Ursula Archer - Five

‘No.’

‘I didn’t…’

‘We have to ask. It’s part of the routine investigation process.’ Beatrice tried to add some warmth into her smile. ‘There’s something else I’d like to ask if possible – don’t worry, it’s not connected to you.’ She stroked her fingers across the notebook, feeling the swirling imprints left behind by the pressure of Nora Papenberg’s pen. ‘Your wife liked spending time in the great outdoors, is that right? Is it possible that geocaching was one of her hobbies?’

Konrad Papenberg’s expression was one of confusion. ‘Geo – what?’

Perhaps not, then. ‘Geocaching,’ repeated Beatrice, disheartened. ‘It’s a kind of treasure hunt. You use a GPS device, work with coordinates…’ She kept her gaze trained on his face, but the last word didn’t provoke any reaction from him.

‘Oh, right, yes, I’ve heard about that somewhere,’ said Papenberg flatly. ‘And it… it sounds like something Nora would have enjoyed.’ He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling to blink back the tears that were building up. ‘But it’s not something we ever did. There’s… so much we never did.’

Beatrice handed him a tissue and waited.

‘How long were you married?’

‘Almost two years. We met three years ago. Next week is – would have been – our anniversary.’

‘I really am very sorry.’ She stood up and pushed the chair back. ‘We’ll do everything we can to find her killer.’ She really meant it, but her words still sounded hollow. ‘If something else comes to mind which you think might be helpful to us, do please get in touch, okay?’

Konrad Papenberg nodded absent-mindedly. He let Beatrice walk him to the door and went to shake her hand, only then noticing that he was still holding the crumpled-up tissue in his. As if this discovery made everything even worse, he leant back against the wall and closed his eyes. ‘I just really need to know what happened,’ he whispered. ‘Do you understand?’

‘I do, very much so,’ answered Beatrice. ‘We won’t give up, I promise.’

She watched him as he went back outside to his car, a green Mazda that he had parked with one wheel up on the kerb. His posture didn’t change, whereas the opposite was often the case when people left the police station and felt that they were no longer being watched.

Beatrice turned and went back to her office, the notepad clamped tightly under her arm. Florin must still be talking to Hoffmann. His mobile was on his desk, seemingly forgotten. The display lit up, indicating an incoming call or message.

No, she wouldn’t look to see what it was.

What would even make her contemplate such a thing? It must be the lack of sleep.

She opened up her contact list on the computer and dialled the graphologist’s phone number.

‘Juliane Heilig.’

‘Beatrice Kaspary here, Salzburg Landeskriminalamt. I need a graphology report, a handwriting comparison. Can I email the documents through to you?’

‘Of course. What exactly would you like to know?’

‘Whether the two pieces were composed by the same person.’

‘No problem. How urgent is it?’

‘The beginning of next week would be great. But if you could give me your first impressions today – off the record, of course – then that would be a great help.’

A brief pause. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Beatrice stared at each of them in turn, the cheerful scribbles on the notepad and the copy of the handwritten cache letter. ‘It’s very probable that one of the samples was written under stress. In extreme circumstances.’

‘That’s useful to know, thank you.’ Heilig gave her the email address, and Beatrice sent the documents through to her. She had barely sat back down at her desk before Stefan rushed in.

‘I’ve got almost all the rehearsal times for the choirs now – it was quite a mission!’ He looked at Beatrice expectantly, prompting her to nod in approval.

‘Excellent work.’

‘Thanks. Three choirs are singing on Sunday – two at Mass, one at a wedding. If we split them up between us we could check them all out.’ He handed her a note detailing the names of the choirs in question, along with the times, churches and addresses.

‘Good work, Stefan. I mean it, you’re being a great help.’

He beamed. ‘I’ll go and make some more calls – it makes sense to get through the list today.’

On his way out, he almost crashed into Florin, who was storming in with a dark expression on his face.

‘Bad news?’ asked Beatrice.

‘No. Just Hoffmann’s usual persecution complex. The press are on his back, so he wants to give the journalists more information than we’d like.’ Florin sank down into his revolving chair and darted a glance at the clock on the wall. ‘He doesn’t like the fact that we didn’t inform him right away and give him the chance to check out the crime scene himself.’

That was nothing new. ‘But we tried to.’

‘Yes, I know, but he says we didn’t try hard enough. Anyway, he’s sulking and lashing out. He wants us to put pressure on the husband. Let’s hope he cheers up over the weekend, otherwise he’s going to be constantly sticking his oar in.’

Half-past ten. For the third time, Beatrice tried to reach Dr Vogt at the Institute for Forensic Medicine, but still without success. Then she tried his mobile. To her surprise, she got through.

‘I’m busy,’ said Vogt, without wasting time on a greeting.

‘I’m sorry to hear that. But I’m still going to need some preliminary information if I can’t get the report before the weekend.’

‘The Papenberg report?’

‘No, the one on the severed hand. In order to find out who it belonged to, I at least need some clues.’

The pathologist sighed. ‘There’s not much I can tell you. The hand belonged to a man, but with the best will in the world I can’t tell you when he died. The decaying process was delayed by the plastic shrink-wrapping, so there was no maggot infestation or anything of the sort.’

‘I see.’

‘The victim’s age is equally difficult to estimate. I’d say somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. The blood group is O positive.’

‘Have you already taken fingerprints?’

Vogt cleared his throat. ‘Of course. I’ll do my best to get the report to you today. And there’s one more thing – the man must have worn a ring for a long time, because there was an indentation on the fourth finger. I’m guessing it was a wedding ring. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that he had a rendezvous with a lover and took the ring off, or that he was recently divorced.’

Jealousy climbed back up on Beatrice’s list of potential murder motives. ‘Thank you. So the report…’

‘Will be with you as soon as possible. Of course.’

Between thirty-five and fifty years old. Beatrice searched despondently through the information on male missing persons, expanding her search to the whole of Austria. Three of the notices had been filed in the last week, but the individuals in question were either older or significantly younger. So was no one missing the man whose hand they had found?

She scrolled through the remaining reports, one after the other, searching for possible connections to Nora Papenberg, for similar professions. When she next glanced at the clock, over two hours had passed. Damn it! She jumped up, wrenched her bag from the back of the chair and dashed towards the door. She’d be lucky to get there on time, yet again.

The traffic was heavy, as it always was on Fridays, and by the time Beatrice finally pulled up at the school she could see Mina and Jakob sitting on a bench in front of the entrance, waiting for her. Mina was gesticulating in front of Jakob’s face, clearly giving him an important pedagogical speech.