‘So I knew they’d been in front of me, and I figured the best thing would be to ski down and catch up with them. Most people wait for you after a while. But the clients were – are – brothers and they seemed a bit competitive as I said, so they might have been trying to race to the bottom, something like that, I don’t know. My colleague Andy was also there, assisting me, even though they’d only booked one guide.’ I don’t mention about Andy tearing off ahead, obviously, or about me trying to overtake so as not to lose face. I’ll have to hope that the guy in the hospital bed doesn’t remember too many details about who was where and when – I certainly don’t. Assuming the poor sap wakes up, that is. I take a sip of water from the plastic cup in front of me and notice my hands are shaking. Calm down. Calm down.

The officer nods. ‘I see. Did you do anything else?’

Anything else? Like what? What else was I meant to do? I swallow the panic down. What is he looking for me to say?

‘Well, obviously we called out, stuff like that.’

‘And when did you decide to call the emergency services?’

‘Once I got to the bottom, given the bad weather, I asked my colleague to go to the office to call their chalet, see if anyone knew where they were. They hadn’t noted which chalet they were staying in on the forms, so we had to call the tour company rep first, which meant we lost some time doing that.’ The clients’ fault that time was lost. Not ours. ‘Meanwhile, I went back up to check the track again, see if I could spot them, in spite of the worsening weather.’

Making myself out to be a bit of a hero there.

The officer nods again. ‘I see. And how long did all this take?’

‘Um – for my colleague to get back to the office? Twenty minutes?’ Way longer than that by the time we’d dithered about what to do. ‘It’s hard to say,’ I continue, ‘I was more focused on finding the men than on what time it was. Besides, with the weather so bad it would have been difficult to look at my watch anyway …’ Stupid thing to say. Think. Calm down.

‘Richard from Powder Puff said he couldn’t be exact, but he thinks he received a call from you at around five.’

I swallow hard. ‘Yes, that sounds about right. The men were a few minutes late for our meeting, we had to get up the mountain, then they spent ages at the top fiddling with their goggles and boot buckles – you know how punters do – and then they were very slow at the top of the slope so … yes, that would make sense.’