Five

by Ursula P Archer

  No one tells her anything. All she finds out is the same information that’s in the paper. That the murder of Evelyn Rieger resembles another case from three years ago which was never solved. On that occasion, too, the victim was raped, slashed and practically disembowelled.

  Alongside the article, they always print the same photo of Evelyn, taken by Beatrice barely two months ago. Such a beautiful picture of her. An angel with deep red locks and bright green, knowing eyes.

  I miss you so much.

  I’m sorry.

  If I had known.

  If I had listened to you.

  If.

  At the funeral, she tries to imprint the face of every man present on her memory, but the crowd of people is too big. There are two policemen there too, but they keep their distance, looking on awkwardly.

  Her mother and Richard have come, even though they barely knew Evelyn. They’ve closed Mooserhof for two days, which Beatrice is very grateful to them for. She told them about her guilt. I could have prevented it. So easily.

  ‘There’s no way you could have known,’ said her mother. ‘The only guilty party is the man with the knife. The knife killed her, and the man who used it. No one else.’

  The thought comforted Beatrice for a mere five minutes, but then it became stale, like over-chewed gum.

  David comes to the funeral too, wearing a black polo-neck jumper despite the twenty-four-degree heat outside. He comes over to stand next to Beatrice and tries to hold her. She pushes him away.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do to change what happened,’ he says sadly. ‘And neither can you.’

  He has no idea what’s going on in her mind, but he does seem to have genuine feelings for her. And that just makes it worse. She avoids looking at him, punishes herself by looking at Evelyn’s mother instead. She lets Rheinberger’s Stabat Mater soak into her, trying to swallow away the metallic taste in her mouth. Guilt tastes like blood.

  In the weeks that follow, she waits. The case gradually disappears from the news, and the police don’t arrest anyone. David has given up on trying to see her again, while she has given up on trying to finish her studies. After a while, Richard turns up on her doorstep to take her back to Salzburg.

  She doesn’t try to protest. She calls the policewoman in Vienna just once a week now, and there’s never any news. She hates the police. At some point, four or five months after Evelyn’s death, she tells the woman, ‘You’re an incompetent waste of space.’

  Hearing the policewoman’s sharp intake of breath, she prepares herself for a strong retort. But the answer, when it comes, is totally calm. ‘You know what?’ she says. ‘You try and do a better job, you know-it-all.’

  ‘Fine, I will!’ Beatrice hangs up. But the thought sticks in her mind. Every time she thinks about it, it lifts a little of the weight off her shoulders. After six months of therapy, when she finally makes the decision, she is welcomed with open arms.

  It happens during the first year of her training. Along with five of her colleagues, she’s on duty at a ball at the Hohensalzburg Castle. A blond man in a tuxedo keeps strolling past her, smiling. She can see his hesitation.

  ‘There are hundreds of women dressed in expensive dresses in that ballroom, but none of them look as beautiful as you in your uniform.’ Achim Kaspary is the junior manager of a saw factory just outside Salzburg. He treats her well, doesn’t rush things. He’s not anywhere near as exciting as David, and he’s not the kind of man she would let down a friend for.

  He’s a good man to marry.

  The flame of the tea light on the coffee table had almost drowned in liquid wax. Beatrice pulled her hand from Florin’s grasp to push the hair away from her forehead. He hadn’t interrupted her even once, but by the end she had felt his fingers clasping more tightly around hers. She searched his eyes for sympathy, or condemnation, but to her relief found neither.

  ‘You don’t think we’re dealing with Evelyn’s murderer here, do you?’

  She shook her head firmly. ‘No. Evelyn was the victim of a sexual crime.’ My God, she sounded like she was quoting a newspaper article. As if that made things more bearable. ‘She was raped, vaginally and anally, and with all kinds of utensils. Then he slashed her with a kitchen knife that her grandmother had given her.’ Red. Beatrice’s mouth was dry. ‘No one ever questioned the motive. The Owner, on the other hand, has shown zero sexual interest in his victims. Neither the men nor the women. His motive is still completely unknown.’

  Her last words were accompanied by the sounds of a violin. Anneke’s ringtone.

  ‘I can call her back later,’ said Florin. ‘No prob—’

  ‘No, it’s fine, take the call, I have to …’ She gestured towards the bathroom.

  Even through the closed door, she could still hear Florin’s voice; earnest and tender. She couldn’t make out the words, and she preferred it that way. He laughed twice. For a few seconds, Beatrice felt betrayed.

  Only when she could no longer hear his voice did she flush the toilet and leave the grey-tiled refuge.

  ‘Are you okay?’ He had made some tea; the dark, fragrant leaves swam on the surface of the shimmering water.

  ‘No,’ she said, honestly. ‘And I won’t be until we find Sigart. I keep picturing his mutilated hand right in front of me.’ She stopped there, hoping that Florin would understand. He called me because he needed help – does that sound familiar?

  ‘I’m going to drive home,’ she decided, giving the tea a longing look. ‘I’ll do some Internet research. We’ve got the latest coordinates, so I’m sure there must be something there,’ she added.

  ‘But you’re not planning to drive out there by yourself, are you?’

  She snorted. ‘What would I do out there in the middle of the night? Hope I stumble across something that we missed during the day?’

  Florin hugged her and let her go. For a moment, she felt disappointed he didn’t try to persuade her to stay.

  It was stuffy in her apartment; the windows had been closed all day. Beatrice longed to be able to go out on the balcony, but every time she went out there she felt as if she was being watched. It was just her imagination, of course. But she felt more comfortable inside the apartment, with the doors double-locked. She set up her laptop on the coffee table and entered the Dalamasso coordinates into Geocaching.com. There was no cache within a two-mile radius. Then she logged into Liebscher’s account and read through his entries, without knowing what she was actually looking for.

  Half an hour later, she turned the computer off and exchanged staring at the monitor for staring at the lounge ceiling. Melanie Dalamasso’s reaction had been so clear. If only she could speak to her, show her the photos one by one—

  A wish that was certain not to be fulfilled. Beil had been her only chance, the jolt when he had seen Nora Papenberg’s photo. She shouldn’t have let it slip by. Beatrice could hold no one responsible for that but herself.

  ‘Well, you’ve got yourself into a fine mess now, haven’t you?’ From Hoffmann’s expression, anyone would think it was his birthday. He must have been lying in wait for her behind his office door. Now he was sitting there on his pigskin chair, and she was standing before him like a school pupil who had been called to see the headmaster.

  ‘I have a complaint here about you, from Carolin Dalamasso. She said you confronted Melanie with photos of the victims. Is that true?’

  ‘They fell out of my hand.’

  ‘Then that was very clumsy of you, Kaspary. The girl’s condition has worsened considerably since yesterday, the doctors are worried and her mother’s on the warpath.’ He paused. ‘My God. How could you? Tormenting a sick girl like that! You’re a mother yourself. Would you really use any means to get results in spite of your complete lack of competence?’

  She didn’t answer. Anything she said would just make it worse.

  ‘So what did you achieve through your clumsiness? Any new clues? Did the girl tell you a story?’

  ‘No.’


  ‘No.’ Hoffmann rotated a pencil between his fingers. ‘Do you have any idea how much you’ve damaged our reputation by doing this? The reputation of your colleagues, who play by the rules? I’m really disappointed in you, Kaspary. There will be consequences, you mark my words.’ He waited, but when Beatrice just stared at him in silence, he waved her out with his hand.

  When she got back to her own desk, Kossar was there, smiling as she approached. He pointed to two folders, a yellow one and a red one.

  ‘There’s a lot to read here, Beatrice. I went to great lengths to prepare everything for you, but a lot of it is in English. I hope that’s okay.’

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘In the red folder, you’ll find everything you need to know on the case of Raymond Willer, a serial killer from Ohio. The most interesting document is probably the interview my colleague from Quantico conducted with him. Willer selected his victims at random, but left behind encrypted messages to make the police think otherwise. He said it was a competition, him against a huge machinery of power. He was highly intelligent, with an IQ of one hundred and forty-seven. He was only caught after the twelfth murder.’

  Beatrice shrugged. ‘But the Owner isn’t killing random victims.’

  ‘The yellow folder,’ continued Kossar as if he hadn’t even heard what she had said, ‘is about the Mike Gonzalez case. He killed nine people with the sole intent of saving them. There are a few cases like that. Religious delusion – the selection of victims only seems to be at random. In the interview, he said he saw a light above their heads and knew they were ready for the kingdom of God. So he wanted to help them get there as quickly as possible. And the fact that he made them suffer beforehand was apparently just to save them from the fire of purgatory—’

  ‘Our case doesn’t have random victims!’ Beatrice heard herself shout, immediately regretting how loud she was. Losing her nerve was bad, very bad. But at least she had succeeded in halting Kossar’s narrative flow. ‘They knew each other. Not every one of them, perhaps, but Beil knew Papenberg, and Dalamasso knew at least one of the victims. I’m sorry you had to do all this work for nothing.’

  ‘That’s assuming you’re right.’ It seemed nothing made Kossar lose his cool. ‘And that’s not certain yet,’ he said.

  ‘It is. You can bet your fucking glasses on it.’

  You know everything, and yet you find nothing, the Owner had written. You know everything, and yet you find nothing.

  I know that you’re Shinigami. I know that you knew Liebscher, that you went hunting for hidden plastic containers together. And I know you’ve informed yourself about my history, but when? When you realised I was one of the people looking for you? And why?

  ‘Perhaps you’re connected to the motive in some way,’ Florin had pondered the day before. Beatrice had considered the idea, turning it over and over before discarding it.

  No, she didn’t believe that. But he had made her a part of his production, and his messages were predominantly directed at her. Now it was up to her to decipher them.

  I’ve overlooked something, she thought. I should go right back to the beginning, but I don’t have time for that, and the most important figures are already dead.

  But why not look back at the first appearance of the Owner himself, as least in so far as Beatrice was familiar with it?

  26 February, enter Shinigami. He registers with the geocaching website – why? Just to make contact with Herbert Liebscher, or so it appears. For after seven collaborative finds, the website doesn’t seem to interest him any more.

  The caches are part of the solution. Otherwise all the hiding places, abbreviations and coordinates would just be pointless.

  Would he really do all that just because it was Liebscher’s hobby? Beatrice’s instinct protested against this theory; it wasn’t that, it couldn’t be that.

  She rummaged through her notes, a thick folder of them by now, looking for her jottings from Konrad Papenberg’s first interview.

  There it was: Nora had been a nature lover. She was sporty and loved going hiking. But geocaching hadn’t been one of her hobbies. Not if her husband was telling the truth – and presumably he was, because even after a thorough search there had been no sign of a geocaching membership on Nora’s computer. The site owners had confirmed it too: there was no Nora Papenberg registered with them. And that was key, because without a computer, without registering with the online community, geocaching was pretty much impossible.

  Something made Beatrice linger over this thought, preventing her from moving on. What if …

  She read through the husband’s statement once more.

  Married for two years, they had known each other for three. Nora’s computer was three years old, which by today’s standards made it practically a Methuselah in the world of technology, but still—

  A glance at the clock revealed it was technically too late to call Stefan, but she didn’t care – it was important. She dialled his mobile first, then his landline, but every time it just went through to a mailbox with a recorded message of Stefan asking the caller to leave their details.

  Damn it. She wrote herself a note so she wouldn’t forget any of her thoughts.

  We haven’t found anything, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything, thought Beatrice, as she laid down her pen. It’s much more likely that we were looking for the wrong thing.

  ‘Passwords, nicknames, forum pseudonyms – make me a list, please.’

  Stefan’s hair was standing up at a strange angle, as if he had only just woken up. His unshaven chin supported this theory, but his eyes looked wide and alert. ‘For Papenberg? Sure.’

  ‘For Beil and Estermann too. Sigart and Dalamasso don’t have computers, but we should check out Dalamasso again just to make sure.’ She reached out and tried to tame the unruly strands of his hair, but they resisted all of her efforts. ‘I didn’t wake you last night, did I?’

  He shook his head, grinning from ear to ear. ‘No. I put my phone on silent. I wasn’t at home.’

  Aha. ‘Are you going to tell me her name?’

  The left corner of his mouth wandered upwards, followed by the right. ‘I think you’ll have to content yourself with Nora Papenberg’s nicknames for now.’

  She had the office all to herself. Florin was leading another interrogation marathon. Someone had seen a red Honda Civic parked by the Wallersee lake two weeks ago, late in the evening.

  Nora’s car. Had she gone there with the Owner in order to hide Liebscher’s head in the treetops? Nora, alias NoPap1; Norissima; radishes_are_red.

  Beatrice raised her eyebrows as she looked at the last lexical invention – how did someone come up with something like that?

  FrankaC. Wishfulthinker28.

  These were all Nora’s nicknames, as found by Stefan so far. Names she had used online. There were possibly more to come. ‘But five is quite a lot, already too many to keep track of,’ he had observed. He was right, as Beatrice realised a few minutes later. She could no longer remember what nickname she had used to register on Geocaching.com, until she eventually thought of Jakob’s cuddly owl. Elvira the Second.

  She logged onto the site and went to Find User. NoPap1 didn’t bring up any results, and nor did Norissima. FrankaC had one hit, but she was clearly in excellent health and had found her most recent cache just two days ago. There was a detailed profile, including photos showing her at a number of different locations – particularly around Hamburg, where she lived.

  Wishfulthinker28. Type and enter. Beatrice crossed her fingers. Bingo.

  There was no information on the profile, nor any photos – maybe it had never been updated, or even deleted. But the user clearly existed. There were 133 smiley faces denoting 133 successfully found caches.

  Feeling as though she’d finally found the hidden door leading to the right path, Beatrice opened the list. As always, the most recently logged find was at the top.

  Wishfulthinker28 had been out caching near the Mondsee
lake. The entry was red and crossed out, meaning that the cache was now archived, as were the majority of the user’s finds. No wonder, for the last one had been five years ago. Wishfulthinker28 had clearly found another hobby.

  Okay, thought Beatrice. Let’s go with this for a moment. Let’s assume this is Nora Papenberg’s account. The area was correct, as most of the found caches were in or around Salzburg. Five years ago, Nora Papenberg hadn’t even met her husband – so she would have had a different surname then.

  Within seconds, she reached Stefan on the internal line. ‘Before she got married, Nora Papenberg’s surname was Winter, if I’m not mistaken. I need the site admin team to tell us whether there’s a Nora Winter behind Wishfulthinker28.’

  Beatrice circled the cursor around the last entry. Great view, I’d definitely come back. The hiding place for the container is really inventive, but I still managed to find it quickly. Had fun! TFTC!

  It didn’t sound like a farewell comment, nor did it suggest she had lost her enthusiasm for geocaching. Okay, there were a number of reasons why someone might give up a hobby – a new boyfriend, a new job, a pregnancy or illness. But she didn’t believe that, because …

  Following a sudden flash of inspiration, Beatrice opened Herbert Liebscher’s profile and scrolled through the entries that DescartesHL had made at around the same time. Inside her mind, something began to lock into place.

  There it was, the connection. Barely perceptible, but it was there nonetheless, like a thin strand of light in the darkness.

  Nora Papenberg’s last entry was on 3 July. Herbert Liebscher had been in Vienna between the 6 and 8 of July that same year, had found eighteen caches – and then stopped. For one and a half years. Papenberg had stopped for ever.

  That’s no coincidence, no doubt about it. There has to be a common cause.

  Beatrice printed out the profile pages and compared the caches listed on each – yes, there were overlaps, but that was no surprise with two people who lived in the same city. There wasn’t a single entry, however, where one of them referred to the other. With the caches that came up in both DescartesHL and Wishfulthinker28’s lists, there were months, if not years, in between each of them finding the same cache. There was nothing at all to indicate that the two of them had known each other.