by steve higgs
Big Ben glanced at the centre console in which his satnav was tracking our position. ‘About fifty kilometres from Tignes.’
‘I thought you were going to wake me up,’ I said around another yawn.
He looked across at me. ‘I might have but you were out of it. I stopped for gas twice and walked the dogs and made sure they had a drink and I stopped for some food. I got you some thinking you would wake up…’
‘Where is it?’ I asked, suddenly hungry and ready to eat even if it was cold.
‘But you didn’t, so I ate if for you.’
Nuts.
‘Besides, I said I would wake you up when I got tired.’ He broke off what he was saying to yawn deeply, then pointed to his face. ‘You see that? That’s the first yawn all night. You’ve only been awake two minutes and you are already boring me to sleep.’
I rolled my eyes. He was such a dick.
‘So, you want me to take over?’ I asked.
‘Nearly there now. I might as well finish it.’ He checked his rear-view mirror and pulled out to go around a truck. ‘You will want to find the client when we arrive, yes?’ I nodded. ‘Then I will get a few hours shut eye when we get there.’
That seemed to be the plan settled so I checked on the dogs, gave each a pat and relaxed in the passenger seat for the rest of the drive. Just a couple of minutes later, Big Ben flicked his indicator on and left the motorway. We were heading into the mountains, the remaining kilometres much slower going as the road wound around and around to make the climb manageable. Jagjit had told me the region had enjoyed an early drop of snow. There was snow at this altitude most of the year of course, but it fell far less frequently through the summer and autumn which reduced all but the highest pistes to impassable icefields. A good drop of snow changed that overnight and there was more on the way he assured me.
We passed attractive, colourful billboards advertising the ski regions ahead. Memories of previous ski trips, of the majestic scenery and of hurtling downhill at life-threatening speeds. Memories of the apres-ski and fun evenings with army buddies. Snowy mountain ranges held a romantic place in my heart, and I was excited to be heading back to the slopes after too long away from them.
We started passing buildings and the snow was getting deeper as we continued up. The roads were clear, the success of all the businesses above the snow line depending on it, but there was very little traffic, probably due to the time of day and we made good time.
‘That looks like it there,’ I pointed. Ahead was a sign advertising the Harvarti cable car. Beyond it I could see the cable car itself and a large car park for the thousands of guests the resort must hold at peak season. It was less than half full now.
With the car parked, Big Ben and I grabbed extra layers we had stashed in a handy location knowing we would need them when we arrived. The dogs would need to pee but would not like the cold one bit. They wagged their tails at me in excitement though since the humans were doing stuff and it was breakfast time. I stuffed them into onesies I had bought a long time ago when they had been on sale thinking they might prove handy one day. Both were fleece lined and came down to the ankle of each paw. The only bits exposed were the bits I needed them to make stuff come out of but even with the extra layer they would not tolerate the cold for long; their big flappy ears would freeze in no time if left exposed. They were good dogs though, both sensing the need to be quick about it when I placed them on the snowy ground. While I attended to them, Big Ben walked across to the ticket office to find out when the cable car would start to operate.
He came jogging back as the dogs were eating their breakfast in the passenger’s footwell. ‘We can go in ten minutes. Apparently, the client owns the cable car and told them to expect us.’
So, ten minutes later, with bags and ski gear loaded into a compartment behind the main carriage and the dogs on my lap staring out of the window in doggy wonder, the cable car pulled out and began its ascent. We were already well up into the snow of the mountains. Where snow ploughs had mounded it to the side of the road it was several feet high, and in the car park, where cars had arrived before the most recent drop, there was eight inches of fresh snow on their roofs.
The cable car lifted us high above the houses as it tracked a path up the mountainside toward the ski slopes above Tignes. The whole region was a series of linked ski resorts, the largest of which is Val-d'Isère. One of the big attractions for winter sports fans was the ability to almost never ski the same slope twice. Complex routes could be devised so the skier or snowboarder could range down slope and up ski-lift for hours, going from one end of the resorts to the other and back. We passed over the top of many exciting-looking runs as we made our way to the crest of a mountain. The cable car didn’t stop at the top though, as we broached the summit, the wide expanse of the Alps was revealed before us, a huge range of snow-topped peaks poking up through the early morning mist like shark fins above the water. Then the cable car descended slightly, and the mist engulfed us once more.
On my lap, Dozer wagged a confused and nervous tail a few times. I couldn’t tell what might be going through his little canine brain, but I was certain he had never witnessed anything like the view I had just shown him. I smooshed him under my chin for comfort before settling him back on my lap.
When we emerged from the mist fifteen minutes later, we could see our final destination shining in the sun ahead of us. Harvarti cable car station had been architecturally designed from glass and chrome with a white roof that resembled honeycomb. It was free of snow, which was undoubtedly achieved by passing heat through it, but I had to acknowledge how impressed I always found myself when looking at buildings on the top of mountains: How on earth did they get the building materials up here? How did they get the equipment to the top of the mountain? It wasn’t like they could send it up in the cable car because how did you build the cable car? It was a chicken and egg question that I sort of knew the answer to but it still made me gawp in amazement.
Big Ben stood up with a yawn and a stretch. ‘Looks like this is us,’ he said giving Bull a pat on the head. ‘I sure hope they have someone there to help with the luggage.’
The cable car came into the upper station and in contrast to most cable cars that are in perpetual motion so just swing around the upper drum and go back down, this one came off the reel at the very top and onto a siding so we could unload our belongings. There were men waiting.
A series of bonjours were exchanged in the frigid air at the top of the mountain, then they set about loading our gear into a trailer on the back of a mini-van looking vehicle mounted on caterpillar tracks. It was wide and squat and had room for a family in the back. It was also warm. Far warmer than the cable car had been.
The cable car station was positioned at the leading edge of the resort. Directly in front of us were the two hotels. The Constantine on the left facing off against the Imperial on the right. Beyond them I could see restaurants, the sign for a pharmacy and shops selling and renting ski gear. There would be other businesses as well no doubt. It was quiet out, hardly any people visible in the resort. I pulled back the cuff on my coat to find my watch: it was 0708hrs which explained why the resort guests were not visible. I doubted I would be up this early again during my stay unless the case dictated I must. Soon there would be teems of tourists in bright ski-gear bustling about and probably music piped over the raised speakers I could see. The street would be filled with the smells of food being cooked to lure hungry guests into restaurants and I realised I was reminiscing about just how wonderful ski-resorts could be. Wistfully, I once again wished Amanda could have come with me, it would have been a joy to have shared this with her. Not that Big Ben wasn’t a great friend to go on adventures with, but if I am honest, he doesn’t have boobs and that makes a lot of difference.
Our hotel was the one to our right, the caterpillar van taking us into an underground car park to demonstrate that the builders had thought of everything; guests could be unloaded out of the snow
which must fall for a good portion of the year this high up.
Two different men were on hand to help us unload and carry the bags and ski gear inside, it truly was a five-star resort, which was demonstrated most keenly by everyone speaking English. If you have never been to France, or do not know the French then I will tell you this: they are a proud and noble nation and they like to speak their own language. Learn their language and they will welcome you, struggle to form a coherent sentence in French and they will leave you floundering. I am generalising of course, but the rules seemed to be different here.
A door opened ahead of us to reveal a huge bear of a man with a thick but well-trimmed beard. I recognised him instantly from the hotel’s website. It was the owner and my client, Hubert Caron.
He raised a meaty hand in greeting. ‘Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for getting here so quickly.’
I crossed the few feet that separated us to shake his hand. ‘Good morning, Monsieur. This is my colleague Ben Winters.’ Hubert had a very strong grip and a right hand so huge mine felt swamped by it.
‘Come in out of the cold, boys. You’ll have plenty of time to be cold later while you look for our Yeti.’ He indicated with his head that we should follow. ‘Don’t worry about your bags. I will have everything taken up to your rooms.’ I followed him through a door, the dogs pulling against their leads to get inside first as always.
It hadn’t been cold in the carpark bit, but I guess it hadn’t been warm either, so the blast of heat inside was a wonderful change of pace. Big Ben and I immediately began stripping off layers.
At a wide, wooden reception desk that had been hewn from a single piece of timber, Hubert stopped and turned to us. ‘I can have refreshments sent to your rooms if you are tired or would you like to press on with your investigation?
I noted that his question had been cleverly posed so that he was more likely to get us working straight away. Any other response would be an admission of weakness on our part. Tired, ha! Tired is for civilians. What I said was, ‘I would like to discuss the case first. My colleague and I will then define our strategy and get our investigation under way.’
With a nod, he said, ‘Very good,’ and led us through to a small but well-appointed office where another man was waiting. ‘Gentlemen, this is Police Chief Francois Delacroix.’ The police chief was in uniform, not that it fit him very well. He appeared to be close to retirement and was certainly well into his sixties. His belly was a round ball of fat that sat on top of his belt as if held up by it and his face, like that of my client, had a weathered look I associated with spending a great deal of time outdoors in a harsh environment. I detected a scent of pipe smoke in the room and saw a pipe sitting in an ashtray on the coffee table in front of the chief. He stood up as we came into the room, advancing so he could shake our hands.
‘Francois Delacroix at your service.’ Yet again his English was impeccable. ‘I’m afraid this investigation is beyond my meagre means.’
Hubert picked up the narrative. ‘The police chief is the only police officer we have. He is supported by a larger department in Tignes, but they have classed my daughter’s death as misadventure and thus there is to be no investigation.’
As he talked, he invited us to sit at one of a pair of sofas arranged around a coffee table. As we nestled into the small space, it was my turn to speak, ‘Mr Caron, please tell me when the Yeti was first seen and by whom.’
The police chief then reached into his pocket, producing an old white envelope that had faded with age. He began speaking, ‘The Yeti was first seen in this area more than one hundred years ago.’ He pulled some grainy black and white photographs from the envelope and spread them out on the desk while he continued talking. ‘What you see here are the result of attacks and the remains of animals found slaughtered.’
The black and white photos were quite graphic in that the blood on the snow avoided all shades of grey to make a direct contrast between black and white. In one picture, it showed men standing around an indiscernible carcass that might have been an elk or a deer of some kind. In another, there was no carcass, but a blood trail leading through the snow and into the trees where it disappeared from sight. The next contained a man in police uniform holding a measure against a footprint. The footprint itself wasn’t defined but one could still tell that it wasn’t the print of any creature I recognised, and it was twice the size of a print that I would leave. It reminded me a recent case where a sasquatch had been roaming the countryside near my house. The man inside the suit on that occasion had been not far short of seven feet tall, but the print he used as evidence of the beast had been artificially made. What none of the pictures contained was an image of the Yeti.
How convenient.
‘Have there been human victims before this week?’ I asked Hubert, keeping my voice quiet and respectful since the recent victim was the man’s daughter.
He shook his head rather than speak, and it was the police chief that answered my question. ‘Only one. In 1923, a man was killed on the west slope of Mt Chevale. He was reported missing by his wife. The man was a local business owner and was presumed dead when the villagers were unable to find him that first night. It was too cold for him to have survived, but it took three days to find his half eaten remains.’
Bull and Dozer were exploring the room. I had let them off their leads rather than put them on my lap as it is hard to conduct a serious conversation with a stupid sausage dog snoring upside down on your legs. At that moment Dozer popped his paws onto the coffee table to see if there was anything interesting on it. Hubert smiled. ‘They will be popular here; my wife has a pair of long-haired girls.’ He seemed greatly saddened by his daughter’s death but was holding himself together.
I needed to ask him questions about the death though. ‘Mr Caron, I need as much detail about the attack as possible.’
The grieving father shifted slightly in his chair, crossed his legs and inspected his fingers for a second before he started talking. We soon learned that his daughter had been skiing with a friend, a girl called Priscille Peran, two days ago. This was not unusual, she skied four or five times a week, but the other girl was someone that had arrived recently, a friend from her finishing school that had fallen on hard times and found employment at the rival hotel across the street. He had first learned of the accident when the police chief had called him late on Monday afternoon. Priscille had flagged down some other skiers after emerging from the woods with blood covering her face. She reported that they had been exploring off piste, heading for a slope his daughter believed would have fresh powder after the recent fall of snow, when a huge, horned, bipedal beast had attacked them. It wasn’t the first time it had been seen. There had been twelve other reported sightings in the last three weeks, but all from a distance and no one had yet captured a picture. Priscille claimed to have been struck across the face when the beast attacked. Knocked unconscious, she woke some time later to find Marie missing but a boot still containing her right foot was on the snow next to her.
With the sun beginning to set and temperature set to plummet, Chief Delacriox had formed a search party and scoured the area until Marie’s body was found. He refused to describe the condition it was in, but Hubert spoke up instead, telling us that his daughter’s head was missing. She had been decapitated and it had been his distraught wife that had identified her little girl’s body from birth marks on her skin.
That was thirty-six hours ago.
I said, ‘I need to see where she was killed.’ Despite the sleep in Big Ben’s car, I was still tired and Big Ben must be more so, but I was also energised now. This was a murder and I was going to prove it.
As we all stood up to leave, Hubert said, ‘The hotel manager Michel Masson will be at your disposal throughout your stay.’ He lifted the phone on his desk and pressed a single button. We waited as it connected, then listened as he spoke a few words in French and replaced it in its holder, ‘Michel will be with you momentarily. I’m afraid I ha
ve to defer to my hotel’s number one employee this week. I have my daughter’s funeral to arrange, but Michel will be only too pleased to see to all of your needs.’
Next to me Big Ben, made a small squeak of excitement that I hoped no one else heard. Ignoring him, I nodded in acceptance then asked one more question before I left. ‘Gentlemen, I have to ask if you believe there truly is a Yeti here? I ask because I expect there to be a person in a costume behind this and I need to know what would motivate them to target your daughter.’ The question was designed to test their reaction, to see how deeply ingrained the Yeti legend was in these parts.
The two men exchanged a glance. ‘You are very perceptive,’ Hubert replied. ‘I believe my rival, that pig Chevalier is to blame. He has been trying to put me out of business for years. Ever since he bought the hotel from the previous owner.’ His voice was instantly filled with venom.
‘Now then, Hubert, you have no evidence to support your accusations,’ chided the police chief. ‘If Monsieur Chevalier were guilty of anything, I would have caught him by now.’
‘What are you referring to, please?’ I asked.
Hubert grumpily rested a cheek on the edge of his desk. ‘Gerard Chevalier has employed all manner of dirty tricks to damage my business. I never had any trouble with the previous owner, but ever since he took over, my hotel has suffered broken equipment, our water supply has been cut off three times, we had to shut once because a rat was found in our kitchen and I know he placed it there. I could kill the man.’
‘Now then, Hubert. I can’t have that kind of talk from you, especially since I have been turning a blind eye to the petty crimes I know you have been perpetrating against him in retaliation.’
Hubert swore in French and made a harrumph sound in response but had nothing further to say on the matter.
Deciding they were done, I asked another question, ‘Where will I be able to find Priscille Peran, please? I should like to hear her account first hand.’
