Presumed Dead (7 page)

He got back to the hotel and checked out.
His plan for the day was to visit the Schloss, then drive on up to Calais where
he would stay over before catching a morning ferry to Dover. As he pulled out
of the hotel car park, the two men who had been watching him all morning
followed at a discreet distance.

.

Back in Chamonix, the rain was now
torrential and the clouds were so low that the top of the Jardin du Mont Blanc
Hotel, the tallest building in town, was lost to view. Ross arrived at the
headquarters of the PGHM and was shown into the duty officer’s room. The
uniformed man obviously recognized the solider in Ross, because he stood up and
saluted. Ross shook his hand then asked in his best schoolboy French,
‘Parlez-vous anglais?’

‘A little, Monsieur,’ Batard replied,
sitting back down behind his desk.

‘What’s the status on the search for my
wife?’ Ross asked, sitting opposite him.

‘You told the manager at the hotel that
Madame was planning to walk to the Charpoua Glacier, so this morning we have
started our search there. We have established that she took the train from
Chamonix up to the Montenvers terminus on the Mer de Glace, several of the
staff remember seeing her. After that, she could have walked onto the glacier or
back down to the town.’ He stood up and stepped over to a large-scale map
hanging on the wall. ‘We have already covered the two paths from Chamonix to
the Montenvers terminus, here and here,’ he said, tracing the winding paths on
the map with a wooden pointer. ‘We have also covered the paths from Montenvers
down onto the Mer de Glace, here and here. My men have discovered no sign of
her at all.’

‘What about the helicopter?’ Ross asked.
‘Have you called that in yet?’

‘The helicopter has done one flight along
the length of the Mer de Glace and up the Charpoua Glacier, but the visibility
became too bad to continue so it has returned.’

‘Yes, I caught a bit of that weather on my
way into Geneva this morning. Any idea how long it’s forecast to be bad?’

‘This time of year, Monsieur, it can last
for days or even weeks. The weather in the mountains is very unpredictable.
This morning when my men set off it was bright sunshine, now they are reporting
blizzard conditions on the Mer de Glace with heavy snowfall higher up.’

‘But they’re still up there searching,
aren’t they?’ Ross asked anxiously.

‘Yes, but not for much longer. The fresh
snowfall makes it very dangerous because the snow that is already up there
cannot support the weight of the new snow, then we have avalanches. Your wife
is classified as Missing at the moment, so we go on searching, but if she is
not found by nightfall, I will have to reclassify her as Missing, Presumed
Dead, and call my men back.’

‘But you can’t just give up!’ Ross
protested. ‘She may be lying hurt somewhere. You must go on searching!’

‘Look, Monsieur,’ Batard said
sympathetically, taking his seat again and leaning across his desk. ‘If your
wife was hurt sometime yesterday on the glacier and spent the night up there in
the open without special clothing, she is very unlikely to have survived.’

Ross bowed his head and looked as sad as
possible, but inside, his brain was working overtime. The spot he’d original
chosen to dump Alice had been perfect. She would have hit the steep
mountainside directly above a treacherous, high level path, then bounced and
slid another eight hundred feet down into a rocky ravine, where her broken,
twisted body would have come to rest among the boulders near a well used trail.
Whoever found her there would assume she’d fallen from the upper path. But
something had gone wrong.

Just as he’d been sliding her out of the
door, her rucksack had caught in the doorframe and with all her kicking and
fighting it had taken precious moments to free her, during which time the autopilot
had flown the plane more than two miles. He’d worked out she must have ended up
somewhere near the Charpoua Glacier, but God alone knew exactly where. I’ve got
to get them to carry on the search, he thought, before she gets buried under
all the new snow. No dead body means no official record of death, no reading of
the will, no probate and no money. If they don’t find her now, it won’t be
until the spring thaw next year, which will be much too late. I want that money
now!

Batard was speaking again. ‘I am afraid I
can not order my men to continue the search in these conditions, but if they
choose to volunteer, then that is a different matter. They may want to stay out
for a little longer, they are very dedicated.’

Ross’s head snapped up, ‘Volunteers! I
think you’ve got it! There must be plenty of guides and climbers around here
who would be willing to search if I put up a big enough reward, but it would
need coordinating properly.’

‘If you can get me the men, I am happy to
organize the search for you,’ Batard said. ‘But I must warn you, the longer she
is out there, the less chance we have of finding her alive.’

‘I understand,’ Ross said sadly, ‘but I
can’t just do nothing, can I?’ Then, after a short pause he rubbed his hands
together and said, ‘Now, to business. What’s the best way to get our
volunteers?’

Batard thought for a moment then said, ‘I
will telephone La Compagnie de Guides, they will let all their members know. To
reach other climbers it would probably be best to make an announcement on CHUT FM,
the local radio station, I will call them also. How much were you thinking of
offering as a reward?’

‘I want as many men as possible… and dogs,
we must have lots of dogs. Let’s say ten thousand Euros. Do you think that
would be enough?’

‘Ten thousand Euros?’ the officer
spluttered. ‘For that kind of money Monsieur, you will have every person in the
valley volunteering!’

‘Maybe so, but we need to cover every inch
of that glacier in the shortest possible time, so I want at least a hundred
good men,’ Ross commanded, the old military training beginning to show. ‘I’ll
leave it up to you to choose the ones you want, just make sure they’re the
best.’

‘Leave it to me, Monsieur. I will start
making calls right away.’

‘Right, I’m going to check into my hotel,
then I’m going to the bank to get the money transferred, then I’ll be back.’

Batard was picking up his phone as Ross
left to make the short drive through pouring rain to the Jardin du Mont Blanc
Hotel, where he was welcomed by the grief-stricken manager and handed the key
to Madame’s room.

.

The call for help and the mention of a
reward had been made on CHUT FM during the traditional French two-hour lunch
break, and the response had been phenomenal. By three in the afternoon all the
roads leading to the PGHM headquarters on the north side of Chamonix were
gridlocked, with the local gendarmes running back and forth, blowing their
whistles.

Fortunately, Ross had decided to walk up
there after he’d left the bank, but still had to fight his way past hundreds of
young men who were milling around the building, pushing and shoving in the
closest Frenchmen could get to an orderly queue.

Many of them had brought their dogs;
Labradors, Huskies, St Bernards, who were adding to the mayhem by barking,
howling and whenever the opportunity arose, snapping at each other. He finally
managed to find Batard, who was looking very harassed. ‘How are we doing?’ Ross
asked.

‘As you can see,’ he said, raising his
hands in typical Gallic fashion, ‘we have far more people than we can use. The
problem is that many of those I am rejecting say they are going to search
anyway. Everyone wants that money.’

‘The more men we have on the job, the
better chance we have of finding her,’ Ross said cheerfully. ‘What’s the
weather doing up there now? How soon can we get going?’

‘The wind has dropped a little but it is
still snowing hard higher up. The first team will be leaving in about an hour.
We are just trying to get enough lanterns organized, so we can carry on after
dark. I plan to set up a forward command post at the Montenvers Hotel as soon
as I am finished here.’

‘Very good,’ Ross said. ‘I’ll make my way
up there later and join you. I want to be there when they find her.’ With that,
he fought his way out of the building and walked back to the hotel. Better have
a bite to eat before I go, he thought. Can’t feign grief on an empty stomach.

.

Meanwhile, up near the summit of the
Aiguille Verte, the soft snow coating the near vertical face that had broken
Alice’s fall was becoming dangerously unstable with the added weight of the
fresh snowfall. Here and there, huge areas, which had been clinging
precariously to the rocks all summer, finally lost their battle with gravity
and came crashing down the mountainside in spectacular avalanches, depositing
tons of snow, ice and all manner of other detritus onto the Charpoua Glacier.

It was nearly three hundred miles from
Chamonix to the village just outside Nîmes, in the south of France, where
Philippe lived. He’d been taking it easy on the autoroutes, letting the big BMW
coast smoothly along under cruise control, a little below the speed limit. As
they had come down out of the mountains and started heading south, they had
left the bad weather behind and Philippe now had the air-conditioning on to keep
them comfortable.

Alice had slept from the moment they left
Chamonix, and sitting back with his feet off the pedals, holding the steering
wheel between finger and thumb, Philippe had had plenty of time to relax and
think during the long drive. He kept looking down at Alice, reclined in the
seat beside him, thinking over and over again that she was the most, vulnerable
creature he’d ever met. For some reason, he felt incredibly protective towards
her. Every time he thought of her husband, his anger flared and he wanted to
kill him with his bare hands.

He could vaguely remember a story he’d
heard years before, something about an ancient belief that if you saved a
person’s life, you then owned that person and were responsible for them
forever. That first night, when she’d fallen through the cabin door at his feet
and he’d bathed her wounds and cradled her in his arms, he’d allowed himself to
believe that the gods of the mountain were somehow making recompense for Luba.
The mountain taketh away, and the mountain giveth. Blessed be the name of the
mountain. Looking down on her again he wished it were true, but he knew that in
reality, as soon as she was physically fit and psychologically ready to face
her husband, she would be gone from his life forever.

The late afternoon sun swept across Alice’s
face as they turned off the autoroute at the Nîmes-East junction, stirring her
from her slumber. At first she didn’t know where she was, then she looked up at
Philippe and remembered.

‘Hello,’ he said, smiling. ‘Did you sleep
well?’

Alice put her hands above her head and
stretched like a cat. ‘Wonderfully,’ she said, with a dreamy smile. ‘Where are
we?’

‘Nearly home, just another five minutes.’

Alice straightened her seat back and looked
around as they followed a narrow road for about a mile before coming to the
small village, which was nothing more than a church, a few houses, a general
store, a boulangerie and a bar tabac. Carrying on out the other side, they were
soon in an arid scrubland where the road carved a swathe through brown,
sun-parched bushes and stunted trees. After another mile and a half, Philippe
turned right into a driveway and pulled up at a set of iron gates, which were
just swinging open under remote control, activated from the car. Once through
the gates, they followed the driveway up hill slightly, around a curve to the
left, then parked outside a single story, white stucco house with a red tile
roof.

‘Here we are,’ he said, ‘home sweet home.’

‘It’s very pretty,’ Alice said, craning her
neck to look around.

‘It used to be a hunting lodge,’ Philippe
explained. ‘When I bought it, it had no electricity or heating, and the only
water was from a hand pump outside the kitchen door. But now you will find all
the comforts of home.’

Philippe jumped out of the car and went
around to the passenger side to help Alice out. They were still wearing their
thick jackets and the heat hit Alice like a hammer blow as he opened the car
door.

‘Whew! It’s a bit warmer here than
Chamonix,’ she exclaimed.

‘Come on inside, it will be much cooler
there.’ Philippe opened the front door and they went in. All the shutters were
closed and the inside of the house was cool and dark, lit only by thin shafts
of sunlight penetrating the louvres. He led the way through a large kitchen and
living room towards the back of the house, where there were two bedrooms, a
bathroom and a toilet. He showed Alice into the back bedroom then opened the
window and threw open the shutters. The room was fairly small and had two
single beds, a small dressing table with a stool, and a chest of drawers. The
window looked out onto a large back garden planted with pine trees, which cast
patches of dappled shade onto the parched earth.

Turning back to Alice, Philippe said
nervously, ‘This is my guestroom. It is yours for as long as you wish to stay.
You are very welcome.’

Alice came to him and taking both his hands
in hers, looked up into his dark eyes and said warmly, ‘You are the kindest
person I have ever met, thank you.’

They smiled at each other for a moment, then
Philippe broke away saying, ‘I expect you would like a nice long soak in the
bath. I will run it for you.’ With that, he went along the passage and into the
bathroom.

Alice heard the water splashing into the
bath and was just taking her jacket and fleece off, wondering what she was
going to do for clothes when Philippe came back into her room with a pink
toweling bathrobe. ‘Here you are,’ he said, handing her the robe. ‘I have put
some clean towels in the bathroom and while you are having your bath, I will
put some more of Louisa’s things out for you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘I know how
hard this must be for you. I’m very grateful.’

Philippe looked sad for a moment, then
brightened and asked. ‘How about some dinner after your bath? You must be starving.’

‘Mmm, I could eat a horse!’

‘I don’t have a horse,’ he said seriously,
‘but I make a great spaghetti bolognese, if that would do.’

She laughed. ‘That’ll do fine.’

‘I’ll wait until I hear you get out of the
bath before I start it, then you can take as long as you want.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘see you later, and thank
you again.’

.

Alice sank down into the steaming bath
water and started thinking about Ross again. The one thing she just couldn’t
get her head around was the fact that he’d actually tried to kill her! Maybe
I’m in denial, she thought, but I just can’t believe he would do such a thing!
She went back over the years of their life together for the fiftieth time in
the past two days, trying to find a reason.

 She remembered how she’d been supremely happy
during the first few months of their marriage, except in one important respect.
As soon as she’d discovered she was pregnant, Ross had refused to share her bed
on the basis that any marital activity, as he put it, might harm the unborn
child. She’d found it very difficult to be angry with him because his motives
had been so pure and noble, and she’d thought he was making such a supreme
sacrifice. She’d been bitterly disappointed though, after such an active and
exhilarating start to their married life. Every time she raised the subject,
he’d promised that once the child was born, things would return to normal.

After Charles was born though, and the
doctor had given her the all-clear, she’d gone to Ross, only to be disappointed
again. Finally, she’d confronted him, and had been shocked when he’d broken
down and wept. He’d told her it was the worry of not having any money that was
preoccupying him, and that if only he didn’t have so many financial worries,
he’d be a different man, the man she wanted him to be.

Although they’d never discussed it, she’d
always assumed that he had a steady income from some source or other. He’d
always seemed to have plenty of money. When he cried in front of her,
confessing he was virtually bankrupt and up to his ears in debt, her heart had
gone out to him. The following day, she’d cabled her lawyer in the States and
made him a gift of half of her stocks and bonds, which had immediately given
him a personal income of over a million pounds a year.

He’d been grateful and happy with that
initially, and even made the occasional effort to visit her room, but it wasn’t
the same as Monte. He started spending more and more time away. Before long his
debts had mounted again and he’d come to her for more. She’d lost count of the
number of times since then that she’d bailed him out of trouble with various
gambling houses.

In the end, she’d been forced to accept
that he just wasn’t interested in her physically. At first that made her
question her own sexuality. Then it made her angry. Then she’d just been sad.
But she’d stuck at her marriage and been faithful and giving, trying to make
the best of it. In fact, she’d thought things had started looking up recently.

Just before the school holidays, Charles
had asked if he could have two of his friends to stay, because their parents
were abroad. The three young teenagers had arrived down from Eton like a
whirlwind, and just as she’d been wondering how on earth she was going to cope
on her own, Ross had cancelled all his gambling trips and stepped in.

He’d spent nearly the whole summer with
them at the farm, swimming with the boys, carrying them around on his
shoulders, wrestling with them and generally fooling about. They’d adored him,
and he’d often taken them off for joyrides in his car or for flights in one of
his planes from the private airstrip behind the house. And at night, he’d been
more attentive towards her too, on quite a few occasions.

It had been a wonderful summer and she
could see no reason why now, just as things were starting to come right, that
he should dump her out of his plane like a sack of trash.

Alice stayed in the bath until the water
was nearly cold, soothing her aching bones and soaking her cuts and bruises.
Eventually, she let the water out then stood up and turned the shower on to
wash her hair. She went back into her bedroom wearing the bathrobe and a towel
wrapped around her head like a turban to find that Philippe had been as good as
his word. On the bed were four separate piles of clothing. There were knickers
and bras, T-shirts and blouses, jeans and trousers and some summer dresses.

On the dressing table, she found a
hairbrush and comb, a hair dryer and some basic items of makeup and hair care.
The makeup and hair things were all brand new. Tears came to her eyes as she
looked at all he’d done for her. She was deeply touched.

After she’d dried her hair and tied it back
in a loose ponytail, she tried to patch up her face a little with some makeup,
then went through the clothes for something to wear. She was nervous of wearing
Louisa’s clothes, conscious that although Philippe had given them to her, it
might upset him, but she really didn’t have any choice. Most of the things
looked like they would fit her okay, thought the trousers and jeans were too
long and the bras were two cup sizes too small. I guess Louisa must have been
taller and thinner than me, she thought.

In the end, she chose one of the simple
summer frocks and wore it with clean knickers but her own bra. Although she
hated putting something back on that she’d already worn for three days, it was
better than going without because she certainly did not want to appear
improperly dressed in front of Philippe.

When she finally came out of her bedroom
and padded barefoot through the house, she found him in the kitchen stirring a
saucepan of bubbling bolognese sauce. He’d obviously showered, shaved and
changed because his hair was clean and nicely combed back and he was wearing a
white open neck shirt with navy blue slacks. The white shirt showed his deep
suntan off to perfection and was protected from the volcanic bolognese sauce by
a blue and white striped chef’s apron. Alice thought he looked very attractive.

Cool evening air streamed in through an
open window and mixed with the wonderful aroma of onions and garlic. A small
table with a red and white check cloth was laid for two with a single candle, a
bottle of red wine and a basket of sliced French stick. A portable CD machine
played Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Philippe didn’t hear her come in.

Alice stood watching him for a few moments,
drinking in the scene, then said, ‘Mmm, that smells good.’

He stopped stirring the saucepan and came
slowly towards her. ‘You look wonderful,’ he breathed, then, taking her hands
he asked ‘How are your cuts and grazes?’

 ‘Much better thank you, all nice and
clean. I think the best thing is to let the air get to them now.’

He looked at her hands, then at her knees
and said, ‘I think you are right. They are healing nicely.’ Letting her hands
go, he went back to stirring his saucepan.

‘Thank you for all those things you left
out for me,’ she said. ‘It was very kind of you.’

‘I hope the makeup and hair things were all
right, it was all they had in the village shop.’

‘You went out specially to get those things
for me?’

‘Yes, and to get some fresh bread. You can
not eat in France without fresh bread.’

‘That’s true,‘ she said, wandering over to
the table and helped herself to a piece of the bread. ‘I love French bread.’

‘I’m glad you found something that fitted
you,’ Philippe said, looking at the dress. ‘Tomorrow, I will take you into
Nîmes and you can choose some clothes for yourself. I’m sure you would prefer
to wear your own things.’

‘No,’ she protested, ‘you’ve done too much
for me already. I’ll just wash out my shorts and top and make do with those
until I go home.’

Putting his wooden spoon down again, he
came and stood in front of her and said, ‘Now look, I know it is important for
a woman to have nice clothes and to feel good in what she wears, and I am sure
you do not feel comfortable in Louisa’s things. It would give me great pleasure
to take you shopping, please don’t deny me that.’