The young man rose quickly to his feet and Brodie saw that he was in uniform beneath his reflective waterproof jacket. His peaked, chequered cap lay on the table, and he seemed uncertain for a moment as to whether or not he should put it on.
‘Constable Robert Sinclair, sir,’ he said, extending a hand.
They shook, and Brodie saw that he was a handsome young man. Blue eyes in a fresh, clean-shaven face. A fine, well-defined jawline and an easy smile. Built, too. A good two to three inches taller than Brodie. So this was the man his girl had married. He cast critical eyes over him and said, ‘I’m told you’re known by everyone as Robbie.’
Robbie seemed momentarily discomposed, a flush of embarrassment on his cheek. ‘That’s what folk call me, yes, sir. We’re very informal here.’
‘Good. Most folk call me Cammie.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Robbie said, without a moment’s hesitation. And it was clear that sir was the only form of address he would be likely to use. He waved a hand towards the table. ‘I brought a flask of hot coffee. We’ve got an ancient wee camping gas stove at home, and a little gas left in the bottle. I knew they were all electric up here and you would probably be wanting something hot to drink.’
We, Brodie thought, was Robbie and Addie. But all he said was, ‘That’s very thoughtful, Robbie, thank you.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down to pour himself a cup from the flask, and Robbie took that as a signal he could resume his seat.
Sita looked at Brodie. ‘Are you not going to eat anything?’
He glanced at the cold meat and the slices of processed cheese curling around the edges. ‘Not hungry,’ he said.
She grinned. ‘Don’t blame you.’
Robbie said, ‘We’ve set up one of the surgeries down at the health centre for the PM. Still no power, though.’
Brodie looked at Sita. ‘Do you need power for the autopsy?’
‘Just a healthy dose of daylight and the power of my elbow,’ she said.
‘Good. The sooner we get this underway, the better.’ Brodie drained his cup and stood up. ‘You got a body bag?’
‘With my kit.’
‘We’d better go get it, then, and move the body to the health centre.’ He turned to Robbie. ‘We got transport?’
‘We’ve got my SUV, sir.’
‘Let’s do it, then.’
They drove to the football field in Robbie’s SUV. The eVTOL stood mid-pitch where they had left it, heaped with a covering of snow. At the gate, Brodie said suddenly, ‘Stop!’ Robbie brought the vehicle to a slithering halt.
‘What is it?’ Sita was alarmed.
‘Footprints. Someone’s been having a good look at Eve. Wait here.’ He jumped down into the snow. A single set of footprints approached the gate from among the trees and tracked off in a determinedly straight line towards the e-chopper. Brodie followed them and saw that whoever had come to take a look at the flying machine had circled it a couple of times, stopping at the doors on each side, perhaps trying to get in. Then they tracked away again towards the far side of the field, and he saw there was a pedestrian gate leading out to a path that headed down towards the river.
He turned and waved to Robbie, and the SUV approached slowly across the pitch. When it reached the eVTOL, the other two jumped out into the snow.
‘Was it our intruder from last night, do you think?’ Sita said.
Robbie frowned. ‘Intruder? What intruder?’
‘We had an unannounced visitor at the hotel last night,’ Brodie said. ‘Came in through the dining room. We were in the bar, and I think he probably stood in the hall listening to us. But he broke a glass on the way out, and that’s what alerted us. I followed his footprints as far as the trees but lost him there.’
Robbie was still frowning. ‘I don’t understand. Why would anyone want to listen to you talking?’
‘Good question,’ Brodie said. He turned to Sita. ‘And in answer to yours, yes, I think it probably was our intruder, coming to give Eve the once-over.’
Sita said, ‘Should we get her charging?’
Brodie smiled. ‘No power, Sita, remember?’
She tutted and raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘Too much bloody whisky last night.’ And there was, perhaps, just a moment between them when each remembered the things that the other had confided in vino veritas. ‘Let’s get my kit.’
They returned to the hotel, taking a black body bag from Sita’s Storm case into the kitchen. There still wasn’t any sign of Brannan. Brodie called up the stairs but got no reply. Private quarters at the back of the hotel were not locked, but Brannan was not there either.
Robbie said, ‘There were tyre tracks on the drive when I arrived. Must have been Brannan’s four-by-four. Maybe he’s gone into the village for provisions.’
Brodie shrugged. ‘Then we’ll just have to do what we have to do without his permission.’
They wheeled the cake cabinet from the anteroom into the kitchen and laid out the open body bag on the stainless steel island beneath all the pots and pans and cooking utensils. Brodie lifted the glass lid of the cabinet and glanced at Robbie. ‘You okay to do this?’
Robbie nodded, and between them they lifted the dead weight from the cold cabinet to lay along the length of the body bag. The colour of the corpse had changed, even since last night, when it had looked pink and almost fresh. The cake chiller had kept the body frozen to an extent, but in just twelve hours without power it had begun to decompose, skin colour morphing from red-grey to grey-green.
Sita said, ‘For some reason, bodies that have been frozen, then thawed, decompose faster than if they’d never been frozen at all.’
‘If he’d never been frozen at all, there wouldn’t have been much of him left after three months,’ Brodie said. He had seen many dead people over the years, but the tiny smile of serenity on Mel’s face was the memory that obliterated all the rest. As if she had somehow found peace in death. Conversely, the look on Younger’s face suggested fear, or pain, in the moment of dying. The open eyes, the gaping mouth. The skin of his face was broken and contused. If he had been wearing gloves on the climb, they were nowhere in evidence, and the skin of his hands was marbling, as if the blood were leaking from every vein and spreading out beneath the epidermis.
‘It was a helluva job getting him into the cabinet when we brought him down off the mountain,’ Robbie said. ‘I thought it was rigor mortis, but I guess he was just frozen.’
Sita said, ‘Rigor only lasts for around three days. You’re right, he’d have been frozen solid, stiff as a board, entombed like that in the ice for three months.’ She zipped up the body bag and Younger vanished into his now accustomed darkness.
Brodie turned to Robbie. ‘You were with the group that brought him down?’
‘Yeah, I’m a member of the mountain rescue team. There were a dozen of us went up to get him. Had to chip him out of the ice with our axes. Wasn’t easy, lying on your back hacking away at ice just above your head in limited space, being careful not to damage a corpse. Worse, because there’s a dead guy staring down at you the whole time. We took it in turns. Then strapped him to a litter and lowered him on ropes, little by little, till it was possible to carry him.’
Brodie nodded. He could imagine just how difficult, and stressful, that must have been. It would be easier getting him into the back of the SUV. ‘Let’s get him down to the surgery.’