Snowfall Page 5
Toni had come swooping down from the higher slopes, which were reached by a drag lift, and had done an exhibition stop-turn at the edge of the terrace. Now, after adding his skis to a colourful forest that sprouted from a mound of snow near the terrace, he approached us with the air of a man who expected applause, or at least a welcome.
‘For heaven’s sake …’ grumbled Stephen. ‘Is there to be no privacy at all? Look, would you like to go for a walk, Kate? There’s a high-altitude path, dug through the snow, and I believe it’s quite pleasant.’
I declined. I was mildly entertained by his manoeuvrings, but I had been wanting to talk to Toni Hammerl about Matt’s accident, and this might be a good opportunity. I sat quiet, listening to the men’s desultory conversation and waiting for an opening.
‘I didn’t expect to see you up here, Toni,’ said Phil. ‘Not when the hotel’s so busy.’
Toni Hammerl shrugged. ‘One can always make time for what interests one most.’ He smiled at me, emphasizing the ambiguity of his words.
Jon Becker looked with slightly disdainful amusement at Stephen, who was glaring at Toni. ‘How’s that pretty dark-haired student of yours, Marsh – what’s her name, Heidi? Trudi?’
Stephen turned his scowl on his colleague. ‘If it comes to that,’ he said, ‘what’s brought you up the Kirchwalder Alm this morning? I thought you usually took your son ski-ing at Igls at week-ends?’
‘He has a bit of a cold,’ said Becker. ‘He’s best at home today.’
Phil Sloan had been fingering his moustache and looking from one to the other, surprised by their barbed exchange. Now he offered an uneasy contribution to the conversation: ‘My wife’s got a nasty cold, too.’
‘Really?’ said Becker with polite disinterest. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’
The four men fell silent. Not a comfortable silence, but an edgy one. There was nothing companionable about our gathering. Stephen and Becker obviously disliked each other, and neither of them wanted to bother with Phil or Toni. Since they had all come up the Alm for the ski-ing, I couldn’t understand why they didn’t get on with it, instead of sitting staring suspiciously at each other and then glancing covertly at me.
At me? Surely I was imagining things again …?
True, I’ve received a whistle or two in my time, but I always feel that the men who work on building sites err on the side of generosity. Matt used to tell me that I was lovely, but he could hardly be called an impartial judge; I know I’m no beauty. So it was ridiculous to imagine that Stephen Marsh and Phil Sloan and Toni Hammerl and Jon Becker were all lingering on the terrace for the pleasure of being with me.
The tube of sun cream began to slide off my lap. I could have saved it, but the feminine temptation was too great.
I let it fall. All four bent, instantly, to retrieve it for me. There was a slightly undignified scrabble on the close-packed snow at my feet, before Toni Hammerl emerged looking as triumphant as though he’d saved a diamond ring from falling down a drain.
I thanked him graciously. It’s a heady sensation, for a girl of unexceptional appearance and personality to find herself surrounded by four attentive men whose looks ranged from passable – if you could ignore Phil’s seedy moustache, he had rather fine dark eyes – through red-gold rugged and darkly attractive to downright blond and handsome. Not that I was in the least interested in any of my companions, but I admit that I enjoyed being the centre of their attention. What woman wouldn’t?
Phil Sloan shifted in his chair, and re-opened the conversation: ‘What’s that mountain peak, up there behind us?’
‘The Nockspitze,’ said Toni, without bothering to look.
‘Oh, I’ve heard of that,’ said Phil. ‘Isn’t the Nockspitze the one that’s really difficult to climb? I believe there have been some nasty –’
‘Shut up, Sloan!’ Stephen commanded angrily.
Phil looked bewildered, and offended. ‘I was only going to say –’
‘Well don’t,’ snapped Stephen. ‘No one wants to know what you were going to say. Come on, Kate, let’s go for that walk.’
It was considerate of Stephen to try to protect me, but I felt sorry for Phil. He tugged uncertainly at his moustache, and his nice eyes looked hurt.
‘Don’t mind what Stephen says,’ I told him gently. ‘The thing is, Phil, that my – that a great friend of mine was killed on the Nockspitze last year.’
There was an immediate murmur of sympathy from the men. Jon Becker was politely conventional; Toni Hammerl explained how sorry he and his family had been over Matt’s death; Phil looked stricken by the gaffe he had made, and promptly set about worsening it.
‘Oh, Kate, how awful for you! I’m so sorry I asked about the mountain, I wouldn’t have mentioned it for the world if I’d known … How did it happen, did his rope break or something?’
‘I don’t know how it happened,’ I said, twisting my pendant in my fingers. ‘As a matter of fact, I’d like very much to find out. That’s really what I’m hoping to do during my stay here. Can you tell me anything about it, Toni?’
‘No,’ said Toni Hammerl abruptly. ‘No I can’t – I’m sorry. And I really don’t think that you should bother with enquiries. They will only distress you. Your friend died, and there is nothing you can do for him now.’
Stephen rounded on Toni. ‘You can’t shrug a man’s death off, just like that! If Kate wants to know how it happened, she has a right to ask.’
‘I think so, too,’ said Phil unexpectedly.
‘But I don’t.’ Jon Becker’s voice was crisp, authoritative. ‘I agree with Hammerl. Making enquiries will serve no useful purpose. Leave it, Kate!’
The four men spoke so vehemently that I was taken aback. I looked from one to another in surprise. Their tension was unmistakable. The air seemed suddenly thick with it. The men were not merely unfriendly towards each other, they were actually hostile.
So what had brought them together? What kept them together now?
They were looking at me again. It was true: I was the centre of their attention. But I had been naïve to imagine that their interest was that of men for a woman. Their eyes were speculative. It was not an openly masculine speculation, but something much more alarming.
I felt that they were watching me, and waiting. And I had no idea why, or for what.
Chapter Five
What a smug idiot I’d been, to imagine that I had suddenly acquired four admirers!
It wasn’t as though I was the only unattached girl on the terrace; there were two others – pretty, at that – sitting only a few yards away and openly envying my superfluity of escorts. I couldn’t delude myself, either, that my sparkling conversation compensated for my unremarkable looks, because I’d said very little. I hadn’t sparkled since Matt’s death; hadn’t even tried. And a quiet enigmatic smile can’t be expected to enthral unless the Mona Lisa’s bone structure goes with it.
No, it was something more significant that kept the four men round me. I wasn’t worried about Stephen’s motives, because he had been a friend of Matt and wanted to be kind; and I knew that Phil Sloan had tagged along simply because his wife was ill. But I began to wonder about Jon Becker and Toni Hammerl.
Apparently Becker usually spent his Sundays ski-ing with his family in another village. So what had brought him here today? What made him think that he had any right to lay down the law about what I should and shouldn’t do? And why wasn’t Toni Hammerl teaching someone to ski, or whatever else was needed to support the family business at the height of the winter sports season?
Why were they both so adamant that I must make no enquiries about Matt’s death?
Last night, I had been indignant when Stephen suggested that perhaps Matt hadn’t been climbing when he was killed. Now I began to wonder whether what he said could possibly be true. Was there some mystery about Matt’s death? Were Becker and Hammerl trying to hide something?
It was Jon Becker who broke the tense silence. ‘Look,’ h
e said, in a would-be friendly tone as artificial as an indoor ski slope, ‘why don’t we all have a drink? What would you like, Kate?’
If Stephen hadn’t been there, I would have refused and returned to the village. I’m not foolhardy enough to set about trying to unravel a mystery on my own. But although Stephen declined to drink with Becker, he remained squarely in his chair with his chin obstinately set. I could see that he had every intention of pursuing the subject of Matt’s death; and as long as Stephen stayed, I stayed.
And as long as I stayed, it seemed, the other men intended to stay too.
Stephen waited until the drinks had been brought, then drew a deep breath and spoke in a voice of patient reasonableness. ‘Just tell us this, then, Toni,’ he said. ‘Was Matt Danby staying with you at the Alte Post when he had the accident?’
Toni took a long drink of beer, then said, ‘No.’
‘But he always stayed with you!’ I protested.
Toni corrected me politely. ‘He often stayed with us. How do I know “always”? Perhaps we were full at the time – the Alte Post is popular with climbers, and often full in the spring. We simply heard that a man had been killed on the Nockspitze, and that he was to be buried at Kirchwald.’
‘But what exactly did you hear?’ I asked. ‘Do you know who he was climbing with? Or where he was staying?’
Toni Hammerl shrugged helplessly. ‘The only detail we heard was his name. Naturally we were sad because we had known him – but the Nockspitze has claimed many lives. It is not unusual for climbers to die in the mountains, and to be buried here in Kirchwald. My father and I went to the funeral, of course. It was simple, but very dignified.’
I couldn’t say anything more. My throat had suddenly closed up. But Stephen persisted.
‘Who else was there? Were there any climbers?’
‘There were some local people who had known your friend, but no one who had climbed with him on the day of the accident. Probably he was with Innsbruckers on the climb, or foreigners. There were a few strangers at the funeral, all men, but it was not my place to ask who they were. I’m sorry, but I can tell you nothing more.’ Toni buried his handsome face in his glass.
Stephen kept his irritation under control with obvious difficulty. ‘Oh, come on, Toni! All right, you yourself know nothing about Matt’s accident – we’ll believe you. But you must be able to give us some leads. Tell us who else he knew in Kirchwald. And tell us where he was most likely to have stayed, if the Alte Post was full. Come on, man!’
‘For heaven’s sake, Marsh, stop behaving like a second-rate television cop!’ intervened Becker curtly. ‘What good are you doing by asking all these questions?’ He turned to me, forcing one of his smiles that went no further than the corners of his mouth. ‘Look, Kate, we all sympathize. I can understand how you feel – my wife was killed in a road accident when I wasn’t with her, and I know that at the time, five years ago, I felt a dreadful compulsion to learn all the details. But it doesn’t help, believe me; you need to start looking forward instead of back. Try to come to terms with the fact of your friend’s death, and let the rest go. Don’t probe. It will do you no good.’
I kept my eyes lowered, and stared at the glass of Apfelsaft I was clutching. Possibly Jon Becker was right. I would have been prepared to accept what he said, since it obviously came from his own experience of tragic bereavement, if it had not been for the ambiguity of that last sentence. I didn’t know whether to take it as a friendly statement of fact, a hint, or a veiled threat.
I glanced at Stephen. He was sitting with his arms folded, simmering; from the look he gave Becker, I had no doubt which way Stephen interpreted his colleague’s words.
Toni Hammerl obviously had no doubt either. I caught sight of his expression just for a moment, out of the corner of my eye, before he lifted his glass again. His answers to our questions had been defensive, but sincere enough; he had fended off Stephen’s irritation with apology.
But I knew now that his sincerity had been feigned. Stephen was too busy glaring at Becker to notice but I could see that Toni Hammerl realized as well as I did that Stephen had every intention of continuing to probe into Matt’s accident. And the look he gave Stephen, behind his back, was one of anger mingled with contempt.
Phil Sloan, who had been following the conversation with surprise and incomprehension from behind the shelter of a tall glass of beer, took it upon himself to change the subject.
‘What’s that you’re drinking, Jon?’ he asked.
‘This?’ Jon Becker tilted the whorled stem of his wineglass, and the liquid glowed ruby-red in the sun. ‘It’s a local wine, Magdalener.’
‘Hardly local,’ said Stephen bluntly. ‘It comes from Italy,’ he told Phil, ‘from the Alto Adige region.’
Toni Hammerl corrected him instantly, vehemently: ‘No – from the South Tyrol!’ This time he made no attempt to conceal his feelings. He glared at Stephen, thumped down his empty glass and strode to the edge of the terrace, his back to us.
Phil was bewildered. So was I, though I had too many other problems to let this particular argument worry me. Phil pulled his chair closer to Becker’s and lowered his voice: ‘What’s upset Toni?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ said Becker, loftily ignoring the fact that what may seem obvious to a history lecturer isn’t necessarily so to everyone else. ‘Toni may be a young man, but the Tyrolese have long memories. They’re proud and independent, and they’ve never given up agitating for the return of the southern part of their country.’ He turned to Stephen. ‘You should have known better, Marsh, than to call it the Alto Adige in front of a local man.’
‘I’ve no reason to treat Toni Hammerl’s susceptibilities gently,’ retorted Stephen. ‘He didn’t even try to be helpful to Kate.’ He glanced at me protectively.
Becker gave him a cold, assessing look, and an enigmatic reply: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t push my luck.’
Phil Sloan stared at them, mystified. He had just given his moustache another beer rinse, and now he dabbed it dry with his handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m still no wiser. Where did you say the wine comes from?’
Becker took an appreciative swallow before he spoke. ‘It comes,’ he explained, ‘from a region just to the south of the Alps, which was part of Austria from the fourteenth century until 1918. It was known as the South Tyrol, and it was larger and wealthier and more fertile than this mountainous northern region. Then, in the First World War, the Allies persuaded the Italians to join in against Austria and Germany, with the promise that in return the Italian frontier would be extended right up to the Alps.’
Phil’s face cleared. ‘I see. So the South Tyrol became part of Italy, and was renamed?’
‘Exactly. The Italians call it the Alto Adige, but to many Austrians it’s still the South Tyrol. There’s an understandable legacy of bitterness about it.’
‘Even after all this time?’ I asked. Despite my dislike of Becker, I couldn’t help being interested in what he said. ‘I mean, it’s all of sixty years –’
He managed to give me a rather more generous smile than usual. ‘What’s sixty years, against six centuries of history and tradition? You heard how Toni Hammerl reacted. A great many Tyrolese have German-speaking relatives living on the other side of the Brenner Pass, and some of them still own land and property there. For them, the South Tyrol is a lasting patriotic and emotional problem.’
Phil Sloan had unslung a pair of binoculars and was standing up to focus them on a cleft in the mountains that ran from north to south just below the Kirchwalder Alm. ‘Isn’t that the valley that runs through the Brenner Pass and on to Italy?’ he asked.
‘Yes. You’ll find that you get a good view of the Austrian-Italian autobahn from half-way down the ski slopes. May I borrow your glasses for a moment?’
Becker took them and focused them on a distant village. ‘Excellent definition,’ he said enviously. ‘Did you buy them abroad?’
‘No. They�
�re a foreign make, but I got them in London – second-hand, of course. I use them quite a lot. My wife and I are keen bird-watchers.’
Becker returned the glasses. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘An interesting hobby.’
Stephen had put a hand under my elbow. ‘What about that walk, Kate?’
‘Just a moment,’ said Becker. He looked at me, characteristically, down his nose. ‘Will you have dinner with me in Innsbruck this evening?’ he asked abruptly.
It was such a brusque and unlikely invitation that for a moment I couldn’t think of any words. Stephen supplied them. ‘No,’ he said, equally short: ‘Kate’s spending this evening in Innsbruck with me.’
‘I see.’ Becker rubbed his chin thoughtfully and then said, this time rather more courteously, ‘Then perhaps I might have a word with you now, Kate, in private?’
He walked to the end of the terrace, assuming that I would follow. Stephen looked annoyed, but it occurred to me that Jon Becker might perhaps have something to tell me about Matt, and so I went after him. ‘Look,’ I said, when we were out of earshot of the others, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but if you do know anything about Matt’s accident I wish you’d –’
Jon Becker shook his head impatiently. ‘It’s not about that. It’s rather more personal.’ He walked to the railed edge of the terrace, brushed off a glistening crust of snow and leaned his elbows on it, looking out across miles of ice-crisp air to the massive Nordkette mountains behind Innsbruck. ‘As I mentioned earlier, I’m a widower. And as Marsh made a point of informing you, I have a son: Bruno’s eight.’
However much I deplored the man’s abrupt persistence, it would have been abominably self-centred of me not to offer some expression of sympathy. He had reason enough for sad preoccupation, with no wife and with a son to bring up single-handed. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said gently. ‘It must be very difficult, for you and your son.’
And then I remembered something else that he’d said, and felt a little less sympathetic. ‘But the boy’s at home with a cold,’ I reminded him. ‘Shouldn’t you be there with him?’