He was halfway to the football field when he remembered that Eve was locked, and that he had the only key. But he decided to check on the aircraft anyway. From what he could see by the light of Sita’s torch, there were more fresh footprints in the snow, but it wasn’t clear whose they were or from which direction they had come.
The eVTOL sat squarely in the middle of the snowy playing field, where she had landed. And was locked, as he had expected. Brodie fished out his RFID card and opened the right-hand door. It was icy inside, and there was nothing of Sita’s in evidence. He decided to check the battery level.
‘Eve, what is your current state of charge?’
Eve remained stubbornly mute.
‘Eve?’
Nothing. Brodie frowned and slipped back out into the snow, closing the door behind him. He crossed to the pavilion to check that the eVTOL was still plugged in. It was, but there were no green lights flashing now on the reader attached to the plug unit. He glanced around. Through the trees, he could see that street lights were still burning in the village, lights twinkling in the windows of dozens of homes huddled around the head of the loch. So there was no power cut.
It was only as he made his way back to the eVTOL that he noticed another sets of prints in the snow. They came from the pavilion, stopping halfway, then turned to make the return trip. There was quite a mess in the snow where they had made that turn. Brodie crouched to shine the light of his torch on the disturbance, and saw that the charging cable had been neatly severed.
Chapter Thirteen
An icy wind advanced up the loch now, leading a legion of thick black clouds to scrape mountaintops and banish what little light had earlier been offered by the stars. Brodie’s parka was zipped up to his throat, its hood pulled around his head, hands thrust deep in his pockets for warmth as he stumbled back around the road to the village.
The cutting of the cable feeding power to the eVTOL was no random act of vandalism. More like a deliberate attempt to stop them from leaving. And he had a dark sense of foreboding about Sita. If she wasn’t at the hotel, where was she?
Every muscle in his body was stiffening up from the cold, and from the pummelling he had taken in the avalanche. His eyes felt gritty, his mouth dry, and he could barely swallow.
He hesitated for a long time at the garden gate of the police station. The same warm light as earlier spilled from the same windows. On the walk round, he had tried, unsuccessfully, to make a call to police HQ in Glasgow, but his iCom had been unresponsive, and he was starting to think that it had been damaged in the violence of the avalanche after all. There was nowhere else he could go for help.
The gate creaked as he pushed it open and walked up to the annexe adjoining the house. A blue police sign above the door glowed in the dark. A notice on the door itself read Knock and Enter. He did as instructed and the door opened into the warm light of a tiny police office with a public counter and a small waiting area that boasted a couple of scuffed plastic chairs. Robbie sat in a pool of light from an angled desk lamp at a desk on the other side of the counter. A computer screen reflected blue on his face. The clack of his fingers on the keyboard filled the tiny space. He turned, surprised, as the door opened, and the beginnings of a smile vanished quickly, to be replaced by concern. ‘What the hell happened to your face? Sir.’ The sir came almost as an afterthought.
‘Didn’t Addie tell you?’
He frowned. ‘I haven’t had a chance to speak to her since she got back. What happened?’
‘We got caught in an avalanche.’
‘Jesus!’ He stood up. ‘Is she alright?’
‘She’s fine. It was me that took the brunt of it.’
Robbie ran a hand back through thick, dark hair. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t around when you got back. You probably know already, but all the comms are down. Mobile phones, the police 15G network, the internet. I’ve been talking to Ballachulish A on short-wave. Old technology, I know, but still good in an emergency. They figure last night’s power cut sent a surge down the line that blew the transmitters and the telephone exchange. It’s happened before. They’ll have sent teams out to get them online again, but who knows how long that’ll take.’ He pulled a face. ‘And there’s more snow forecast.’ He paused. ‘You find anything up there?’
Brodie fumbled in his breast pocket to retrieve the black RFID card and held it up.
Robbie squinted at it. ‘What is it?’
‘Younger’s car key, I figure.’
Robbie was puzzled. ‘What car? Brannan didn’t think he had one, and there certainly wasn’t one in the car park.’
‘Then how did he get here?’
Robbie shrugged and made a face. ‘There is a bus.’ But he didn’t sound convinced.
Brodie shook his head. ‘We can talk about it later. Right now I’m more concerned about Sita.’
A frown furrowed Robbie’s brows. ‘What about her?’
‘I can’t find her.’
Robbie advanced to the counter and placed his hands flat on top of it. ‘Isn’t she at the hotel?’
‘No, she’s not. Her personal stuff’s in her room, but there’s no sign of the Storm trunk with her kit and all her samples.’
Robbie extended his hands to either side, perplexed. ‘I dropped her off at the hotel this afternoon, along with her kit and everything else. We put Younger in his body bag back in the cold cabinet until you were ready to leave.’
Brodie said, ‘Was Brannan there when you dropped her off?’
‘No, he wasn’t. Why?’
‘He hasn’t been around all day. And wherever he went, he’s still not back.’
Robbie scratched his head. ‘Well, he can’t have gone far. The road at Glencoe was impassable this morning — though I guess the snow ploughs will have cleared it by now. They’ve got to keep access to the nuclear plant open at all times.’
Brodie pushed back his hood and opened up his parka at the neck. Now he was too warm, his fingers tingling as they transitioned from ice-cold to blood temperature. ‘Something else,’ he said. ‘Someone cut the cable between the eVTOL and the charging hub at the pavilion. Eve has zero charge.’
‘You’re kidding!’ Robbie’s face creased with incomprehension. ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘To stop us leaving?’
‘But who? And why?’
Brodie shrugged. ‘Younger’s killer, perhaps. Maybe something he thought Sita would find during the PM. Or maybe he was afraid of something I might discover up on the mountain.’ He sighed. ‘To be honest, I have no fucking idea.’
Robbie laughed. ‘You know what? It was probably some kid who thought it would be a laugh. I know, misplaced sense of humour. But you know what kids are like. And Dr Roy probably walked into the village to get something to eat. There’s a couple of pubs that serve food. If Brannan’s been gone all day, she wouldn’t have got anything at the hotel.’
He snatched his parka and cap from a coat stand and rounded the counter. ‘Listen, I know a guy who can repair or replace your cable first thing tomorrow. But right now, let’s go and find Dr Roy. If she’s not back at the hotel, we’ll do a round of the pubs.’
Brodie felt strangely comforted by the fact that Robbie was taking charge, even though he was very much the junior officer. Brodie was fatigued to the point of exhaustion, and probably not thinking straight. Robbie’s suggested explanations for the severed cable and the missing pathologist seemed reasonable, and Brodie was suffused with a welcome sense of relief.