Ursula Archer - Five

The GPS device Beatrice had borrowed from Stefan that morning was showing another 143 metres to their destination. She hoped he wasn’t too disappointed at having to hold the fort in the office instead of coming on the hunt with them.

‘What a strange place.’ Florin pushed his sunglasses up onto his head and came over to Beatrice to look at the GPS device with her. His proximity filled her with an unfamiliar shyness; the encounter – or rather, the almost-encounter – from Saturday was still playing on her mind. The strange sensation of having intruded into his private sphere.

Drasche stomped over in his blue-plastic covered shoes. ‘Which direction?’

‘Straight ahead, under the arch of the bridge. Keep to the right just a little.’ She pushed the GPS device into Drasche’s hand and pointed at the black-and-white destination flag. ‘Head towards that. The thing will make a peeping noise once you get there.’

She and Florin walked several paces behind Drasche and Ebner, who were making their way slowly, step by step, towards the indicated location. It was excruciatingly loud beneath the bridge itself, but as soon as they emerged into the daylight again all that remained was the surf-like rushing sound, paired with the babbling of a stream. It was flowing along to their right, dammed up a little further on by a low wall of uneven stones. A miniature waterfall was spluttering out of a hole in the middle of it.

Pretty, but not likely to be a hiding place . Beatrice watched Drasche as he paced back and forth, turning around in circles, before eventually pressing the GPS device into Ebner’s hands.

‘The bloody thing changes its mind about the direction every other second.’

‘That means you’re almost there!’ she called out to him. ‘Look within a five-metre radius.’

Drasche’s cursing was only just swallowed up by the combined efforts of the autobahn and stream. ‘What am I supposed to do, dig a hole in the ground or something?’

‘No…’ She went forward a few paces and pointed at the wall. ‘You have to look for hiding places. Geocaches are often stashed in tiny crevices or holes. You’re not supposed to find them at first glance.’

‘Then maybe it’s in the water,’ scoffed Drasche as he lifted a large stone at the edge of the bed of the stream, before climbing up to the small wall with Ebner. ‘Just mud, sludge and branches,’ he commented. ‘Now the GPS is saying we’re thirteen metres away.’

Beatrice exchanged a glance with Florin. Had they messed up? Was the cache already gone?

She thought back to yesterday’s search, to the hole she and Stefan had crawled into.

‘He hasn’t given us a terrain rating,’ she murmured.

Florin turned to look at her. ‘Come again?’

‘A terrain rating. Normally each cache has a starring system which shows you how hard it is to find. That way you know whether there’ll be any climbing or crawling involved…’ Her gaze wandered over to the brambles growing around the mouth of the stream. Buttercups, hip-height spiky plants whose name she didn’t know, and—

‘Gerd!’

Drasche whipped around. ‘What is it?’

‘Climb down again and come back in my direction. Yes, just a few steps – stop! Is that a tree root there on your left?’

As he leant over, Beatrice moved forwards to be able to see more clearly. He nodded. ‘Yes. It’s completely overgrown.’

‘Reach underneath – there, where the roots are hanging over into the water. From where I’m standing it looks like there might be a little recess.’

Drasche’s gloved hands fumbled downwards. It would have been much easier to get access if he had climbed into the slimy riverbed, but he was clearly trying to avoid that. His favourite sentence was: Your evidence erases their evidence .

But he couldn’t get to it kneeling down, so he lay on his stomach and immersed his arm right up to the shoulder in the cavity between the roots and the bed of the stream.

If I were the Owner, thought Beatrice, this is exactly the place I would have picked. No one would go rooting around in there just for fun .

Drasche’s triumphant cry made her jump. He pulled his arm back up, bringing out into the daylight a container which was coated in slime and tiny pebbles. An earthworm lost its grip and tumbled down into the grass.

They had been right after all. Relief streamed through Beatrice’s body, as welcome as oxygen after being immersed underwater. Florin put an arm around her shoulders.

‘Good work, Bea.’

They walked over to join the others. Ebner was already taking photos of the box, the stream, the tree roots and the surrounding area, while Drasche busied himself putting the cache into one of his own transport containers. ‘Sorry, but you’re not opening anything out here,’ he said, turning to Beatrice and Florin. ‘For one thing, I’d like to do it in lab conditions, and for another I’m not in the mood to wait for official transportation if it turns out there’s another body part in there.’

They struggled to contain their impatience. Beatrice was in no hurry to see the gruesome trade she presumed was inside the box, but the note she hoped it contained was another matter. A clue to the next stage, perhaps a clue leading them to the Owner himself. Or a mistake, at long last.

But they would have to wait while Drasche and Ebner took samples of the mud and searched the surrounding area for any possible traces of evidence. When they finally set off to the lab, the journey seemed to take longer than usual, and even the act of putting on protective clothing in the scrub room was a tortuous exercise in patience. Slow , she thought to herself grimly.

Under the light of the blindingly bright investigation lamps, Drasche finally opened the box. He took a note out and unfolded it.

‘“Congratulations – you’ve found it!”’ he read out loud. ‘“This container is part of a game that you are now familiar with. You didn’t find it by chance, but intentionally looked for it. The contents won’t surprise you as much as last time, but surprises are overrated, believe me. I’m sure you’ll soon agree with me on this. TFTH.”’

Drasche looked up. ‘What an asshole.’

No surprises. It was already clear what was in the wrapped-up bundle that almost entirely filled the container. Feeling vaguely grateful that she didn’t have to touch it herself, Beatrice felt her body tense as Drasche carefully pulled it out.

Three additional days in warm spring temperatures hadn’t been good for the contents of the plastic film. This hand had expunged significantly more fluid than its left counterpart. Despite the vacuum packing, green and blue discolorations on the flesh were clearly visible.

‘Luckily the task of opening it falls to the pathologist,’ explained Drasche. Beatrice guessed that his face mask was veiling a sardonic smile. She watched him check the plastic film for fingerprints and shake his head in frustration. Next, he laid the typed note down on the work surface, sprayed it with Ninhydrin and heated it up with the hot-air gun, but this didn’t yield any results either.

Commenting that ‘all good things come in threes’, Drasche pulled another folded piece of paper from the cache container. He spread it out carefully and laid it beneath the lamp to take photos of it under the light.

‘I’d hazard a guess that this is the same handwriting as last time,’ he established. Instead of waiting for him to read aloud, Beatrice moved closer and leant over the note. He was right. The same looping, rounded letters – Beatrice was sure they belonged to Nora Papenberg. The pen had clearly been shaking at times; the lines slanted slightly downwards like the stems of a withering plant.