Page 16 of Murder at Christmas

We had to wait for an answer, but when it came, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. ‘He’s tried and tried, but you’ve met his father; you can see what he’s like. He’s a smooth talker and he comes across as easy-going, but beneath the surface, he’s stubborn and hard-nosed. He won’t take no for an answer. Instead of sitting down with Orlando and talking it through, he gets angry and it develops into a shouting match. That makes Orlando even more depressed and, needless to say, that impacts our marriage.’ She looked across at Anna, and I did my best to make myself look invisible. ‘I still love him, Anna, I always will, but it’s been tough, and it’s not getting any easier. I’ve tried telling him to make a clean break of it and get away from his father’s influence, but Orlando’s not built for confrontation. He just drops his head and carries on doing a job that he hates.’

Fiona lapsed into silence as I digested her words. In many ways, it was a familiar story – an overbearing father trying to mould his child into his own image but only succeeding in pushing the two of them further apart. But in this case, might it even have pushed the son towards considering patricide?

I gave Fiona a bit of time to sip her cappuccino before venturing a question of my own.

‘If Orlando were to leave Aquila Sports, what would he do? I gather from his father that he’s a passionate snowboarder.’

Fiona nodded again. ‘To be honest, Dan, the best thing that could happen to Orlando would be if the Alpine resort project really did get off the ground, and he could play a leading role in it. I’d be quite happy to live up here if it made him happy – and it would. To him, paradise is a snowy slope and a snowboard.’ She mustered a little smile for me. ‘And before you ask, I like snowboarding as well – not as much as Orlando, obviously, but enough to know that I could very happily settle here in the mountains, if I felt that he was contented.’ The smile faded. ‘But that isn’t going to happen, is it?’

I gave her a sympathetic smile in return, but the thought that was going through my head was that the very best thing that could happen to Orlando and Fiona would be for his father to disappear from the equation.

And murdering him could be one solution.

10

TUESDAY EARLY AFTERNOON

After leaving the market in Ponte di Mezzo, we carried on up the main valley until it looked as though we would be able to go no further. Following Fiona’s instructions, I then negotiated my way through the narrow streets of another tiny village before finding myself on an even narrower road that climbed almost vertically for hundreds and hundreds of metres via a series of tight hairpin bends. At the top, we emerged into a scene that was not dissimilar to Pian delle Marmotte. A wooden sign at the roadside told us that we had arrived at Pian dei Granati, height 2178 metres, and once again, I found myself looking at a huge, almost flat area, surrounded by towering cliffs and snow-capped mountain peaks. Unlike Bartolomeo’s valley, where the ground at the head of the valley sloped gently upwards for a long way before running into cliffs, this one appeared to be fully encircled by vertical walls of rock. It was like being in a huge cul-de-sac that closed in around us. Although beautiful, it was also somehow intimidating.

On the way up, we had been driving through a pine forest, but by the time we got up here, the trees had petered out, and the only vegetation was little more than rough grass and scrub.A couple of old stone barns and, bizarrely, a rather fine villa belonging to the Catholic Church were the only buildings to be seen. We parked at the side of the road and climbed out into hazy sunshine and, predictably, bitter cold. Fiona pulled on her gloves and pointed to a low building with a stone roof, about a hundred metres vertically above us.

‘That’s the restaurant up there. It belongs to the CAI.’ She shot us a grin. ‘It’s all right, not the CIA. The Club Alpino Italiano has mountain refuges throughout the Alps, some of them little more than rough shelters where visitors are left to their own devices, but some of them are staffed and provide accommodation and food. This one does food, and it’s good stuff. I guarantee you’ll be warm by the time you get there. It doesn’t look too far away, but it’s a steep climb and the track meanders around quite a bit before we get there.’

She was dead right about that. By the time we reached the refuge, I was seriously considering taking off my jacket in spite of the sub-zero temperatures, and when we got inside, it was the first thing I did. It was boiling in there. Although it was only just after midday, at least half the tables were already occupied, and we were shown to a table by a low window, through which we could look out onto a magnificent panorama of cliffs and Alpine peaks. Following Fiona’s advice, we skipped the antipasti and just ordered the main course. When it arrived, I could see why. The portions were enormous, the polenta was positively oozing melted cheese – according to Fiona, a mixture of blue cheese and hard localtoma, mountain cheese – and the stew was rich and aromatic. It was good, substantial mountain fare – the sort of nutritious food that keeps out the cold and gives energy to lumberjacks or mountain climbers. For those of us living a less energy-intensive life, there were probably far more calories in my plate ofpolenta counsaand goat/chamois stew than I needed, but I couldn’t fault the taste – or the surroundings. Itwas very filling and, even with Oscar helping out with one or two larger pieces of meat, I only just got through it. Considering my excesses of the previous night’s meal, all I had room for afterwards was a coffee – although I knew full well that Oscar would happily have ordered a double portion for himself.

In the course of the meal, I managed to get Fiona talking again and I asked her if she had known her father-in-law’s recently deceased partner, Vincenzo.

She nodded. ‘He was a very nice man.’ Although the only people within earshot were quite clearly a bunch of walkers or climbers intent on refuelling and arguing loudly – Italians don’t tend to do ‘quietly’ – about who had had the hardest morning, she lowered her voice. ‘He was probably the real brains behind the business, and he certainly worked very hard. Why on earth he married Ingrid, I’ll never know.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Not a good choice?’

‘She’s another Gloria.’ Seeing the expression on my face, she elaborated. ‘Two very ambitious women. Both of them like the good things in life, and Ingrid made sure Vincenzo gave her everything she wanted. Did you see that Ferrari back at the villa? That’s hers, and it’s a ridiculous car for somebody who lives in the centre of the city or up here in the mountains. It’s so low, she could hardly get it up the track to here.’

‘So that belongs to Ingrid, but that doesn’t come as such a surprise. She did strike me as high maintenance. But what about Gloria? Umberto’s a university professor, isn’t he? He told me he has nothing to do with the company, so I wouldn’t think he’s earning the sort of money that would allow him to buy Gloria that kind of thing.’

Fiona rolled her eyes. ‘That’s always been the problem. I sometimes wonder whether Gloria thinks she married the wrong brother. She seems to get more and more bitter each time I see her – and I try to make that as rarely as possible.’

I swallowed the last of my espresso and indicated to the waiter that I wanted my bill. While waiting, I reflected on what Fiona had said about Ingrid and Gloria. That explained quite a lot about the two women and, again, I filed that away for future consideration.

After paying the bill, I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to two, and I knew I needed to get back to Villa Delle Coppelle to check in on Bartolomeo and Selena and then try to sit down for a serious talk with Orlando and Ingrid.

By the time we left the restaurant, the sky had completely clouded over and was looking decidedly threatening. Fiona remarked that the weather could change very quickly here in the mountains and added that people should always be prepared. It felt even colder now without the sun, and we walked quickly back down to the van. I was impressed to see that Oscar had once again managed to find himself a stick, which I repeatedly threw for him to retrieve. Where he managed to find these things up here above the treeline was one of the great mysteries of life.

As we drove back down the hairpin bends again, I reflected on what Umberto had said last night about distances in the mountains. A glance at the map this morning had told me that we were currently only about six or seven kilometres from the villa in a straight line, but we would now need to drive at least twice that distance and descend a thousand metres or so and then climb back up a thousand metres in order to get there. Before the arrival of the internal combustion engine, getting about in these valleys must have been really tough.

Things got tougher for us after we had passed through Ponte di Mezzo and reached the turn-off signposted San Giorgio. As we did so, snowflakes began to appear on the windscreen, fluttering gently down in the still air. It was so cold outside that they didn’t immediately melt when they landed on the glass at first, and I could distinctly see their perfect geometric shapes for a secondor so before the wipers swept them away. Although initially attractive and atmospheric, the snowflakes rapidly increased in size and frequency until I found myself driving up the series of hairpins with visibility limited to less than twenty or thirty yards, and the wipers working hard. By the time we got up to San Giorgio and turned off onto the dirt track, there was already a covering of white on the ground, and I could see only a few metres in front of the van. I took it really slow as I picked my way cautiously up Bartolomeo’s valley to the villa and I was relieved to get there without slipping and sliding too much, but I had little doubt that by tonight, the track would be impassable without snow chains.

Anna and Fiona scrambled out and made a run for the house, while I waited around for a couple of minutes with Oscar, so he could melt some snow on the rocks he had marked. The arrival of the snow had at least raised the air temperature by a few degrees, although it was still bitterly cold – but Oscar didn’t seem to notice. The snow was noticeably deeper here, and it was hilarious to see him experience it for the first time, initially tiptoeing about in the three or four inches of fresh snow that had already fallen, clearly uncertain what was going on. Then his tail started wagging excitedly when he suddenly realised that he rather liked the cold sensation under his feet. He then had an attack of the zoomies – charging around in circles like a rocket, snorting and snuffling happily to himself. I wondered, yet again, whether he was sensing some atavistic link to his distant ancestors.

By the time he and I got back to the front door of the villa, I had a black Labrador with a thick covering of what looked like white icing all over the top of him. I shook the snow off my hat and jacket on the doorstep and then used my hat to brush away as much of the snow as possible from Oscar before we went into the hall. I was just turning to close the door behind us when Iheard a whine from outside. I peered out into the snow and saw Winston the monster hound emerge from the white-out, now looking even bigger with a thick layer of fresh snow piled up on his head and back. I repeated my snow-sweeping trick on him with my hat before ushering him in and closing the door behind us.

Unexpectedly, he didn’t start wagging his tail when he saw Oscar. Instead, he kept coming back to me, pawing at my leg and whining, at one point rearing up on his hind legs against me, his cavernous mouth barely a foot from mine. It was obvious he was trying to tell me something, and I wondered what it might be. Maybe the couple that Fiona had called his aunt or uncle might know. I headed for the kitchen and tapped on the door.

‘Avanti.’I recognised Paolo’s voice and pushed the door open.

‘Ciao, Paolo, Winston’s just come in. He’s trying to tell me something, and I don’t know what it is. Any idea?’

In the meantime, Winston had headed straight for his surrogate master and started repeating the pawing and whining process with him. Paolo crouched down and stroked the big dog’s ears, staring straight into his soulful eyes.