He slumped into the vacant armchair.
‘Everyone’s picking up on it. It’ll be the lead story on every news bulletin all day tomorrow, and probably for weeks to come. Trust me, there’s not an elector in the land who won’t have seen it before they go in to cast their vote.’
Their attention was suddenly drawn to the TV as an announcer’s voice broke across coverage of the SDP rally at the Armadillo. ‘We have breaking news.’ Simultaneously, a BREAKING NEWS banner appeared, and an inset of a station newsreader popped up in the bottom left corner of the screen with news of the sensational story just published by the Scottish Herald.
The director covering the rally cut to a close-up of the podium as a po-faced man in a dark blue suit whispered into the ear of the first minister, whose strained smile could barely conceal her irritation at this on-stage interruption at the climax of her speech.
But the smile very quickly vanished, and Sally Mack’s mouth gaped just a little, initially shocked. Before fear and realisation registered in the widening of her eyes. Game over.
Addie punched the air in vengeful satisfaction. ‘Yes!’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Addie walked with Cameron through the old Cathcart Cemetery, fallen leaves crackling underfoot in the frost. Here stood the graves of the good and the great. Impressive headstones and mausoleums. Wonderful old trees bowed in reverence by time and death, witness to the passing of generations.
It was deserted on this icy December day, a pale disc of winter sun barely rising above the southern hills of the city.
The little boy clutched his mother’s hand, swaddled in clothes to keep him warm, red nose in a bright face beneath his yellow woollen bunnet, talking almost incessantly about his day out in Pollock Park just yesterday with Uncle Tony and Auntie Sheila. They had taken him horse riding, and then to a café for ice cream, in spite of the cold. He wasn’t complaining. And they, Addie reflected, seemed almost reborn. Happy to take on responsibility for a family they’d never had. Not, she knew, just out of Tiny’s loyalty to her dad, but because they wanted to.
Addie led Cameron down the path to Netherlee Road and they crossed to where the cemetery had been extended into the Linn Park. It was more open here. Less mature. And they found her dad’s grave easily among the rows of recent headstones. Placed in the ground close to where he had buried his wife ten years earlier.
There was a wooden bench on the edge of the path, and after she had laid her flowers on the grave, she lifted Cameron on to it and sat down beside him, staring at the simple inscription on the headstone.
Cameron Iain Brodie, 5th April 1996 to 23rd November 2051. Loving husband and father.
The time for tears was long gone, but the regret would linger a lifetime.
Cameron said, ‘I don’t know why my grampa had to die? Just when we found him.’ He thought about it. ‘Everyone else has a grampa. Some of the boys at school even have two.’ His sense of wonder at this was expressed in the emphasis he placed on the word. ‘You know what I wish, Mum?’
‘No, Cammie, what do you wish?’
‘I wish Grampa didn’t have to go to heaven.’
Addie pressed her lips together to contain her emotion. ‘Me too, Cammie. Me too.’
Acknowledgements
I would like to offer my grateful thanks to those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during my researches for A Winter Grave. In particular, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Steve Campman, medical examiner, San Diego, California, USA, for his advice on forensics and pathology; Mo Thomson, photographer, whose amazing still and drone photography substituted for my eyes and ears in Kinlochleven and on Binnein Mòr, when Covid-19 made it difficult for me to travel. Mo’s virtual eVTOL flights from Glasgow to Mull and through Glencoe to Loch Leven, as well as his simulated flights to the summit of Binnein Mòr and into the corries, provided stunning insights into the landscape; Professor Jim Skea, co-chair of Working Group III of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and member of the UK government Committee on Climate Change for his advice on my climate change scenario; Cameron McNeish, author, Scottish wilderness hiker, backpacker and mountaineer for his insights on snow, and climbing Binnein Mòr.