‘What is it?’ Addie peered through the gloom.
‘An SD card. If Younger’s car had sentry mode, and it was activated, whoever shoved it over the edge should be caught on video. And it’ll be on this card.’ It was a long shot, and he wouldn’t know if there was anything on it until he got back to the hotel to slot it into his laptop, but it was time he had a break. Nothing else had gone to plan so far. He secured the card in another pocket and said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’
It was harder getting out of the gully than it had been getting in, and it was nearly ten minutes before they were standing in the parking area off the old military road, breathing heavily and perspiring in the cold air. The wind was getting up now, and Brodie felt it filling his mouth as he fought to recover his breath.
‘We’d better get back to the village,’ he said, and they started off back along the road until reaching the point where they had climbed up to it from below. Overhead, the clouds had morphed from ominous to threatening, and you could smell the coming storm on the leading edge of the wind.
It wasn’t until they had climbed down through the trees to where the ground levelled off and the going got easier, that Addie formed words to express the thoughts that had been eating away at her all this time.
‘So it was Mum who had the affair. Not you.’ She wasn’t asking, so he assumed that she had been processing it and was voicing it now as a statement of fact.
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s what you wanted to tell me? That’s what was so important that you deceived your bosses to get yourself sent up here?’
Brodie drew a deep breath. ‘It’s important enough, Addie. But it’s still not the whole story.’
She looked at him. ‘I didn’t think it could be. Mum didn’t kill herself just because she’d had an affair, did she?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘So, are you going to tell me?’
‘I will, Addie.’ He hesitated. ‘But there are things I need to do first. I need more time with you than we have right now.’
‘Time for what?’
‘To explain.’
‘How you drove Mum to suicide, you mean?’
He glanced at her, expecting to see the hatred she’d harboured for him all this time still reflected in her face. But her expression was blank. Eyes cold, emotionless, and assiduously avoiding his.
‘Yes,’ he said.
They stood there for a long time listening to the wind, and Brodie thought how his story was just like that wind. Cold and unforgiving, and gone in the blink of an eye. Like his life. They walked then the rest of the way in silence until they reached the Grey Mare’s car park. And stopped at the parting of the ways.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What now?’
‘I need to get to my laptop to see what, if anything, there is on this card. And if the phone or internet is back up, then I need to check in with HQ in Glasgow. We need a team up here. There’s two people dead and a killer still on the loose.’ He closed his eyes as he felt the pressure of it all weighing down on him. ‘I’ll have to come back to the police station sometime this afternoon. I need to take a look at that CCTV footage of Younger and the unidentified individual he was talking to in the village the day he disappeared.’ He paused. ‘Maybe we could talk then.’
‘I’m not sure I want to hear what it is you have to say. Whatever it is, maybe it’s better if it dies with you.’
She turned abruptly and walked away in the direction of the police station.
Chapter Twenty-One
As he climbed the slope from the football field to the hotel, he could smell woodsmoke carried on the wind, and saw curls of blue smoke whipped into the gathering storm from the chimney top above the bar. Brannan’s SUV was parked at the foot of the steps. For once, Brodie thought, there was someone home.
He kicked the snow from his boots on the top step and pushed open the door into the entrance hall. Brannan emerged from the bar. He must have been watching Brodie’s approach unseen from behind reflections on glass.
His smile was forced. ‘Internet’s back online. Mobile phones, too.’
‘Good,’ Brodie said.
But Brannan made a face. ‘We’re not likely to have them for long, though. Storm Idriss is scheduled to hit in a couple of hours, and it’ll probably take everything out again.’ He flicked his head back over his shoulder. ‘I was just trying to build up some heat in the bar. In case we lose power again, too.’ He laughed at his own optimism. ‘In case? I should say “when”.’
Brodie said, ‘You’ve spoken to Jackson?’
Brannan’s face clouded. ‘I haven’t had a chance.’
Brodie’s eyes turned dangerous. ‘Oh, yeah, cos you’re so busy here at the hotel.’
Brannan said quickly, ‘No, what I mean is, I haven’t been able to reach him, Mr Brodie. He’s at the plant. Won’t come off shift till six. There were no phones all morning. And it’s hard to get a call through to him there anyway.’
‘Then try harder.’
‘I will, I will... But, you know, I promised Joe confidentiality.’
Brodie took a step towards him. ‘If there’s no rendezvous arranged by close of play this afternoon, I’m going to arrest you for obstruction of justice, Brannan.’ He scrutinised the man’s frightened face. ‘Do you understand me?’
Brannan nodded.
‘Good.’ Brodie started for the stairs, then stopped and turned. ‘One other thing.’
Brannan eyed him warily.
‘What does he look like, this Joe Jackson?’
Brannan frowned. ‘I don’t—’
Brodie cut him off. ‘Just describe him to me.’
Brannan looked perplexed, then almost pained as he tried to pull an image to mind of the man he had spent half the day with just yesterday. The succession of witnesses over the years who had struggled to recall the details of events which had unfolded in front of their eyes meant that Brodie was no longer surprised by people’s faulty memories. ‘He... he’s tall. Probably six foot. Maybe a bit more.’ He raised a hand to his own balding head. ‘Losing his hair. Sort of gingery, going white.’ He was warming to his memory. ‘A wiry guy, not much meat on the bones.’
Brodie nodded. This was better than he had expected. ‘Talk to him,’ he said, and turned to run up the stairs.
In his room, Brodie unfolded his laptop on the dresser and booted it up. He took the SD card from his North Face and examined it in the light. Extended capacity. Ten terabytes. Enough for hours of 6K video. He slipped it into the card slot on the side of the laptop and opened it up on-screen.
Younger’s housekeeping had been poor. There were hours of recorded video that he hadn’t bothered to wipe. Fortunately there was a date stamp, so Brodie was able to fast-forward to the day the journalist went missing. It was 9 p.m. when the cameras on Younger’s car flickered into life and Brodie saw a figure approaching from the rear. A man wearing a hoodie and jeans, and to Brodie’s disappointment, a ski mask — aware of the possibility that he was being captured on camera. As he moved around the car, his image segued from one camera to the next. He tried each of the doors, but there was no way of getting into the car without breaking a window.
A hand came into close-up as the man turned away from the driver’s door, and Brodie stiffened. He froze the image and zoomed in on it. It was some kind of work glove. M-Pact Mechanix. Brown and tan, reinforced across the knuckles and along the back of each finger. With four distinctive horizontal slashes at each joint to allow for easy flexing. The same pattern that, with repeated blows to Younger’s head, had been imprinted in clear contusions in the flesh of his face.