Almost as if she had read his mind, Eve reduced her height. Dropping fifty feet or more in a matter of seconds. Sita cried out, ‘Woah!’ She grabbed Brodie’s arm.
They felt the storm snapping at their heels, the eVTOL’s stabilisers working overtime. To their right, at Caolasnacon, they saw the lights of houses lining the water’s edge and extending back into the trees.
Sita said, ‘Is that Kinlochleven?’
Brodie shook his head. ‘Nah. These were homes built for workers at the nuclear plant. All 3D printed. Ugly things.’
He saw Sita turning to look at him in the reflected light of the computer screen. ‘They’re printing houses this far north now?’
He shrugged. ‘Apparently.’
In the distance, at the head of the loch, they saw the lights of Kinlochleven for the first time. They seemed feeble somehow, almost smothered by the dark. Arcs of street lamps delineated rows of houses built around the curve of the valley and dissected by the dark passage of the River Leven as it tumbled down from the mountains above, cutting a swathe of fresh icy water into the warmer, salinated seawater that washed up on the shore.
‘Tell me that’s the village,’ Sita said, a hint of quiet desperation in her voice.
‘It is,’ Brodie said, with his own sense of relief. In just a few minutes they would be on the ground, and the storm could do its worst.
Then all the lights went out, and it was as if they had been sucked into a black hole. There was no light anywhere, except for the reflected glow of the computer screen in the eVTOL, and a couple of spots directed by Eve on to the water below. Water that seemed perilously close now and rushing past at speed.
Sita let out a tiny scream. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Must be a power cut.’
‘Power cut?’ She almost shouted it. ‘You just told me they’re generating three and a half thousand gigawatts of electricity at the other end of the loch. How can there be a power cut?’
‘I don’t know. The storm must have brought down power lines.’
‘Well, how are we going to land in the dark?’
‘I have no idea!’ He turned towards the screen. ‘Eve, how are we going to land in the dark?’
Eve sounded unruffled. I am preprogrammed for landing, Detective Inspector Brodie. I do not require light.
Sita was still grasping his forearm, her pathologist’s grip almost cutting off the blood supply to his hand. Below, by the light of the eVTOL, they saw a shoreline exposed by low tide, white-topped surges washing over it, forced up loch by the wind that scoured the valley, winter-bare trees now bucking and bending among a scattering of houses. The River Leven in spate, white water generated by its power, almost glowing as it fought against the storm surge to feed itself into the loch.
Then they banked against the force of the wind, frozen rain hammering on the glass, and Brodie just prayed that the rotors wouldn’t ice up before they landed. A perfectly delineated rectangle of unbroken snow swung crazily into their field of vision. The football pitch. And both of them held their breath as Eve dropped from the air to settle with a bump in the snow, light from her spots spilling out around them in a wide circle that faded into the darkness beyond. The rotors powered down and Brodie felt Sita’s grip on his arm relax as they both drew deep breaths.
‘Well, that was fun,’ she said.
‘Not.’
She turned towards him and laughed with relief. ‘Nothing like a near-death experience for bringing folk together. Thanks for the use of your arm. You might need witch hazel for the bruising.’
And his heart leapt. A thousand memories of Mel flashing through his mind in a moment. He rubbed his arm to get the circulation back in his hand. ‘With a grip like that, it might need to be set in plaster.’
She laughed again. ‘Plaster? You’re giving away your age now, Mr Brodie. They haven’t used plaster to splint broken bones since the Dark Ages.’
They were interrupted by Eve, whose oleaginous tones seemed to coat the interior glass of the eVTOL. Her lack of panic in the landing had been reassuring somehow, although they both knew that panic was not programmed into her software. Warning. Low battery. Low battery.
‘Jesus,’ Brodie said. ‘Now she tells us!’
Extinguishing lights to save power. Please connect me to a power source as soon as possible.
Her lights went out, and the computer screen powered down, leaving them in a darkness so thick it felt almost tangible.
‘Fuck!’ It was Sita’s voice that reverberated around the cabin. ‘What do we do now?’ She heard Brodie swinging himself out of his seat to clamber into the space behind them, and cursing as he stumbled over one of her Storm cases. A moment later, light filled the interior.
‘I always keep an LED headlight in my pack,’ he said, and she turned to see him stretching the elasticated band around his head so that the tiny lamp projected from his forehead to light the way in front of him.
‘Very practical,’ she said. ‘Can you teleport us to our hotel now?’
‘If only I knew where it was.’
‘Huh! And just when I was starting to like you.’
‘The technician at Helensburgh said it was right beside the football pitch. So it can’t be far.’
‘Well, I’ll let you go and find it. And when you do, you can come back and give me a hand with my stuff.’
‘Yes, miss. Whatever you say, miss.’ Brodie raised a hand to tug an imaginary forelock.
She grinned. ‘Well, it doesn’t make sense for both of us to go stumbling about in the dark. And you’re the one with the light.’
Brodie pulled a face. ‘So I am.’
He pushed the button to open the door, unprepared for the blast of wind and sleet that nearly took him off his feet. He zipped his parka up to the neck and pulled the hood over his head, bracing himself with a hand either side of the door frame before jumping down into the snow. Sita reached over to shut the door quickly behind him.
He turned in a quick arc, but the light from his headlamp didn’t penetrate far through the freezing rain that drove into his face. He had a sense that since the wind was coming from the west, that was the direction he should take. So he staggered into it, semi-blind, until he reached a perimeter fence. It stood around two-and-a-half metres high. His face was stinging, almost numb now. There had to be a gate somewhere. He worked his way along the fence. He could see there were trees on the far side of it, and beyond them, a strangely eerie glow that seemed to flicker through branches that creaked and swayed in the wind. And, finally, a gate. It opened on to an area that felt firmer underfoot beneath the snow. Tarmac, perhaps. He leaned forward into the wind and pushed himself up a short slope, where a path appeared, cutting a way through the trees. And there, conveniently planted in the ground, was a white arrow sign. International Hotel, it read.
He found his way back to the eVTOL by following his own footsteps, accelerated on his return by the wind behind him. He banged on the glass with the flat of his hand until Sita opened the door. She jumped down into the storm, a tiny circle of wide-eyed face peering out from her hood.
‘You found it?’ She had to shout above the roar of the wind.
‘Yes. But we’ll never be able to carry both your cases.’ He reached in for his pack and swung it over his shoulders. ‘You can get your kit in the morning. You won’t be doing any post-mortems tonight.’
‘What about recharging Eve?’
‘Even if there was any electricity, I haven’t the first fucking idea where the charging hub is.’ He felt the wind whipping the words from his mouth as he shouted them into the night. ‘Nobody’s going to steal her tonight.’