Five

by Ursula P Archer

  If I wanted to hide something here, how would I go about it?

  She tried to focus on her surroundings, to shut out disruptive thoughts. Water. Trees. Earth. Yes, burying it was the most likely option.

  Just a moment – the trees. Beatrice touched the raw bark of the tree trunk rising up directly next to her. There had been something on that list of caching abbreviations. She closed her eyes, concentrating. JAFT.

  Just another fucking tree.

  Tree hiding places were popular and common, and during her research Beatrice had stumbled across some very creative ideas – preserved roots, hollowed-out branches, nesting boxes mounted especially for the purpose of hiding a cache. It was certainly worth pursuing the idea.

  The inspiration came completely out of the blue, at the very moment when Beatrice stood up to go back to the others. You know everything, and yet you find nothing.

  We do know, she thought, but only because he’s telling us.

  ‘Florin!’ Twigs and dry leaves crackled beneath her feet. ‘We have to look upwards, to the treetops! We’ll probably need ladders.’ She positioned herself on the spot Stefan had marked and looked up at the branches of the nearest tree.

  ‘Why up there?’

  ‘The Owner told us. I just didn’t understand it.’ She turned to Florin. ‘“Chin up”, he wrote. Does anyone have binoculars with them?’

  They discovered the cache – much to Stefan’s pride – directly by the coordinates he had dictated, fastened a good eight metres up a beech tree. The container was bigger than all the ones they had found so far, a box with the dimensions of a small television.

  Stefan offered to retrieve it. He clambered up, accompanied by Drasche’s detailed instructions.

  ‘It’s attached to the trunk with gaffer tape,’ he called down to them from above. ‘I’ll cut it loose, then lower it down to you on the rope.’

  Beatrice watched with mixed emotions as the container swayed its way down to them. Even before it had touched the ground, she was pretty sure what it contained. The size was about right, and the Owner’s words …

  Even Drasche was impatient this time, and declared that he was prepared to open the box on location. ‘Without taking any risks and destroying important evidence, of course,’ he growled as Beatrice started to edge closer.

  The box had four snap locks, which he undid one after another until the lid was open and the contents revealed.

  She had guessed right. Chin up could be interpreted in more ways than one.

  The part of Herbert Liebscher’s body which had once steered his thoughts, housed his memories and directed his senses was now wrapped in the same strong plastic film that had surrounded all the others.

  Beatrice and Florin silently exchanged looks. Vogt wouldn’t need to ponder over the cause of death this time. Half of Liebscher’s head had been shot clean away; a large chunk of the right temple was missing, grey brain mass clinging to the inside of the plastic film.

  Less obvious, but noticeable nonetheless, were the missing ears. On one side, the wound was dark red and scabbed, while on the other it was smooth and pale. The uneven teeth, stained a brownish yellow, were bared.

  A tea drinker, thought Beatrice, or a heavy smoker.

  Gases had collected under the film, swelling out the plastic and threatening to burst it in the not-too-distant future.

  ‘We’ve nearly got the whole guy now,’ observed Drasche. He carefully pulled the usual two notes out from under the head.

  ‘You’ll get the photos this afternoon, and the information as soon as I get back. Watch your backs, guys, this is getting more gruesome by the day.’

  ‘No, stop.’ Beatrice went over to him. ‘I want to read them now, see the handwriting.’ She ignored Drasche’s groan and peered over his shoulder.

  Nora Papenberg’s handwriting again, now almost as familiar as that of an old friend.

  Stage Five

  You’re searching for a torn woman. Indecisiveness has made her sick, and one day it will cost her her life. She is both guilty and innocent at the same time, like most of us, but she bears her guilt more heavily than most.

  Look for dark hair and a name to match, for talent in flute and composition.

  Once again, the year of birth is the key: add 15 to the last two digits of the number and multiply by 250. Add 254 and subtract the result from the northern coordinates from Stage Four. Multiply the first two digits by the second two digits of the birth year, add the number 153 to the result and then add the resulting sum to the eastern coordinates.

  We’ll see each other there.

  A woman, for the first time. No, that wasn’t entirely true – the case had begun with Nora Papenberg, but there hadn’t been any search leading to her.

  Could it be that the Owner placed significance on symmetry? A woman at the start, four men, then a woman again at the end? No, he’d said he planned to keep Sigart until the end.

  Drasche was now reading out the cache note – Congratulations, you’ve found it! This time it was worth it, don’t you think? – but she was only half-listening. Flute and composition. That sounded like a student or teacher at the Mozarteum. Dark hair and a name to match.

  Florin already had the car engine running. This time, they would beat the Owner to it.

  Torn woman sounded quite worrying, particularly as the Owner seemed to be developing a fondness for the literal. While she and Florin were in the car, Beatrice requested a list of female students studying composition and flute from the Mozarteum. She also requested a second list of the names of the teachers, and a third of alumni.

  ‘That’s a good start.’ They were the first words Florin had uttered since they drove off. ‘Don’t forget the private academies.’

  ‘I won’t. But first there’s something else I want to check out.’ She looked through her notes for the telephone number of the conductor for the choir Christoph Beil had sung in.

  ‘Kaspary here, LKA. Could you tell me where you normally hold your choir practice?’

  ‘In the church. There are set times when we’re allowed to use the space.’

  ‘I see. And you never hold them anywhere else?’

  ‘Well,’ said the man hesitantly. ‘Occasionally, ahead of really important concerts, we use one of the rooms in the Mozarteum.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Feeling that she finally had something important within her sights, Beatrice tucked her phone away. ‘You’ll see,’ she said to Florin. ‘We’ll find what we’re looking for at the Mozarteum.’

  But when the lists arrived, Beatrice’s suspicions weren’t confirmed. Dark hair and a name to match – she had hoped for an obvious choice: something Mediterranean, or literal, like ‘Schwarz’, for example. She hadn’t reckoned with the large number of students from Japan and China studying music in Salzburg. They were particularly prevalent in the flute classes, regardless of whether it was the transverse or wooden flute.

  ‘Shit,’ groaned Beatrice, leafing through the printouts. ‘It’s going to be impossible to check them all out. The ex-alumni have long since moved away, and the others …’ She rested her head in one hand, closing her eyes for a moment. What if she discounted the international students initially? The clue could refer to one of them, of course, but so far all the victims had been locals.

  Using this approach, she looked through the list again, but the darkest name she came across was ‘Wolf’. Alexandra Wolf. Dark in a mystical sense, perhaps? She requested the girl’s details, but instinct told her she hadn’t yet found who they were looking for.

  She read through the Owner’s message once more, and then again. A torn woman. Sick with indecisiveness, both guilty and innocent. Perpetrator and victim?

  Look for talent in flute and composition. Talent, not qualifications.

  A picture began to form in Beatrice’s mind. Someone haunted by a past event, someone who felt guilty and distraught. Torn. Or perhaps they had been torn from something – their studies, for example. Beatrice picked up the pho
ne.

  ‘It’s Beatrice Kaspary again. Do you happen to have any records of female students who interrupted their studies there at the Mozarteum? I’m thinking in particular of the flute and composition classes.’

  The woman at the other end of the line sighed. ‘That’s a difficult one. We can of course find out who quit, but it’s a time-consuming task when you don’t know who you’re looking for.’ It seemed quite clear that she wasn’t contemplating making the effort. ‘Do you at least know when the girl in question broke off her studies?’

  ‘No.’ Don’t get discouraged, Beatrice told herself. ‘Send me the files from the last ten years. That should be enough.’

  Another sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘His nickname was “DescartesHL” and his password “skyblue”.’ The air in Stefan’s office was sticky. Bechner, who he shared the room with, had an issue with open windows – a pollen allergy.

  ‘He found over nine hundred caches, most of them here and in Bavaria, but it seems he used to go caching while he was on holiday too.’ Stefan scrolled down the page to a bar chart that showed which countries Liebscher had gone cache-hunting in: Italy, France, Great Britain. Even the USA.

  ‘Most geocachers love their statistics,’ explained Stefan. ‘Look, there’s a percentage calculation of which days of the week he was most active on. Sunday is at the top, which is no surprise.’

  ‘This is great work, thank you.’ Beatrice noted the details down on a scrap of paper.

  Descartes. Everything that is entirely probable is probably false. The Owner knew the nickname and had built it into his game; he had known about Liebscher’s hobby. Is that why he’d hidden his body parts all over Salzburg, as if his corpse was a puzzle they had to piece together?

  No. That was too simple. Too banal.

  ‘DescartesHL,’ she reported to Florin shortly later. ‘It’s pretty clear that HL stands for Herbert Liebscher. And Descartes, well, it seems he couldn’t let go of the mathematician in him even on his days off.’

  That evening, Beatrice left the office earlier than usual. She drove over to see her mother and the children first, then headed home and set her laptop up on the living-room table.

  Name: DescartesHL.

  Password: skyblue.

  One click of the mouse and Liebscher’s geocaching profile page was in front of her. The finds from the last thirty days were shown first, listed under the Geocaches link, and it seemed Liebscher had been active until shortly before his death. The most recent entry was twenty-two days old, a multi-cache near the Traunsee lake.

  Challenging, but worth it! he had written in his online logbook. TFTC!

  Three days before that, he had gone on a lengthier expedition, logging eight finds. None of the entries revealed any unusual observations. He praised original hiding places or the beautiful scenery the search had led him to, and expressed his gratitude on every one.

  Beatrice worked backwards chronologically. There was a tricky mystery cache which Liebscher was very proud to have solved; according to his comment he had left a coin behind, presumably one of the special caching ones they had found in his apartment. He had also logged three multi-caches and twenty-four ‘traditionals’, in other words, caches without difficult additional puzzles.

  She had now reached mid-March of this year, and had almost given up hope. The most exciting comments had been along the lines of: Looked by the wrong rock to start with, but the hiding place became clear after a quick look around. Coordinates are a little off!

  But then came the entry from 12 March. It was just a ‘traditional’, but it made Beatrice’s inner divining rod lurch. The cache was in central Salzburg, hidden in a park near the Leopoldskron Palace.

  Original idea! Liebscher had written. Discovered along with Shinigami. TFTC!

  It was the only entry so far that made reference to a fellow cacher. And the same applied to the other three finds Liebscher had logged on 12 March. He and Shinigami seemed to have spent the whole day together on a collaborative treasure hunt.

  She scrolled on. On 10 March there were two caches, but no reference to a companion. But four days before that, on 6 March, Shinigami was there again:

  Great hiding place, but the logbook is almost full! Found together with Shinigami. TFTC!

  Okay. Every finder documented his success on the page of the cache in question, so Shinigami’s comment should be recorded there too. She opened the link and looked through the comments to 6 March. There was DescartesHL, and directly above him Shinigami, who had not made his entry until three days later.

  She read, realising at once that there was something she could put her finger on here. Or rather someone.

  Found with DescartesHL. Sometimes we find, and sometimes we’re found, isn’t that true? TFTC.

  And to the rest of you: TFTH.

  The rest of you, thought Beatrice. That’s us.

  Shinigami’s profile was empty. Of course it was. The only information on there was his registration date and cache finds. The list was short: seven caches, all discovered in March and April this year. Shinigami had registered on 26 February. Barely a week before he first went on a hunt with DescartesHL.

  It took Beatrice no more than three minutes to confirm her suspicion. Shinigami had found all seven caches together with Herbert Liebscher, and in all seven entries he had not only expressed his thanks for the cache, but for the hunt too.

  She managed to catch Florin while he was still at the office; he picked up straight away.

  ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘What? No, everything’s fine. But I found something.’ She took a sip of cold coffee from the sorry remains of her breakfast still on the countertop, then grimaced. ‘I’m ninety per cent sure that the Owner went geocaching with Liebscher. I’m sending you the link. Take a look.’

  In the blink of an eye, the mail was sent. Down the line, Beatrice heard Florin click on it. Then another click.

  ‘It’s the entry above DescartesHL, the sixth of March.’

  ‘Shinigami.’ Florin’s voice was as clear as if he was sitting right next to her. ‘Sounds Japanese.’

  The overseas students at the Mozarteum came into her mind. Maybe we’ll have to check them out after all, thought Beatrice resignedly. Nothing could be ruled out, nothing at all.

  ‘We’ll look into it – I’ll check whether Stefan or Bechner are still here. We need the real identity behind the pseudonym. This is great progress – thanks, Bea.’

  It was unusual for him to thank her, and it left a strange aftertaste. Was he trying to counterbalance Hoffmann’s attacks?

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Now go and get some sleep. I’m stopping soon too.’

  ‘Soon.’ In the background, she heard his mobile ring, the tone he had programmed for Anneke. He would be in a hurry to go now anyway. ‘See you tomorrow, Florin,’ she said, hanging up before he could.

  Liebscher’s first cache find was almost seven years ago, meaning that he must have gotten a taste for the treasure hunt long before it had become a trend. His enthusiasm was clearly audible in his log entries, and he had gone out geocaching practically every weekend. Most of the caches he’d found back then didn’t even exist any more: a red line through them meant they’d been archived. Only a small number of caches seemed to last more than four or five years.

  Treasure hunting by GPS had clearly been one of Liebscher’s favourite pastimes for a number of years, and then …

  Beatrice stopped. She scrolled up, then further down, checking the dates. No, she hadn’t been mistaken. After a weekend in Vienna that had brought him eighteen new finds, there was a break of a year and a half. Not one single cache. Nothing.

  Had he been ill? Or had the divorce sapped too much of his energy? She would have to ask at the school.

  After the gap, his approach seemed more hesitant. There was around one registered find a month, two at most, and the log entries seemed less detailed than the older ones.

>   Quickly found, TFTC. Aside from the ones she had read earlier, most were very brief indeed.

  But why? Beatrice looked at the clock. It was half-past ten, much too late to phone Romana Liebscher now. Tomorrow.

  She clapped the laptop shut and went to the kitchen, where she found herself unable to decide between sparkling water and the last bottle of beer which had been sitting in the fridge door for months on end now.

  Water. She drank it straight out of the bottle, enjoying the prickling sensation of the bubbles in her mouth, her throat, her stomach. She suppressed a burp, then wondered who she was trying to be polite for.

  Intent on enjoying just ten minutes of free time before going to bed, she walked over to the window and looked out at the night sky over the city. There was almost a full moon, another three days to go at most.

  ‘Shinigami,’ she whispered to the moon. She took a long slug of water and pulled the curtains shut, just in case she was being watched. Then she smacked herself on the forehead in disbelief and ran back over to the coffee table.

  Why hadn’t she checked right away? Now she’d have to start up the laptop again, the rattling old heap.

  Google was generous with its answers: A shinigami was a Japanese death spirit, regarded as a bad omen. Beatrice fumbled blindly behind her, grasped the lint-covered blanket from the reclining chair and pulled it around her shoulders.

  The Owner had made his intentions clear from the very moment he registered on the geocaching site. He would bring death. But no one had understood his message – not least Herbert Liebscher.

  Dagmar Zoubek was one of those women who command respect at the very first glance. Tall, with a taut back and an equally taut bun at the nape of her neck, she reminded Beatrice of the ballet teacher who, with her impatient, bony hands, had pushed Beatrice’s toes outwards when she was six years old. But Zoubek taught the flute, not ballet.

  Beatrice had made a spur-of-the-moment decision that morning. The thought of having to plod through endless lists of names had been so unbearable to her that she had decided to go for the direct route. She would look for a torn woman, not a dark-haired woman with a dark name.