Presumed dead, p.1
Presumed Dead, page 1
PRESUMED DEAD
Vince May
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are fictitiously used. Any semblance to actual persons, living or dead, real events or locales is entirely coincidental unless specifically indicated. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Kindle Edition
First eBook edition published 2014
This edition published April 2015
Copyright 2006 Vince May. All rights reserved.
Cover art: Chris Peacock
eBook ISBN 978 1 311 26063 5
Dedication
For the three women in my life: Sharon, Carina and Gemma.
Remembering all the good times we’ve shared in the mountains.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Author’s Afterword
Acknowledgements
About the Author
If you liked Presumed Dead, try…
Preface
Dumped in the mountains.
Left for dead… by the man she loved.
Alice knew her husband didn’t love her very much, but she never realized he actually hated her. Not until she found herself left for dead high in the French Alps. After dragging herself to a refuge hut, French mountaineer Philippe Dulac tends to her injuries and saves her life.
She knows that no one will believe her husband tried to kill her. He’s too well respected and would have covered his trail extremely well. She decides that if justice is to be done, she must remain presumed dead and prove his guilt personally.
Together with Philippe she sets out on a quest for justice, which very soon goes horribly wrong…
“I almost looked at the end to check everything worked out all right!”
---Cornerstones
PRESUMED DEAD
Prologue
Death in the mountains can come at you a thousand different ways. Alice Webley knew that. She’d spent years relishing the savage beauty of this hostile terrain. But nothing in her darkest dreams had prepared her for the savagery of her own fate.
Suddenly she’s awake. Something has her by the ankles. Hauling her face down towards the open door. A blast of freezing air hits her, bringing her to her senses. She realizes for the first time exactly where she is.
She’s being lifted, bent double. She screams his name trying to make him stop. Kicking and punching she tries to fend off the powerful hands propelling her towards the dark opening. But he’s much too strong.
Moments later she’s tumbling head over heels through space. Screaming as she falls into the black, freezing void.
Chapter 1
Ross Webley drummed his fingers impatiently on the side rail of the launch as it ploughed through the dark waters of Monte Carlo harbor, out towards his host’s yacht: one hundred and fifty feet of floodlit white steel and bronzed glass, riding gently at anchor in the bay.
This particular gin-palace was owned by Riccardo Bonatti, a wealthy and extremely shady businessman out of Miami who enjoyed hobnobbing with the rich and famous of Europe. Ross liked the totally amoral American because he knew, deep down, they were two of a kind. Both of them, beneath a thick, highly polished veneer of respectability and manners, were hard, ruthless men who never let anything or anybody stand in the way of what they wanted.
Ross felt comfortable around Bonatti and often flew down from his home in the UK for weekend parties. Tonight though, he was in no mood to party. He was already fuming at the time it had taken to get the twenty miles from Nice airport. Unlike any other taxi he had ever been in, the one he’d got only seemed to have two speeds, slow and stop. All Ross wanted to do now was get on board the yacht and into his room so he could do some private thinking.
Looking up ahead though, he could see Bonatti waving at him from the top of the gangway and a noisy party in full swing on the upper deck. Heaving an inward sigh at the thought of more delay, he smiled and waved back, slipping effortlessly into his public image of a wealthy international playboy.
As Ross reached the top of the gangway, Bonatti pumped his hand and slapped him on the back. ‘Good to see you again, you old son-of-a-gun! Where’s that beautiful young wife of yours? Didn’t you bring her along?’
Ross forced a smile as he shook his old friend’s hand. ‘No, we stopped off in Geneva on the way down. She’s hired a car and driven up into mountains. Wanted to do some walking rather than come down here.’
‘I think maybe Alice doesn’t approve of me,’ Bonatti observed.
‘Nonsense! She thinks you’re a fine fellow!’ Ross lied, remembering the last time Bonatti’s name had come up Alice had called him a greasy pimp.
Bonatti laughed and slapped him on the back again. ‘Come on, Ross, join the party. There are some people I want you to meet, and we’ve got roulette and backgammon going on the lower deck.’
‘Look, Ricky, I’d love to, but you must let me clean up and get changed first. I’ve been travelling all day and I smell like a buffalo!’
Bonatti made a show of sniffing his friend, then laughing heartily again, showed Ross to his quarters.
As soon as the crewman had deposited his luggage and the door to the luxurious stateroom was shut, the smile slid from Ross’s face and he delved franticly into his flight case. Pulling out a scale ruler and a walking map of the Mont Blanc region, he spread it out on the table and studied an area where he’d made some pencil crosses and lines.
Damn, he thought. There’s no way anyone’s going to believe she climbed all the way up that glacier on her own in what she was wearing. Then, looking closely at the map again and taking a measurement, his eyes narrowed as he did some mental reckoning. After a few moments, he reached into his pocket for his phone and dialed his wife’s cell phone.
The call was answered on the first ring. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Ross growled. ‘Get your map out and I’ll tell you what you’re going to do about it.’
.
Consciousness came swimming back to Alice after a while. She lay utterly still, not daring to move, her breath coming in short gasps, hanging over her in white plumes on the freezing alpine air.
Wind resistance had slowed her forward momentum, and she’d barely started to accelerate in free fall before she’d slammed into the near vertical, snow covered ridge.
Bouncing, arms and legs flailing, she’d tumbled fast and relentlessly down the steep mountainside for over a thousand feet, grunting with each blow. Unable to stop. Incapable of helping herself. Flooding with pain. Dimly aware of the battering she’d been taking.
As the snowfield had gradually leveled off, she’d instinctively spread herself out flat, clawing at the soft snow, desperately trying to slow herself down. It hadn’t done much good.
She’d been spun, twisted, bounced and rolled for another six hundred agonizing feet before finally slithering to a halt, face up in the snow at the top of the glacier like a discarded doll.
She’d felt crushed, bewildered, ragged, abused… then mercifully thought had left her, and she’d felt nothing.
Now, in the perfect stillness, she could hear her heart pounding wildly and her breath rasping in her throat. She could see the bright moon and stars high above in the night sky, the silhouettes of mountain peaks all around her.
As her mind started to clear, she suddenly realized the enormity of what had happened. He tried to kill me! The words built up into a scream in her head. Ross tried to kill me! She closed her eyes, but in the giddying darkness behind her eyelids, all she could see was a snapshot of her last memory of him. His contorted face bathed in red light. His demonic eyes. She searched her mind for some small crevice to crawl into. Somewhere to hide from the violence, the hatred she’d seen. But her head was hurting so much it was all she could do to stay conscious.
An earlier version of herself, the Alice Webley of a few years back, may have reacted differently. But now, as she lay there sobbing uncontrollably, she slowly started to realize something: there was nothing more he could do to her. She was no longer afraid of him.
The idea started as a tiny flame somewhere deep inside her then quickly flared and ignited her anger. He’s done his worst, played all his cards, shot his bolt, and he’s lost! He’s also not going to get away with this, she thought, gritting her teeth. I’ll be damned if I let him get away with it! Who the hell does he think he is?
She opened her eyes. ‘Move,’ she ordered herself aloud. ‘You have to move.’ Carefully, she flexed each leg in turn, then each arm. There didn’t seem to be any damage, at least, she didn’t feel any sharp pains as she moved. Just an overall aching and stiffness that made her feel like she’d been hi t by a truck. The only thing that really worried her was that she couldn’t move her right arm.
She sat up stiffly. After a few moments she realized her telescopic aluminum walking pole was strapped to her right wrist and she’d been laying on it. Then, looking down at her legs and along her arms, she saw that she was wearing all her walking gear, right down to her rucksack and Baby G watch! The last thing she remembered, she’d been wearing a lemon yellow skirt and jacket with matching stilettos!
Looking around, she tried to figure out where she was. Stretching high above was the almost sheer face she’d just fallen down. Far to her left and right were outcrops of jagged rock, whilst below all she could see was a gentle white slope, disappearing out of view into the darkness. She could tell by the sheer scale of the landscape and the feel of the air that she was in the Alps, but where exactly, she didn’t have a clue. There was one thing she was sure about though: realistically, she was going nowhere but down.
Carefully she rolled over, and with a groan, stood up leaning heavily on her walking pole. Her legs and pole sunk straight into the soft snow. It was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to walk on this stuff. She started to make her way down the incline on her bottom with a shuffling motion, digging the heels of her boots into the snow to control her speed as she went.
As she gradually slid and shuffled down the slope, the snow started to get harder and more crystalline until it finally gave way to solid ice. Sliding down was easier now, faster, but she’d only gone a short way when she realized the surface of the glacier was embedded with small shards of granite that were ripping at her hands and the soft flesh of her buttocks.
She tried to stand again, but each time she took a step, her rubber-soled boots slipped and she fell. She realized walking was going to be impossible, so pulling the arms of her fleece jacket down over her hands, she set off down the ice on all fours, trying to avoid the worst of the sharp stones. She knew that if she followed the glacier down, it would eventually lead into a valley, and a valley in these parts invariably meant people and help.
She slipped and crawled and slithered for over an hour, constantly looking down the slope in the hope of seeing some end to the massive river of ice. The protection of the fleece she’d pulled over her hands worked at first, but before long the cloth was shredded and her flesh was gashed and bleeding. On top of that, despite all her exertion, the intense cold was starting to affect her. She was deeply chilled. Her bare legs, her hands, her face, especially the tips of her ears and nose, were painfully frozen and she was starting to become disorientated.
Once she thought she saw a light below in the distance, but she slipped, and by the time she’d recovered it was gone. Then, after a few seconds, it was there again!
Soon she could make out a wooden hut perched on a huge pile of boulders with light streaming from its solitary window. The final path to the hut was up a steep stairway formed from flat granite blocks. Looking up with despair, she wondered how she was ever going to make it. Gritting her teeth, she eased herself down and sat on the bottom step, then gradually, one step at a time, hauled herself up until she was leaning against the small wooden door in a slowly accumulating pool of blood.
Mechanically, with the ground now tilting left and right below her, she raising a frozen, bloodstained fist and pounded on the door with what little strength she had left.
After a few seconds, Alice felt the door swing open. She was just trying to form the words, ‘Help me,’ when the floor of the hut came rushing up and hit her in the face.
Chapter 2
Philippe Dulac felt a massive adrenaline rush and lunged forward to catch the woman as she pitched forward into the hut, but was a fraction too late. Kneeling down, he slipped her backpack off, picked her limp body up out of the doorway then gently laid her in the warm bunk, which up until a few moments earlier, had been his. He could feel she was chilled to the bone, so covered her with blankets before putting a pan of water on his gas stove.
As it heated, he gently uncovered each of hers limbs individually and checked her over carefully for injuries. He figured she must have been in a nasty fall. The parts of her that weren’t cut or grazed, were covered in fresh bruises, and both her eyes were blackened.
Now that he was starting to recover from the initial shock of finding her at his doorway like that, he was mystified. How on earth did she manage to get all the way up here in ordinary walking boots, he wondered. He brushed the long, blond hair away from her face and washed the dried blood from under her nose and the corners of her mouth. After that, he lifted each eyelid, then manipulated her bruised jaw, checking for breaks. Nothing too serious, he thought, only cuts and bruises. She was lucky. The most important thing now is to get her warm. He noticed her wedding ring and judged that she must be in her early thirties. He also judged she must have been a very beautiful woman… before this.
As he touched her battered body and set about tending her wounds, she moaned and writhed in painful delirium, throwing her head from side to side. She was still freezing cold when he finished cleaning and dressing the worst of her injuries, so he took her boots off and carefully slipped her into his thick padded ski suit. He added a second pair of his own socks over hers, then climbing onto the bed beside her, covered them both with his sleeping bag and blankets.
Wrapping his arms around her, he carefully pulled her in close to his chest, trying to transfer as much warmth from his body into hers as he could. The warming-up process was obviously accentuating the pain in her damaged limbs, because she shuddered and moaned in agony before eventually falling into an uneasy sleep.
All the time she writhed in distress, Philippe comforted her by stroking her hair and whispering soothingly in her ear, like a mother comforting a sick child. When she eventually warmed up and lapsed into a more peaceful sleep, he started to relax, and before long, was asleep himself, still cradling her in his arms.
.
Ross was feeling much better following his telephone conversation. The problem he’d had earlier with Alice didn’t look like it was going to affect things much after all, and he was quite happy that now he’d brought Alex up to speed, things would be taken care of in the mountains and he could relax.
He’d decided on a stylishly cut dinner jacket and bow tie for the party tonight. What he liked to think of as his roguishly handsome, Rivera look. Checking his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he touched up his dark, wavy hair with a little gel and straightened his tie. Not bad, he thought, not bad at all for a man of fifty.
Venturing out on deck, he accepted a drink from a passing waiter then made his way up to the party and mingled with the other guests, most of whom he knew. He was just thinking about going below to try his hand at one of the tables when Bonatti strolled over to him with a small, bespectacled, prematurely balding man of about forty, and introduced him.
‘Ross, meet David Wiseman from New York. He tells me he’s your wife’s nephew.’ Having done his duty as host, Bonatti wandered off.
Ross didn’t like the look of those sharp little eyes and was uncomfortably surprised to find the man’s handshake less nondescript than his appearance suggested. He was immediately on guard. ‘I though I’d met all my wife’s family,’ he said, ‘and I don’t recall the name Wiseman.’
‘I guess maybe I didn’t make myself clear to Mr. Bonatti, David said with a broad Bronx accent. I’m not related to your present wife... I’m your first wife, Freda’s, nephew.’
Ross’s stomach did a back flip and his heart felt like it was bouncing all around the inside of his rib cage. Being a gambling man though, he had a well developed poker face and stayed as solid as a rock. The ice in his drink didn’t even clink against the glass. ‘This is a surprise,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I knew dear Freda had a brother who’d emigrated to the States, but I understood he’d died relatively young.’
Ross’s mind raced back twenty-five years, desperately trying to recall the details of Freda’s family and background, which he’d checked into very carefully when he’d met her. He could vaguely remember some mention of a nephew, but it hadn’t worried him at the time because he’d only been a young boy, not likely to make any trouble.
