Murder at the matterhorn, p.1
Murder at the Matterhorn, page 1
MURDER AT THE MATTERHORN
T. A. WILLIAMS
To Mariangela and Christina with love as always
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
More from T. A. Williams
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by T. A. Williams
Poison & Pens
About Boldwood Books
1
TUESDAY EVENING
Anna’s Aunt Domenica, known to everybody in the family as Zia Menca, was unlike any other ninety-year-old I had ever met. When Anna and her sister had asked her what she wanted as a birthday present, the reply had been a new external hard drive for her computer. I have only one aunt of a similar vintage and I know for a fact that she wouldn’t have known what a hard drive was and, even if she had known, she would have dismissed it along with anything to do with computers as the work of the Devil. Zia Menca was a very different kettle of fish. Not only did she own a computer and know far more about technology and the Internet than I did, but she also had her own blog with a following of tens of thousands on social media and she produced regular podcasts.
Yes, she was quite some lady.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost ten o’clock. Virgilio and Lina had been looking after Oscar all evening while Anna and I came to the grand old lady’s birthday party along with most of the inhabitants of the little village outside Florence where she lived. I knew we would have to head off soon to retrieve him. This was for two reasons: partly to relieve them of the responsibility of looking after sixty pounds of canine bone and muscle, and partly before the ever-hungry Labrador ate himself to death. Although his ‘I’m starving’ act no longer worked on me, Lina fell for it every time and he always came back from a visit to them a good bit heavier than when he went.
I bade farewell to the pair of elderly gentlemen who had been giving me an interesting, if slightly repetitive, treatise on the joys of fly fishing, and went across to where Anna was standing with her sister and a handful of other relatives, listening to Zia Menca outlining the gist of her next blog post. It came as no surprise to learn that this was to be her investigation into attempts by a pharmaceutical firm to hide the fact that their latest drug had the unfortunate side effect of producing temporary blindness. The title of her blog was VERITAS ITALICA – Italian Truth – and, from what Anna had told me, her aunt lived and breathed conspiracy theories, corruption in high places, supernatural phenomena and the unexplained and the underhand in general.
The Italian police and armed forces regularly came under her scrutiny and she had been suspicious of me at first until I had convinced her that I really had retired from my former job as a detective at Scotland Yard. It had taken time and a couple of good meals in the local restaurant before she had relented and accepted me into the bosom of the family. Now as she saw me, she reached out with an arthritic hand and gripped my arm remarkably firmly.
‘What do you think we should do, Chief Inspector?’ She always called me by my former rank but it was out of affection – or at least I hoped so. She spoke very clearly and I found her easy to understand. By now, I was used to the way the Tuscans speak Italian and I had even been told I was beginning to sound like one of them myself.
‘What to do about what, Zia Menca?’
‘About unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies putting profit over morality?’
I grinned at her. ‘Bring back the death penalty and hang the lot of them?’
I saw an answering spark in her bright old eyes. ‘Not such a bad idea after all, but maybe just a trifle too radical, even for a police officer.’
‘An ex-police officer; I’m a private investigator these days, remember. Well, alternatively, if you don’t want to hang them, then why not make them take their own drugs for a few months and that way they can experience the side effects for themselves. I imagine that being rendered temporarily blind might help them get the point.’
‘Excellent idea, I’ll propose it.’
I stood and chatted for another few minutes until it really was time to leave. After thanking her for the party and wishing her well, Anna and I kissed her goodbye and made our way out, kissing and shaking hands with all manner of other guests here in the sala communale as we did so. It looked as though most of the village had turned out and I was pleased for Zia Menca. She deserved her celebrity.
The drive back to Virgilio and Lina’s house on the outskirts of Florence took less than twenty minutes and we found them still sitting outside in the garden, enjoying the heat of the unusually warm weather for early May with Oscar sprawled before them with a satisfied look on his face and a bulging tummy. He did, at least, have the decency to get to his feet and come over to say hello when he saw us. I ruffled his ears and shot a mock-accusing glance at Lina.
‘What part of, “I’ve already fed him, don’t give him anything else,” didn’t you understand, Lina?’ I gave her a big smile. She and I got on really well and she had been working for me now for almost a month as my receptionist, secretary, personal assistant, researcher, occasional dog walker and general office manager, and she had taken a massive amount of weight off my shoulders.
She smiled back. ‘I only gave him a few bits and pieces, honest. He looked so hungry…’
Her husband waved towards the cool box alongside the table. ‘Cold beers or cold water if you want it. Help yourselves, or would you like a coffee? Come and talk about anything but work.’ Virgilio was an inspector in the Florence murder squad and he often put work my way. I was very grateful to him for this and, in fact, he had been instrumental in suggesting that I set up my own investigative agency last year.
I headed for the beer. ‘Work, what’s that?’ I gave him a grin. ‘Now that I have my wonderful new PA, I’m a lot freer than I was. This is actually a relatively quiet time of year for me, but I doubt whether that’ll last.’
The winter had been a busy mix of unfaithful husbands, bored housewives, pilfering home helps and missing persons – and, memorably, a missing tortoise called Walter – interspersed with a few days helping Virgilio and his team with cases where English speakers were involved. I grabbed a cold beer for myself and indicated the cool box to Anna, who shook her head and sat down beside Lina. I took a seat alongside her and Oscar slumped down between us.
Anna gave a little sigh. ‘I’m happy for you, Dan. Unlike you, this is my busiest time of the year. With exam season coming up, most of my students are paranoid, and I hardly have a minute to myself.’ Anna was a lecturer in medieval and Renaissance history at the University of Florence and she took her job very seriously.
Just at that moment, my phone started ringing and I saw that it was Paul in London.
Inspector Paul Wilson and I had worked together for almost twenty years at Scotland Yard before I had taken early retirement two years ago and he was one of my best friends.
‘Hi, Paul, how’s life?’
‘Hi, Dan.’ He sounded a bit subdued, embarrassed even. ‘I’m fine, thanks, but I was hoping you could help me.’
He often did me favours when I had queries about cases with links to the UK so I knew I would be only too glad if I could to repay his kindness. ‘Anything I can do, just say the word. What’s the trouble?’
‘Have you ever come across any ufologists?’
For a moment, I struggled with the unfamiliar word. ‘Ufologists?’
‘People who’re interested in UFOs; you know, alien life, little green men, flying saucers, that sort of thing. Ring any bells with you?’
‘I’ve never had direct dealings with anybody like that, but I imagine there are quite a few of them about these days. No doubt they would have appreciated Return of the Scaly Things from the Other World or whatever it was called.’
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Just a crappy B-movie I was watching the other night. Anyway, I’ve never knowingly met a ufologist, although I did like the woman with the red hair in The X Files. What’s up? Don’t tell me aliens have landed.’
‘Who knows? It’s Sandra… my little sister. Do you remember her? She’s in a spot of bother.’
I vaguely remembered Paul’s sister as a gangly fourteen- or fifteen-year-old with braces on her teeth. I had met her quite a few years ago so she must have grown up by now. ‘Yes. I remember Sandra. What’s the trouble?’
‘I’ve just had my mother on the phone and then a long talk with Sandra herself, crying her eyes out. She went over to Italy on holiday a few days ago with a girlfriend and a bunch of UFO hunters, and one of the group’s been killed.’
‘Killed, how?’ Inevitably, given my background, I immediately found myself wondering if the death had been suspicious. Was this why Paul was asking for my help?
‘There was a fire a couple of hours ago and they found the guy’s body in the ashes.’
‘Accident or murder?’
‘When you say, “up there”, whereabouts is “up there”?’
‘Right up in the north of Italy, in the Alps.’ There was a pause while he checked his notes. ‘The Aosta Valley, apparently; do you know where that is?’
I knew exactly where this was, because each time I drive to or from the UK, I usually go through the Mont Blanc tunnel through the Alps into France, and that’s at the top end of the Aosta Valley. I had a feeling I knew what Paul wanted to ask me, so I saved him the trouble. ‘Do you want me to pop up there and take a look?’ It was the least I could do.
There was relief in his voice when he replied. ‘That would be amazing, but can you spare the time? Isn’t it miles away from where you are?’
It was about four or five hours away from Florence but I played down the distance. ‘A few hours’ drive, no biggie. Give me the details.’
I pulled out my ever-present notebook – old habits die hard – and scribbled down the directions. It sounded as though the ufologist encampment consisting of a mixture of mobile homes, caravans and tents was high up in the mountains, no doubt in a remote spot, which would make it quite a good location for a murder. I told him I’d check my diary and call him back but I knew I owed it to him to get up there as soon as possible. Once he’d given me the details, I queried if he had any other information.
‘If it really was murder, what about motive? Any idea who the victim is and whether anybody there might have a reason for wanting him dead?’
‘She doesn’t know very much. It’s only just happened and there’s no formal identification yet – the body was too badly burned – but Sandra says the group up there believe it to be a guy called Nick Green. They think he was in his late forties or early fifties but no one knew him particularly well.’
‘And he was British?’
‘That’s what Sandra says. Apparently, the group’s almost exclusively made up of Brits. The problem is that he was travelling on his own and nobody there knew him. I imagine his documents may well have been burned in the fire so I expect it’ll take a while to find out for sure who he was. The thing is, she says it’s a weird set-up and she doesn’t trust any of them very much. Some of them appear to be very tight-lipped about what happened. She says it’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy of silence.’
I mulled this over as I sipped my beer and an idea occurred to me. ‘I was just thinking, if there is something dodgy going on and I pitch up there announcing myself as a private detective, the odds are that they’ll just clam up. What about if I go up there incognito, pretending to be a UFO fanatic, and see if I can join in with the ufologists? That way I might be able to wriggle my way into their confidence.’
There was a pause while Paul gave it some thought. ‘That’s not a bad idea. And you could probably help out with the interpreting by stepping forward and offering your services, further ingratiating yourself with the group. Sandra says half the problem is that none of them speak more than a few words of Italian, so communication with the police isn’t easy. I suppose the question is whether you reckon you could convince them that you have an all-consuming interest in extra-terrestrial life in order to be accepted. Could you do that?’
I looked up at the sky above my head. The candles on the table prevented me from seeing much but on a clear night like this, I knew it would be a mass of twinkling stars. Whether there were other life forms out there remained unproven for now and I’d never subscribed to it. Although the idea of visitors from outer space seemed as unlikely to me as Oscar giving up food, my parents had brought me up to respect other people’s beliefs – however wacky they might sound to me. I felt sure I would be able to suspend my disbelief in order to fit in. I’d been reading up on the sky at night recently and had even bought myself a star atlas so as to help in identifying what I was seeing on my evening walks with Oscar. As a result, I felt I could probably put up a reasonably convincing act if pushed.
‘I don’t see why not. And my van should fit in with the less flashy ones quite nicely.’ My van is a nine-year-old VW with seats that fold down to give a flat sleeping area – although it occurred to me that I would have to share it with Oscar and I knew from experience that that promised to be challenging. ‘I just hope the little green men don’t mind me bringing my dog.’
When the call ended, I gave the others a summary of what Paul had just told me and I looked across at Anna. Things were going really well between us now and we had been going out for over six months. ‘What do you think, sweetheart? Do you feel like going out and buying yourself an ET T-shirt and coming with me to meet the visitors from another world – that’s the ufologists I’m talking about?’
She gave me what my mother would have called an old-fashioned look. ‘Would I like to come and spend two or three days in the freezing cold mountains sleeping in the back of a van with two snorers – and at least one of them with flatulence – and spend the daytime mingling with a bunch of deluded loonies? No toilet, no shower, no privacy, no, I can’t think of anything worse.’ To soften the blow, she reached across and caught hold of my hand. ‘You know I love spending time with you and Oscar, carissimo, but even if I wanted to come, I can’t get away. I’ll be tied up with lectures and seminars every day this week.’
I gave her hand a little squeeze in return. ‘You’re a very wise woman. I’m prepared to accept that we may not be alone in the universe, but I’m having serious reservations about sharing the van with Oscar.’
Virgilio, as always, was very supportive and he offered some practical assistance. ‘Depending on where the encampment is, it’ll probably be within the jurisdiction of the squadra mobile in Aosta. I have a good friend up there. I’ll give him a call now and see what I can find out.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s late now so I may have to wait to speak to him until the morning. If I get hold of him, I’ll tell him who you are and say that you’re happy to help out if required. Okay?’ He reached for his phone.
I thanked him and sipped my beer as I talked it over with Lina. Today was Tuesday and we worked out that there was nothing particularly pressing in my diary for the rest of the week so that should give me ample time to drive up next morning and spend three or four nights up in the Alps. Hopefully, things would be resolved by the weekend and I would be able to leave and come home. In fact, the idea of a few days in the high mountains sounded rather appealing – and I felt sure Oscar would agree with me. I called Paul back and told him I hoped to be there around lunchtime next day and he was very grateful. He said he had told Sandra that I would be coming, and she had sounded most relieved. As agreed, he had also told her not to mention my true identity to anybody up there for now.
My call to Paul finished at almost the same time as Virgilio got off the phone to his pal in Aosta. ‘Right, Pierre tells me there’s been a development.’
‘Pierre? Is he French?’
‘No, Italian; the Aosta Valley’s what’s called an autonomous region. Many of the people there are bilingual: French and Italian, or trilingual, I should say – many of the locals speak patois, which is a mixture of both languages. Come to think of it, I seem to remember reading that there’s one of the valleys where they even speak German so it’s a real mixture. Pierre is Inspector Pierre Gressan and he was born and bred up there. He’s checked the file and he tells me the body was found at nine-fifteen tonight – so less than two hours ago. It was seriously burnt and the first impression was of a tragic accident, but the paramedics who attended discovered that the side of the skull had been smashed in. They say it’s impossible to tell at the moment whether that was done accidentally or whether somebody deliberately hit him over the head with a heavy object. The body has been removed to the mortuary and the pathologist has promised to produce a preliminary report tomorrow morning, but it could well be that this was no accident. The site where the body was found has been cordoned off and the Carabinieri are mounting guard for tonight. If the doctor confirms it was definitely foul play, the murder team will go up there tomorrow and start questioning everybody.’
