scanning the rooftops and the near horizon. But the land rose steeply into the trees on every side, and Robbie could have been anywhere. He must have known that with the storm over, Brodie would take the opportunity of first light to try to make it to the playing field. He had every advantage.

Addie stood at her father’s back, holding Cameron. She said, ‘We’re sticking close to you all the way. I don’t think he’ll risk a shot if there’s a chance of hitting one of us.’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Brodie turned and growled at her. ‘I’m not using my own family as human shields.’

She met his eye, unflinching. ‘Dad, that’s not your decision to make. We’re in this together, or you go on your own.’

And again he saw something of himself in her. That wilful stubbornness that so had characterised most of his adult life. He knew there would be no arguing with her.

The snow lay at least a metre deep, and more where it had drifted. So they made slow progress up Lochaber Road from the police station, huddled close, Brodie with his rifle held ready to raise to his shoulder. He scanned north and west, Addie raking keen eyes to the east. A plume of snow raised itself from the road just a couple of metres ahead of them, followed by the delayed crack of a rifle shot smothered by the acoustic muffling of the snow. A group of startled crows lifted black into the sky above a gathering of trees almost directly to the north, and Brodie swung his rifle in that direction to release a shot. He felt the kick of it against his shoulder, knowing that there was zero chance of hitting anything other than a tree.

Addie said, ‘He’s not that bad a shot. He’s just letting us know he’s there.’

Brodie nodded. The real test would come when they got to the football pitch.

It was heavy going through the snow with legs that ached and had to be lifted to make every step forward. Past Lochaber Crescent on their right. Mamore Road on their left. Not a single villager venturing forth in the aftermath of the storm. But curtains twitched with the sound of the shots, and unseen eyes watched them from behind glass that reflected only the glare of the snow. Semi-detached houses with upper dormers, and satellite dishes crusted in white. Fences barely rising above the drift.

The banks of the Allt Coire na Bà were smothered in shelves of compacted white crystals, the rush of black sparkling water beneath the bridge cutting a tortuous path beneath a skin of ice. The barrier that Brodie had clipped with Brannan’s SUV the night before was lost beneath the snow.

Now the trees crowded in, close to the road, and rose steeply into the calm of the morning. It seemed inordinately dark among them, perfect for Robbie to move unseen, following their progress around the curve of Lochaber Road as it headed out of the village.

They passed a cottage among the trees on the other side of the fence to their left, snow clinging to the steep pitch of its slate roof, insulation sealing in its warmth, so that the snow would remain there all day, unmelted. Then, up ahead, they saw the turn-off into the tarmac parking area in front of the sports pavilion.

They smelled the blaze before they saw the glow of it in the sky and the smoke rising above the trees. But it was not the sweet smell of woodsmoke. It was the acrid stink of man-made materials, toxic, and belching abnormally black smoke. For a moment, Brodie thought that Robbie had somehow managed to set the eVTOL alight. But as they reached the turn into the football field, they saw Eve half buried under snow in the middle of the field where she had landed. The ground around her appeared undisturbed.

It wasn’t until they left the road behind that they saw for the first time, beyond the trees, the flaming bulk of the International Hotel. Across the valley, sirens were sounding at the fire station, but it would not be a simple matter to get here through metres of drifting snow. The flames licked high above the treetops, and Brodie understood for the first time what it was Robbie had meant when he’d said of Calum McLeish, he’ll burn now like everyone else. Everything would be destroyed in the fire. Younger’s corpse. And Sita. And McLeish. No doubt Robbie had intended for the evidence stored in his hut to go up in flames as well. He must have figured that Brodie had found it by now. Another reason he couldn’t afford to let him leave.

The glow of the fire flickered orange across the white that lay thick on the playing field, ash falling from the sky like the snow before it. The prevailing breeze carried the smoke through the trees in their direction. But, even so, Brodie knew that as they crossed the field to the eVTOL they would be easy targets.

He glanced behind them, but there was no sign of life among the trees on the hillside. Addie stuck close to him, only too aware of the danger, as they ploughed across the snow-covered tarmac to the shelter of the pavilion. Brodie saw immediately that there was no green light on the reader attached to the plug. Either Eve was fully charged, or the cable had been severed again. He lifted the end of the cable, and began pulling it up from the snow as they crossed slowly towards the eVTOL. Halfway there, the severed end of the cable prised itself free of the snow where McLeish’s repair had been ripped apart.

‘Shit!’ Brodie cursed and knelt down, searching in the snow for the other end. They couldn’t afford to leave a length of cable dangling from the e-chopper as it took off. If it would take off at all. He found it and ripped it up through the crusting white snow as they started to run towards Eve.

When they reached her, he waved his RFID card at the door and it slid open. He half turned towards Addie. ‘Get the boy in, quick.’

Addie bundled Cameron unceremoniously into the back of the eVTOL, the boy protesting all the while at his rough treatment. Brodie pressed the return button inside the cable hatch, and the remainder of the severed cable began to reel itself in.

‘Get in,’ he shouted at Addie, almost at the same moment as the bullet hit him somewhere high on the left side of his chest. He spun away in a spray of blood to slam against the open door as the crack of the rifle shot rang out across the field. Addie saw the panic in his eyes.

This time it was she who shouted, ‘Get in!’ And she half lifted, half pushed him into the cabin of the eVTOL, before stooping to pick up the rifle that had fallen from his grasp. She turned around, back to the e-chopper, as Robbie started walking across the field towards them. The blaze of the International lit him orange down one side, and cast a long shadow across the snow. He had a scarf wrapped around his head, and held his rifle at chest height as he advanced slowly towards the aircraft. The air was filled with smoke and the crackle of flames. A siren wailing somewhere in the distance. Addie raised the rifle to her shoulder. ‘Don’t come any closer.’

He stopped then. A sad smile on his face. He shook his head. ‘Addie, you know you’re not going to shoot me. Just like you know I’m not going to harm you or Cameron.’

‘Try me.’ Her voice sounded bolder to her than she felt. She pressed the rifle harder into her shoulder, her finger crooked around the trigger.

He said, ‘Addie, you don’t have it in you. And, really, I mean you no harm.’ He paused. ‘But I can’t let your Dad leave. I can’t.’

‘Take one step closer and I’ll drop you where you stand.’

His smile became strained. ‘There’s too much of your father in you. Maybe I know now why you hated him so much.’

Without taking her eyes off Robbie, Addie half turned her head towards the open door. ‘Dad, don’t let Cameron see this.’

Inside, Brodie was almost numb with the pain. There was a lot of blood, and he could only just see Cameron’s frightened eyes in the gloom. ‘Come here, son,’ he said, his voice the hoarsest of whispers. But it was invitation enough to propel the boy into his arms, and he turned his grandson away from the open door, wrapping himself protectively around the child.

Robbie’s smile was gone now. ‘You’re making a mistake, Addie.’

‘No, you’re the one making the mistake, Robbie, if you think I’m going to let you kill my father.’

He stood for a moment, all humanity leached from his eyes — a man who had killed too many times. He lifted his rifle in a single, swift movement, and the shot that rang out spun him away, his fall cushioned by the depth of the snow. He half sunk into it, blood spreading quickly around him, rabbit fear in his eyes. As he tried to speak, blood gurgled into his mouth.

Addie stared in horror at what she had done. This was the man who had changed her life, persuaded her that she should make her future here with him, in this hidden valley. The man who had fathered her child. She had aimed for the largest part of the target, his chest, afraid that if she simply tried to disable him with a shot to the leg, she would miss, and he would shoot her instead. But, still, she felt sick to the core.

She became aware of Brodie yanking at her hood. ‘Get in,’ he whispered, still shielding the boy from the sight of his father lying bleeding in the snow. And as Addie climbed into the eVTOL with leaden legs, he closed the door, summoning all his energy to bark at Eve. ‘Eve, initiate our return journey.’

Her voice came back to them. Low battery, Detective Inspector. Range limited.

‘Just go,’ he barked. ‘As far as you can take us.’

After a moment she responded. Flight initiated. And the rotors above them began to spin, snow flying off in all directions, the power of the downdraft blowing it clear of the glass. The screen at the front of the cabin displayed a battery symbol in orange beneath the warning RANGE THIRTY MINUTES. It didn’t matter to Brodie. He wanted to get them away from here. And thirty minutes flying time would just have to do.

With the gentlest lurch, Eve lifted herself up out of the snow and wheeled away, rising over the trees and the flames of the International Hotel. Brodie peered through the glass, back the way they had come, and saw Robbie lying spreadeagled in the snow. Even from here he could see the blood.

And he saw the figure of a man running across the field to grasp Robbie’s parka by the hood and start dragging his prone form through the snow towards the blazing building. Even as Brodie watched, the man turned his face up towards them. Brannan! It was fucking Brannan! And then realisation struck Brodie with sickening clarity. Brannan was the face of the faceless they. He was their man here. He had been pulling all the strings the whole time. Orchestrating everything. And now he was pulling Robbie into the fire, so that he too would go up in smoke.

But what made no sense is why Brannan would have let them get away. He could have disabled the eVTOL, set fire to it, just as he had done to his own hotel. Brodie shut his eyes and shook his head as a surge of pain took away his breath.

Addie took Cameron from his grandfather’s grasp and held him to her, trembling almost uncontrollably. She glanced at her father as he eased himself forward and into the front seats, leaving a trail of blood across the leather. An involuntary cry of pain escaped him as he slid the weekend pack from his back, letting it fall to the floor. He dropped into the seat, his breathing laboured.

Below, the dark waters of the loch swept past, the unbroken white of the mountains rising up around them into a clearing blue sky. And as Eve lifted still higher, the early sun breached the peaks behind them, to send sunlight cascading west along the fjord, and filling the cabin with a golden light.

Still clutching Cameron, Addie manoeuvred herself into the seat beside her father and reached over to push her hat and gloves on to the wound beneath his anorak, pulling the drawstrings tight to create pressure on the wad where the bullet had entered. And another voice filled the cabin.

‘Detective Inspector Brodie, this is air traffic control at Helensburgh. We’re going to schedule a landing for you at Mull. You should have just about enough juice to get there. We’ll monitor battery range remotely.’ A pause. ‘We have a video message for you.’

They were passing Glencoe village on their left now, and the power station at Ballachulish A two hundred feet below. Moments later they overflew the barrier bridge at the narrowest point of the loch and skimmed out across the open expanse of Loch Linnhe.

The monitor flickered and the battery symbol vanished, to be replaced by today’s date, white letters on black, that in turn gave way to the battered face of Brodie delivering the report he had sent the previous night. Text scrolled across the bottom of the screen: Report by DI Cameron on the death of Charles Younger.

Brodie listened to his voice speaking. But they were not his words. His lips moved as if they were, but he knew he had never spoken them.

Dr Roy’s post-mortem on Charles Younger, he said, had returned a verdict of accidental death. An apparent fall while climbing on Binnein Mòr. But the fire at the International Hotel, in which the pathologist had perished today, meant that her report and all her samples were lost.

He shouted at the screen, blood in his spittle. ‘That’s a lie! That’s not me. I never said that. Younger was murdered. Murdered, for fuck’s sake!’ He lashed out and struck the windscreen of the cabin, his fist smearing blood on the glass.

Addie’s voice, right beside him, was tiny and frightened. ‘What’s happening, Dad? What does it mean?’

He turned blazing eyes on her. ‘It means I’ve been fucking had.’ He fumbled in his pockets for his iCom glasses and snapped them in place with blood-sticky fingers. ‘iCom, scan the video,’ he shouted, focusing his gaze on the screen.

After a moment, his iCom returned its verdict. Video genuine. And a green GENUINE symbol flashed in his lenses.

He yanked the glasses from his face and threw them away across the cabin, and, with fumbling fingers, pulled the earbuds from his ears. ‘Fuckers!’ His voice reverberated around the cabin, his grandson shrinking into his mother, fear in the wide-eyed stare he directed at his grandfather. ‘The software in these things isn’t the latest version. They have the latest version.’ He tried to bring his breathing under control. ‘Eve, place a call to DCI Maclaren at Pacific Quay.’

He listened with dismay to the silence that greeted his request.

Addie said, ‘I don’t understand. What’s going on?’

‘That video of me...’ Brodie waved his hand at the screen. ‘It’s not me. It’s a deepfake. What do they call it...?’ He searched for the term. ‘Neural masking.’ He slammed his fist down on the dashboard. ‘They’ve set me up for this.’

Eve interrupted. RANGE FIVE MINUTES. And an alarm began to sound. A piercing, repetitive wail that filled the aircraft. His video was replaced on-screen by a flashed warning: BATTERY LEVEL CRITICAL. The battery symbol was red.

They were over Mull now, and Brodie looked down in impotent frustration as they flew over the golf course above Tobermory, the land passing beneath them before giving way to the Atlantic Ocean sweeping in from the west in white-crested waves.

‘Why aren’t we landing?’ Addie asked, fear making her shrill.

And he realised now why it was that Brannan had let them go. ‘Because they’re going to drop us in the ocean,’ he said. ‘You, me, Cameron and all the evidence of government cover-up at the nuclear plant. We’re dangerous. And expendable.’

He stared out, wild-eyed, as they overflew the upper half of the island of Coll, and the vast expanse of the Atlantic ahead beckoned them to their final resting place. He had forgotten now about his wound. The survival instinct had kicked in, adrenaline overriding pain.

‘No! No! No!’ he bellowed. He stood up and swung a fist, feeling bones breaking in his hand as he struck the glass and smeared yet more blood on it. He turned to press his back to the windscreen, arms stretched out to either side like Christ on the cross. His mind was racing. Thoughts tumbling one over the other in blind panic. But he knew there was something he could do. Something just out of reach. If only he could remember.

He looked down at daughter and grandson staring up at him in sheer terror, and he could hardly breathe. He said, ‘Jesus Christ, Addie. I was in the delivery room when you were born. I watched you draw your first breath. I’m not going to watch you draw your last!’

He slumped into his seat, burying his face in his hands. Think! Think! Think! It was so hard above the wailing of the alarm and Eve’s constant prompting to buckle up again. And he knew at any moment that Eve was simply going to stop flying and drop them silently into the ocean. He tried to focus on the day he flew downriver to pick up his flight out to Mull. The technician in yellow oilskins who had run across the grass from the clubhouse at Helensburgh golf course. He had sat in beside Brodie and primed Eve for flight. Brodie screwed up his eyes. Tiny was so much better at this than him. He noticed things, remembered details that Brodie missed. A visual thing, he’d said it was. You could remember images better than words. And better still if you could link either to something personal. Something you could relate to.

Brodie tried to replay in his mind what it was that the technician had done. Of course! He’d tapped the screen simultaneously with his index and middle fingers. The image of him doing it returned from some deep memory recess that Brodie almost never visited. Twice. He’d tapped it twice. Brodie leaned forward to do the same, and the warning message was wiped away, to be replaced by the eVTOL’s original welcome page. A horribly incongruous photograph of the aircraft taken on a sunlit day, and set against the clearest of blue skies. Brodie could remember thinking how unlikely it was that this photo had been taken in Scotland.

Absurdly, Eve addressed them as if for the first time. Welcome to your Grogan Industries Mark Five eVTOL air taxi. How had the technician responded, sitting there dripping rain from his glistening oilskins? Something had chimed with Brodie at the time. Something almost subliminal. The technician had identified himself with what was certainly his own unique code. Three letters and a three-digit number. Brodie could very nearly hear his voice. And then it dawned on him why the numbers had registered. His birthday. It was his birthday! Year and month, 496. April, 1996.

‘Dad, we’re losing height!’ Addie’s voice beside him was brittle with panic.

But he figured that had to be illusory. When Eve ran out of battery, her rotors would simply stop, and they would drop from the sky. He resisted the temptation to look and forced himself to keep thinking, trying to recall the technician’s voice. But the warning siren was still filling his ears and it was difficult to think above it.

The man had used the NATO alphabet. Key words representing each letter for clarity. What were they? ‘Come on, come on,’ he urged himself, almost unaware that he was speaking out loud. And then he remembered how Eve had responded, calling him Zak. ‘Z-A-K,’ he said suddenly. ‘ZAK496.’

He caught his breath to try to steady his voice and speak clearly.

‘Zebra-Alpha-Kilo-496.’ And then Zak had issued an instruction. What exactly had he asked Eve to do? Activate remote. That was what he had said. Brodie was sure of it. Now he had to ask her to do the opposite. He said, ‘Eve, deactivate remote.’

And he was astonished to hear her respond immediately to the command. Remote deactivated. He breathed his relief, and heard the exhalation rattle in his lungs. Now Brodie had control. Not some bastard in a darkened room sending them to their deaths.

He said, ‘Eve, turn around and put us down at the nearest safe landing point.’

The sunny photograph of the eVTOL vanished from the screen, to be replaced by a map of the Inner Hebrides. Their route across Mull and Coll and out to sea was traced in red, concluding in flashing circles of orange. A return route in yellow retraced their flight to the nearest landfall. The island of Coll, the chosen landing spot pulsing in circles of green.

They felt Eve bank left and turn through one hundred and eighty degrees, and the distant outline of Coll swung back into view. At the same time the eVTOL began losing height. No question about it this time.

Brodie hardly recognised his own voice. ‘Eve, do we have sufficient battery?’

Battery life unknown. She sounded so calm. As if her programmers themselves had made no distinction between life and death.

Brodie felt Addie clutch his arm as Coll grew nearer. They were barely three metres above the waves now, fearing that at any moment they would fall into the brine. Salt spray blew back across the windscreen, blurring their vision. And still the alarm sounded.

They could see a beach, silver sands cleared of snow by an incoming tide. Beyond it, tufted machair land, sparsely covered by snow, was dotted with dozens of hardy, grazing, black-faced sheep. Beyond them, a road, a collection of huddled buildings, a farm.

And the rotors stopped turning, as silently as they had begun. The eVTOL dropped the final metre into snow and peat bog, landing heavily and turning on to its side, propelled forward by its own momentum.

It was chaos in the cabin, all three flung from their seats and sent sprawling as Eve slid across the snow on her side for another twenty metres, before coming to an abrupt halt against a line of broken fencing.

Cameron was wailing, in fear more than pain. Addie clambered over the upturned seats to grasp him to her, holding him close for just a moment before checking him for damage. But children are far less brittle than adults, and beyond a lump the size of an egg coming up on his temple, he seemed unhurt.

She turned around to see Brodie slumped at an awkward angle across the far door. He was looking at her across the space between as if it were some eternally unbridgeable gap. His breathing was laboured, and in his eyes she saw a look she had seen once before, when Robbie had taken her hunting and shot a deer. It had still been alive when they reached it, eyes full of incomprehension, but also accepting of death. And she had watched the light of its life die as Robbie pulled the trigger for a second time. She had never gone hunting with him again.

Now she scrambled across the upturned cabin, but he held out a hand to stop her. Beyond him, through the glass, she could see people running towards them from the farmhouse. He said, ‘You’re going to have to do this on your own now.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

She tried to sit him up, but he pushed her away. There was blood everywhere. ‘Addie!’ His voice was insistent. ‘They’re going to try everything in their power to stop you.’ He fought to get more air in his lungs. ‘So you’re going to need help.’