tapped out the numbers printed on the card. The phone rang and she crossed her legs as she waited for someone to pick up.
The phone rang for a long time before it finally rang off.
‘No one there?’
‘No one there. Elf or otherwise.’
‘There’s a police station in the village, behind the supermarket. We should go there anyway. See what’s happening.’
They left the Petit la Creu and trudged through the village, past the pretty church with its slender tower, taking a right-hand turn down a side street towards the supermarket and the police station. They passed no one. Neither was there any activity in any of the shops. Some of the stores were illuminated, some were not. The lights were all on in the supermarket, but there were no people, neither customers nor staff, to be seen through the windows.
A four-wheel-drive police vehicle with snow chains on its tyres was parked in the yard. The police station itself was a small, unprepossessing concrete building almost hiding behind the supermarket. They pushed open the heavy glass and steel door, and then opened a second door onto a small space furnished with a white melamine reception desk and three moulded plastic chairs.
Jake shouted loudly. This time he didn’t call
Zoe stepped behind the melamine counter, to a door behind it plastered with posters and notices. She tapped on the door, and when no one answered she pushed it open. There was a cramped office equipped with a couple of desks, PCs, a printer, a bank of filing cabinets, a coffee machine. The red light on the coffee machine was switched on, and half a pot of coffee was still warming. There was an anteroom visible with a coat rack and a police coat hanging on a peg.
‘Hello!’
They sat at the police desks for half an hour, hands dug into their coat pockets, trying to figure out what to do.
‘Okay,’ Jake said. ‘The entire village has been evacuated. Why? Avalanche risk. That’s the explanation. Sometimes these avalanches—big avalanches, not the kind we got caught in this morning—can take out an entire village like this. Happened near Chamonix a few years ago and pushed over twenty chalets. And all this snow falling has increased the risk. So everyone’s gone.’
‘How come they just left us?’
‘Maybe they thought we were killed in the avalanche this morning.’
‘Wouldn’t there be rescue teams?’
‘Look, I don’t know. All I know is the place has been evacuated, and we need to get out of here and pretty quick.’
‘Right. How?’ Zoe said.
‘That’s the… that’s just it. We can walk. We could get some skis from a store and try to make it further down the mountain. But I don’t much fancy that, given what we know, and given what happened this morning.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Or we can drive. Which means we just take one of these cars parked in the village. Drive slow, so it doesn’t trigger anything.’
‘Right. We’ll do that.’
‘Right.’
‘Let’s go then.’
‘So what are we waiting for, Zoe?’
‘I don’t know. I’m scared.’
‘Scared? There’s nowt to be scared about, you big girl’s blouse. Nowt at all. Actually I’m scared, too. Never mind all that. Look, we’ve got to find a car with keys still in the ignition.’
‘Right. Couldn’t we—’
‘Couldn’t we what? Hot-wire a car like they do in the movies?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know how to do it?’
‘You’re the technical one. You’re the man.’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you something for nothing, fuckwit of a wife. I don’t know how to hot-wire a car. As you correctly pointed out I’m a vet, I work with dogs and white mice and budgerigars and in all my training and experience as a vet, for some reason I’ve never been called upon to hot-wire a car. To save our bacon. Until now.’
‘Don’t get exercised with me.’
‘I’ll tell you another thing for nothing. See how they do it in the movies? They just rip out some wires from under the dashboard and stick ’em together and the car coughs into life? A car mechanic told me that’s all bollocks. It doesn’t work like that any more. He said if you do that the most likely thing that’ll happen is you’ll give yourself an electric shock.’
‘So we won’t do that.’
‘And he was a car mechanic. A proper car mechanic.’
‘So, as you said, we go and look for a car that still has the keys in it. And then we drive out. With the engine sort of muffled.’
‘You’re a sarcastic bitch, you know that?’
‘It’s why you married me. You love it.’
But before leaving the police station they tried, once more, the telephone number of Elfinda the smiling holiday rep. Just as with their earlier attempt, the phone rang off before anyone answered.
Outside, and with the snow falling more heavily around them now, they went from car to car, trying the drivers’ doors, looking for one that would open. They tried perhaps fifty or sixty vehicles and did find doors open on four of them; but none had the keys inside.
The snow came down heavier still, and with it an oyster-coloured mist. They were starting to feel both cold and tired.
‘I’ve just thought of something,’ Jake said.
‘What?’
‘Back at the police station—there was a police car. Maybe the keys are in the office.’
‘What, steal a police car? Don’t even think about it.’
‘But the situation is somewhat exceptional, surely?’
Zoe knitted her eyebrows but followed him back down the hill to the police station. There they found the keys to the police car, hanging on a hook by the door.
‘Are you sure it’s okay to just… take it?’
‘No.’
The police car fired into life first time, kicking out a lot of diesel smoke. They had to scrape snow from the windshield and de-ice the glass. Jake steered the car out of the police yard and onto the street. He honked the horn a few times; he was expecting a hand on his collar at any moment, and if the police did return to see their car being stolen he wanted to be able to say that he had hardly been stealthy about the operation.
He drove slowly past the supermarket, unused to the weight of the 4WD vehicle. In order to leave the village the way they had come in from the airport, they would have to drive past their hotel. Zoe wanted to stop and gather their things; Jake didn’t because the snow was coming down even heavier now, and the blanket of mist was getting thicker by the moment. Visibility was already less than twenty metres.
‘We need our passports, hon, and there are things I don’t want to leave. Come on, Jake. Two minutes.’
‘If we end up dead because of these two minutes, I’ll kill you.’
‘Fair enough.’
They pulled up outside the deserted hotel. Jake left the engine running, exhaust smoke billowing in the freezing air, as they got out. They rode the lift up to the third floor in silence, where their arrival was heralded by a tiny ping. Once in the room they opened their suitcases on the bed, flung everything in without care and clicked them shut. Then they took the suitcases down and out to the car, stowing them on the rear seat.
Jake growled. The mist had thickened. It was still oyster-grey and he fancied that it had an iridescent sheen where the electric light was caught and refracted: at another time, beautiful. The snow hadn’t abated either. It fell
