Situation Normal

Fifteen thousand pounds per executive for the weekend. Twelve executives. Three days of high-altitude leadership training in a glass-and-timber resort that emerges from the mountaintop like something extruded rather than built. Capacity thirty guests, staff of eight, access by cable car or helicopter, no road in winter.

The cable car climbs through cloud. The cloud breaks. The light hits like a change of subject: sky, rock, snow, the Eiger across the valley standing in the morning like something the landscape had built to prove a point. Every crevice visible. Every snow field, every shadow, every striation in the rock. The clarity is aggressive. The mountain is not interested in secrets.

Hans Brügger meets them in the lobby. Sixty, Swiss, built like something assembled from the same materials as the resort. He memorised the brief, which means he either cares about service or cares about control. Possibly both. His phone chimes. His jaw tightens. He does not look at the phone again. Nadia notices the way his posture shifts afterward, the composition maintained but the content altered, like a building settling into its foundations.

The retreat begins formally that evening. Mr Pemberton, the facilitator, is currently in the Great Room arranging what he calls the space. The faintest pause before the space. By Monday morning, one of the twelve executives is dead in a place where the building manages its own atmosphere and its own light, and the cable car operator’s pause makes more sense than it did when he made it.