‘Looks fresh,’ was all he said. ‘For someone who’s been dead for three months.’
‘Being frozen in ice most of that time will have preserved him pretty well,’ Sita said. ‘And this cabinet’s what? Three, four degrees?’
Brannan said, ‘Usually around four or five.’
‘Which means he probably hasn’t completely defrosted on the inside yet. Though this power cut is going to accelerate decomposition. Even so, I’m going to have cold hands when I go pawing about his interior tomorrow.’
Brannan lowered the lid on the sightless body inside. ‘What I want to know is who’s going to pay for a new chiller. I mean, is it an insurance job, or do the cops cough up? Cos, let’s face it, no one’s going to want a slice of chocolate cream gateau from this one now.’
Chapter Ten
The bay windows in the bar rose from a wooden floor to a stucco ceiling and opened, in summer, on to a terrace with unrestricted views back down the loch. There was no view now, though. Just black beyond glass that ran with rain, distorting their reflections. Despite the double glazing, the flames of their candles ducked and dived in the draught, and Brodie watched the glass bend with the force of the wind. He shivered, despite the comparative warmth that came from the fire that Brannan had lit.
A pool table lurked in the darkness of one corner, the balls of a half-finished game casting shadows on the baize. In a flicker of candlelight at the bar, Brannan placed a bottle, a jug of water and two glasses on a tray, threw on a couple of packs of crisps, and crossed to the window. He set the tray down on their table and straightened up, running a large hand back over the shining baldness of his head.
‘Shame you can’t see the view. It’s one of the big selling points of this place. But never mind, you’ll see it tomorrow. The forecast’s quite good, and you’ll no doubt want a drink after...’ he hesitated and rephrased, ‘before you leave.’ His smile was unctuous. ‘As for tonight, just help yourself to the bottle. I’ll put it on your room, shall I, Mr Brodie? No doubt Police Scotland will be paying for it.’
‘No doubt.’ Brodie grunted and leaned forward to break the seal and uncork a bottle of Balvenie DoubleWood, pouring generous measures of its pale amber into each of the glasses. ‘Thank you, Mr Brannan.’ It was clear, he thought, that he and Sita wanted some privacy, but Brannan wasn’t taking the hint. Or maybe he was just lonely.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘A nuclear power plant at one end of the loch, and a hydroelectric power station at the other, and all we seem to get all winter these days is power cuts.’
‘And why’s that?’ Sita asked him.
‘Because the power still leaves here on pylons. They never invested in underground cabling. So the overhead cables are exposed to the full force of the weather. All these storms. Ice forms on them and the weight of it brings them down. Bloody short-sighted, if you ask me.’
Nobody was, Brodie thought. But kept his own counsel.
‘You know, they’ve had hydro power here since the first decade of the twentieth century. Way ahead of its time. They built it to power an aluminium smelter across the river there. That’s long gone now, mind you, but Kinlochleven was the first village in the world to have electricity in every home. The electric village, they called it.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘When I bought this place six months ago, it was called the MacDonald Hotel. I toyed with the idea of changing it to the Electric Hotel. But people thought that was a bit shocking.’ He laughed. And when neither Brodie nor Sita joined him, he added lamely, ‘So I settled for the International instead.’
Brodie took a long pull at his whisky and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the voice, hoping that it might be drowned by the wind. A forlorn hope.
‘Wish I’d bought it back in the thirties when they were building Ballachulish A. There was an influx of thousands of workers then, a lot of foreign experts among them. They all needed accommodation. So the International, or the MacDonald as it was then, and every other hotel and B & B for miles around was full. The bars and restaurants were stowed out, summer and winter, for more than five years. Even when they finished work, the plant itself employed nearly two thousand folk, and until they built the 3D homes across the loch, they all needed accommodation.’ A long, sad sigh escaped his lips. ‘Different story now, though. Business has dropped right off. We still do well in the summer, but the winter’s dead. Just dead.’
‘Like Mr Younger,’ Brodie said.
Brannan leaned in a little, and his voice became softly suffused with a sense of confidentiality. ‘You won’t be advertising the fact that he was staying here, will you? It wouldn’t be good for business.’
Brodie opened his eyes and felt a wave of fatigue wash over him, as if he had just endured a long, sleepless night. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say what the press will or won’t report in relation to the case, Mr Brannan. I suspect that if his death was the result of natural causes, or an accident, they won’t pay it very much attention at all.’
‘Well, what else would it be?’ Brannan seemed surprised.
‘Until Dr Roy has conducted her post-mortem, nothing can be ruled out, including foul play.’
The hotel proprietor frowned. ‘Murder, you mean?’
Brodie shrugged. He had assumed that this was self-evident.
‘But who would want to murder him?’
‘We don’t know that anyone did. But if he was, then it’ll be my job to find out who killed him and why.’
Brannan stood staring forlornly at his reflection in the window. ‘Never even thought of that. Let’s just hope he fell, or had a heart attack or something. Can’t afford to lose any more business.’ He folded his arms across his chest.
Sita said, ‘With all the snow you get here, you’d think it would be good for winter skiing.’
‘Oh, we have the snow, but not the infrastructure. And too much snow, if the experts are to be believed. Ballachulish A might have brought a lot of business, but it also buried us in bloody snowfall.’
Brodie frowned. ‘How’s that?’
‘So, to cool the reactor they use water from the loch, which then goes back in to recirculate. That raises the overall temperature of the loch, making it warmer in winter than the air. So winter precipitation almost always falls as snow. Kind of like the lake-effect snow they get in North America. The stuff just dumps on us. Metres of it at a time.’ That thought seemed to draw the curtain on his desire to talk to them any further. He said, ‘I’m afraid it’ll be a cold breakfast, unless the power comes back on again overnight.’ He made a tiny bow. ‘Sleep well.’ And he retreated into the dark of the hotel from which he had emerged half an hour earlier.
Brodie let out a long sigh of relief. ‘I thought he’d never go.’
‘Interesting, though,’ Sita said, ‘that it never occurred to him that Mr Younger might have been murdered.’
Brodie took a thoughtful sip of his DoubleWood. ‘Well, in truth, it does seem unlikely. I mean, if someone had killed him, they would hardly drag him halfway up a mountain to get rid of the body.’
‘Maybe they killed him up there.’
‘Well, there is that. But, then, you’d have to figure it would have been easier to kill the man before he went up.’
Sita emptied her glass and poured herself another. ‘You?’ She waved the bottle in his direction, and when he nodded, refilled his glass. ‘What was he doing up the mountain anyway?’