Ahead lay a bottle of champagne on ice, a good meal and a mistress who was attentive if not practised. Tonight I shall teach her a few tricks, Danzer decided.
He vaguely noticed an Alfasud parked beside the cobbled sidewalk. Italian registration. He wondered what an Italian tourist was doing in this dump. Unloading lire probably. He forgot the Alfasud and rapped on the window of the ski-lift control cabin.
The slovenly-looking controller was buttoning a torn parka over his plum-coloured uniform preparatory to leaving. He looked aggrieved, then recognised Danzer who had in the past made a habit of tipping him well. He smiled. Danzer pointed upwards with his thumb and the controller nodded. No great favour, Danzer thought, because they had to bring the attendant at the top down to earth again.
He climbed the slippery steps and told the attendant to go home: he was perfectly capable of negotiating the doors at the platform adjoining his chalet. Rules were made to be broken and tonight he would enjoy breaking any rule in the book. He wondered if Helga Keller loved him enough to ….
He rubbed his cold hands together as the scarlet car jerked and, swinging a little from side to side, began its last ascent of the day.
Prentice waited until the homeward-bound attendant had got half way across the square. Then he walked swiftly to the glass-door of the control cabin. It opened as it had opened before. The controller swung round in his seat and stood up.
Prentice prodded the barrel of the Walther in his stomach and said: ‘Keep quiet and you won’t get hurt. When I tell you to stop the cars stop them. Understand?’ He spoke with a thick Italian accent.
‘But —’
Prentice jammed the gun deeper into the flabby belly. ‘Understood?’
The controller nodded, sweat already glistening on his lumpy face.
‘Good. Then I’m going to put this round your mouth just to make sure you don’t shout, and this,’ tossing the two lengths of wire onto the panel of dials, ‘round your wrists and ankles.’
Prentice stared up towards the cable-car, barely visible in the falling snow. He consulted his stop-watch, in thirty-five seconds the car should be opposite the rocks nestling among the little pine trees.
‘What controls the lights in the cars?’
The controller pointed at a switch to Prentice’s right.
Prentice nodded towards a grey fuse-box with one red and one green button on it. ‘Does that affect the lights in the cars?’
The controller shook his head and a few beads of sweat fell on the flickering dials.
‘Right. Now!’
The controller pulled a lever. The cables stopped. Shuddered. Prentice pulled the grey fuse-box from the wall. Sparks showered around him.
He told the controller to turn round. He put down the gun and stuck the masking tape round his mouth. ‘Now lie face down with your hands behind you.’ It took Prentice less than a minute to bind his ankles and wrists.
Then he locked the door from the outside and ran across the square to the Alfasud. As he drove up the hill the outline of the cable-car became clearer. Danzer was standing with his hands and face pressed against the glass. Suspended in space, facing the firing squad.
Anderson saw the lighted cable-car hanging motionless in the gorge and thought: ‘Christ, what a target!’ But, because his attention was concentrated on negotiating the road down to the village, it was a couple of seconds before he stamped on the brake. The Mercedes slewed first to one side, then the other, before stopping. Anderson jumped out and ran back up the road.
The snow had thinned out and the figure of Danzer was quite clear. A standing target. There was one car in the parking-lot, an Alfasud. Anderson glanced inside. On the front passenger seat lay a newspaper thickly folded so that only a completed crossword puzzle was visible.
Where was he?
Anderson stared wildly around in the fading light. To the right a pathway. Freshly kicked tracks in the snow. Anderson drew his Magnum and charged down the path.
With the night field-glasses, which Karl had used more and more frequently since the change in his personality, Helga Keller stared down the valley.
She saw him enter the cabin. Happiness expanded inside her. She smiled. Her hand went to her throat. She closed her eyes for a moment; when she opened them again the cable-car had begun its ascent bringing him to her.
She could see him quite plainly through the powerful glasses. She stretched out a hand as though to touch him.
Then the cable-car stopped.
Helga saw the frown on his face.
She focussed the field-glasses on the control cabin below to see if she could find the cause of the stoppage. There didn’t appear to be anyone there.
An avalanche higher up, perhaps. Her hands shook a little as she traversed the length of the cable with the field-glasses. On the far side of the valley, directly opposite the stationary car, she noticed a movement.
She refocussed the glasses. A man. One of the men she had seen with Karl … He was holding … a rifle …. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound issued from her lips.
Another figure entered the picture. The big black man whom she had seen with Karl ….
This time the scream found its voice – at the same time as the crack of the rifle shot. Two of the windows of the cable-car shattered, the figure of Karl Danzer disappeared.
Helga Keller, wearing the low-cut evening gown that she had bought especially for this evening, ran into the snow. Still screaming.
And it wasn’t until she saw the blood splashing on the broken shards of glass still attached to the window-frame, that she collapsed in the snow and the screams were stilled.
‘Hold it, you stupid fuck!’
Anderson aimed the Magnum at Prentice’s head. But he hadn’t recovered his balance from his headlong descent down the path. He slipped and Prentice, kneeling, swung at him with the butt of the rifle, catching him on the shin. Anderson fell into the snow, dropped the pistol.
He gazed down – into space. They were on the brink of a precipice. The last echo of the rifle-shot lost itself in the mountains; the wind whined through the jagged holes in the cable-car windows.
And then Prentice, who had discarded the rifle, was on him. Hard and wiry. Instinctively, Anderson began to employ the unarmed combat that he had learned a long while ago; his movements were brutal and measured but his instincts were out of control: he wanted to kill.
They rolled nearer to the edge of the drop. Anderson got his knee into Prentice’s groin and thrust upwards; Prentice catapulted backwards, teetered on the brink, then fell forwards towards Anderson.
As Prentice tried to get up, Anderson went for his throat. And realised, too late, that his instincts had taken over from his training. Prentice twisted to one side and chopped at Anderson’s neck with the side of one hand. Pain leaped up Anderson’s neck into his skull ….
Then Prentice was free, crouching, coming at him with both hands slicing and chopping. Anderson put up a hand to defend himself but he couldn’t fend off those hands. Like the blades of a machine, he thought, as one of them caught him just below the ear and he fell back unconscious in the snow.
Prentice picked up the rifle and started up the hill. Before climbing into the Alfasud, he gazed briefly at the cable-car suspended in the darkness below and wondered who had killed Danzer: it certainly hadn’t been him.
The Swiss are never over-anxious to publicise violent death within their country: it is very bad for their image. Better to bury the details beneath the snow which so perfectly represents their façade of pristine correctitude. Inevitably the killing of Karl Werner Danzer