Casanova by Mark Arundel

here,’ she said. The cable braked making the bubble swing sharply. We entered the winch house and slowed to a crawl. The automatic doors popped open and Charlotte stepped out. I followed her. We both reclaimed our skis from the box and headed for the exit. The snow crunched below our feet. We dropped our skis, knocked the snow from the bottom of our boots with our poles and then snapped shut the bindings. I checked my K106 again.
    Charlotte watched me. ‘Which way?’ she asked.
    ‘East,’ I said. ‘We need to ski this run and then pick up a trail that traverses east through the trees.’ I pointed with my ski pole at the signpost. Charlotte positioned her goggles and pushed off. She gathered speed by lifting one ski after the other like a skater. I followed.
    At the top of the run she glanced back briefly before disappearing at pace. She had seen me close behind and decided to test me. I’m sure it wasn’t a race but we weren’t going to be stopping until we reached the trail.
    I put in one brief turn to test the snow and my edges. It was fast and icy. I tucked and pointed diagonally across the run to where the first brow hid a steep turn. As my skis slapped back down from the jump, I was close enough to see Charlotte’s smile and hear her squeal. She dipped with natural ability and took the turn at speed with her edges spraying snow like ice from a champagne bucket. She straightened with confident balance and then glanced to see where I was. Fortunately, the slopes were almost empty of other skiers. At the speed we were going, I wasn’t excited by the prospect of having to take evasive action. Another brow came up fast and Charlotte pulled her knees to her chest and took a Breecher’s Brook amount of air. I followed. On landing, I almost caught an edge and fought to hold my left ski. Charlotte put in a turn across the slope to break her speed. I came up alongside her. She was still smiling.
    ‘There’s the trail,’ she said. She had turned and was skiing backwards. I went passed her. At the end of the run, I braked to a stop on the edge of the flat trail. Charlotte was a second behind me. She sprayed me with snow from the edges of her skis as she skidded to a stop beside me. She lifted her goggles and laughed.
    ‘You can ski,’ she said. Her cheeks were pink and she breathed in hard.
    ‘Downhill racing is dangerous,’ I said.
    ‘It is if you catch an edge,’ she agreed. ‘For a second there I thought you were going to take a tumble.’
    I ignored her and pushed off down the trail. Charlotte caught me up and tapped her ski poles together as some downhill racers do just before they go through the gate.
    An easy glide led us along the path. The narrow trail zigzagged and dropped below the tree line. The fir trees held fat deposits of snow that deadened the sound. The Alpine air pressed on my senses like a Wolfgang sonata. When the mountain steepened and the ledge narrowed, I stopped to check my K106. Charlotte stopped beside me. The cabin was close.
    A rock overhang hid the turn. The trail opened out. It was an undulating sloped basin with trees and rocks pushing through the snow. I saw the wooden cabin. My K106 confirmed it was the right one. We pulled off the trail and released the bindings on our skis. The cabin was above us. We trudged up together with our boots sinking in the snow.
    ‘What’s the plan?’
    ‘Let’s just knock on the door and see what happens.’
    Our stiff boots clumped up the wooden steps. I used the heavy metal doorknocker. The old man had a friendly, enquiring expression. We never heard what his voice sounded like. We both felt the bullet. It distorted the cold mountain air between our heads. It made us instinctively flinch. It had come from a sniper rifle. The blood splatter and the sound were the two things I remember clearly. The old man dropped. His head was leaking badly. He was dead.
    I pulled Charlotte down beside me and scanned the view for the most likely vantage