9.30 a.m.
The top of the Grand Alpine gondola
The lift attendant steps warily into the gondola, just to make sure.
He searches for a pulse; finds none. The man, curled on the floor in the foetal position, facing the open doors, is unmistakably dead: his skin cold.
His suntan and full head of red-gold hair and look of general vigour and vitality make for an uncanny contrast with death – he seems almost more like a waxwork than a corpse.
His eyes, eerily enough, are open. The only other object in the gondola is an empty coffee flask, which has rolled into the shadows beneath the seat.
There is a smell of coffee and of something else that oddly enough makes the attendant think of the Hanselmann Konditorei in St Moritz, where he grew up.
Yes, that’s it: it reminds him of freshly baked nusstorte: the sweet, caramelised nut-filled pastry that was their most famous confection.
Perhaps the man had brought a pastry from the hotel restaurant to enjoy with his coffee. The last breakfast he would ever eat.
The attendant realises that he doesn’t want to spend another moment alone with the corpse if he can help it. It’s enough to rattle even the most stoic of men.
He takes out his radio and calls down to the hotel to receive his instructions.
Simple enough: he must send the body back down in the gondola again, like an unwanted meal in a dumbwaiter.
The staff from the hotel will meet it and transport it to the hotel to await the authorities.
If left up here in these sub-zero temperatures it would freeze and denature.
This is the protocol with all bodies found on the mountain here: claim them before the mountain can take them for its own.
And all the while the dead man stares blindly on, at a view he cannot see through the open doors: towards the majestic Alpine chain and the Black Bear Pass.