Blood in the Snow: The thriller that will give you chills

By Franco Marks

Marzio Santoni left behind the brutal crimes of the big city long ago.

Valdiluce is a quiet ski resort, where all he needs is the peace, quiet and his trusty vespa.

At first glance, the town inhabitants are as perfect as their postcard scenery. But under the surface, nothing is as it seems...

So when four women are discovered dead, seemingly by their own hand, Marzio can sense that something isn't right. Fighting against his police chief, his own emotions and the evidence stacked against him, Marzio is caught up in a race against time to discover what truly happened.

Gripping, shocking and packed with a punch that will leave you reeling long after the last page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Nov 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781788548458

Franco Marks

Franco Marks is a writer and television director who lives and works in Rome. He has written the novels La neve rossa, Il visionario (shortlisted for the 2003 Strega Prize), Festa al blu di Prussia (winner of the Procida Isola di Arturo – Elsa Morante Prize 2005), Il profumo della neve (shortlisted for the 2007 Strega Prize), Lo show della farfalla (shortlisted for the 2010 Viareggio-Repaci Prize), Il suicidio perfetto, La mossa del cartomante, Tre cadaveri sotto la neve, Lo strano caso dell'orso ucciso nel bosco, Delitto con inganno and Giallo di mezzanotte. His books have been translated in several countries.

Book preview

1

On his Vespa, White Wolf climbed the steep road. Emitting polluting gases and stale alcohol fumes, he shifted the gears, the control slick with grease, down from fourth to third and from third to second. The cold wind blew hard in his face. He’d taken his fair share of slaps since he was little, but these handfuls of ice, delivered with a hard rock rhythm, were the most beautiful of them all.

White Wolf, born in a basket of the north wind with hoarfrost in his blood, had eaten his share of snow. He’d ravished his fair share of snow too, though always with respect, like when as a child he’d put his boots into the footprints that were already there so as not to spoil it. He was missing it now. It had been at least a hundred years since there’d been a February as weird as this in Valdiluce. At night it was three degrees below zero and by day it was twenty above. On the road lay a sheet of ice that looked as if it were snow.

He pushed the Vespa as hard as it would go. He crossed the bridge, where the fog was caged in like a bale of cotton. He’d spent his life on those hairpin bends, often on foot, with newspapers tucked under his shirt to protect himself from the wind. Blue eyes, loose blonde hair, a red kerchief around his neck, a rough sweater, corduroy trousers. White Wolf drove with bare hands. Strong, safe, experienced. He would have inspired trust in anyone: a child, a woman, an old man. Used as they were to working an axe, climbing, skiing, moving mountains, those same hands could also become dangerous weapons. There was something athletic, something natural about the way he looked. He’d had many women – all fleeting, temporary relationships.

But a few days ago he had met Elisabetta, and there had been the beginnings of love. An intimacy that was unusual for White Wolf, used as he’d been since childhood to holding in his feelings. Elisa, his sad natured mother, had spent a life in her slippers, hanging around the stove and the church. Alfonso, his father, was always chopping wood. A solitary man with a cigar sticking out of his moustache. In that Prussian existence with its iron rules, there had never been a moment of relaxation, of warmth.

Elisabetta had melted him like hot chocolate. With her he could immerse himself, spread himself, offer himself up. While he drove forward on the Vespa, he went over the fragments of a few hours earlier in his mind. Elisabetta naked, as white as the mountain snow. Her thighs, her pelvis, her lips in sticky flights of fancy. Her hair spread out on her hands or on her cheeks or on the pillow. Peeping out from half closed eyes. A memory that dangled in his mind like some knick-knack hanging from the handlebars of the Vespa. Elisabetta would be leaving soon by bus to return to her town, Vissone on the Sea. Her winter holiday was over. A breath of sadness, but it wouldn’t be a goodbye kiss: they had pledged to see each other again.

White Wolf hunched over recklessly; third, second, first. The engine roared, shattering the silence of those lonely bends paved with ancient stones. The sun had taken off its balaclava and slivers of light entered the forest as if through a half open shutter. Dik, Osvaldo’s Irish setter, emerged from the undergrowth and ran alongside the road for some way, his coat tawny in the wind, racing the scooter. Daringly, he slipped into the woods and disappeared. White Wolf passed the church. Don Sergio was standing at the door, illuminated by candles like a saint. A large priest, with a beard so long it touched the ground. He was welcoming those of the guests at the hotel who were among the faithful to the first mass, to commend themselves to the Lord.

Please God, let the snow fall.

On the way to the square, a group of skiers with yellow, red and white boots wandered through the mud, enraged wild boar awaiting the weather forecast. Sun, sun, sun, that would melt the snow the snow cannons had blown out during the night. The only happy ones were four young women, all of them married: Elisabetta – White Wolf’s ‘beginnings of love’ – and her friends Flaminia, Angela and Stefania. They’d won a stay at the Il Bucaneve holiday apartment complex in Valdiluce. A week spent sunbathing in bikinis on the Bucaneve’s terraces, being courted by the locals and drinking raspberry syrup. Better than a vacation in Miami.

Third, second, first, a touch of the brake, throttle. White Wolf skimmed past the doctor’s surgery. The medical officer Ugo Lanzetti had hung his latest paintings out to dry, a sequence of snow covered panoramas that rocked like slides in the wind. In the square, the bus looked like a blue caterpillar. Mentina, the driver, was sucking a sweet, perhaps to hide the odour of the Ginpin – the local liquor – he’d drunk. The engine was running and the exhaust pipe exhaled a grey cloud. There were only a few minutes left before it was due to depart. Inside the bus, framed like paintings by the windows, were the faces of Marietta, the teacher who taught at Rocalta, a village six kilometres away, Francesca, the caretaker of the technical institute in Valstura, Giuseppe, a commuter who worked at the factory, and the terrible Morena, with her restless hair and scythe-like eyes, who was a nurse at Vicosauro hospital. Sly as cats in a cage, they weighed up the facts to try and conjure a bit of gossip into existence.

What was White Wolf doing on his Vespa at the bus stop at that time of the morning?

He slowly panned his eyes over the square, analysing every millimetre of space: the walls, the signs of the bars, the spruce covered with artificial snow. He examined every corner, developed the image, zoomed in on the pixels, spread his nostrils, breathed in: there was no sign of Elisabetta’s body. Over those days he had perceived a single fragrance – rural, slightly country-ish: her nakedness smelled of wheat. But where was Elisabetta? And where were her friends? They were all missing for the roll call.

Mentina, didn’t four girls come to take the bus this morning?

We’ve got the same load as usual, as you can see.

They must be late…

It’s time for me to go. I’m off.

Wait a minute.

One minute then I’m off. It’s their problem.

In that moment, while everything seemed to be melting in the sun and the smell of the resin emanating from the fir trees, White Wolf’s phone rang. It was as if a string of pearls broke and each little ball flew off. An excited voice shouted about a tragedy, begged him to hurry, to run to the Bucaneve.

White Wolf returned to what he really was: Inspector Marzio Santoni, local public safety officer for Valdiluce.

2

The scooter roared along. Too slowly for the haste he felt inside. Inspector Marzio Santoni, known to all as White Wolf, saw himself frozen, almost motionless, in the landscape. He could get to the Bucaneve quicker on foot by taking shortcuts, so he leaned the Vespa against a wall and ran ferociously. The soles of his shoes threw up earth and leaves. His blonde hair flew across a sky that was growing bluer. An animal. He calculated the fastest route, the distances, the slope, the slippery ground, the undergrowth, the low firs: obstacles that he avoided. The images glistened inside him as though a navigator was marking out his path. Arrows, angles, curves, straight stretches. The excited words of Agostino Uberti, the Bucaneve’s caretaker, echoed in his head.

Hurry, hurry, it’s a tragedy!

Elisabetta was in an apartment at the Bucaneve with her three friends. Considering that, what with the lack of snow, there were very few guests, it was all very predictable. There was no point him fooling himself. Did the excessive happiness of those days, the principle of love, have to be punished?

Under the sun, the scent of resin spread through the air wrapped in a light mist. A smell that could kill, the old people said: they had sometimes found foxes dead for no apparent reason.

Marzio Santoni was able to smell odours whatever condition he was in – to separate them, distinguish them. The rot of the leaves, the mossy ground. It was a gift. He came out of the beech forest. With its grey stone, green copper roof and turret, the Bucaneve looked like some cursed castle. Reflected in the blue pupils of White Wolf’s eyes, a gnat sized fragment appeared, swooping through the sky. Far away, like a semicolon. Trogolo the falcon – the ‘ghost ship’, the curse of Valdiluce, a chain swinging from his leg.

It was an old story: Leopoldo the butcher had displayed a falcon in front of his shop. It had been a great success. The people of the town came to see the bird of prey, they enjoyed baiting him. Trogolo spent the day tearing at his leg to try and escape; in the silence of the night he recovered his strength, and then at dawn his torments resumed. And even with the limited range the chain allowed him, when he opened his wings he sent up a cloud of dust and blood. Until one day, the chain broke. Incredible. The falcon flew into the sky with that remnant of his prison attached to his leg. With each wing stroke he sounded like a ramshackle cart. Trogolo the falcon. A bad omen.

Marzio increased his pace, uphill, leaning forward to counter the force of gravity; it almost looked as though it was he who was making planet Earth rotate. From his mouth came heavy breathing. With his nose he sniffed out odours. One, in particular, grew stronger the closer he got. Treacherous and subtle. Methane gas. Enough of it to make you sick. His fear erupted.

Agostino, his eyes crazed, coughed out the words.

Inspector, there’s been a gas leak, something terrible has happened!

Where?

Apartment twelve.

Who’s inside?

The four girls.

Marzio put the red neckerchief he always wore over his mouth. Dazed, crying, sobbing and beating his fists against the wall, Agostino followed him.

Hurry up, turn off the electricity.

I have done.

Apartment twelve was locked. Agostino tried to open the door using his key, but his hands were shaking and he couldn’t get it into the lock. Marzio charged the door with his shoulder and knocked it down. Darkness. He moved through the gas mixed with a suffocating heat. He wanted to whisper Elisabetta’s name, hear her voice, discover her still alive, but he did not. With a hint of hope he opened the window, and the light splashed into the room, illuminating a pitiless scene: on the beds lay Stefania, Flaminia, Angela: composed, sleeping dolls. Elisabetta was trapped in a position that didn’t do her justice. A grimace, eyes appalled, hair betrayed by a messiness she wouldn’t have tolerated. Marzio stared at her in agony. Nothing remained of her beauty. It had flown away. All that was left was a motionless bundle.

Inspector Santoni tried to look at her with professional detachment, as though he must suddenly deny his emotions. It was impossible. Mortally wounded, trapped. Hunted by dogs. A poisoned arrow traversed his veins, pierced the petrified muscles and finally reached his groin. Rage violent enough to drive a man insane. Marzio clenched in his fist the memory of those days. Elisabetta’s sweet, smiling face. Their meetings. Their last harmonious kiss. On his lips he gathered the magic of her body. Marzio crushed the story between his fingers. Madness. Perhaps it was because of the gas that continued to fill the room. He was losing consciousness. On his hands and knees, he went into the kitchen. He checked the knobs on the cooker – they were all open. He didn’t turn them off for fear of damaging fingerprints – the crime scene must be kept intact. He looked for the gas stopcock. It was open. From there came the poisonous hiss, the mouth of the dragon, the breath of death. He took the red scarf from his mouth and wrapped it around one hand so as to leave no traces. He turned the iron knob firmly, as though by that gesture he could return the four women to life. A bead of sweat, perhaps a tear, escaped him and flew into the light. He caught it and wiped it on his corduroy trousers.

Inspector. Do you feel alright?

Agostino stared at him with morbid eyes, as though trying to strip Marzio’s confusion naked. He returned to being an inspector. Abruptly, he bustled him out of the apartment.

Get out of here immediately. Wait outside.

3

Now that the gas was draining from the apartment, Marzio realised that he was dealing with a catastrophe. He took the red kerchief off his hand and tied it around his head. A wounded apache. He tried to observe the situation as though it was nothing to do with him. It was essential to pull out his investigative tools, rusty after all these years spent in Valdiluce.

As a detective, Marzio had an illustrious past. As a lad he had joined the police sports team. With success: he’d won many trophies, especially in downhill and slalom skiing, and at twenty-three he had decided to remain in public security. At police academy he had worked hard and profitably, a long apprenticeship with the flying squads of many cities where he had worked on increasingly complex cases.

Police officer Marzio Santoni practiced an unusual style of investigation: he used laboratory instruments as little as possible, little or no DNA and autopsies, and spent plenty of time walking around inside his own mind – long walks, with boots on, assessing every detail. A procedure that gave the same results both on level ground and uphill: always accurate, never approximate, and carried out with mathematical precision. Inexorable, right up to the peak.

He was a bio-detective, and didn’t spoil the crime scene: he advanced carefully, politely, always finding the solution to the case. He perceived smells with the sensitivity of a wild animal. Wary and mysterious, he had more foxholes than an actual fox. Nobody knew about his private life. Even his colleagues called him White Wolf, the nickname he had borne since he was a child.

But one day, all of a sudden, the clock by which he regulated his existence lost its compass. Marzio realised that in the city he was trapped inside a square inch of sky. The clouds piled up above the rooftops crept up on him, the sun didn’t rise or fall in a specific place. It was then that the call of the wild came. He had to return to his mountains, take back the infinite space, regain the temperament of the wolf. And give up a brilliant career. Thanks to the support of Soprani, the big police boss, he managed to get himself appointed to the unimportant position of Inspector for Public Security of Valdiluce. He had established a close relationship with Soprani. They had often gone skiing together. The big boss had organised the