Emme took a sip of her iced water and looked around. It all made sense now– the humblepied à terrein town felt more everyday and accessible than this stunning hard-to-reach space. But then hard-to-reach felt appropriate for Tristan Du Kok. She realised she didn’t know anything about him, other than the very little he had told her, and a whole lot of gossip.
‘Was this your dad’s?’ Emme asked, knowing he was so sensitive about it, but she didn’t want to tiptoe around him now.
Tristan took an olive and nodded.
‘He won the hotel in a card game,’ he added sheepishly. Emme nodded gently, encouraging him to continue. She was desperate to hearhisversion.
‘I used to live up here with my dad when we were in town.’
Emme took a slice of focaccia and looked at the snow whirling outside between Vitreum and the Silberschnee.
‘Best view in the village.’ He double clapped his hands sharply. ‘Fire!’ he added in a commanding voice, which startled Emme, then made her laugh when she realised. Morebloody tech, she internally eye-rolled, laughing at the mad scenario she was in, and thinking, if only her friends could see her now.
The long thin fire at one end of the room lit in an elegant ribbon.
‘Sorry to make you jump,’ Tristan added wryly.
Emme laughed. ‘It’s OK. I am slowly getting used to Kristalldorf ways,’ she said, although this penthouse was next level. She had no clue where televisions, fire or ice would appear from at any given moment. She looked back to the view.
‘It is the best view in town. Does that not also make it sad for you?’ Emme dared to ask. ‘That you shared this place with your dad?’ She turned back to Tristan, searching his face for clues.
‘I guess. But I can’t let this go.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I sold the hotel to Alexey Stognev on the condition I keep this as my home. But…’ he looked around, a little embarrassed. ‘I struggle to sleep up here, so I use it more as an office.’
‘And sleep down in the village,’ Emme said, joining the dots.
Tristan turned up the fire and Emme saw the sadness in his eyes. She crouched down and rubbed a hand over the navy jumper that covered his athletic, sore shoulder.
‘We were up here the morning before he died.’
His hair flopped into his eyes and he pushed it away, along with a tear, on the palm of his hand.
‘Look, you don’t have to tell me anything– I shouldn’t have said anything about Lexy…’
Tristan almost laughed.
‘Yah, lots of people think I killed my father. I was with him ski touring that day. I was the lone son and heir. No body found. I know what they say.’
Emme felt guilty for having looked it up. For having given Cat’s hypothesis any air time.
‘He was a difficult man, but not so difficult I would push him down a ravine.’
‘Of course not!’ snapped Emme. ‘I didn’t think for a second!’
‘Yes you did…’ Tristan said, looking at her with his magnetic, troubled gaze, then back to the fire.
‘So what happened? That day?’
Emme hadn’t been aware of it at the time– deep in her studies and social life at twenty. But since Cat told her, she’d googled the coverage that popped up in newspapers all over Europe, theSunday Timesin South Africa, and small stories in theFinancial TimesandWall Street Journal. All of them quoted canton police statements and said the search for Charles Joubert’s body was ongoing, until a later story on the BBC said the case was being closed. From the haunted look on Tristan’s face, it would never be closed for him.
‘We were out skiing, we’d had a great day, great conditions. On the Teufelsgletscher glacier, but we both knew what we were doing. I was ahead, and then I heard a cry– a terrible cry. It was desperate…’ Tristan swallowed hard, as he looked to the fire in bewilderment. ‘I didn’t see him fall, but I know he went down the Hexenfinger ravine. I heard that cry disappear and get further away. I heard a godawful thump and the silence. I hear it every night.’
He shuddered.
‘Was he not wearing a tracking device?’
