Ursula Archer - Five

She let Jakob go back to the nameless cat, hung up and looked at the text message again. After staring at the number for a few moments, she pressed the green button. It had barely begun to ring before the recorded voice kicked in. The number you have dialled is not available right now. Please try again later .

He hadn’t activated his voicemail, which meant Beatrice didn’t have the chance to say all the things she wanted to blurt out. That was probably for the best.

She was still holding the phone in her hand when it started to ring, prompting her to nearly drop it in shock. Florin.

‘Is there any news? How was this afternoon?’

‘We went to the agency. And it seems like the Owner has made contact with me. Three times.’

‘What?’

She brought him up to date on the events of the last few hours.

‘I’m coming into the office tomorrow,’ he said.

‘No, enjoy your time with Anneke. Stefan and I have things under control. We’ll check out a couple of the choir singers, and if we don’t have any luck then we’ll see the others on Sunday.’

She heard him sigh. ‘You two are making me feel guilty. And Bea, it worries me that he’s sending you anonymous text messages. Are you alone in the apartment?’

The creeping sense of unease from before returned. ‘Yes, but you can’t seriously think that he’ll pay me a visit. That’s nonsense, Florin.’ Good – she had even managed to convince herself.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it. We don’t yet know what makes him tick. Be careful, okay?’

‘Of course.’ Seeing her nod reflected in the balcony door, she pulled the curtain closed. ‘How was your evening? Was the carpaccio a hit?’

‘Don’t try to change the subject.’ But she could hear from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Are you sure about tomorrow? I could come in for an hour or two, at least.’

‘There’s no need. Really. You always have my back when I need to go and pick up the children, so it’s the least I can do to repay the favour now and again. Give my best to Anneke, even though I’ve never met her, I mean.’

‘I will. Have a nice evening, Bea. And remember—’

She interrupted him. ‘You, too. Both of you, I mean.’

Ending the call, she collapsed onto the sofa and closed her eyes.

Schubert’s Mass in A flat.

A noticeable birthmark on the back of the hand.

Why these particular clues? What was their relevance?

They reminded Beatrice of bad witness statements. Sometimes the strangest things stick in people’s memories while they forget the really important ones.

She clapped her laptop shut and went off to bed, not because she was tired, but because she knew she needed the sleep to be able to function tomorrow. She wouldn’t unplug the phone this time; she wanted to be contactable in case something was wrong with the children. Presumably Achim would leave her in peace tonight.

She only hoped the Owner would too.

‘I have no idea what you want from me, and I have no intention of letting you inspect my hands.’ The chubby, angry man in a dressing gown who had opened the door to them was the third Christoph they had called on today, and by far the least cooperative. ‘Show me your ID again,’ he demanded, looking Beatrice up and down in a leering fashion. The fatty was lucky she was feeling well rested, she reflected. She had slept through the night as if drugged. No calls or messages had startled her awake.

‘We’re investigating a murder case,’ she explained. ‘If you don’t want to get this over with quickly, we can happily take you down to the station.’

The man made a big fuss of examining the ID, then stretched his hands out. ‘If this is some hidden camera thing, you won’t hear the end of this,’ he grumbled.

‘Don’t worry.’ Gripping his hands a little more tightly than necessary and prompting an involuntary yelp, she looked at his palms. Nothing.

And the backs? Still nothing, even though she pushed up the sleeves of his dressing gown to be sure.

‘Thank you, we’re done now. Enjoy the rest of your day.’

Clearly the fat man wasn’t content with that. ‘Aren’t you going to at least tell me what murder case this is in connection with?’

‘Sorry, but no. Goodbye.’

The next man on their list wasn’t at home, and the one after that didn’t have any noticeable birthmarks either. Frustrated, Beatrice and Stefan made their way back to the police station, disappearing into their respective offices without another word. As she walked in, Beatrice was surprised to see Florin sitting at his desk.

‘Just a couple of hours,’ he explained. ‘I discovered yesterday evening that if you enter coordinates on Google Maps it shows you the exact location on the map. Look.’ He angled his screen so she could see. ‘This is the place where we found the hand. More or less exactly. This should make the work easier for us in future, if—’

Stefan rushed into the room, waving a piece of paper over his head. ‘This email arrived an hour ago, and you were right,’ he cried, thrusting the printout into Beatrice’s hand.

The Nokia N8 with the International Mobile Subscriber Identity she had investigated yesterday was registered to Nora Papenberg.

‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Beatrice. ‘He’s got her phone, and he’s sending us messages from it.’

‘Not us, you,’ Florin corrected her. ‘Which I still find very worrying, by the way.’

‘And I still think it’s very unlikely he wants to harm me,’ she answered, with a conviction that she only half felt. ‘He’s just trying to demonstrate his superiority.’ All the same, she knew she would be double-locking the door and closing all the windows tonight.

Florin nodded, but still looked doubtful. ‘It’s high time we brought a forensic psychologist onto the case – perhaps he’ll read more into the messages than we’re seeing. I don’t want to risk making mistakes or overlooking anything.’

Midday gave way to afternoon, and the striped pattern on Beatrice’s desk cast by the sunlight stretching through the blinds wandered from left to right. At half-past two, an email arrived from the network provider with a PDF attachment listing the connections made by the owner’s prepaid card.

The pickings were slim; only one number appeared, and that was Beatrice’s own. He had connected to the network cell for just two minutes at a time to send her the two messages, once in Hallein and the second time right there in Salzburg, in the Aigen district. Apart from that, the mobile had been offline the entire time.

‘He knows what he’s doing,’ Beatrice muttered. ‘So far he hasn’t made a single mistake that could give us anything to go on.’ The familiar digits of her own mobile number aggravated her every time the printout caught her eye. ‘So are we in agreement that the text messages and note came from him? From Nora Papenberg’s murderer?’

Florin stared thoughtfully at the reports in front of him for a few seconds, then nodded. ‘Yes. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.’

Half an hour later, Beatrice tried to shoo him away from the desk. ‘You shouldn’t even be here today. You have a guest.’

She sounded like her grandmother, but Florin’s smile was one of gratitude.

‘Okay, okay. But you should call it a day now, too.’

‘I will soon.’ She started to rearrange the papers on her desk. ‘Just another half-hour.’ Seeing the look on his face, she added, ‘I have a child-free weekend, so let me make use of it, okay?’

Half an hour turned into two, but beyond that she couldn’t make sense of anything; none of her thoughts managed to find a tenable link. Frustrated, she flung her pen across the desk.

She took a deep breath and shut down her computer. After letting Stefan know that she was stopping for the day, and noticing with a guilty conscience that he carried on working regardless, she finally walked out into the sunshine. It hadn’t been this warm for a long time. Beatrice pulled her sunglasses and car keys out of her bag, almost making her mobile fall out in the process.