Five

by Ursula P Archer

  Shaking her head, Beatrice leant back in her chair. What had she been expecting? That the killer would leave clues on the Internet for them?

  On the off chance, she clicked through the profiles of the users who had commented on the stone chasm cache. Most of them would be easy to track down through the details they had given, and some had even included a photo – often depicting them out in the countryside, smiling, with a muddy plastic container in their hands. The picture of Nora Papenberg building a snowman would have fitted in perfectly here.

  Beatrice read the entries and profile descriptions until her eyes were so tired they began to sting. Stefan had already spent the previous evening looking in the forums for leads, for any conspicuous members from the local area. It was a Sisyphean task. But if the perpetrator was from the geocaching community, it wasn’t entirely impossible that he might betray himself through a post. They couldn’t rule it out, at least.

  Beatrice altered the map on the screen again and clicked on the second-nearest blue question mark she could find. It revealed a Sudoku, the solution of which was supposed to give the correct coordinates. Was that the standard kind of puzzle? Another blue question mark, however, revealed a load of numbers with no apparent system. It was a complete mystery.

  She tried to suppress a yawn. ‘Pretty complicated, huh, Elvira?’ The cuddly owl’s yellow plastic eyes stared unseeingly into nothingness.

  Beatrice carried on searching, stumbling upon an online dictionary devoted exclusively to geocaching. One of the first links led her to a list of abbreviations. ‘TFTH’ was there, the one with which the Owner had so sarcastically signed off his message. Perfect. She decided she would read on for a little bit longer, then go to sleep. With the end of her working day finally in sight, Beatrice fetched a glass of wine and shunted her notepaper to the side. No more revelations would be presenting themselves today, no flashes of inspiration which ran the risk of being washed away into the depths of claret red forgetfulness.

  She took a sip from her glass. The abbreviation ‘BYOP’ meant ‘Bring Your Own Pen’, and was usually found in caches that were too small to contain writing utensils of their own. ‘HCC’ was ‘Hard Core Caching’ ‘JAFT’ stood for ‘Just Another Fucking Tree’ and denoted a Tree Cache with Rope Technique, whatever that was supposed to mean. Beatrice squinted, trying to ignore the headache that was threatening to take hold. She would have to go deeper into this material to make any sense of it, much deeper.

  It was 10.35 p.m. She yawned again and caught herself wishing she could just snuggle up against the furry owl and go to sleep.

  The shrill tone of the telephone was like a sudden punch to the chest. Beatrice jumped up from her chair, ran across the lounge and practically ripped the handset from the unit. Had the children woken up? Hopefully not. A telephone call this late could only mean something had happened. Another dead body, or another body part …

  She braced herself for anything; anything, that was, except Achim’s nightly onslaughts.

  The stupid asshole.

  ‘How lovely to actually get through for once.’ As always, his voice was dripping with contempt. ‘Make sure they’re ready tomorrow, half-one on the dot. And this time remember to pack a jacket for the kids, and by that I mean one each. Mina almost froze to death last time.’

  Don’t let him get to you. ‘Of course. Tomorrow at half-one,’ she said curtly. ‘And stop calling at this time of night – the children don’t just need their jackets, they need their sleep too.’

  ‘I don’t need parental advice from you—!’

  Acting on reflex, Beatrice hung up. Another thing he could use against her. The cosy sleepiness from a few moments ago had vanished; her heart was beating so hard it felt as if she’d just come back from a long run. But at least the children didn’t seem to have stirred. She bookmarked the cache dictionary and shut down the laptop, unplugged the telephone, turned her mobile off and went to brush her teeth. As she brushed, she realised she was humming something, but couldn’t place the sombre melody at first. Then she realised: it was the Stabat Mater.

  ‘Herr Papenberg? I’m sorry to disturb you, but we need your assistance with something.’ Beatrice strove to inject the right balance of sympathy and efficiency into her voice. ‘Would you be able to provide us with a sample of your wife’s handwriting? A letter, a diary – or something along those lines?’

  ‘For what?’ He sounded exhausted.

  ‘We have a note that may possibly have been written by your wife. We need to have the handwriting compared by a graphologist.’

  She could hear him struggling to keep his voice steady. ‘A note? Can I see it?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. There’s some information that we can’t even make available to the next of kin. Not yet, in any case.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said wearily. ‘Okay then. I need to run a few errands and I’ll be in the area anyway, so I’ll drop off a sample of her handwriting for you.’

  ‘That would be great, thank you very much.’

  That morning, Hoffmann had appointed Florin leader of ‘Project Geocache’, a name that had amused Beatrice for several minutes even though she couldn’t have explained why. He now came through the door with Stefan in tow, who was beaming across his unshaven cheeks. ‘I’m officially on board. Give me some work to do!’

  ‘You’ll live to regret it,’ said Beatrice in mock earnest, pressing the list of choir rehearsals into his hands. ‘We’re still missing the rehearsal times for some of these. It would also be helpful to find out the private addresses of the singers we need to speak with. It’s possible that some of the choirs are performing this Sunday, so I’d like us to check those out together.’

  Stefan gave an exaggeratedly snappy salute, already on his way back to his office.

  It’s good that he’s motivated, thought Beatrice with a glance at the clock. It was only half-nine, but she felt as if she already had an entire working day behind her. She had slept badly last night, dreaming intermittently of Achim and sawn-off limbs. Then she had just lain awake in the darkness, trying to make some sense of the case.

  ‘We need to question the people from Nora Papenberg’s work as soon as possible.’ Florin pushed a piece of paper over the desk towards her, a printout of the contact details on the agency’s home page.

  ‘I know, and preferably today. We can do it as soon as I’ve spoken to Konrad Papenberg. He’s bringing a sample of her handwriting across, and I really need to ask him something.’ She wiped her eyes, too roughly; a few eyelashes were now clinging to the back of her hand.

  ‘Should we send one of the others? Stefan could do it, or Sibylle, she—’

  ‘No.’ Hearing the hardness in her voice, she tried to soften it with a smile. ‘I want to speak to them myself, otherwise I’ll lose my sense of the case. It already has too many components as it is. The body, the coordinates. Then the puzzle, dismembered parts of a second body, and blood traces from that body on the clothing of the first. All of these things are connected, but I can’t figure out in what way.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ And I don’t want anyone to beat me to it. She didn’t say it out loud, knowing that Florin was a great believer in teamwork and collaborative brainstorming. That was a good thing, of course – for him. But Beatrice found it hard to think clearly as part of a team. She had to do her thinking alone, or with one other person at the most. Any more than that and she just found it disruptive.

  The shiny silver ballpoint pen which Florin was rotating between his fingers cast elongated reflections on the wall. ‘Well, I still think it’s possible that one of these threads is designed as a distraction for us, so we confirm the Owner’s belief that the police are incompetent.’

  Without saying anything in response, Beatrice began to sort out the files strewn all over her desk. The photo of the hand with its macerated skin, enclosed in plastic shrink-wrap. She placed it to the right of the photo of the stone chasm where they had found the box, and diagonally opposite
the photo of the handwritten puzzle. She paused to take it all in. Then she changed the order around, waiting for the pictures to tell her a story. But they kept their silence.

  ‘I’ll tell Stefan to go with you to the agency,’ she heard Florin say.

  ‘Perfect.’ She glanced at the clock and wished she could pick the kids up from school and drop them off at Achim’s right away. Then she would have crossed one thing off today’s to-do list. ‘By the way,’ she added, more loudly this time, ‘the new owl was a hit. The children love it.’

  ‘Good, then at least one of my missions has been successful.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Keep your fingers crossed for my next one; I have to go and discuss our plan of action with Hoffmann. See you later.’

  Konrad Papenberg arrived shortly before ten that morning, looking as though he had lost ten pounds in the last two days. Beatrice led him into one of the consultation rooms. She apologised for the stuffy air and opened the window.

  ‘Yesterday I went to … identify Nora.’ After every word he spoke, Papenberg seemed to need to summon up new strength. ‘It was her … and yet it wasn’t. Not properly, do you know what I mean? She wasn’t a person. Just – a thing.’ A jolt passed through his body; he turned aside, took a tissue from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  Beatrice paused to give him a moment. ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ It wasn’t a lie. She had never subscribed to the belief that dead people just looked as if they were sleeping. They looked like a foreign species. Shockingly different, even if they had died peacefully.

  Papenberg forced a smile. ‘Thank you. I realise this is nothing new for you.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ Beatrice searched for words. ‘It’s not something you ever get used to, that’s the thing. It’s always hard, every single time.’ She fell silent. Was she bothering him with her own sensitivities? ‘I’m really very sorry for what you’re going through, that was what I wanted to say.’

  He nodded jerkily, abruptly, without looking at Beatrice. ‘The handwriting sample,’ he mumbled, lifting his bag onto the desk.

  A notepad, full of scribbled writing. Nora Papenberg had filled a good forty pages with brainstormed ideas, trying out and discarding advertising slogans alongside comments like ‘too lame’, ‘stale’, ‘dull’ – or ‘not bad’, ‘has potential’, ‘promising’.

  Beatrice would have been willing to bet two months’ wages that the handwriting here was the same as that in the message in the cache box, but it would be unprofessional to jump to conclusions. Before she had the graphology report in her hands, nothing could be regarded as a sure thing.

  ‘Thank you.’ She laid both hands on the notepad. ‘I’ll make sure you get it back once we no longer need it.’

  The man standing opposite her was gazing into space. ‘A colleague of yours questioned me yesterday. He wanted an alibi from me, for the night when …’ He was kneading the fingers of his left hand. ‘I don’t have one.’ Now he looked Beatrice straight in the eyes. ‘Are there many people who have alibis for crimes committed between two and four in the morning?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I didn’t …’

  ‘We have to ask. It’s part of the routine investigation process.’ Beatrice tried to add some warmth into her smile. ‘There’s something else I’d like to ask if possible – don’t worry, it’s not connected to you.’ She stroked her fingers across the notebook, feeling the swirling imprints left behind by the pressure of Nora Papenberg’s pen. ‘Your wife liked spending time in the great outdoors, is that right? Is it possible that geocaching was one of her hobbies?’

  Konrad Papenberg’s expression was one of confusion. ‘Geo – what?’

  Perhaps not, then. ‘Geocaching,’ repeated Beatrice, disheartened. ‘It’s a kind of treasure hunt. You use a GPS device, work with coordinates …’ She kept her gaze trained on his face, but the last word didn’t provoke any reaction from him.

  ‘Oh, right, yes, I’ve heard about that somewhere,’ said Papenberg flatly. ‘And it … it sounds like something Nora would have enjoyed.’ He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling to blink back the tears that were building up. ‘But it’s not something we ever did. There’s … so much we never did.’

  Beatrice handed him a tissue and waited.

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Almost two years. We met three years ago. Next week is – would have been – our anniversary.’

  ‘I really am very sorry.’ She stood up and pushed the chair back. ‘We’ll do everything we can to find her killer.’ She really meant it, but her words still sounded hollow. ‘If something else comes to mind which you think might be helpful to us, do please get in touch, okay?’

  Konrad Papenberg nodded absent-mindedly. He let Beatrice walk him to the door and went to shake her hand, only then noticing that he was still holding the crumpled-up tissue in his. As if this discovery made everything even worse, he leant back against the wall and closed his eyes. ‘I just really need to know what happened,’ he whispered. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I do, very much so,’ answered Beatrice. ‘We won’t give up, I promise.’

  She watched him as he went back outside to his car, a green Mazda that he had parked with one wheel up on the kerb. His posture didn’t change, whereas the opposite was often the case when people left the police station and felt that they were no longer being watched.

  Beatrice turned and went back to her office, the notepad clamped tightly under her arm. Florin must still be talking to Hoffmann. His mobile was on his desk, seemingly forgotten. The display lit up, indicating an incoming call or message.

  No, she wouldn’t look to see what it was.

  What would even make her contemplate such a thing? It must be the lack of sleep.

  She opened up her contact list on the computer and dialled the graphologist’s phone number.

  ‘Juliane Heilig.’

  ‘Beatrice Kaspary here, Salzburg Landeskriminalamt. I need a graphology report, a handwriting comparison. Can I email the documents through to you?’

  ‘Of course. What exactly would you like to know?’

  ‘Whether the two pieces were composed by the same person.’

  ‘No problem. How urgent is it?’

  ‘The beginning of next week would be great. But if you could give me your first impressions today – off the record, of course – then that would be a great help.’

  A brief pause. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Beatrice stared at each of them in turn, the cheerful scribbles on the notepad and the copy of the handwritten cache letter. ‘It’s very probable that one of the samples was written under stress. In extreme circumstances.’

  ‘That’s useful to know, thank you.’ Heilig gave her the email address, and Beatrice sent the documents through to her. She had barely sat back down at her desk before Stefan rushed in.

  ‘I’ve got almost all the rehearsal times for the choirs now – it was quite a mission!’ He looked at Beatrice expectantly, prompting her to nod in approval.

  ‘Excellent work.’

  ‘Thanks. Three choirs are singing on Sunday – two at Mass, one at a wedding. If we split them up between us we could check them all out.’ He handed her a note detailing the names of the choirs in question, along with the times, churches and addresses.

  ‘Good work, Stefan. I mean it, you’re being a great help.’

  He beamed. ‘I’ll go and make some more calls – it makes sense to get through the list today.’

  On his way out, he almost crashed into Florin, who was storming in with a dark expression on his face.

  ‘Bad news?’ asked Beatrice.

  ‘No. Just Hoffmann’s usual persecution complex. The press are on his back, so he wants to give the journalists more information than we’d like.’ Florin sank down into his revolving chair and darted a glance at the clock on the wall. ‘He doesn’t like the fact that we didn’t inform him right away and give him the chance to check out
the crime scene himself.’

  That was nothing new. ‘But we tried to.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but he says we didn’t try hard enough. Anyway, he’s sulking and lashing out. He wants us to put pressure on the husband. Let’s hope he cheers up over the weekend, otherwise he’s going to be constantly sticking his oar in.’

  Half-past ten. For the third time, Beatrice tried to reach Dr Vogt at the Institute for Forensic Medicine, but still without success. Then she tried his mobile. To her surprise, she got through.

  ‘I’m busy,’ said Vogt, without wasting time on a greeting.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m still going to need some preliminary information if I can’t get the report before the weekend.’

  ‘The Papenberg report?’

  ‘No, the one on the severed hand. In order to find out who it belonged to, I at least need some clues.’

  The pathologist sighed. ‘There’s not much I can tell you. The hand belonged to a man, but with the best will in the world I can’t tell you when he died. The decaying process was delayed by the plastic shrink-wrapping, so there was no maggot infestation or anything of the sort.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The victim’s age is equally difficult to estimate. I’d say somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. The blood group is O positive.’

  ‘Have you already taken fingerprints?’

  Vogt cleared his throat. ‘Of course. I’ll do my best to get the report to you today. And there’s one more thing – the man must have worn a ring for a long time, because there was an indentation on the fourth finger. I’m guessing it was a wedding ring. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that he had a rendezvous with a lover and took the ring off, or that he was recently divorced.’

  Jealousy climbed back up on Beatrice’s list of potential murder motives. ‘Thank you. So the report …’