Pasqual turned on a huge smile for the line of rich customers and tilted her head to greet the Chateau’s duty-manager who was gliding towards them with a similar smile.

‘Hi. Doin’ great business I see.’

Eric smiled weakly but Pasqual was effusive.

‘You bet, Saul. This’ll make Tamarack wince. They only got two people from Thirtysomething last season. We got Del Parkinson. Did you hear he confirmed?’

‘Yeah. Good. The Alley Cat, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Yeah. Lighten up, Cundie. Ha Ha. Right.’

Pasqual laughed readily, thinking what an asshole he was.

Saul seemed to want to say something else, and Pasqual arched an eyebrow. He put a hand into an expensive suit pocket. ‘I hear they’re after your man then.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The cops. They’re on the trail of your Indian.’

Pasqual looked blank. ‘My Indian?’

Saul smiled at a wrinkled old trout in a shiny ski-suit who was gazing at him from the line. She smiled back and adjusted her expensive and ugly shades.

‘Yeah. That guy Hunt. Heard a rumour from the news guys that were gassing off in the piano bar upstairs last night until three in the morning. They’re saying that he’s on the run and the cops think he’s the killer.’

Pasqual went cold. A flash of what she’d seen in the trees, the remains of that boy, came back to her so vividly that she felt a thin pipe of vomit trying to slide up her throat. Sam Hunt. She was working beside a guy all these years who at any time could have cut her up into fillets and …

‘Sam Hunt?’

Saul grinned like she’d just made a booking for fifty doctors on conference.

‘Yeah. That’s it. Sam Hunt.’

‘Saul. This is real important. Does anyone else, any of these hacks here, know that Hunt worked for the Ski Company?’

Saul looked pleased he’d affected her with such confidential and important news. ‘No one knows anything. I told you. I get this stuff being on the spot where the news guys get loaded.’

‘I’m begging you now, Saul. I tell you I’ll work my butt off to fill this goddamn hotel with skiers for the next ten years if you just bear with me. Don’t tell a soul. Please. Not a soul.’

Saul put on an expression of mock offence. ‘Hey. Why would I?’

She nodded, knowing in her heart that if a nothing guy like Saul Jennings knew about it, the whole fucking world would too. She had to pick up Parkinson from the private airfield at half-past eleven. If they could just keep it quiet till then. Please God.

She turned to see how Eric had handled the news. He was over by the big arched window that looked out onto the Chateau’s frozen lake, his portable phone to his ear and his free hand pressed palm up onto the glass.