by steve higgs
‘Alright, you. Get out!’ he spat. Big Ben didn’t react at all to start with, he just sort of wafted a hand in the air as if warding off an annoying fly. Gils was clenching his fists. He was already angry; it had been his starting emotion but it was visibly cranking upwards toward uncontrolled rage. He was a big man and probably not used to being defied, especially not in his family’s hotel. He leaned down to get in Big Ben’s face. I saw the error he was making but opted to let the scene play out. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I said get out.’
Big Ben’s right arm whipped out to loop around Gils’s neck. Gils was overbalanced, his head and chest forward of his feet, so a gentle tug from Big Ben was all it would take to send him flying to the floor.
Big Ben didn’t use a gentle tug.
The heir to the family sprawled across the carpet in an untidy mess at Big Ben’s feet. Big Ben stayed in his seat, but any advantage Gils might have had was long gone. Nonchalantly, Big Ben placed a foot on the other man’s back to hold him in place.
‘Am I going to have any more trouble from you, Gils?’ he asked. ‘I would really rather avoid any further interaction with you.’ Gils tried to get up but found Big Ben was able to hold him in place. He fought it for a second before accepting he was stuck. In his chair, Big Ben picked at something invisible under a fingernail as he said, ‘I’m not letting you up until I am sure you will behave in a calm manner.’ This was unusual behaviour. Normally he would let an opponent get up so he could knock him down again. Maybe he had learned something from me.
‘I promise,’ hissed Gils through gritted teeth.
Big Ben lifted his foot and picked up a cocktail menu from the table to show how disinterested he was in what Gils might do next. Embarrassed, Gils all but ran from the bar. I doubted the battle was over though. Gils did not strike me as someone that would let such an insult lie.
When he was gone, Big Ben finally looked up. ‘I found us a table,’ he grinned.
As the marrieds came toward us with drinks balanced on a tray, I excused myself. I was eager to find the way down to the cold store, I had a feeling we might be asked to leave in a more official manner soon, but I was also curious to see where Gils was going. If he was off to grab some staff to oust us, then I wanted to know in advance. Jagjit was here on his Honeymoon, I didn’t want him going home with a black eye and it would be wrong to expose any of them to unpleasantness while they were trying to help me.
Gils had vanished down a corridor that led off the hotel’s lobby area when he fled the bar, but his general direction was all I knew. Trying to be inconspicuous without looking like that was my intention, I pushed through a door at the end of the corridor as if I belonged on the other side of it, portraying confidence in my whereabouts even though I had none. The door led to a set of stairs going down. They were concrete and in stark contrast to the rest of the plush hotel: I was in a maintenance area of some kind.
‘Where are you going?’ asked a voice by my ear. It was a good thing I hadn’t drunk much liquid yet because I probably would have wet myself. I had been so focused on looking like I was meant to be where I was, that I hadn’t looked around to see if I was being followed. As I sagged against the wall, waiting for my heart to recover, I saw that it was Alice behind me. ‘I thought you were heading to the toilets so I followed you. Where are we?’
‘I have no idea,’ I whispered. ‘I followed Gils.’
‘Is that the tall man that Big Ben just messed with?’
‘Yes. His father owns this hotel. I was concerned that he might be off to get some friends to throw us out. Now I am curious about what he is doing down here so I’m going to take a look.’
‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘Shall I wait here?’
I took a couple of steps down the concrete stairs then glanced back up. ‘Up to you entirely. I’m going though.’ I wanted to tell Alice to head back to the bar where the chance of getting caught sneaking around the basement of a hotel wasn’t so likely, but she was independent and fiery and far more likely to come with me if I told her not to. She came anyway, letting me get a few yards away before she made her decision and caught up.
I motioned for her to be stealthy as we crept along the corridor at the bottom of the stairs to another door. I listened at it for a second with my hand on the handle. Muffled voices were just about audible. Opening the door was risky, I had no idea if I would find a small room with people on the other side or a large space where we could sneak in and listen. There was only one way to find out, so I slowly turned the handle to peek inside.
I had found the underground garage. There were cars in front of me and the cold store was supposed to be in here somewhere. Finding it now would be helpful later when I came back to check out the bodies. The voices were clearer now though, they were speaking French and doing so too fast for me to be able to hear what was being said.
In the underground space, the voices were echoing and hard to pinpoint. They were not in sight though, so I continued forward, sticking to the wall and sidling around the cars to a corner where I stopped and peeked again. I could see Gils. He was facing away from me, his height making him easy to distinguish. Going beyond the corner would expose us, but Alice, being a head shorter than me, slipped beneath my arm to peek as well.
‘Who’s the girl?’ she asked, her question whispered.
The other voice in the conversation was indeed a woman. She wasn’t visible but it sounded like Priscille Peran to me. They were in the cold store, or at least that was what I thought I was seeing. There was a pair of silver doors in the wall on the other side of the underground space, both were open. Gils was standing dead centre to them and about a foot inside.
The woman was speaking. I nudged Alice. ‘Are you getting any of this?’
She nodded, listening. When there was a brief pause, she started translating, ‘She’s happy about something. Jubilant. She keeps saying, “I always knew I would win.” Any idea what that means?’
It would help if I could see who was talking. I wondered if I could crawl along the floor to get closer, to get a better angle from which to see. I whispered, ‘Stay here a second,’ as I crouched down. There was too much echo though, as I moved across the concrete, the noise I made sounded deafening to me and I stopped. Glancing back at Alice, I saw how wide her eyes were. Then she darted back behind the corner as footsteps from the cold store and a creak from a hinge reached my ears to tell me the doors were being shut.
They were leaving!
I was crouched behind a car and probably invisible as long as I stayed still, but Alice was going to be spotted the second they turned toward the corridor. What was the right move here? Did I jump up and pretend I had been fishing around for a dropped cufflink? They would see me and ask what I was doing and might be suspicious of my presence, but what could they actually do?
I made the choice and bunched my muscles to get up. As I did so, I looked under the car and saw their feet. They were not coming toward the corridor where Alice was hidden. Instead, they were going away from her. They were still jabbering away excitedly as they went. The tone of the exchange was that of an argument; they were disagreeing about something in passionate terms. Then I heard my name and sound of the woman spitting followed by a door shutting and the space we were in was once again silent.
I held my breath and watched to make sure they had left, maintaining the semi-press up position I had found myself in rather than move again. Behind me, I heard Alice breathe an audible sigh of relief.
As I got to my feet, she said, ‘I thought I was busted then.’
‘Me too,’ I agreed. ‘What were they talking about? I couldn’t keep up they were talking so fast.’ I wondered if Alice might now want to escape back her husband and the safety of the bar, but she showed no sign, so I started walking toward the cold store as she answered.
‘I think we came in half way through a conversation because I could understand what they were saying but not the context of it. The girl was arguing with Gils because sh
e had done something he hadn’t wanted her to do. She claimed it was necessary and said he should be glad. What do you think they were talking about?’
I glanced at her. ‘I think they were talking about the two dead boys.’ We had crossed the room and were standing in front of the cold store doors. ‘I’m going to open these now,’ I said as I placed my hands on the handles. ‘Are you sure you want to see?’
She bit her lip in thought. ‘I think maybe I’ll just hang around back here.’
‘Can you watch for anyone coming?’ I asked, which ensured she turned around to face the other way and reduced the chance of seeing what was inside. Once she was facing the other way, I pulled both doors open. Immediately inside the doors was the sled they had been brought down the mountain on and over the bodies was a pair of blankets. As I knelt to expose them, I asked Alice, ‘What else did they say?’
‘Oh, yes. They went on to talk about having to do something tomorrow. He was still angry about whatever it was she had done and was arguing that they needed to stick with the original plan, but she insisted that tomorrow morning was the perfect opportunity and said something about your interference demanding they accelerate the plan. She sounded quite upset about your presence here and said something about her father. She used a bad word when she said father.’
I filed the information away to consider later and peeled back the blanket to look at the first victim. I couldn’t tell which man was which, but I took a photograph of his damaged face so I could identify him later. He was stiff as a board from rigor, but I could get to his wrists by forcing his clothing up. The rope burns on his wrists where he had been tied were clearly that. I had to guess that he and his friend had been snatched, maybe drugged, but definitely tied up and fed to the Yeti. Had they been awake for the attack? Whether they had or not, I was dealing with a ruthless murderer.
I took another series of photographs then undid his coat and underlayers to expose as much of his chest as I could. There was no damage to the skin underneath his clothing that I could see other than those wounds that correlated with the slashes in his clothing. I performed the same inspection on the next man. The rigor prevented me from doing much, but the coroner would be able to perform a full exam when they finally got the cable car working and could deliver the bodies. For now, though, I had confirmed my suspicions: the two young men were murdered.
‘We should get back to the others,’ I suggested to Alice as I straightened their clothing and covered them over once more. A vigorous nod of her head indicated her agreement, then I realised that she was cold. She had removed her coat when she came into the bar and had been heading to the toilets when she followed me. My breath was coming out in clouds and it had to be below zero in the unheated parking area. I was wearing a jacket and shirt, the jacket of which I now shed to put around her shoulders. It swamped her slight frame, but it was already warm from my body and would help.
With my mind whirling around all the different clues I had to sift, I grabbed the cold store doors. The immediate task was to get out of here without being seen and deliver Alice back to her husband but as I swung the doors shut a small piece of paper drifted across the floor caught in the movement of air.
Seeing my interest, Alice bent to pick it up. ‘It’s just a receipt,’ she said. Then, still staring at it she said, ‘Oh.’
We still needed to get back to the others before they sent out a search party so closed the doors and made sure they were shut, then ushered her back the way we had come. On the way I asked, ‘Oh what?’
‘The name of the business is Dr Monnoglavche chirurgie plastique. This is a receipt for someone to have plastic surgery done. Do you think that was Priscille, the girl you said had her face destroyed?’
‘It might have been.’ I took the receipt as Alice passed it to me and slipped it into a pocket to consider later.
A Plan. Thursday, December 1st 2103hrs
‘I remembered something else,’ Alice said once she had a stiff drink inside her and was nursing her second, ‘The woman mentioned something about a favourite spot and that was where he would be taken. Does that mean anything?’ Alice had her shoes off and was curled in next to Jagjit with her feet tucked under her legs and her husband’s arm around her protectively. Dozer was on her lap, adding his warmth to thaw her out while she scratched his chin.
Jagjit had been a little bit panicked when we returned. His wife had been popping to the ladies room and had then vanished for twenty minutes in a resort where there was either a nine-foot killing beast on the loose or a murderer or both.
All eyes were on me as the group waited for me to provide an answer to Alice’s conundrum. ‘It would help if I knew who the woman was for certain.’
‘Who do you think it was?’ asked Big Ben.
‘It sounded like Priscille Peran.’
‘The girl that got injured in the first attack?’ he confirmed.
‘Yes. I only had one conversation with her though, so I couldn’t swear it was her and all I saw was her feet. I would also like to know what it is they have planned for tomorrow morning. Alice made it sound like it was the culmination of something they have been working toward. I just don’t know what yet or who it is they are targeting.’ I turned my attention toward Alice. ‘You said she mentioned her father and was upset with him.’
‘Yes. I am ninety-nine percent certain that’s what I heard.’
‘Ninety-nine percent,’ I echoed, ‘That’s good enough for me.’
‘Why? What does it mean?’ asked Jagjit.
‘It means I am mistaken about the woman. It couldn’t have been Priscille because her parents are both dead.’
‘So, what’s the next step?’ Big Ben was giving me his encouraging tone. His attention wasn’t really on me though. Having scared the ladies away earlier to ensure they didn’t get caught up in Gils violent display, he was now on the hunt for someone new to target, preferably a lady or ladies that had entered the bar after the event I was sure.
I answered the question anyway, ‘I will be up early tomorrow to check out some places where I think the Yeti might be. I have a theory that…’ I paused because I realised our conversation could be overheard and leaned in so the others knew to lean in also. Then I spoke quietly, ‘The Yeti is a polar bear, right? So, someone has messed with it and added the tusks and horns.’
‘I thought you had no proof of that,’ said Anthea.
‘I don’t. It is the premise I am going with though. I think we have a polar bear that someone has performed surgery on, and that same person has the ability to control it.’
‘How do you control a six-hundred-pound carnivore?’ Jagjit wanted to know.
I smiled wryly. ‘Actually, the weight is probably nearer one thousand pounds and they can weigh more than that. That’s the weight I am using to calculate the dose of tranquiliser I need to administer though. To answer your question: I don’t know, but I have seen the dancing bears they have in Eastern European countries and they are controlled by pain. I hate the thought of it, but I found tracks in the snow where the two men had been killed and I think someone is moving it around in a trailer of some kind. The Carons and the Chevaliers both own property in the form of machine rooms for the ski-lifts and on-slope med stations, that sort of thing. If I have this right, then the creature, polar bear or not, is being kept in one of those buildings. I’m going to try to find it before they can kill anyone else and before that nutter Vermont can cleave its head off or get himself killed.’
‘What then?’ This time it was Big Ben that asked the question. ‘What do you do once you have found the Yeti and tranquilised it?’
I shrugged my eyebrows. ‘No idea. Gils and the woman he was with tonight have something planned for tomorrow morning though. If it involves the Yeti, I can thwart their plan and with it tranquilised, I can show people what it is.’
‘You can’t be everywhere though,’ said Hilary. ‘If you are going after the Yeti, you cannot be here to tail Gils and see what he is up
to.’
‘That depends how long it takes me to find the Yeti,’ I replied defensively.
‘He’s right,’ said Big Ben. ‘Gils might be planning murder and if the Yeti doesn’t show, he might do it anyway. We need to cover both bases.’
‘Too dangerous,’ I replied. ‘You are talking about having civilians snooping on a man we suspect to be a murderer. I can’t endorse that.’
Hilary locked eyes with me. ‘No one is asking you to. The same way that no one invited me to tackle the witch that was going to kill you.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but seeing the faces looking back at me, I shut it again.
Jagjit filled the awkward silence. ‘We are all here already. You said it yourself: we might all be in danger. Well, we are going to help you do something about it.’ His statement got a chorus of yeahs as he raised his glass and waited for everyone else to raise theirs. Then he lifted his in a salute and said, ‘Let’s solve a crime.’
Unanimously, everyone then decided an early night was called for, although from the look Jagjit was giving Alice, I wasn’t sure how much sleep they were going to get. For that matter, Big Ben wanted an early night but was still in search of a companion or companions, so after Jagjit’s toast, as everyone emptied their drinks, he surveyed the crowded tables in the bar and left us to zero in on his latest victim.
The rest of us headed back to our hotel, the bright lights of the street and the staff standing lookout at least giving a sense of safety from the Yeti. Despite their best efforts, there were very few people outside and the smaller bars and restaurants beyond the two hotels looked empty.
In my room, the dogs, knowing it was bedtime, scampered to the table on which their biscuit tin sat and waited for their human butler to serve them. As they crunched their treats, I kicked off my shoes and rubbed my feet. I was ready for bed but I couldn’t stop thinking about the receipt I found earlier.