Now they were flying over the mouth of Loch Linnhe towards the Inner Hebrides, leaving the mainland behind. White caps broke the surface of a turbulent sea below, and Brodie could feel the wind buffeting his eVTOL. Snow started to fall as they reached land again, and Eve banked north-west over the Isle of Mull. Brodie saw how the Atlantic Ocean had nibbled away at a rocky coastline that rose well above sea level in most places, keeping the bulk of the island intact. Tobermory at the north of the island, where his pathologist awaited, had fared less well. The dock and coast road were awash; the row of multicoloured seafront properties that featured on island postcards was semi-submerged. The rest of the town rose steeply up from the water, cowering among the trees. The coastline of Calve Island opposite had been completely reconfigured by the relentlessly rising ocean.
Eve lifted up over the town to the golf course that sprawled across the hill to the north of it. There was no helipad here. Brodie saw how they were manoeuvring to land on an almost perfect circle of manicured green. He could even see the hole. Someone had removed the flag, and a figure, huddled in waterproofs and hood, stood in a bunker at the edge of the putting surface with two large slate-grey Storm travel cases. He could barely see anything beyond the figure because of the snow that was driving in now from the west, though it was wet and not yet lying.
He opened the door and felt large wet snowflakes slap into his face. A woman’s voice called out from the bunker. ‘Well, come and give me a hand, then! I can’t carry these on my own.’
Brodie sighed and wondered how she’d got them here. There didn’t appear to be anyone else around. He pulled up his hood and braced himself to face the blast, jumping down on to the green and running at a tilt into the wind. There was little visible of the pathologist’s face, with her hood crimped tightly around it. Angry dark eyes flashed at him through the snow. ‘You’re late!’ As if somehow he had any control over departure and flying times. ‘Take my kit case, it’s heavier.’ She lifted the other one and ran for the eVTOL. Brodie gasped at the weight of the case containing her kit as he heaved it up out of the bunker and staggered across the green. She was waiting for him by the open door, and together they lifted the two cases to slide into the back of the cabin. He helped her then to climb in and quickly followed, closing the door behind them.
The howl of the wind was instantly extinguished, and a pall of damp silence hung in the air as Brodie slipped into the front seat beside her. She pulled away her hood to reveal jet-black, crinkly hair drawn back from her face and tied at the nape of her neck. Her complexion was a pale brown, her eyes almost as black as Mel’s. She had a small, dark brown mole on the right side of her upper lip. Her lips themselves were full and marginally darker than the skin of her face, but touched with red. A handsome woman. In her late thirties, perhaps, or early forties. She glared at Brodie. ‘I’ve been hanging about there in the wind and the snow for nearly half an hour. Ever since they dropped me and told me you’d be here in a few minutes.’
He protested. ‘I have no control whatsoever over the timing of this flight.’
But she wasn’t letting him off with anything. ‘You must have been late arriving for it, then.’
Irritatingly, Eve’s relentless voice was urging them to buckle up. He could barely think above it. ‘For Christ’s sake, do what she says and shut her up.’
They both engaged their seat belts and the voice ceased, leaving them once more in silence.
He glared at her, before nodding towards her cases in the back. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’
She scowled back at him from beneath dark eyebrows. And then her face creased suddenly into the most disarming smile, and he saw the twinkle of mischief in her eyes. She thrust out her hand. ‘Sita Roy. Dr Sita Roy, actually. But you can call me Sita.’
He shook her hand and felt the power of the pathologist’s grip in muscles developed by the cutting of bone and the prising open of ribcages. ‘Cameron Brodie. Detective Inspector, actually, but you can call me mister.’
She laughed out loud. ‘Yes, sir.’ She half turned towards the computer screen below the windshield. ‘Eve, we’re ready to go.’
Eve responded immediately. Thank you, Dr Roy. Hold on tight. And the rotors above them sprang to life.
‘You two are acquainted, then,’ Brodie said.
She grinned. ‘Eve and I have made many a trip together. We’re old friends.’
The eVTOL lifted up from the green and wheeled away, back towards the town, rising as it headed south.
Sita said, ‘Eve, what’s our flight plan?’ And the topographical map displayed earlier reappeared, with the route to Kinlochleven outlined again in red. Sita frowned. ‘Eve, why are we taking such a circuitous route?’
Incoming ice storm, Dr Roy. It’s more sheltered if we approach via Glencoe.
Sita puffed up her cheeks and exhaled through puckered lips. ‘And I’d been hoping for a short flight, too. I never travel well in these things at the best of times.’
Chapter Nine
They reached the mainland again just north of Oban. Much of the port town was underwater, its roll-on, roll-off ferry services to the islands long since defunct. Inland then towards Tyndrum and banking north to Bridge of Orchy. The snow was still wet, but lying here; the ominous peaks that flanked the darkly sinister Glencoe with its history of betrayal and massacre reflected white where light tore through breaks in the cloud.
‘Where are you based?’ Brodie asked Sita.
‘Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow. But they send me all over Scotland.’
‘Yeah, they said you were doing PMs on victims of the hotel fire in Tobermory. Is there some doubt about the origins of the fire?’
Sita nodded. ‘Your guys think it was an insurance job. If so, then technically the fatalities are murders.’ She sighed deeply, lips curled in distaste. ‘Two children among them. My American colleagues call burn victims crispy critters. I don’t share their sense of humour. There’s nothing worse in my book than performing autopsies on people who have died in a fire. You get used to the perfumes of the autopsy table, but it takes days to get the smell of burned human flesh out of your nostrils.’ She canted her head towards the computer screen. ‘Mind if I put on the news? I’ve been out of the loop for a few days.’
He shrugged his acquiescence.
‘Eve, play me the news headlines.’
A voice Brodie recognised as a newsreader at SBC said, ‘Good afternoon, listeners. Welcome to SBC Radio One. Here are the news headlines. The United Nations reports that the immigration wars raging across North Africa have reached a tipping point. Sheer weight of numbers is overpowering national defences across the continent, from Morocco to Egypt. Tens of thousands are already feared dead in the conflict. Estimates put populations on the move from equatorial Africa and Asia at around two billion, and South European countries are bracing for a fresh flood of migrant boats across the Mediterranean. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in a statement earlier today, described national immigration policies around the world as unsustainable.’
They played a thirty-second clip of an interview with the High Commissioner herself. She raged at political leaders in Europe and Africa, describing them as immoral and ostrich-like, accusing them of burying their heads in the sand. ‘The problem is simply not going to go away,’ she said. ‘We have to address it head-on and find solutions. Simply letting people die is no answer.’