Medusa - 9 (6 page)

The bells of Santa Maria del Ghirli started ringing noon as he re-entered Italian territory. Perfect. Just time to go home, change into something more fashionable and then head out to the restaurant. He would stick with venison for the main course, but what to start with? The ravioli with meat and truffles were hard to beat at this time of year, but then so was everything else on the menu. Maybe the best thing would be to get Bernard to serve a selection of first courses so that people could sample them all. He drew up in front of the steel gates of the villa, took the
telecomando
from the glove compartment and depressed the green button at the top.

IV

The torch acted as the
genius
loci
, its scope and sway strictly limited but within that ambit omnipotent, calling a myriad objects and vistas into being before dismissing them back into latency with a flick of its narrow beam.

The world was made of rock, and always hemming in, but lately it had become more disorganized. The bounds had burst somewhere, allowing massive lumps and clusters to fall, or in some cases erupt upwards, almost blocking their path. But at the last moment the torch would always find a way. Some slit or aperture would appear, and they would crawl or squeeze through, mindful of the jagged edges all around, and patch together from disjunctive glimpses an impression of yet more rectangular tunnel strewn with debris.

‘Now we must be careful,’ announced Anton in his stalkily precise Italian. ‘This is the pitch head.’

The beam of the squat orange torch dashed about, speedily brushing in their notional surroundings like a manic cartoon sequence, and then, unaccountably, its power ceased. The darkness in front of them, just a few metres distant, seemed no different or more intense than that which had surrounded them ever since they entered the tunnels, but the playful minor divinity of the place, out of his depth here, could get no grip on it.

‘Rudi wanted to go down and take a look, so we fixed an eight-millimetre self-drilling expansion bolt over here as a primary belay.’

He pointed the torch at the wall of the tunnel, picking out a glinting metal ring.

‘Then we ran a secondary to the natural anchor point on that boulder over there.’

The torch briefly illumined the chunk of raw rock.

‘We didn’t really count on much in the way of horizontal work when we planned the expedition,’ the young Austrian went on. ‘Nevertheless, we brought about fifty metres of static nylon rope, a harness and a minimum of other gear, just in case. What we didn’t have was any rope-protector, since we were thinking that if there were possible descents then they will be free hangs, with no rub points. But as soon as Rudi went over the edge he spotted a sharp protrusion. There was no way to belay around it so he carried on. It was safe enough for a single descent and ascent, but anything more than that would have been risky.’

His voice boomed around the confined space, evacuated only by the gulf that had opened up at their feet.

‘Rudi rappelled down as far as he could, until he came to the knot marking the end of the rope. And he was shouting something we couldn’t make out, and we were shouting too, you know, because we were excited, and also feeling a little foolish because we had got lost. Then there were a few flashes when he took the pictures, and after that he prusiked back up the pitch and we hauled him over the edge and he told us that there was a body down there.’

Anton gestured in an embarrassed way. ‘Been there, done that’ was the motto of him and his pals at the University of Innsbruck Speleology Club. That meant the Stellerweg and Kaninchenhöhle, of course, but also the Trave and the Piedra de San Martin, two of the longest and deepest systems in Northern Spain, not to mention various expeditions to Slovenia, Mexico, Norway and even Jamaica. And then to spend a weekend break exploring a network of military tunnels dating from the First World War and get lost in a man-made shaft in what had used to be part of their own country? The indignity, the disgrace, and … well, yes, a certain amount of fear had come into it, even before they’d found the body.

‘Let me take a look,’ said Zen.

‘All right, but on your hands and knees, please. Then on your stomach when I do. Your clothing will get dirty, but it’s perfectly dry here and it will brush off after. But we don’t want another accident.’

It seemed to Zen that ghostly quotation marks seemed to hover around the last word, but he made no comment. They both proceeded in the prescribed manner until they reached the brink of the chasm. Anton leant out and shone his torch down, but there was little to see except occasional hints of the sheer scale of the pit beneath. Somewhere very far below – Zen found it impossible to estimate the depth even roughly – a wild chaos of rocks was dimly visible.

‘Is this a natural formation?’ asked Zen.

‘No, no. The Dolomites are formed out of the rock that gives them their name. It’s a crystalline form of limestone and virtually impervious to erosion, even by acidic water. So there’s no caving here, although further north, where the limestone is softer, the situation is quite different. This was man-made. We’re now in one of the Austrian tunnels. The Italians counter- mined it in 1917. Over thirty thousand kilos of explosives. This is the result.’

He moved the torch beam closer to the edge.

‘You can see the overhang down there, about two metres below,’ Anton went on in his slightly pedantic manner. ‘It is this which prevented us seeing the body from here, of course. But when Rudi reached the end of the rope, he illuminated his torch so that he could see how far there is to go and where he will land, and …’

‘And then he saw the corpse.’

‘Yes. Of course we were anxious to inform the authorities, but we were also lost in this maze of tunnels, so Rudi took some photographs to confirm and then we started back, this time keeping a sketch map for reference. After two hours and many false starts we found another way out, not the one by which we had entered. From there I called to the
carabinieri
on my mobile phone and then we waited some time for them to arrive. Quite a long time, actually.’

He crawled back a metre or so before standing up.

‘So, I think that is all there is to show you. Shall we go back?’

‘We won’t get lost?’

‘No, after returning with the police I know the way well now.’

Back in its element, the torch became their guide and saviour again, pointing out the crooks and crannies they had to negotiate, the low-hanging clumps of rock in the roughhewn tunnel, the subterranean barracks and storerooms, and the various junctions and steep flights of spiral steps which at long last led them back out into the cold wan twilight.

They emerged on to a broad track cut as a supply route into the rock face of a cliff overlooking the valley almost a thousand metres below. With relief, Zen removed the additional skull of the helmet that Anton had insisted he wear. Underground, he had had to follow his guide, and the noise of their feet on the broken rock, as well as the constant need to pay attention to their surroundings, had made silence at once necessary and easy. Now that they could walk side by side, and the only sound was the whine of the unpredictable squally breeze with fistfuls of sleet in its folds, that silence became oppressive. Invisible behind the clouds, the sun had already set.

‘The case is being treated as an accident?’ Anton asked at length.

‘Apparently.’

‘So who was he? What happened? And when?’

‘That’s still unclear.’

They walked on along the rock road marked by the ruts carved almost a century before by the metal wheels of carts and gun carriages.

‘Strange,’ remarked Anton. ‘Of course, this is also what we thought when we found the body. Someone who had tried to do what we were doing, only badly equipped and alone. But there was no sign of any rope at the top of the pitch. Or at the bottom, I think. Even if it had frayed and broken on that rub point, the upper length should still be there attached to the belay and the rest should be with the body. Unless he was one of those free-style alpine climbers, and tried to descend without aids. But he wasn’t dressed correctly for this, or even for walking at such an altitude, still less exploring those tunnels, which are cold, as you know. In fact, from what the photographs show, he didn’t seem to be wearing any shoes or boots.’

‘He was barefoot?’

‘Apparently, yes. Of course, people who come alone into the mountains for adventures are often a little bit strange, but I have never heard of this before. Besides, if he was going to do something extreme in this way, he would surely have informed a relative or the hotel keeper of his intentions and estimated time of return. If someone goes missing, there’s always a search and an enquiry, at least in my country. Even if they don’t find him, the police keep an open file in case a body turns up. We get a few up in the Alps once in a while, particularly now that the glaciers are receding so fast. Those bodies are often chewed up by the ice, but even then they are almost always identified, even if they have been there fifty or more years. In this case the corpse was not so badly decayed, because of the cool stable air in the tunnels. You would think it would not be so difficult to put a name to this person.’

‘You would, wouldn’t you?’

At the point where the path up the face of the massif crossed the old military road, they turned right and started zigzagging down the way they had ascended over four hours earlier, Anton effortlessly, Zen taking frequent pauses to admire the view.

‘You mentioned some photographs,’ Zen said as they picked their way down the steep, rock-strewn track.

‘Yes, Rudi was carrying a camera on his belt, and he took a few shots of the scene just to prove that we hadn’t touched anything or interfered in any way. In the event we forgot all about them, but it didn’t matter. The officers who answered our call weren’t interested. They just took our names and addresses and a brief statement and then said we could go. And of course we were only too happy to do so, and still perhaps a little in shock from this experience. So it was only when we got back to Innsbruck that Rudi remembered the photos.’

‘Where are they now?’

‘I have a set with me. I’ll give them to you when we get back to the
rifugio
, if you like. But these are just amateur snapshots, taken in a moment of some stress and anxiety. The quality isn’t that good, and of course you’ll have access to the official photographic record taken when the body was removed.’

‘Yes, of course. Still, it would be interesting to see them, if you don’t mind.’

‘Not a problem. I brought them just for that.’

The path narrowed to wind over the shoulder of a rocky bluff, followed by an even more precipitous descent, and silence once more became an acceptable option.

It was pitch-dark by the time they reached the small hostel in the bleak, rock-strewn plain where the road crossed the pass towards Cortina and the valleys to the east. Once through the double set of doors, the smoke-laden fug was initially overwhelming after the icy air outside. Bruno was propped up in a booth at the far end, pointedly ignoring the fact that he was being pointedly ignored by everyone else in the bar. Catching sight of his superior, he hurriedly straightened his uniform, replaced his cap and stood up, but Zen waved to him to stay put. The young patrolman nodded, sat down again and picked up the crossword puzzle magazine he had been working on.

The bar was crowded with a gang of German motorcyclists of both sexes, all sheathed in garish leather suits, as well as a smattering of elderly people who looked local, although where they could have come from was a mystery. Zen led Anton into the restaurant area at the side of the building. There were the same red and white checked curtains over the tiny windows, the same glossily varnished wooden chairs and tables, the same dim lighting from elaborate brass fixtures with frosted glass bowls, but this space was unoccupied and much quieter, apart from a muttered news bulletin from the inevitable television set mounted on a cabinet at the end of the room.

A blank-looking girl of perhaps fifteen came over, a notebook in her hand. After a brief discussion, they settled on a selection of cheese and
salumi
, a bottle of red wine and two large bowls of soup. Out of sheer habit, Zen initially ordered minestrone, until Anton sensibly pointed out that to be worth eating this required fresh vegetables and high-quality olive oil and parmesan, none of which was likely to be available at this remote spot. Instead they both opted for lentil soup made with chunks of smoked bacon.

‘So, I hope you feel that your visit has been worthwhile,’ said Anton.

It took Zen a moment to realize the oddity of the question. Anton had spoken German to the waitress, who had replied in the same language. Everyone else in the room was speaking either German or, like the TV newscaster, Ladino, the archaic dialect of Latin which had survived only in this isolated mountain range. There wasn’t a word of Italian to be heard or seen anywhere in the place. Zen felt very much as if it were he, and not Anton Redel, who had travelled to a foreign country.

‘Indeed,’ he replied. ‘You too, I trust.’

The Austrian laughed.

‘Oh yes! It is always a pleasure to come down here to our former transalpine provinces. Everything is so cheap, too. But this is the first time I’ve had the additional pleasure of doing so at the expense of the Italian government.’

When their food arrived, Anton’s choice proved to have been inspired. The lentils and bacon were a thick, unctuous, rib-sticking delight, more stew than soup. The cold cuts, too, were subtly different from their southern cousins, darker and smokier in flavour and texture. The wine was from the Adige valley where they had both started their journey that morning. It was a very young light red with a tart raspberry taste and a slight prickle of spritz. It was utterly delicious, and cut the rich, heavy food perfectly.

When they had eaten, Anton lit a small cheroot.