Five (21 page)

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s just another message from my ex.’

She put her mobile away again, aware of him watching her. ‘You were expecting something else, right?’ he asked.

All she could manage was a shrug. ‘Well, it could have been the Owner.’ For a few moments, Beatrice was tempted to tell Florin about the lone hand she had played. If you could call it that, but the description seemed to hit the nail on the head. Hoffmann would go mad if he found out she had taken it upon herself to respond to the killer without consulting the others first.

Well, then he would finally have something worth going mad about.

She changed the subject. ‘If we’re not making any progress on the next stage, then how about with Herbert Liebscher? Has anyone questioned his colleagues at the school yet?’

‘Stefan went there with two of our guys. But nothing useful came of it. Three of Liebscher’s colleagues knew that he was a geocacher, so Stefan spoke to them for a good while, but unfortunately he didn’t find out anything we don’t already know.’

Beatrice drew circles on her notepad, lost in thought. ‘Liebscher went geocaching, we can take that as a given. But Papenberg didn’t, unless her husband was lying to us, which would pose the question of why. And we didn’t question Beil about it.’ Beatrice didn’t say it out loud, but she doubted they would ever get the opportunity to remedy that.

Beil’s wife phoned their office for what must have been the fifth time that day – she had been out of her mind with worry ever since hearing that her husband’s car had been found. Luckily for Beatrice, Florin took the call, repeating with seemingly limitless patience the same thing he had already said the last few times. That they were doing everything they could to find Christoph Beil. That they would be in touch as soon as they had any news. Then he paused. ‘Actually, it’s possible you might be able to help us with something. Do you happen to know whether your husband ever went geocaching?’ He turned the phone onto loudspeaker so Beatrice could listen in.

‘That’s … the thing with the navigation devices, right?’ The woman’s tear-choked voice resounded out from the speaker. ‘To be honest, I don’t know. He had so many hobbies. If he did do it, then he never told me about it.’

‘Don’t you spend your free time together?’

A hiccoughing sob. ‘Not always. He’s much more sporty than I am, and I don’t mind when he does things with friends without me. He always says a little distance keeps things fresh.’

‘So that means you don’t know exactly what he’s doing when he’s not at home?’

‘Well, most of the time he tells me. But it’s the same the other way around. I have my hobbies too.’

Beatrice, who had just brought up the geocaching website on her screen, was struck by an idea. ‘Ask her if her husband had a nickname,’ she whispered. ‘Perhaps one that his friends gave him at school, or one that she used for him. Something along those lines.’

Florin nodded, but his question was initially met with incomprehension.

‘Why do you want to know that?’ asked the woman. ‘What does that have to do with the blood in his car, and the fact that he’s missing?’

Beatrice pointed to her screen, and Florin caught on. ‘It’s possible that your husband registered on Internet forums with a nickname of some kind. If you can help us a little we can narrow down our search and possibly find some clues. Does your husband have a PC at home?’

The sound of her breathing came through the loudspeaker. ‘He has a laptop. And I always call him my Grizzly Bear.’

There was a ‘GrizzlyBear’ on Geocaching.com, as well as a ‘GrizzleBear’, but neither of them were Christoph Beil. The first had only registered one found cache, which was back in 2009, in Berlin. The second had registered only five months ago, already logging over 500 finds. ‘But all of them in Baden-Württemberg,’ Beatrice declared.

Two hours later they had Beil’s laptop in their possession – his wife had handed it over without hesitation. Stefan took charge of searching for clues, opening the Web browser and looking through the bookmarks. Geocaching.com wasn’t there, not even in the history, which covered the last three months.

‘I’ll check the emails now,’ he declared. ‘He has an inbox stretching back four years. If he was sent messages via his geocaching account during that time, then we might find them here, which would give us his username too.’

But not even rummaging through his email folders brought anything to light. The disappointment was written all over Stefan’s face, even though he tried to hide it. ‘It looks like Beil wasn’t a geocacher then. With your agreement, I’d like to go through all the emails from the last few weeks with a fine-tooth comb. Maybe I’ll find something useful. Then I’ll send the laptop to the IT lab so they can bring any deleted data back from the dead on the hard drive.’

Every single path they pursued seemed to lead to a dead end. The investigation of Sigart’s patient files hadn’t unearthed anything either: it seemed neither Nora Papenberg nor Christoph Beil had taken their pets to him for treatment. Another idea smothered in the cradle. But there was no time to brood over it: one of Liebscher’s colleagues had emailed through some photos taken at a bowling night, including a few close-ups of Liebscher. He was laughing, exposing crooked teeth. Beatrice’s attention was drawn to his ears, her hand instinctively lifting to touch her own left ear as she thought about the cache.

‘Do you want to come and get a coffee with me?’ Kossar had popped up out of nowhere. His question was clearly directed solely at Beatrice.

‘Sorry. I’m busy.’ The way he looked at her made her feel uneasy. Whenever colleagues tried to approach her about anything other than work, she always felt the acute impulse to run away. She turned her concentration back to Liebscher’s photos. Pale blue eyes. They would fit in a very small container. A micro-cache.

Kossar seemed to have noticed her irritation. ‘I don’t mean to impose.’ His tone was significantly more businesslike than before. ‘But a chat over coffee might spark off some more ideas about the case. I’m happy to come back later if you—’

Her mobile beeped, announcing the arrival of a message.

With one quick lunge, she grabbed it from her bag and pressed ‘Read’.

Just one word. She stared at it, the context slowly dawning on her. But maybe she was wrong. Hopefully.

‘Bad news?’

She had to get rid of Kossar. Showing him the message right now would just bring on another of his gusts of hot air. She would tell him about it later. Once she had worked out her own thoughts on it.

‘It’s a family matter. With all due respect, I really must ask you to let me get on with my work.’

He stared at her for a moment. ‘Family, I understand. Yes, Hoffmann mentioned that you had a messy divorce behind you. If you’d like—’

‘Sorry if I didn’t express myself clearly enough, but I really don’t have much time and I have to work.’

‘How about the two of us go get some coffee?’ Florin stood up, walked over to Kossar and clapped him affably on the shoulder. ‘I could use a quick break. Let’s go.’ Beatrice, having known him for so long, was the only one to hear the edge of sharpness to his voice.

Kossar’s laugh sounded forced, but Beatrice barely noticed. The word on the screen of her phone was taking up all her attention:

Archived.

With one click, she found the caching dictionary under her favourites on the browser, opened it and confirmed that her suspicion was correct. An archived cache was one that had been taken out of operation. It was gone and wouldn’t be replaced.

First
disabled
. Then
archived
.

Presumably the Owner didn’t mean the container he had hidden for the police. He was being abstract. It was clear he was referring to something they were looking for, and right now, first and foremost, they were searching for Christoph Beil.

Archived. In the unusual peace and quiet of her empty office, Beatrice wondered whether the Owner was trying to tell them, in his own particular way, that Beil was no longer alive.

That evening, she drove to Mooserhof and found the children being kept very busy. Jakob – dressed in jeans and his pyjama top – was sweeping the floor, singing and distributing little packets of sugar among the tables, while Mina was in the process of serving a bottle of water and two glasses on a tray. Her gaze was fixed with the utmost concentration on the load in her hands, as if hoping that through hypnosis she could prevent them from falling.

Beatrice’s mother was standing behind the bar, pulling a pint of beer. ‘I didn’t expect to see you!’ She waited until the foam top was at the right thickness, then put the beer krug down and hugged Beatrice. ‘You look tired. Are you hungry? Hang on, I’ll tell André to bring you a portion of stuffed cabbage leaves – they’re delicious!’

Beatrice was about to protest, but didn’t have the energy. Besides, she really was hungry. Her stomach was practically screaming out for nourishment. ‘Okay. I really just came to see the children quickly though.’

‘But you’re not taking them with you today, are you?’

‘No. It’ll probably be another few days. This new case is … very unusual.’

Her mother looked indifferent to the explanation. ‘That’s fine. I love having them here, you know that.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Sit down at table twelve, I’ll bring you a drink in a moment.’

Jakob shot over to her, giggling, placed an open sugar sachet on her knee and hugged her. ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

‘No, sweetie. I really wanted to see you, but I have to get up early tomorrow, and it’s going to be another long day.’

He nodded, his eyebrows knitted together, the very personification of understanding. ‘I earned some pocket money. Three euros and forty-five cents. For clearing plates and putting out the sugar. Oma said I’m a really good helper.’

‘You certainly are.’ She squeezed him against her, seeing Mina come towards them carrying water and a glass of apple juice.

‘You’re not picking us up yet, are you?’ She looked really worried.

‘No. Although I’d really love to. I miss you guys.’

‘Yeah. We miss you too, but you can hold out a bit longer, right?’

‘A bit.’

‘Good,’ replied Mina contentedly, going back to the bar. Jakob fidgeted around on Beatrice’s knees.

‘Uncle Richard told us that you’re going to have a … a burn-ow … soon. What’s that?’

It took her a moment to understand what Jakob meant. ‘No, sweetie, I’m not going to have a burn-out. Where is Uncle Richard anyway?’

‘He’s over there playing cards.’

Beatrice looked over her left shoulder. Yes, there he was, her darling brother. Shuffling cards and laughing about something the brawny man next to him was saying.

‘You two should go to bed – it’s already past eight,’ whispered Beatrice in Jakob’s ear. ‘I’ll tuck you in, okay?’

‘Okay!’

The bedroom up in the loft was still as cosy as it had been when she used to sleep there herself. She put Jakob and Mina to bed, listening to their stories of the day and trying to push everything about the case to the deepest recesses of her mind. No, she wasn’t going to burn out. Three days’ holiday once the Owner was caught would be enough to recharge her batteries; it always was.

When she went back downstairs to the restaurant, there were two things waiting for her: cold stuffed cabbage, and a critical brother. ‘Surely they can’t be paying you so much that you just let everything else go to hell?’ His blond hair clung to his sweaty forehead – and he had put on weight since the last time she saw him.

‘It’s not a question of money, Richard.’ She started to eat. Even though it was no longer hot, it tasted good.

‘No, of course not. You’re saving the world, right?’ He winked as he said it, but she still felt like plunging the prongs of her fork into the back of his hand. Just as she’d always wanted to back when they were kids, when he used to pinch food from her plate.

‘Achim was here this lunchtime – we had a long chat.’

The fork nearly dropped out of her hand. ‘What?’

‘Yep. He’s in a really bad way, Bea. He comes here a lot, whenever he’s sure he won’t run into you. I think he’s hoping that one of us can explain to him why you wanted a divorce.’ Richard looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Maybe you’ll at least explain it to us one day? You had it good, Bea. He was crazy about you, and if you ask me, he still is.’

She almost spat out her half-chewed mouthful of cabbage. ‘Yeah, sure. Listen, he doesn’t even talk to me when he picks the kids up. He looks at me as if I’m a stinking pile of rubbish that someone forgot to take out.’

Richard wiped a serviette across his forehead. ‘I believe you. But only because you’re the one who took everything he cared about away from him. If you were to give it back—’

‘You can’t be serious.’ She put her knife and fork down. ‘We’re not good for one another, Achim and I. We never were. He wants someone who enjoys the same things as him, who laughs at the same jokes. Who likes cooking and only works to bring money in.’ She snorted. ‘You would probably get on much better with him than I ever could.’

‘But it would make your life so much easier.’

‘Except it wouldn’t be
my
life any more.’

Richard twisted the serviette between his hands as though he wanted to strangle someone with it. ‘It’s because of what happened back then, right? You’ve become so much harder since then, Bea. You have to move on at some point, you can’t bring someone back to life by—’

‘That’s enough, okay?’ She pushed her plate away; at least she had eaten half of it. ‘I’m really grateful that Mama always helps out when I need it, and that you look after the children too. Really I am. But when it comes to Achim and what happened back then, as you put it, you don’t get a say.’ Without giving him a chance to react, she stood up, ruffled his hair and gave him a hug. ‘Everything’s fine. I’m not on the brink of burning out, but thank you for teaching Jakob a new word.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He held her at arm’s length for a moment and gave a sigh. ‘Is there anyone who understands what’s going on in your head, Bea?’

She smiled and shrugged.