Five (13 page)

She nodded, shone the light on the pages and started to read:

Great cache, found it quickly. Out: Smurf. In: dice. TFTC, Heinzweidrei & Radebreaker

TFTC, Wildinger

All caches should be like this! TFTC, Team Bier

At least half the pages in the small spiral notepad were scribbled full.

‘Draw a line under the last comment and write something – whatever you like. People normally leave a note of thanks – TFTC means “Thanks for the Cache”. Then sign off with
Undercover Cookie
. We can log our find on the website – it’s my eight hundred and sixty-seventh.’ Stefan sounded proud.

Beatrice stared at the notepad, wondering whether it was wise to leave handwritten evidence, then shook her head in disbelief. She was thinking like a perpetrator, not a policewoman.

So she did what Stefan had said, drawing a line under the last entry and writing:

I wish all caches were like this. TFTC, Undercover Cookie
.

‘Is that the right plural for cache?’

‘Absolutely. Right, now you pack the logbook back into the plastic bag and see what treasures are in the box.’

A transparent dice, a sticker that clearly belonged in a collection album from the last football World Cup, a glass marble and a broken Matchbox car.

‘Those are the trades,’ explained Stefan. ‘Normal trades. You can take something with you and then put something else in. Do you want to?’

Even though she couldn’t have explained why, she did want to. In her jacket pocket, alongside a rubber band and a tissue, she found a tiny metal heart that had once been part of a keyring. She exchanged it for the glass marble.

‘Okay. Now pack everything up neatly and put it back exactly where you found it.’

Having made a note of the hiding place behind the crag ledge, she put the box back, then turned her attentions to the arduous task of crawling back out.

‘Right then, I’ll have to go and get changed,’ Beatrice determined. ‘Thank you, Stefan, that was very educational. I think I understand the appeal now.’

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ He beamed. ‘The last stage is on the computer. Come on.’

They logged the cache as ‘Found’, which resulted in a yellow smiley appearing on both the map and the webpage with the cache description.

I really enjoyed it, TFTC
, wrote Beatrice as her comment on the site. The abbreviation was flowing from her hand as though it was second nature now.

On the drive home, she contemplated whether she should get one of these GPS devices; perhaps the treasure hunt could be something Mina and Jakob would both enjoy. But thinking back to her very first find made her quickly dismiss the idea. Today, even accompanied by Stefan, she had been overcome by a queasy feeling as she opened the cache box. She wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to look at a plastic container like that again without thinking of the severed hand.

They all met in front of the office shortly before four and got into the car, Stefan taking the wheel and Florin – still exhausted from his round trip to Munich – claiming the back seat.

Christoph Beil’s house was out in the suburbs, and looked in dire need of renovation. The cracked facade suggested damp in the walls, and the wooden terrace looked unsound even from twenty metres away. But the garden was well looked after, complete with gnomes, clay frogs and a replica of the Manneken Pis.

‘We have to be careful – under no circumstances can we give too much away,’ warned Florin. ‘So not a word about coordinates or caches with body parts.’

They rang the bell at the garden gate. Beil opened it so quickly that it seemed likely he had been watching out for their arrival from the window.

‘Would you like some coffee? Tea? Water?’ He waved to his wife, who had been waiting in the doorway and now came out bearing a tray of drinks, only to disappear back into the house again straight afterwards.

They all sat down at a massive wooden table, on which a company of ants were forming a long line. Beil wiped them off with nervous, jerky hand movements. ‘I’ve been racking my brains since lunchtime, trying to work out what you might want from me.’

He looked tense, like someone who had to do an exam without knowing what subject it was in. Beatrice cleared her throat. ‘We’re investigating the murder of Nora Papenberg. Does the name mean anything to you?’ She fixed her gaze on him. But Beil didn’t bat an eyelid; on the contrary, he suddenly seemed to relax. ‘No, I’m sorry. Although – it’s possible that I might have heard about it on the radio. Is this the woman who was found in the cattle pasture?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm. Could you tell me what I have to do with all of this?’

Beatrice wiped her forehead, a tiny insect stuck to her hand. ‘We’re pursuing every single lead, and one of them led us to you. May I check your ID, please?’ Seeing him hesitate, she smiled reassuringly.

Beil pulled a battered black wallet out from his trouser pocket and handed Beatrice his driving licence. She immediately focused her attention on his date of birth.

1964. She noted the day and month, along with the date of issue and licence number, then returned the document to Beil. ‘The thing is,’ she began cautiously, ‘the suspect left a clue that could indicate there’s some connection between you and the victim. I’m afraid I can’t be more specific.’

‘Aha.’ He stared at the discoloured spot on the back of his hand. ‘But that’s not the case. Which means I can’t be of any further assistance to you.’

Florin cleared his throat, a signal that he wanted to take over. ‘Have you been singing with the choir for a while?’

‘Yes, nearly ten years now. I’m a dental technician, so I like to have some artistic balance in my free time.’

‘How’s business in the dental trade?’

Beil grinned. ‘I assume you’re referring to the run-down state of the house? It’s being renovated this summer. My great-aunt left it to me.’

Florin nodded to Beatrice, who was pulling two photographs from her bag. ‘We’d like to ask you to look at the woman in the pictures very closely and tell us whether it’s possible that you know her after all.’

Beil took the photos. ‘Is that this Nora Pa …’

‘Papenberg. Yes. Please take your time.’

He laid the picture down on the table, the one of her laughing heartily, and flicked one last confused ant away. It began to scrabble over the edge. ‘No. I really am very sorry.’

The second photo was a portrait in which Nora was looking directly at the camera with a serious expression. The jolt that went through Beil’s body as Beatrice laid the photo in front of him was subtle, so much so that at first she wasn’t certain she had really seen it. But it had definitely been there. No widening of the eyes or sudden intake of breath, but a jolt nonetheless. When Beil handed the pictures back to Beatrice, his hand was completely steady. ‘No, sorry. I really wish I could have helped you.’

She kept staring at him, not looking away for a second. ‘Are you completely certain that this woman doesn’t look familiar to you?’

‘Yes. I’ve got a really good memory for faces, so I would know if I’d ever met her. And the name doesn’t mean anything to me.’ Beil grimaced apologetically. ‘I can imagine that your job is no walk in the park, so I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing. And on a Sunday of all days.’

He smiled warmly and looked her right in the eyes without blinking, but she didn’t believe him. He had recognised Nora Papenberg – not immediately, but when he saw the second photo. So it was very interesting indeed that he was denying it.

With a friendly smile, Beatrice took the pictures, tucked them away in her bag and pulled out a business card. ‘If anything else occurs to you that you think might be relevant to us, then please call me.’

He put the card in his wallet. ‘Of course, but as I said …’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know the woman.’

Beatrice was convinced, even though neither Florin nor Stefan had noticed Beil’s reaction to the second photo. If he was lying, then there must be a reason.

‘There are two possibilities,’ Beatrice pondered out loud. ‘First, I’m mistaken, and Beil never met Papenberg. Maybe he’s even the wrong choir singer and his birthday will just be leading us off track. For one thing, he doesn’t even have the birthmark any more.’

‘And the other possibility?’ asked Florin.

‘My instinct is right, and he did know her. Then there has to be a reason why he’s lying to us. If we find something at Stage Two, then we’ll speak to him again.’

Back at the office, the three of them sat down on Florin’s side of the desk. Florin picked up the copy of the cache note. ‘“The last two numbers of his birth date are A,”’ he read out loud.

‘So, sixty-four. Then square that …’ Beatrice tapped on the calculator and made a note of the resulting sum. ‘Four thousand and ninety-six.’

‘Okay. Then add thirty-seven.’

‘That gives four thousand, one hundred and thirty-three. That should be the northern coordinate, right?’

‘Correct. For the eastern coordinates, we need the sum of A’s digits – four plus six equals ten. That times ten gives a hundred. Multiply by A and we get six thousand, four hundred.’

Beatrice wrote the number down and looked up. ‘Why didn’t he just say straight away that we needed to times A by a hundred?’

‘To make it less obvious?’ Florin suggested. ‘To increase the possibility of us making a mistake? Okay, let’s keep going. Take away two hundred and twenty-nine and subtract the resulting sum from the eastern coordinates.’

Beatrice calculated, noting the results as she went and then circling them. ‘This is it. Shall we drive out there today?’ Even as she said it, she realised she wouldn’t have enough time before she had to get home.

‘Of course!’ Stefan had already jumped up, but Florin stopped him.

‘I want Drasche to be with us. We’ll go first thing tomorrow. Having said that, I’d still like to see where this place is.’ He entered the new coordinates into Google Maps. The map appeared on the monitor in just a fraction of a second, prompting Florin to let out a brief and – or so it seemed to Beatrice – pained laugh. ‘We’ve dropped the ball here somehow.’

They zoomed in closer. ‘The results are never completely accurate,’ said Stefan. ‘It’ll be a few metres to the right or left of that.’

They would just have to hope he was right. Because the arrow indicating the location of the coordinates they had just entered was pointing directly at the autobahn.

Beatrice arrived home just in time to air the apartment and prepare all the ingredients for ham-and-cheese omelettes. Achim brought the children back on the dot of the arranged time. They were practically bursting with stories about their weekend. The cat was now called Cinderella. She was grey and white and a little bit black. They had gone for ice cream in the afternoon, two scoops each. Papa had been really funny and lost twelve times to Jakob at arm wrestling.

Beatrice smiled, laughed, nodded and suppressed something that, on closer inspection, she identified as melancholy. Did she wish she had been there too?

She shook her head in disbelief, cleared the table and sent the children off to the bathroom. She would read
The Hobbit
to them and have a relaxing evening for once.

‘The fires in the middle of the hall were built with fresh logs and the torches were put out, and still they sat in the light of the dancing flames,’ read Beatrice. Jakob, who in her opinion was still too young for the book, and for whom she improvised harmless passages in place of the more violent scenes, was staring at the
Buzz Lightyear
poster on the wall, his eyes glistening. Mina’s gaze, on the other hand, was fixed on Beatrice; she was smiling and seemed to be at peace with herself and the world for the first time in weeks.

‘… with the pillars of the house standing tall behind them, and dark at the top like trees of the forest–’

Her phone vibrated, and she heard the first few bars of ‘Message in a Bottle’.

Beatrice only realised she had stopped reading and let the book sink when Jakob shook her arm. ‘Mama! Keep reading!’

She found her place, started again, tripped over her words.

Stay calm. The message would still be there in a minute, and perhaps it was … from Florin. Or from Achim, wanting to relieve himself of some more bitter words. She would find out soon enough, but right now it was the children’s time.

‘Whether it was magic or not, it seemed to Bilbo that he heard a sound like wind in the branches stirring in the rafters, and the hoot of owls. Soon he began to nod with sleep and the voices seemed to grow far away—’

‘Mama! You’re not reading properly any more!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Pulling herself together, she tried to concentrate on the story. Eventually, she even let herself get carried away by it, only looking up again once the children were fast asleep.

To be disabled.

Just those three words, sent from the same number of course. Beatrice stared at her phone until the energy-saving function made the display go dark.

Disabled meant turned off, deactivated. And ‘to be’ meant it would happen soon. Or perhaps it could also be read in the sense of something or someone being handicapped.

Was the message referring to the mutilated victim? Was the Owner announcing that he was about to start sawing limbs off again?

She sat down on the couch and felt her pulse beating in her neck and all the way up to her temples. It would be hard to fall asleep now. For the third time that evening, she checked that the door was locked, then fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and turned on the computer. She had left her files in the office, including all the research Stefan had done for her, but she would easily be able to find the list she was thinking of online. She typed
Geocache disabled
into Google, and a list of links appeared. Reading the first two, she discovered that a cache could be ‘temporarily disabled’. The term, as she found out two clicks later, meant that the owner had removed the box in order to update it or exchange the logbook for a new one.