Five

by Ursula P Archer

  ‘Stay behind me.’ Was it a gust of wind that had set the ‘5’ in motion, or someone who was lying in wait for them here? Florin pulled out his gun, and they both listened into the night. Wind. The gurgling of the stream. The sounds of birds, more distant than before. And the soft scraping sound which accompanied the movements of the swaying number.

  They walked over to it. Slowly, thought Beatrice. Yet, unfortunately, not without making a noise. Dry twigs and rustling leaves betrayed their every step.

  ‘It’s just the wind,’ said Florin, as they reached the wooden shed. A cut-out of the number five was affixed onto a battered tin container, which in turn was dangling from a thin, rusted wire. Beatrice pulled a pair of silicon gloves from her jacket pocket.

  Fingers, she thought, like before. Eyes, toes. What else could fit in a tobacco tin?

  She carefully pulled the looped wire from the wooden ledge it was wrapped around. The wire wouldn’t relinquish its grip on the tin itself; it was wound around the entire cylinder and fixed with several layers of thick tape.

  ‘It doesn’t look new,’ observed Florin.

  ‘No.’ Beatrice struggled with the screw cap, twisting several times before it loosened with a grinding sound. Preparing herself for what was to come, she lifted the lid. For the first few moments, she couldn’t comprehend what she was looking at in the beam of torchlight.

  A pale blue hairband. A one-yen coin. A key. A heart-shaped stone. Beneath all of that, a plastic bag with something orange inside. ‘The logbook.’ Beatrice pressed her torch into Florin’s hand and pulled the small book out of its wrapping.

  It was a little damp despite the packaging, but the pages could still be turned without needing to be prised apart.

  ‘It’s just a normal cache,’ she said, reading through the various thank-yous. ‘Why is Stage Five suddenly the odd one out?’ She flicked further back. The cache was old; the first entries had been made over six years ago.

  Following her instinct, she turned the pages without reading, on and on, until she found the last entry in the logbook.

  There it was. The connection they had been searching for all this time, in black and white. Nora Papenberg’s handwriting was unmistakable.

  12th July

  Two hours of hiking in the searing heat and then a hiding place like this! But it was worth it! TFTC, Wishfulthinker28, AlphaMale, GarfieldsLasagne, DescartesHL, ChoristInTheForest.

  ‘On the twelfth of July five years ago, they were all here, all the Owner’s victims.’ Beatrice spoke in hushed tones, trying to order her thoughts. ‘Since then, no one else has found the cache. Except us. Nora Papenberg gave up her hobby afterwards, just like Herbert Liebscher, although he did start up again later. And do you know what, Florin? Neither of them registered having found this cache.’ Something must have happened, and it must have been after Nora wrote the note in the logbook. She held it up, ‘ChoristInTheForest’ – that must be Christoph Beil, no question …’

  Blackened trees. Destroyed lives. Beatrice went through the signatures. Five stages. Five names.

  That’s one too few.

  She shook her head. Did she know what had happened, or did she just think she knew? 12 July: she would have to check the date, but it was possible – no, probable – that it had been the day of the forest fire.

  Five deaths. Five names. The joker in the pack.

  The words of the logbook entry hammered inside her head as she shone the light towards where the slope began to even out. There was something there, something angular, stony. ‘Down there.’

  Step by step by step. Beatrice thought she would recognise the place as soon as she was standing before it, but she would have walked straight into it if Florin hadn’t pulled her back by the arm.

  A foundation built of stone, half in, half outside the forest. In the middle was a cover of sorts, square and made of metal. It was pushed a little to the side, just far enough for someone to be able to put their hand through. From the space beneath, a faint shimmer of light forced its way out, making the opening a pale grey gash in the blackness of the night.

  They communicated with a quick glance. It had been a mistake to assume they would only find a cache container. There was someone here, and he must have been listening to them. Florin pulled out his gun.

  ‘We’re not going in without backup. Two cars, maybe three. No risk-taking,’ he whispered.

  They retreated back into the forest, into the darkness between the trees. Mobile reception here was bad, but at least there was some. Beatrice listened to the dialling tone and her own breathing, both of which seemed much louder than usual. ‘We’ve found something, send us some backup. There’s a cellar with a light burning, and we have reason to suspect someone’s down there, even though we’ve seen no signs of life yet.’

  While she described their location, Beatrice replayed her own words in her mind. No signs of life. She remembered the mobile photos of the hacked-off fingers, only half-listening as the base announced that there would be three cars with them in around twenty minutes.

  ‘You know what that cellar is, right?’ she whispered after she had ended the call.

  ‘I think so. There are still scorch marks in the forest.’

  The moon shone above them, the clear sky saturated with stars. In comparison, the shimmer of light making its way up to the surface from below the ground was hazy and milky. Beatrice didn’t take her eyes off it for a second, waiting for it to expand and then darken behind a looming figure. But no one appeared.

  The minutes seemed to pass at a painfully slow pace. Everything within Beatrice wanted to creep towards the crack, open it wide and climb down. If it is the Owner’s hiding place, then we’ll probably find Sigart there too.

  The thought intensified her impatience. Florin’s hand grabbed her wrist, and she realised she had already started to crawl out of the thicket. He pulled her back and laid an arm around her shoulder. ‘No going it alone this time.’

  ‘But what if Sigart’s down there?’

  ‘Then he’ll have to hold on for another five minutes.’

  Beatrice fingered the round metal cache tin through her jacket pocket. Its contents shed new light on the events, although she couldn’t yet figure out how, not conclusively at any rate. She closed her eyes and counted the minutes. Was that the sound of someone whimpering? The wind carried a quiet, feeble noise towards her – but maybe it was just the sound of the wind itself, a plaintive, restless whisper.

  By the time the three police cars were parked on the path, Beatrice was already kneeling down by the cellar opening. She had heard the approaching engine sounds, and from then on had been deaf to Florin’s warnings.

  Could she hear anything? A voice, breathing?

  She laid her ear against the crack, recoiling involuntarily as a puff of air wafted out of the cellar towards her.

  All of a sudden, she was back in Evelyn’s bedroom with the smell of blood – but here it was mixed with the stench of putrid flesh. Beatrice sat down, took a deep breath and tried to banish the unwelcome images. Images of red.

  Shadowy figures armed with lights climbed down the slope. Whispered instructions, hushed voices.

  Then Florin was standing next to her. ‘Let’s go in.’

  They were only halfway down the steps before Beatrice cursed herself for having waited so long.

  Sigart was lying on the floor, shaking. He was pressing his maimed left hand to his chest, his mouth moving silently.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ Florin shouted to one of their colleagues.

  Beatrice knelt down next to Sigart. There was a cut on the side of his neck, but they didn’t need to worry too much about that as it seemed to be healing well. She ignored the stench coming from his hunched-up form. And she only half took in the surroundings: the noose hanging from the ceiling, the wooden table she recognised from the Owner’s photos, the saws on the wall. She concentrated all her attention on Sigart, touching his forehead gently. He flinched away from her as tho
ugh she had electrocuted him. Then he lay there, motionless, wheezing and trying to say something.

  I have to calm him down. Explain that we’ll talk later. But her curiosity was stronger. She leant over to him, tried to breathe evenly and put her ear next to his mouth.

  ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Not … another … one. Please don’t …’

  Ashamed, Beatrice sat back up. Florin had come over to her side. ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘Nothing that can help us. He’s pleading with us not to cut another of his fingers off.’

  When the ambulance arrived, the emergency doctor diagnosed wound inflammation and severe dehydration. ‘He probably hasn’t had anything to drink for two days now. But if he doesn’t get sepsis then he has a good chance of surviving.’

  Only once Sigart had been taken away did they pay more attention to the cellar. It was roughly twenty square metres. Around the wooden table were three chairs, and towards the back of the room Beatrice discovered a device which was roughly the size of a laser printer. She only realised its purpose – the wrapping of food products – when she saw the vacuum bags lying next to it. In a corner, half covered by bloody muslin bandages, was a pair of red women’s shoes.

  Drasche arrived as dawn was breaking. He worked silently, and they left him in peace. He did the same, knowing that they had to get an impression of the place where Liebscher, Beil and Estermann had been killed. On a small stainless-steel bottle which Drasche was in the process of sealing away in his evidence bag, there was a sticker with the letters HF. Hydrofluoric acid.

  The table’s surface was ploughed with notches and covered with red and brown flecks. If Beatrice stood in front of it, a little to the side, the perspective was exactly the one she knew from the picture messages, only without the hand and severed fingers.

  The noose on the ceiling brought to mind the strangulation marks on Christoph Beil’s neck.

  So this was where it had all happened.

  Drasche had taken the tobacco tin cache, but the signatures in the logbook were firmly etched in Beatrice’s memory: Wishfulthinker28, AlphaMale, GarfieldsLasagne. DescartesHL, ChoristInTheForest.

  Five.

  The feeling of having stumbled upon a critical gap in her line of thought, the feeling which had crept chillingly up her spine the first time she read the entry, was no longer as intense as it had been initially, but it was still there. It lurked, ready to be summoned, in the recesses of her mind.

  At the hospital, they were optimistic. They had treated Sigart’s wounds and he was responding well to the antibiotics they had given him. His psychological condition, however, was described as critical, veering from distracted and depressed to completely apathetic. ‘You’ll have to wait a little longer to speak to him,’ explained the doctor.

  So Beatrice immersed herself yet again in online research. Stefan had already explained a while back that profiles set up on Geocaching.com couldn’t be erased: once you were registered, that was it. And true to his word, the pseudonyms from the cache log were all still there. AlphaMale – such a humble codename could only belong to Estermann. His quota was indeed over 2,000 caches. 2,144, to be precise – not a single unconquered find. In comparison, Christoph Beil’s 423 finds seemed downright modest. GarfieldsLasagne – had Dalamasso been witty enough to name herself after a plump cartoon cat and his favourite meal? Her profile showed only twenty-four caches; according to the log entries she had found them all with ChoristInTheForest.

  They were a couple, thought Beatrice. Christoph and Melanie; they must have met at the Mozarteum, after a choir rehearsal perhaps.

  A man old enough to be her father, as Carolin Dalamasso had put it. And married, so no wonder Melanie hadn’t wanted – or been able – to introduce him to her parents.

  She was the last one, the one who had remained unharmed. It was hard to imagine the Owner would give up now, but so far no one had tried to get close to her. Her watchers hadn’t reported any unusual events.

  ‘Blood traces from Liebscher, Beil, Sigart and Estermann. And small amounts from Papenberg too. The saws were used to cut up Liebscher’s body, and Nora Papenberg’s fingerprints were found on the handle. A vacuum-packing machine has been taken off for investigation. The bags match those we found in the caches.’ Drasche stood in the conference room, leaning against the back of his chair as if he couldn’t carry the weight of his body without help. ‘So it’s as good as proven that the cellar was the scene of the crimes. You’ll have to work the rest out yourselves – all the evidence is there.’

  ‘And you say the Owner imprisoned Sigart in the building his family burnt to death in?’ Hoffmann’s question was directed at Florin.

  ‘In the cellar of the building. Yes, it looks that way.’

  ‘A particularly perfidious form of sadism?’ That, in turn, was addressed to Kossar.

  ‘I’d interpret it like that, yes.’ Beatrice noticed, not without a degree of satisfaction, that he had become more cautious since his ‘random victim’ theory had been proven so grossly inaccurate.

  ‘It would also be supported by the fact that he let Sigart live longer than the others. In his mind, they’re all connected with the fire – the five geocachers who passed through the area on the same day, and Sigart, who blamed himself for the deaths of his wife and children, both to himself and to anyone who would listen.’

  Hoffmann nodded. ‘Then we’re dealing with someone who was also affected by the fire, in some way or another.’ His gaze slid from one person to the next, skipped Beatrice and stopped at Florin. ‘You’re working closely with the guys from the fire service, right, Florin?’ Without waiting for an answer, he smacked both hands down on the table to signify their dismissal. ‘Good. Then the case will soon be closed.’

  The first detective to exchange a few words with Sigart was Florin. He managed to catch him at a good moment during a routine visit, and had a five-minute conversation while two doctors sat alongside, ready to usher him out immediately if their patient’s condition worsened.

  ‘I asked him about the Owner, but he said he didn’t know him. He described him though, as well as he could. The description matched fairly precisely with the one given by the hotel waiter. Bald, a full beard, medium height. Sigart wasn’t sure about his eye colour. Blue or green, he thinks. He said he spoke without any regional accent, and the voice was neither particularly high nor deep. He wore gloves the whole time. That’s as much as I got in five minutes.’

  Florin’s disappointment was clear to see. If Sigart had known the man and been able to name him, the case could have been closed very quickly indeed. Hoffmann’s ideal scenario.

  ‘If I were a man,’ said Beatrice slowly, ‘and I wanted to disguise myself without using wigs and false teeth, then I’d grow a beard and shave off my hair. Everyone who sees me would then remember me as a bearded bald guy, even though I’m normally clean-shaven with a full head of hair.’

  A smile twitched across Florin’s face. ‘Hoffmann would be very happy if you grew a beard. “Don’t be such a girl, Kaspary.”’

  They laughed, and it did them good. ‘But you’re completely right,’ Florin continued. ‘The description doesn’t necessarily help. The Owner isn’t making it easy for us.’

  She sat on Sigart’s bed and waited for him to wake up. He’d been in the hospital for three days now. His condition was stable, according to the doctors. They had allowed Beatrice to pay him a visit, but now he was sleeping, while the IV released one drop of electrolyte solution into his veins per second. The sight nudged something within Beatrice, something like the precursor to a realisation. She waited, but it didn’t come.

  Sigart stirred. His eyelids fluttered softly before they opened. He turned his head and looked at her, and Beatrice knew that he had recognised her right away.

  ‘It’s good to see you alive, Herr Sigart,’ she said.

  He didn’t smile, but looked at her steadfastly.

  ‘Can you speak?’

  A shrug of the shoulde
rs, followed by a pain-filled grimace. He cleared his throat. Had the tilting of his head been a nod? Beatrice decided to interpret it as such. ‘That’s good. I don’t want to disturb you for too long, but there are so many things on my mind. I’m sorry we didn’t get there soon enough to prevent you from being kidnapped. We came as quickly as we could, but the perpetrator was unbelievably fast.’

  Sigart’s eyes closed again. His breathing sounded worse; the memory was clearly causing him distress.

  ‘The thing is,’ Beatrice continued, ‘I’d like to know why you ignored our warnings. We offered you protection, and when you didn’t want it we pleaded with you to be careful. Not to open the door to anyone. But the killer still got to you, and there was no sign of forced entry.’

  She gave him time to process her question. His eyes were still closed, and after a few seconds he turned his head to the side, away from her.

  ‘That’s why we have the theory that you must have known the killer,’ she continued. ‘And there are a number of additional reasons why I still believe that’s the case. But you told Herr Wenninger he was unknown to you.’

  He didn’t stir. Beatrice felt impatience welling up inside her, and counted silently to five. She gave herself, and him, time. Took a deep breath. Sigart no longer stank of blood, vomit and urine, just of disinfection fluid.

  ‘If you didn’t know him, why did you open the door? I just don’t understand.’

  Had he gone back to sleep, or were her questions too painful for him? Beatrice tried again, as gently as she could, but Sigart was no longer reacting.

  The Owner hadn’t been in touch since the picture message showing Sigart’s severed middle finger. The dog team had searched the woods around the cellar where Sigart was discovered, but hadn’t found anything. Drasche had been completely baffled by the prints found in the cellar. ‘We found fingerprints from all the victims, but not a single one from the killer. He must have worn gloves the whole time.’ That, at least, matched Sigart’s statement.

  Lost in thought, Beatrice worked through the Owner’s text messages once more, reading one after the other.