A Winter Grave

Chapter Thirty-One

Tiny sat slouched in his armchair, balancing a half-drunk beer on the arm of it. The television was on. News coverage of a political rally held by the Eco Party. The venue they had chosen was far too big for the number of its supporters crowding around the stage waving banners and saltires. The close-up shots made it appear full. But the TV director was showing his political bias by intercutting with wide shots revealing the emptiness of the hall beyond. It was an anticlimax to a bitterly fought campaign in which the Ecologists had gained almost no ground on the ruling Democrats, who were scheduled to hold a triumphant rally the following night on the eve of an election they were certain to win.

Tiny was paying it no attention. It was a distraction in the corner of the room, like the flickering flames of the living-room fires he remembered from his childhood. Sheila was sitting on the settee opposite, playing some word game on her tablet. They didn’t talk much these days, drifting apart as they grew older, and without the glue of children to keep them together. But they were still comfortable with each other.

Tonight she had commented on how distant he seemed, coming home at the end of his shift to eat a carry-out pizza from a box on his knees. He had told her there was a lot on his mind. Just work stuff. She had never cared for Brodie, so he didn’t really feel like telling her that his best pal had been killed in an air crash. It had been rumoured for a couple of days that his eVTOL air taxi had ditched in the sea somewhere off Mull. He had been shocked to the core to hear it. But no one had been able to provide confirmation. Not even the DCI. Until today. But the air taxi had not, it turned out, ditched in the Atlantic as first reported. It had crashed on the Isle of Coll, and they had pulled Brodie’s body from it, killed by a bullet from a rifle. No one could quite believe it.

Tiny had spent most of the evening thinking about Cammie, remembering all their scrapes and adventures, and hoping against hope that somehow reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. He knew, of course, it was a forlorn hope. When he’d first heard rumours about the eVTOL going missing, he had tried calling Brodie on his iCom, but the call had gone straight to messages. Which had not augured well.

Now on his third beer, he was subsiding into distant mawkish memories, and getting quietly emotional.

When the doorbell rang, it did not immediately penetrate his thoughts. It was Sheila’s voice that woke him from his reverie. ‘Who could that be at this time of night?’

Tiny looked up. ‘What?’

‘The doorbell.’

And right on cue, it rang again. Sheila clearly had no intention of answering it, so Tiny heaved himself out of his armchair to lay his beer on the coffee table before heading out to the hall to see who was there.

He turned on the outside lamp before opening the door. The rain that had been falling all day cut through the light it cast upon the steps and the path beyond.

A young woman stood on the top step, long auburn hair escaping from the hood of her parka, wet and smeared across her face. She was holding a child in her arms. A young boy who was fast asleep, his head resting on her shoulder. Tiny frowned. There was something oddly familiar about them both, but he was sure he didn’t know them. ‘Yes?’

She said simply, ‘My dad told me you would help.’