John Leake - Cold a Long Time

While Bob and Blackstock were in the helicopter, another officer spoke with a parking lot attendant, who said he was certain the car had not been there prior to September 1, and fairly sure it had been there since September 8. Lynda wondered why he was so sure of this, and why the two different points of certainty. She felt a mounting frustration with all the ambiguity.

At the end of the day, the MacPhersons had to face the terrible truth that finding Duncan’s car had not, as they had so hoped, quickly led to him. As night fell, Bob again looked at the Opel Corsa, sitting by itself in the parking lot. What could it mean that it had been ignored for so long? Something very strange is going on here , he thought.

They decided to check into one of the hotels near the gondola station, so they parked their car (with a missing person poster taped in the rear window) near the entrance of a place called the Apparthotel Mutterbergalm. As they approached the front desk, a young man walked up and said something to the receptionist in German. She turned to Lynda and Bob.

“He says he recognizes the person in the photograph in your car.” Instantly their frustration and despair were supplanted by hope, and they turned to look at the young man who claimed to have seen Duncan. He was lean and athletic, with fine cheekbones and light blue eyes. Switching from German to decent English, he told his story.

His name was Walter Hinterhoelzl, and he taught snowboarding at the Stubai Glacier. That day he happened to be at the ski resort to take his mother (an elegant-looking lady in her forties) skiing on her birthday. Just walking past the MacPhersons’ car, he’d noticed the photo and recognized the young man as a pupil he’d had in August—he would check his records for the exact date.

Lynda and Bob were surprised to hear that the ski resort had been open in August, as no one had mentioned this before. Walter explained that most of the slopes closed in June, though a couple of them, located on a north-facing glacier, stayed open all summer. In order to get to the glacier, one had to take a gondola up to a high mountain station, just below the peak.

On the day of his lesson, Duncan had appeared at Walter’s snowboarding school at the Eisgrat Station at around 10:00. He’d already rented a snowboard—a Duret 1700, as Walter recalled—as well as boots and gaiters from the station’s rental shop. Normally, when one took a lesson, the gear was included, but because Duncan had already rented it, Walter told him he might as well use it. However, because Walter’s instruction and gear package cost 50 schillings less than the sum of a lesson and separate gear rental, Walter went to the shop with Duncan and asked them to honor the discount—a request they denied. And so Walter reduced the lesson price. He emphasized that Duncan had excelled on the snowboard—that “he was very strong in the legs and could handle the board very well.”

Following the two-hour lesson, Walter had lunch with Duncan at the Eisgrat restaurant. Duncan mentioned he was a hockey player who’d recently accepted a job in Scotland. He had only a couple of days left for his tour, as he needed to be back in Nuremberg to catch a flight. He was thinking about doing some windsurfing on Lake Garda. Walter told him that Garda was too far, and that he should try Lake Achen near Innsbruck instead. Duncan also said he wanted to take a follow-up snowboarding lesson, so they agreed to meet the next morning at the Apparthotel if the weather was good.

After lunch, Duncan bought a violet-colored sweatshirt (brand name Capriccio) at the Eisgrat retail shop, as his sweater and turtleneck were damp from the morning lesson. These, along with his leather belt, he hung to dry on the radiator in Walter’s office before heading off to the slope to practice by himself for the afternoon. At around 2:30, Walter’s girlfriend Daniela saw him riding up the tow-lift.

At the end of the day, after Walter finished teaching other lessons, he returned to the snowboarding school and noticed that Duncan’s clothing was still there. Because Duncan had mentioned his desire to meet the following morning for further instruction, Walter assumed he intended to pick up his clothing then. He was surprised when Duncan didn’t show up the next day, but figured he’d decided to do something else and would be in touch about getting his stuff. A couple of weeks later, Walter took the clothing home to his apartment in Innsbruck and planned to give it back when he finally heard from Duncan.

Lynda and Bob were enormously grateful to Walter for being so forthcoming with so much information, and they therefore didn’t notice that his story contained a number of implausible details. As they recounted his story (with the aid of Lynda’s journal) to me during my October 2009 visit to Saskatoon, I was sitting at their breakfast table, looking at photographs.

“Walter told you he just happened to be at the glacier that day to take his mother skiing?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lynda replied.

“Are you positive he told you that?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Because of this,” I said, and pointed to the photograph of Duncan’s car, sitting in an otherwise empty row of plum parking spaces near the gondola station.

“If the mountain had been open for skiing on Friday, September 22, 1989, the parking lot would have been full.”

As events were happening in real time, it was only natural that the MacPhersons regarded Walter as sincere. Given that he approached them, they had no reason to suspect that his apparent frankness was a ruse.

After hearing Walter’s story, they called Inspector Brecher, who came to the hotel to hear the account first-hand. Because the two men spoke in German, the MacPhersons didn’t understand what they said, but Brecher concluded by telling them that the search would begin around the skiing area where Duncan had last been seen.

The next morning, Walter fetched the booking slip from his office; it was dated August 9. He then volunteered to call the Youth Hostel in Innsbruck to inquire about Duncan’s stay. The receptionist said that he’d been a guest on the night of August 8, but not the following nights. Walter didn’t mention to the MacPhersons that, during ski season, he kept a room at the Apparthotel Mutterbergalm, where he worked in the evenings, providing entertainment for the guests. Had they’d been aware of this, they probably would have asked him if Duncan had said anything about spending the night of August 9 at the hotel—the most logical place to stay, with his car parked near the entrance, and with his plan to take a follow-up snowboarding lesson the next morning.

A team of volunteer search and rescue workers assembled at the gondola station. They would start on the ski slope on which Duncan had last been seen. Some had repelling gear with which to lower themselves into crevasses on the glacier. According to Inspector Brecher, the slope itself was groomed and inspected every day to insure that it was safe, but it was possible that Duncan had snowboarded or hiked outside of the secured area.

After breakfast, they rode the gondola up 1,150 vertical meters to the Eisgrat (“Ice Spine”) mountain station. The final stretch of cable was suspended over a rocky bed that marked the glacier’s course until the twentieth century, when it had begun to recede rapidly. As Bob looked down at the tons of moraine, he marveled at the stupendous force the ice had exerted.

Arriving at the station, they exited the gondola terminal and were shocked by what they saw. Until that moment, they’d been under the impression that the “Stubai Glacier” was one glacier encompassing a large area and covered with multiple, interconnected ski runs. They’d understood that most of the runs were closed in August, but they had not realized that the slope that was open on August 9—the slope that now lay before them—was a mere bunny hill with a rope tow-lift.