A Winter Grave

Chapter Thirty-Three

The SEC Armadillo was jam-packed. A sea of waving flags and banners. The chanting of the crowd rising to the rafters, reverberating throughout the auditorium.

The stage was bedecked by elongated saltires hanging from the roof, the campaign logo of the Scottish Democratic Party projected in blue on the screen behind the podium. ONWARD TO VICTORY.

Sally Mack was an island of calm in the eye of the storm. She stood at the podium smiling, facing a barrage of media mics. She turned her head slowly from one invisible teleprompter to the other, delivering carefully considered words crafted by half a dozen speechwriters. Victory was theirs. The future of Scotland assured. Tomorrow the electorate would return to power the party that had delivered both economically and ecologically.

She was a slim and elegant woman in her early sixties, her calf-length blue dress emphasising both her femininity and her power. Her carefully sculpted and dyed blond hair made Addie think of the photographs she had seen of the first woman to become British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Her delivery had the same syrupy sense of insincerity. Here, she told her adoring crowd, stood the woman who had delivered energy certainty for Scotland, while most of the rest of the world was still struggling to come to terms with the post-fossil fuel emergency. And suffering the consequences of their failures.

Addie and Sheila sat together on the edge of the settee, watching the screen, taut with tension. Sally Mack’s triumphalism was both infuriating and depressing. Addie wanted to throw something at her. Anything. But she contained her frustration. She was exhausted after the hours of intensive grilling she had endured at the offices of the Herald.

Cameron, wrapped in a blanket, was asleep in Tiny’s armchair. Oblivious. Addie glanced away from the screen towards her son, and her heart and soul bled for him. Just a matter of days ago, they had been the picture-perfect family, living the dream in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland, perhaps the world. And it had all been an illusion. The dream, a nightmare just waiting for the hours of darkness. And the darkness, when it came, had been both bloody and profound.

Addie had barely slept since the moment of pulling the trigger and watching the man she had once loved thrown backwards into the snow. The same look in his eyes then as she had seen in Brodie’s just thirty minutes later.

But she had no more tears to cry. They had spilled until she ached, her eyes red and scratchy, burning now only with anger.

She almost jumped at the sound of the front door opening, and Sheila leapt immediately to her feet. Tiny appeared in the living room door, his face grey and drawn. His overcoat hung limp from bony shoulders, dripping rainwater on the carpet.

‘Are you okay?’ Sheila’s voice was tentative.

Tiny sighed. ‘It’s been a long day. And I’d probably have been in a lot more trouble if those SIA guys had been able to claim they were there on official business.’ He slipped off his coat to hang on the coat stand in the hall, and they heard his voice come back to them from over his shoulder. ‘As it was, they had to go along with our story of a terror warning to explain why they were there.’ He came back into the room. ‘But it’s a mess. And I’m not out of the woods yet.’ He managed a pale smile. ‘Though I think we’re going to be okay.’

‘What’s SIA?’ Addie said.

‘Scottish Intelligence Agency, pet. Not that there was much intelligence discernible in those guys.’ He disappeared into the kitchen to open the fridge and grab a beer. As he came back through to the living room, he popped the lid off the bottle and raised it to his lips. He took a long draught. Then he said, ‘The good news is that the Herald have published. Simultaneously on the internet and in print.’ He mimicked the sensational delivery of an imagined newsreader. ‘Herald reporter murdered to cover up disastrous radiation leak at Ballachulish A.’

He slumped into the vacant armchair.

‘Everyone’s picking up on it. It’ll be the lead story on every news bulletin all day tomorrow, and probably for weeks to come. Trust me, there’s not an elector in the land who won’t have seen it before they go in to cast their vote.’

Their attention was suddenly drawn to the TV as an announcer’s voice broke across coverage of the SDP rally at the Armadillo. ‘We have breaking news.’ Simultaneously, a BREAKING NEWS banner appeared, and an inset of a station newsreader popped up in the bottom left corner of the screen with news of the sensational story just published by the Scottish Herald.

The director covering the rally cut to a close-up of the podium as a po-faced man in a dark blue suit whispered into the ear of the first minister, whose strained smile could barely conceal her irritation at this on-stage interruption at the climax of her speech.

But the smile very quickly vanished, and Sally Mack’s mouth gaped just a little, initially shocked. Before fear and realisation registered in the widening of her eyes. Game over.

Addie punched the air in vengeful satisfaction. ‘Yes!’