Dozens and dozens of her as a baby. Newborn, crusty and wet, fresh from the womb. First nappies, first pram, first cot, first step. Every first of almost every day recorded for posterity.
Mel had told him the night they met that her mother had named her after one of the Spice Girls. Or maybe two of them. Mel herself had wanted to name their daughter after her favourite singer. Adele. In the early days she’d always had music playing. The sad, haunting, self-pitying songs of Adele had predominated, to the point where Brodie had come to hate them. Lyrics mirroring a generation obsessed with itself. Though he never said anything.
When Mel told him she wanted to name their daughter after the singer, he had bitten back an objection. There was not a single happiness he would have denied her. But right from the start, he had been unable to bring himself to call her Adele, shortening it instead to Addie. Which had stuck. All her life.
Now he watched through a haze of alcohol as his daughter grew up before his eyes. From laughing toddler, to the solemn-faced five-year-old in her brand-new uniform whose hand he had held as he walked her to the school gates for the very first time. He could remember, still, the sense of loss he’d experienced watching her passing through them and into her new life. The loss was one of innocence. He understood now that each chapter of our lives changes us irrevocably. That we grow and adapt to fit the new narrative. And that nothing is ever the same again.
But he had loved that little girl. And loved her again as he watched her once more grow towards womanhood. The video that Mel had taken of him teaching her to swim. Then the first wobbling turn of the wheels as she learned to ride a bike, screaming, ‘Don’t let go, Daddy, don’t let go,’ long after he had.
Now a toothy twelve-year-old with braces, arms wrapped around the astrological telescope he had bought for her birthday. She was almost unable to contain her glee. An obsession with the sky, an early indicator of where the future might lead her. Now she could see the stars that she had somehow always wanted to reach for.
Then came the succession of inappropriate boyfriends that punctuated her teen years, the knee-jerk rejection of parental advice as she very nearly drowned in a sea of adolescent hormones, almost unrecognisable from the little girl he had taken to school that first day.
And finally, the very last photograph he had of her. One she had taken herself. A defiant, accusatory selfie. Her anger at the world — and more specifically, her father — was evident in the curl of her lips, the fire in her eyes. He could barely bring himself to look at it. How had he even acquired it? He had no recollection now. Maybe she had sent it to him. A farewell gift. Of her hatred and contempt. The force of it had not diminished in all the years since.
He fumbled on the cushion next to him among the empty miniatures, in search of one with an unbroken seal. He found the last one. A bulbous, dented little bottle. Haig Dimple. He tore off the lid and sucked at the neck of it till it was empty. His breathing was stertorous in the still of the room. He closed his eyes and felt the world spinning away. Then opened them to find Addie still directing her hostility at him. He shut his eyes again to escape the pain of it. And made a decision.
Chapter Seven
It was just over a mile and a half from his tenement home in Gardner Street to police HQ at Pacific Quay. As he did most days, he walked it, avoiding Dumbarton Road where he could. It took him a little more than half an hour. His parka kept him dry in the rain for up to two hours, and his waterproof leggings saved his trousers from a soaking. He wore a baseball cap beneath his hood to keep the rain out of his face.
Today it was falling in a steady, breathless stream, just a degree or two above turning to snow. He hardly noticed it. His head hurt and his mouth was like the bottom of a birdcage. But he didn’t much notice that either. His mind was somewhere else altogether, and he was only vaguely aware of the extra weight on his back from the weekend pack chock-full of climbing gear and a change of clothes. He was accustomed to taking it on much more arduous expeditions than this.
The south side of the river was almost obscured by rain as he walked across the Millennium Bridge. The multistorey blocks that housed the media and the police stood wraithlike against a grey sky indistinguishable from the horizon, hazy electric light illuminating misted windows in the gloom. He felt better for the walk. But only just.
DCI Maclaren’s door stood ajar, as it always did. Paying lip service to the open-door policy that he had promised but never quite delivered. His familiar bark told Brodie to enter when he knocked on it.
‘Got a minute, sir?’
Maclaren looked up. Brodie had changed out of his wet gear, and only his reddened cheeks betrayed evidence of his half-hour walk in the rain. ‘What is it?’
‘Just wondered if you’d managed to get someone to fly up to Kinlochleven.’
‘Aye. McNair’s going. He’ll be taking a water taxi down to Helensburgh within the hour.’ He tugged at his collar to loosen his tie below an outsized Adam’s apple that seemed to slide up and down his neck like a gauge recording levels of profanity. ‘He’s not very pleased about it. The spot where the body was found is halfway up a fucking mountain. The only climbing McNair’s done in the last twenty years is into his bed.’ He paused for a moment and frowned. ‘Why?’
Brodie said, ‘I could go.’
Maclaren’s frown deepened. ‘What happened to your medical condition?’ The way he stressed the word medical betrayed a certain scepticism.
‘I’ve been given the all-clear, sir. I brought in my backpack and my climbing gear just in case.’
‘Well, la-de-fucking-da. McNair will be your friend for life.’ He shuffled through the detritus on his desk to retrieve a buff-coloured folder and held it out. ‘The background’s all in there. The water taxi will take you downriver to pick up an eVTOL from the temporary airbase at Helensburgh golf course. You’ll go via Mull to pick up the pathologist. She’s been there carrying out PMs on the victims of the Tobermory fire.’ He paused. ‘You do know what an eVTOL is, don’t you? Never know with you old-timers.’
‘It’s an electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle, sir. What us old-timers used to call a chopper.’ He paused long enough for Maclaren to register the sarcasm, then said quickly, ‘When was the body actually discovered?’
‘Three days ago. Too bloody long. They’ve been keeping it in some kind of cold cabinet. It was found by a young part-time meteorologist who’s married to the local cop. She was up there servicing a mountaintop weather station. Installed it herself apparently, along with a whole bunch of others in the area about six years ago. She now only works a few hours a week, on a service and maintenance basis. Childcare issues, apparently.’
Brodie felt the skin tighten across his face.
‘I need you to determine whether it was an accident or foul play and report back.’
Brodie said nothing. He was still reeling.
‘If it’s foul play, we’ll have to send in a full team.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’d better hurry. The water taxi’s booked for half past.’
Chapter Eight
Brodie stood on the landing stage. Its raised helipad extended from Pacific Quay out into Cessnock Dock. In the last century they had built ships here, a forest of cranes lining each side of the river, breaking the skyline like dinosaurs. Both species now extinct.
From where he stood, the levees blocked his view of the north side of the Clyde. He huddled down under his parka hood, watching the rain drip from the brim of his baseball cap, a curtain of water obscuring his view of the flooding in Govan Road that extended all the way up to Ibrox Stadium.