Brodie stepped to the door and stooped to pick up the glove. Soft, hand-sewn lambskin, turned over at the wrist. It was still warm, and for a moment it felt like holding her hand. He raised it to his face and breathed in her scent deeply before closing the door. Then he turned to find Sita staring at him. Concern was etched deeply in the lines around her mouth, and reflected in the light that diffused the darkness of her eyes. ‘Your daughter? Really?’ She hesitated. ‘Of course, you knew?’
He nodded and she closed her eyes.
‘For God’s sake, Brodie. I mean, she’s right. What on earth did you hope to achieve?’
He hadn’t achieved it yet, and he wasn’t about to tell her.
‘Do they know? In Glasgow, I mean. Your bosses?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
She sighed in frustration. ‘They would never have sent you if they had. And you should never have volunteered, if that’s what you did. Your daughter found the body. She’s a potential suspect.’
‘Addie didn’t kill anybody.’
‘You don’t know that. No one knows that.’
‘You think she’s big enough and strong enough to punch a man the size of Younger off the top of a mountain?’
‘No, of course not. But that’s not the point.’
‘What is?’
‘That you should not be involved with this investigation in any way. You have to declare a family interest. They’ll send someone else.’
‘We have no power, remember. No comms. No way to contact HQ. So I’m just going to have to make the best of it.’
She stared at him for a long time, the slightest shaking of her head. ‘Why did you come?’
‘There are matters I need to settle before...’ His voice tailed away. ‘Just things I need to settle.’
The slightest cant of her head, the faintest narrowing of her eyes, posed a question that she didn’t frame in words. Perhaps suspecting that there would be no answer forthcoming.
Brodie looked at Addie’s glove in his hands and said, ‘I’ve heard that sometimes gloves can be a good source of DNA. A tear in the cuticle, a spot of blood dried into the lining.’ He looked up. ‘Is that right?’
She frowned. ‘It’s been known.’
He took a step towards her and held out the glove. ‘Any chance you could look for a sample in this?’
Now she was incredulous. She took the glove. ‘You just told me there’s no way you think she’s involved in Younger’s murder.’
He scoffed. ‘Of course she’s not.’ He crossed the room to where he had draped his parka over the back of a chair, and turned the hood inside out. There were quite a number of hairs trapped in the fleece from a time before his razor cut, when his hair had been longer. He teased some of it free and held it out to her. ‘If you find some, maybe you could check it against mine. See if there’s a familial match.’
‘You think there might not be?’
‘I’d just be grateful if you could do that for me.’ He paused. ‘Can you?’
She took the hair and slipped it into a resealable evidence bag. ‘You sure you want to know?’
He pursed his lips, and she saw the sadness in his eyes as he nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Chapter Twelve
Brodie walked back to the hotel, following the tyre tracks on the B863. He crossed the bridge spanning the stream they called Allt Coire na Bà, where it ran in spate down from Grey Mare’s Waterfall before joining the River Leven as it debouched into the loch. Across the valley, the windows of the school simmered darkly. Absent of the sound of children’s voices. There were no footprints breaking the surface of the freshly fallen snow on the school playing field. No power, so no school. Frustrated schoolkids no doubt sitting at home staring at blank TV screens, unable even to fire up games on their PlayStation Fifteens. No evidence, either, of them playing outside. Perhaps they had forgotten how.
Robbie had told him he would bring Sita and the body, and all her kit and samples, back to the hotel once she had cleaned up. Brodie wanted to get up on to the mountain before the light began to fade.
Brannan’s four-by-four was nowhere in evidence when Brodie reached the International. He pushed open the main door, kicked the snow off his boots, and walked into the hallway. It was silent as the grave in there. Gloomy without any direct sunlight spilling through windows. He called out, but there was no response. He was hungry, but there was no time to go foraging for food. Instead, he climbed the stairs and went into his room to prepare for the mountain.
He pulled on elasticated stretch pants over his long johns, and a microfleece top over a synthetic base layer. The weather was dry, with no imminent risk of further snow, so he would wear his down-filled North Face parka on top of that.
He sat on the bed to pull on a pair of stiff-soled B2-rated mountaineering boots, and attach the snow gaiters that would keep his lower legs dry. His articulated C2 crampons lay on the duvet. He would put them in his pack and attach them to his boots when they emerged from the woods to begin the climb up through the snow.
His gloves, which extended to cover his forearms, were a halfway house between a glove and a mitten, with separate sheaths for thumb and forefinger. He stuffed them in his pack, and before pulling on his woollen hat to cover his ears, caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink. Unshaven, complexion like putty, salt-and-pepper silver stubbled hair. The face with which he had greeted his daughter for the first time in ten years. And he thought how old he looked, and weary. And in that brief encounter had felt how much she hated him still.
Robbie had promised that Addie would meet him at the Grey Mare’s car park. He half expected she wouldn’t be there, and half hoped he might be right. He was, he realised, dreading the climb with her. He had no idea what he was going to say. Had rehearsed nothing. Taken the decision to come on the spur of the moment, and like a marriage made in haste, was regretting it at leisure. But he also had a job to do. A man had been murdered. Outside help was not an option, since he had no way of contacting Glasgow. So he was on his own. In more ways than one.
He was in the downstairs hall when the power came back on. Lights flickered to life in the dining room, and he heard the refrigeration units in the kitchen kick in. He checked the time. It was approaching midday. He swithered briefly about whether or not to check in with Glasgow and report Sita’s findings. Instinctively, he touched his breast pocket to check that his iCom glasses in their protective case were still there. He decided against making the call. It would only delay him. And complicate things. He needed the time with Addie that the climb would give him, and would call when he got back.
He left the hotel and made his way through the trees to the football field. Now that the power was back on, he could get the eVTOL charging for the return journey. As he walked through the gate on to the pitch, he stopped. There were more tracks now than previously. Robbie’s tyre tracks had obliterated the initial single set of footprints leading out to the e-chopper that they had spotted earlier. He could see where the three of them had got out of the vehicle to recover Sita’s Storm case. And the original set of prints that had circled Eve before heading off to the smaller gate on the far side of the field. Now a second set of prints came from that same gate and circled the chopper before disappearing among the tyre tracks towards the pavilion outside the main gate. Perfectly possible, of course, that it was just some curious local, though Brodie reflected he had seen precious few folk out and about on this morning after the storm. He circled the eVTOL himself to check for damage, or any sign of forced entry. But there was nothing.