“I hear you are a very lucky man,” said Belzoni cheerfully.
“True.”
“There’s something else I heard, from... ah... someone else I know in the watch exporting business.” Belzoni gave Bannerman a deliberate glance. “This Signor Gelling has visited several tourist centers lately — never staying long at any.” He shrugged and sighed. “Mrs. Adams will be driving back to Scotland soon, I suppose? A sad journey.”
As suddenly as he had arrived, he turned and limped away.
David Bannerman was the first back at the guesthouse. But Helen arrived a little later, smiling.
“I got lucky at the fourth photo shop I tried,” she reported cheerfully. “Their street photographers proof print every photograph they take, then date stamp them.” She slid a brown envelope across the table. “This was taken on the morning Mark Adams vanished.”
Bannerman opened the envelope. The photograph inside showed two men walking down Grindelwald’s main street. One was Mark Adams; the other had deliberately turned his head away from the camera, one hand going up towards his face.
“Gelling?” suggested Helen.
“It could be,” frowned Bannerman. “He’s the same build. But that isn’t enough. Where’s Susan?”
“Probably in her room. I’ll check.”
She was gone briefly and brought Susan Adams when she returned.
“Susan says Gelling looked in on her while we were out.”
“And it was the same old time,” said Susan bitterly. “How sorry he was, how he really thought I should go home.”
“Belzoni made the same kind of noises.” Bannerman stared at the street photographer’s print again. “Maybe he was telling me something in his own roundabout way. You’ve had no more phone calls?”
She shook her head.
When Susan went home, the Volvo would go with her. He glanced at his wristwatch. The car was back in the service station, which by now would probably be closed for the night.
What they had to do could wait.
Next morning the Bannermans joined Susan for breakfast, made sure she didn’t plan to leave the village for the rest of the day, then went out on their own. By nine thirty they were at the service station, where a middle-aged mechanic was at work in the lubrication bay. He knew they’d taken the Volvo out the previous day.
“Did much need doing when you serviced her?” asked David.
“Very little, whatever he expected.” The mechanic shrugged. “We had it for a couple of days, just lying in a corner. Then he turned up, said he wanted to try the car, and drove it away for a spell. When he returned, he wanted the handbrake adjusted a little. I said okay, he went away—” he grimaced “—then came the avalanche.”
Helen frowned. “His wife told us that from the time the Volvo was left here it wasn’t taken out again until yesterday.”
“She was wrong.” The mechanic smiled down at her dark, earnest eyes.
“Was he alone when he collected his car?”
“Ja.” The man scratched his chin. “And still alone when he came back.”
It took a small wad of Swiss francs before the mechanic became enthusiastic. Then they began. First they checked the entire interior but drew a blank. The mechanic put the Volvo on a ramp and raised it almost shoulder-high, then examined the underside. When he reached the fuel tank, the Bannermans saw him hesitate.
“Found something?” asked Helen.
“I think so, fraulein.” He frowned. “This tank has small marks, as if something has been done to it.” He eyed them wisely. “Much can be done to a fuel tank if you are a smuggler. Shall we look?”
“Not yet.” She stopped him as he turned towards the tools on his workbench. “When a car comes in, do you make a note of the mileage readings?”
“Kilometers.” He nodded. “Always.”
“Can you bring it, and a good local map? And I need the car’s present reading.”
The man was gone for a couple of minutes, then returned with the Volvo’s service sheet and a map. He spread the map on his workbench.
“You’re the brains,” David told his sister. “Go ahead.”
She borrowed a stub of pencil from the mechanic and used a corner of the map for a scribbled calculation using the present reading, first subtracting the short distance they’d driven the previous day, then the Volvo’s recorded mileage when it first reached the service station. What was left meant that the car had traveled fourteen miles on the vital day. At a guess, that meant seven miles out, seven miles back again.
Seven miles — to where? They needed the mechanic’s help again.
He studied the map, then used an oily finger to trace a narrow road that ran close to the avalanche site.
“Maybe here,” he suggested. “The old Braunheim chalet. I’ve heard that new people have moved in there.”
“Good,” Helen said softly. She glanced at her brother. “And now we get hold of your friendly police sub-inspector?”
“Suppose you do that,” said her brother. “Have him here before that fuel tank is opened, and tell him the rest of it.” He gave her a grin. “I’ll go and take a look at this chalet.”
Bannerman borrowed the mechanic’s ancient Renault van and was on his way. Fresh light snow was falling, and the old van’s single windshield wiper slapped busily as it rattled along the narrow, empty road. Slowly the contours he’d seen on the service station map came to life, and at last he saw a turnoff just ahead and an old chalet at the end of it. Ruts in the snow showed that vehicles had used the track recently.
He left the Renault behind a hump of rock and continued on foot through the snow until at last he was close to the Braunheim chalet. It was an old wooden structure with a high-peaked roof and small shuttered windows. The wheel tracks led past its front door and round to a barn at the rear. Bannerman worked his way around again, got even closer, cleared snow from the barn’s single window, and was surprised to look in at a modem, well-equipped garage. He could even see what looked like a portable welding plant.
He switched his attention to the chalet. A thin curl of smoke was rising from the main chimney. There was no other sign of life of any kind, but there was only one way to be certain. Crossing to it, he used a billet of wood to smash a ground floor window. He reached in, freed the lock, and seconds later was standing in the chalet’s kitchen near the glowing warmth of a wood stove.
Swiftly, with growing confidence, he checked the other rooms. They were empty but with signs that the place was being used, and when he returned to the kitchen, he heard a strange thumping that seemed to come from under the floor. The thumping led him to a cellar trapdoor. When he drew back the bolts and raised the lid, a pale, unshaven face peered up from the darkness.
“And who the hell are you?” asked the man below in a weary yet hopeful voice.
“Call me the cavalry — if you’re Mark Adams.” Bannerman offered a hand to help him out. “Right now you’re supposed to be dead.”
“I’m Adams.” The missing bridegroom emerged into the light, blinking and unshaven, his clothes grubby and crumpled. “And no, I’m not dead.”
“Did you tell Gelling that your pet name for Susan was Lollipop?”
“Yes.” Adams moistened his lips. “He said he’d get word to her to do what she was told; then I’d be okay.”
He swallowed and looked around. “Where are they? I heard them going out—”
“Them? How many?”
“Gelling and two others. They’re armed.”
“Then let’s move. The police are on their way.”
He hustled Adams towards the open window. They were through it and outside when they heard the sound of an approaching car and the rattle of its chains. It stopped outside the chalet, and its passengers climbed out.