The Chalet: the most exciting new debut crime thriller of 2020 to race through this Christmas

by Catherine Cooper

  I stumble up the stairs into our room, expecting it to be in darkness, but Hugo is sitting up in bed, jaw clenched, pretending to read. He puts his book down and stares at me.

  ‘How dare you embarrass me like that,’ he hisses.

  I wave my hand at him and lurch into the bathroom. ‘’S fine. Simon loved it. And you’re here to impress Simon, as am I, apparently. If anything, I’ve done you a favour.’ I lean in towards the mirror and beam at myself. ‘He thinks I’m great.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ Hugo says, prissily, now at the bathroom door in his Hugo Boss boxer shorts instead of the horrible old Y-fronts he used to wear. One of the many minor adjustments I’ve persuaded him into since we got married. ‘And the way you were flirting with Matt too – God! What did I do to deserve that?’

  I look at him blearily. ‘Nothing, darling,’ I say, I can’t be bothered with being told off by Hugo. But I know the best way to end this, and as I’m so drunk the idea doesn’t seem too unbearable. I wobble over to him and put my hand down his boxers. He makes a pathetic attempt to pull away huffily, but I know he can never resist me. Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long.

  5

  December 1998, La Madière, France

  ‘We’re going to have to phone it in,’ Andy says. ‘Make it official.’

  I feel sick. ‘Don’t you think it’s too soon? Maybe they made their own way down and are chugging vin chaud in a bar as we speak?’ I suggest.

  There’s a pause. ‘D’you think?’

  Argh. ‘I don’t know!’ I shout. ‘Either way, we’re in serious trouble.’

  I know we’re both thinking the same thing. If we call out search and rescue and it turns out the men are fine, we’ve still lost two clients in bad weather. Word gets round about that kind of thing very quickly and no one will ever book us again. And if the clients aren’t in the bar, if they’re really lost, then …

  ‘We can’t do nothing, Cameron!’ Andy snaps, clearly thinking the same as me and starting to panic too. ‘We need to think. Do something. What’s the best thing to do? How about we check if they’re back at their chalet?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ I explode. I take a deep breath. Calm down. Calm down. ‘OK. Here’s the plan,’ I say. ‘You whizz back to the office and call the chalet. I’ll go back up and check the route again. You radio me as soon as you’ve called them, and I’ll radio you if I find them before you’re back. If we still haven’t found them, then we’re going to have to phone it in.’

  Andy doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Agreed?’ I prompt. ‘It’ll take you max twenty minutes to get back. We don’t want to mess everything up for no reason when everything’s probably fine. Yeah?’

  Andy nods. ‘Yeah. I’ll go down and we’ll speak in twenty. But everyone can hear us on the radio, so I’ll say “all good” if it’s OK or, um, I don’t know, “nothing here” if not. You do the same.’

  I watch Andy disappear off down the slope and get back on the lift, bracing myself against the wind. The thought of ‘if not’ hangs ominously in the air.

  6

  January 2020, La Madière, France

  Ria

  There is a gentle knocking at the door and Millie comes in with our morning tea. I keep my eyes tightly shut. My head hurts and my mouth is dry. I don’t want to have to deal with Hugo’s disapproving looks and I don’t want to listen to a lecture about how I need to behave better if he wants to get Simon on board. I simply don’t care. I shouldn’t have come here. Maybe I shouldn’t have even married Hugo.

  I hear the door close softly and Hugo prods me in the back. Thankfully this morning it is with his hand. ‘Ria? You awake?’

  I mumble something incoherent which I hope makes me sound like I’m still asleep. Hugo sighs, gets out of bed and goes into the shower. I carry on pretending to sleep while he gets dressed and he doesn’t try to wake me. I guess he’s still annoyed about how I behaved last night. Once he’s left the room, I manage to fall back to sleep for real.

  What feels like seconds later, Hugo slams open the door and says, far too loudly, ‘Ria! Wake up! Now!’

  I open my eyes and look at him grumpily. ‘What? Why can’t you let me sleep? Do I have to go skiing each and every day with bloody Cass? I thought this was supposed to be a holiday, for me at least, not just some giant schmoozefest. Why can’t I stay in bed if I want to?’

  ‘God, Ria, it’s always about you, isn’t it?’ Hugo says, uncharacteristically snappy. ‘I don’t care if you’re too hungover to ski. Serves you right after your appalling display last night. Anyway, you need to get up. Cass has gone missing and we need to help look for her.’

  I sit up and rub my eyes. ‘What? Why do we need to look for her? She’s a grown woman. She’s probably gone for a walk or something.’

  Hugo sighs. ‘You may well be right, but Simon is beside himself. It seems she’s been suffering with postnatal depression and he’s worried she might hurt herself or something. He says she wouldn’t go out without the baby and without telling anyone.’

  I sigh and sink back onto the pillows. ‘Yes she would – the baby’s always with the nanny. Cass barely seems to spend any time with it at all.’

  Hugo strides over to the bed and hauls the covers back. I turn over on to my front, feeling strangely exposed. ‘It doesn’t matter what you or I think,’ he says in a low voice. ‘I’m sure she’s fine too. But I want us to look like we’re being helpful. Like we care – which I do, even if you don’t. So get yourself out of bed and get dressed, OK?’

  Once I’ve had a quick shower, some paracetamol and two Berocca to try to wake myself up, I go downstairs to the living room.

  Simon is sitting on the leather sofa, holding the baby and staring into space. Matt is on the phone speaking French and gesticulating, and Millie is standing anxiously and awkwardly by the sofa, patting Simon’s shoulder.

  ‘Simon?’ Hugo says. ‘What can we do to help? Should we go and walk around the resort? See if we can see her?’

  I look out the window and see that it is snowing. Really quite hard. Please say no, I plead inwardly.

  Simon ignores Hugo’s question, gets up from the sofa and distractedly hands Hugo the baby. Hugo makes a coochy-coo noise at Inigo and Inigo giggles. ‘Who’s a gorgeous boy?’ Hugo says in that stupid high-pitched voice everyone seems to use to talk to babies.

  Simon gives Hugo a despairing look, runs his hand through his thinning hair and paces up and down by the enormous glass wall. Hugo turns his attention back to Simon, pulling a sympathetic face while gently rocking the baby.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ Simon says, his voice strained and strangulated. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed up last night. I shouldn’t have got drunk. I should have been in bed with Cass, looking after my wife and my baby. It’s all my fault. She’s so vulnerable at the moment. I shouldn’t have brought her here. If anything’s happened to her …’

  Millie pats his shoulder again.

  ‘I’m sure she’s fine, Simon,’ I say, in what I think is my best sympathetic voice. Hugo will be impressed. ‘She’s probably gone out to clear her head or something.’

  Matt gets off the phone. ‘Well I’ve called the gendarmes and they say they’ll keep an eye out for her, but it’s too early to do anything yet as she’s an adult and she’s only been missing a maximum of a few hours. I’ve also called the tourist office and the mairie, but there’s not …’

  ‘The hospitals!’ Simon almost shouts, stopping his pacing. ‘Shouldn’t we call the hospitals?’

  Matt and Millie exchange a look. Sarah, who has just come in with Inigo’s blanket, subtly rolls her eyes at me and I hold in a smirk. She reaches her arms out towards Hugo to take the baby and Hugo kisses Inigo’s head before he hands him over. Ugh.

  ‘Shall we wait a little and see if Cass turns up first?’ Matt says tentatively. ‘After all, we’ve no real evidence that anything is wrong yet.’

  Simon slumps down onto the sofa and sinks his head back into h
is hands. ‘I’d like it if you would call the local hospitals, please,’ he says quietly, without looking up. ‘I would do it, but I don’t speak any French.’

  ‘Of course,’ Matt says, in a professional tone of voice, no doubt hiding his irritation. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘I’ll go and have a walk around the resort,’ Hugo says. ‘She’s got to be somewhere.’ He looks at me meaningfully. I say nothing. But then I glance at Simon again and he seems so pitiful that I can’t help but say: ‘I’ll go too, soon as I’ve changed into something warmer.’

  Hugo and I agree that we will cover the ground more quickly if we split up. The chalet is piste-side on the very edge of the village, so once we’ve walked down the tree-lined driveway to the main road at the top of the village, he sets off to the left while I say I will walk around to the right. If I was Cass, who has no doubt slipped out for some quiet time by herself, I’d be really annoyed to be found. So I put my head round the door in most of the cafés and shops I pass for the first hundred metres or so and then stop for a café au lait in one which has a particularly nice open fire.

  About an hour later I wander back to the chalet. Nothing much seems to have changed except that Matt has gone and Simon has moved over to the huge glass wall where he is staring miserably out over the valley. Hugo isn’t there, and I wonder briefly if I should have stayed out longer pretending to look for Cass.

  ‘No news?’ I ask. Millie smiles sympathetically and shakes her head.

  ‘Not yet,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t understand where she could have gone,’ Simon says hoarsely, banging his fist against the glass. ‘If anything’s happened to her, I’ll never forgive myself.’

  7

  December 1998, La Madière, France

  I take the chairlift back up again. The wind is now blowing even harder and it is absolutely freezing. The lift keeps stopping, no doubt as the few fools who are still out braving this weather fall over as they fight to get off and stay upright at the top with the wind buffeting them. If the wind gets any stronger, they’ll probably have to close these upper lifts. Which means I might only have one more go at checking the run before … I must find them this time, I think. I must. It’s so hard to see in this weather. They’ve got to be there somewhere.

  As the lift gets to the top, my radio crackles. My hands are so frozen that I struggle to pull my gloves off and unzip my breast pocket. Is it Andy? ‘Hello?’ I shout. The lift station looms into view through the mist and I wrestle against the wind to force the safety bar up. ‘Hello?’ I shout again into the radio as the wind catches the bar and throws it back down, bumping my arm and jolting the radio from my frozen fingers.

  ‘Fuck!’ I shout as I watch the radio fall, quickly enveloped by the mist. I throw the bar up and slide off the lift onto the snow.

  Now what? Were they back at the chalet or not? Was that even Andy on the radio? I’ll have one more check of the slope and then I’ll have to head back to the office, check in with Andy and see if they’ve been found.

  I ski as slowly as I ever have, traversing wide, unable to see beyond about a metre in front of me, calling all the time. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’ It’s deserted. Anyone with any sense has gone back to their cosy chalets and apartments by now.

  I get to the bottom; there’s no sign. Feeling like I might be sick, I head back to the office.

  If Andy hasn’t found them, we’re going to have to make a decision. Although chances are, if they really are in trouble, anything we do will already be too late.

  8

  January 2018, London

  Hugo

  I’d always thought that someone like Ria would be totally out of my league.

  I’m not exactly ugly or anything, I’m more what you’d call nondescript. No one remembers me. Even my mum struggles to pick me out in old school photos.

  So I absolutely couldn’t believe it when Ria approached me at the party. It was a work party, and I hadn’t wanted to go, even though it was a party thrown by my company so, by extension, a party hosted by me – not that I had any hand in organizing it beyond signing the cheques. I’m not very good at events, but my brilliant PA Olivia says that, as the owner of the company, I have to go to these things. I don’t really see why – I think if anything, my social ineptitude is likely to put people off using my company rather than encourage them to do so. Olivia is beautiful and clever and always knows what to say, so personally I think it would be better if she did all the socializing for me, but no. That’s not how it works. Not according to Olivia, anyway.

  ‘Clients like the fact that we’re a small company with a real face – your face,’ she says. ‘When they book a holiday through you, they feel they’re getting personal service.’

  ‘But I don’t have anything to do with the clients. I certainly don’t book their holidays for them. Most of them do it online now, anyway.’

  She tuts and rolls her eyes. ‘Stop being so literal. You know what I mean.’

  I don’t, but experience has taught me there’s no point arguing with Olivia.

  My driver takes us to the party – this one is at the Natural History Museum. At least if I get stuck for something to talk about with the clients, I can comment on the exhibits. Everyone likes the big blue whale, but many liked the dinosaur better. I wonder if Olivia had that in mind when she booked the place – a ready-made conversation piece. She knows I am useless socially and makes allowances for me. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

  The party starts at eight and we arrive at half past. I’m grateful that Olivia no longer makes me be present at our parties from the outset to greet everyone as they arrive, like she used to when she first started working for me. Luckily, she soon saw how awkward that was for all concerned. In some ways, walking into a huge room full of people is harder, but in other ways it’s much easier. If I arrive later, everyone has a drink in their hand and has usually found an old colleague or friend to talk to, so most of them are less bothered about talking to me. Some come along to try to do business with me in a very direct way, which always appals me as I never know how to react. But it seems to me that for most of the people who come, these events are really about the free champagne. It costs the company a fortune but, according to Olivia, the PR people, and the accountants who know more about these things than me, these twice-yearly events are worth it for the ‘goodwill’, whatever that means. So I take them at their word and grin and bear it. Or bear it, anyway.

  The car draws up outside the museum and the driver gets out and opens the door for us.

  ‘Ready?’ Olivia says.

  I groan. ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  ‘It’s two hours of your life. Maximum three. Try and enjoy it.’

  ‘You know I won’t. I never do.’ I arrange my face into a fixed smile. ‘Better?’ I ask.

  She sighs. ‘Kind of. Come on, let’s get inside.’

  As soon as we’re through the door, a wall of noise hits me. How can anyone enjoy this? A couple of sweaty-looking men in cheap suits and name badges approach me straight away and shake my hand. One of them starts talking at me about some hotel his group has acquired and how it would be a brilliant fit for us. I am looking at him, smiling and nodding occasionally but I’m not listening. I hate all this and I’m no good at it. I’m much happier doing business by email – even a phone call somewhat fills me with dread. I want to go home.

  ‘Do you think it could be of interest?’ he pushes.

  ‘Possibly,’ I say vaguely, having absolutely no idea because I have no clue what he said. I stopped listening before the end of his first sentence, and I can’t stand being put on the spot like this anyway. I pass him my card. ‘Can you email my secretary and we’ll have a look? As I’m sure you understand, these decisions aren’t made in an instant. Or, in all honesty, by me usually. I just sign them off.’ I have rehearsed this line. Olivia came up with it for me.

  Olivia looks at me in the way that a proud mother might look at a four-year-old perf
orming in his first nativity play – in that ‘see, I know you can do it!’ way. I should probably feel patronized by her, but I don’t – I couldn’t manage without her. My palms are sweating. I don’t want to talk to these people.

  ‘It was lovely to meet you, but I’d better circulate. I’ll look out for your email,’ I add, which is a total lie. I’ve already forgotten the guy’s name and who he works for.

  ‘Of course, of course!’ he says, whipping out his card and pressing it into my hand. I immediately give it to Olivia, who pulls a face and it’s only then I remember that she’s told me before that that looks rude. ‘I’m giving it to Olivia for safekeeping,’ I bluster, no doubt making an already awkward situation worse.

  ‘I’ll email your secretary tomorrow,’ says the hotel man as he backs away.

  Olivia gives me an exasperated look.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘You know what,’ she mutters, rolling her eyes. ‘Come on, let’s get you a drink.’

  I wonder about reminding her that she should be more polite to me as I’m paying her salary, but I remember that last time I did that she threatened to resign. And I don’t want that. It would be a disaster.

  Olivia lifts two glasses from a tray carried by a skinny girl in a black dress which is so tight you can see her nipples. I remind myself that you are not allowed to notice things like that these days and keep my eyes firmly on her face. Olivia hands a glass to me and says: ‘Right. Half an hour of mingling, then a short speech. Another half an hour of mingling, and then you can go and get back to your computer games or whatever it is you do in your spare time. OK?’

  ‘Yup.’

  A woman in a suit bustles up to Olivia and starts babbling about some issue with the canapés. I am wondering if it’s OK to wait for the canapés woman to finish so that Olivia can continue to circulate with me, but then the canapés woman strides off with Olivia teetering after her, so I’m left on my own.