Ursula Archer - Five

Stage Three

You’re looking for a loser, and you’re the first person besides me to take any interest in him in a long time. Look for scars, inside and out, and an old, dark blue VW Golf. The last three digits of the number plate are 39B. The street he lives in contains a name, which forms your keyword. Transform the letters into numbers (A=1, B=2…). Take the sum you get from the word, multiply it by 26, add 64 and subtract this from the northern coordinates from Stage Two.

Add the number 1,000 to the house number and multiply the sum by 4, then add 565. Subtract the resulting sum from the eastern coordinates from Stage Two. We’ll see each other there.

‘A loser,’ mused Beatrice. ‘That could mean anything. We’ll have to go by the description of the car.’

While Drasche checked the second piece of paper for fingerprints, Florin went off to phone the vehicle registration office.

Look for scars, inside and out. The first thing that came to Beatrice’s mind was the scar on the back of Beil’s hand – that was definitely an outer scar. Her gaze wandered instinctively over to the vacuum-packed hand. The counterpart to their first find – but there was still no body. Presumably inner organs would follow in the next stages, pieces that could fit in mid-sized plastic containers, pieces of a mutilated body…

‘Bingo!’ Drasche leant in closer over the paper he was heating with the hot-air gun. ‘We’ve got plenty of spoils here.’ On the letter, particularly around the edges of the page, violet flecks began to stand out. Oval shaped, partly smeared, but clear in some places, almost sharp. Fingerprints.

‘Is that a fleck of blood on the bottom right?’ asked Beatrice.

‘Possibly. You’ll get the detailed report when we’re done, okay?’ For Drasche, that was a consciously polite attempt at kicking them out.

‘I’d like the photos right away though,’ insisted Beatrice. Ebner promised to email them over in the next ten minutes.

By the time she left the lab, Florin had just finished off his telephone conversation. ‘They’re sending us a list. All the cars from Salzburg and the surrounding areas which match the last three digits of the number plate.’

Lists. Letters. Reports. Beatrice peeled off her lab coat, threw the gloves in a disposal bin, pulled the protective cap from her head and ran both hands through her hair. When she was trudging through all the paperwork that the case brought along with it, she didn’t feel as though they were getting even one step closer to the Owner. She only felt his presence in the notes they found in the containers.

There was another three hours to go before their scheduled meeting with Hoffmann. They hurried back to the office. Beatrice checked her emails immediately in the hope of finding the photos there. Nothing. Instead, a provisional handwriting comparison had arrived from the graphology expert.

‘“The two samples correspond in all fundamental characteristics such as size, connectivity, angularity, anticlockwise slant and line spacing,”’ Beatrice read out loud. ‘“This suggests that they originate from the same individual, despite the fact that the second sample shows considerable irregularities which may indicate the subject was under extreme psychological stress.”’

Florin had stopped what he was doing to listen. He drummed his knuckles thoughtfully on the desk. ‘So Nora Papenberg really did compose the puzzles. And then there’s the fact that the blood of the dismembered victim was found on her clothes – Bea, we have to at least consider the possibility that she might not be the victim here.’

He was right, of course; they couldn’t rule it out. But it just felt so wrong.

‘Two accomplices,’ Florin continued, holding a pen in each hand, ‘who are in it together, until they argue, and one of them kills the other.’ The pen on the right fell onto the desk and rolled towards his keyboard. ‘Then the Owner disposes of the helper.’

‘Yes, although – nothing we’ve found out about Nora so far makes her sound like the kind of woman who cuts people up into little pieces.’ Seeing Florin frown, she knew what he was thinking. It was impossible to know, taking someone at face value, what they were capable of. Unfortunately. Luckily. She had tried to do it so often, back then, that she had almost lost her mind.

‘Have a good look at the photos from the agency dinner. She was carefree in all the pictures, completely relaxed. Until the phone call – then you can almost feel the weight on her shoulders.’

She thought about Christoph Beil. He had recognised Nora. Not her name, but her face. She would speak to him again, hound him if she had to, until he told the truth.

A few minutes before they headed off to their meeting with Hoffmann, word came in that a man had been reported missing. A man who, as the official put it, ‘could fit with the profile you have, age-wise’. The individual in question hadn’t turned up to work for the last week.

Florin scanned through the report that a colleague had laid on his desk. ‘Herbert Liebscher, forty-eight years old, teacher. Divorced, no children.’ He looked up. ‘Who filed the missing persons report?’

‘The school principal. He described Liebscher as being very dependable, and has no idea where he might be. They’ve tried to reach him on his mobile numerous times, but they just keep getting his voicemail.’

‘What about the ex-wife? Has he contacted her?’

‘No. Apparently they’re not in touch any more.’

Beatrice walked up to Florin’s desk and peered over his shoulder. The image showing Herbert Leibscher was a typical old-style passport photo: head dipped slightly, a strained smile, a blurry blue background. A long face with pale blue eyes, a narrow nose and equally narrow lips. Heavy bags under the eyes.

His hands weren’t in the picture, of course.

‘Send a patrol car over to the school and make sure they get a comb or some other personal article that his DNA might be on,’ Beatrice directed their colleague. ‘A full-length photo would be good too, one we can see his hands in. And have someone go to his apartment. If he’s not there, ask the neighbours when they last saw him. It would be helpful to know as precisely as possible.’

Their colleague – what was his name again? Becker? – raised his eyebrows in disbelief. ‘You don’t say. We’re not idiots you know.’ With that, he turned on his heel and left.

Beatrice watched him go, completely baffled. ‘What was all that about? Was I – I wasn’t rude, was I?’ Seeing that Florin was struggling to contain a grin, she couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Come on, tell me, what’s so funny?’

‘You treated Bechner like he was still at the police academy.’ He stood up and gathered the files for their meeting, putting them under his arm. ‘He’ll go off to tell the others and confirm your reputation as a control freak.’

‘Control freak?’

‘Come on. You don’t exactly like letting other people handle things, do you?’

‘Well, when it comes to colleagues I don’t work with very often, I can’t know for certain how competent they are.’ But at least she knew the man’s name now. Bechner. She repeated it to herself a few times, glancing at the clock as she did so. Three minutes past three, they were late – wonderful. She hastily grabbed her notes and joined Florin, who was waiting for her by the door.

‘It would do you good to have a little more faith in others,’ he said softly. Looking at the picture of the shrink-wrapped hand on the top of his pile of documents, Beatrice wondered if he could really mean that seriously.

Their meeting with Hoffmann went like all their meetings with Hoffmann. He demonstrated his discontent with the results they had produced so far by puckering the corners of his mouth and sighing loudly. Florin was the only one he ever found favour in, so he took over reporting the investigations that they had undertaken so far. And he said she didn’t ever let anyone else take control! When Florin got to the part about the text messages the Owner had sent, Hoffmann’s attentiveness increased perceptibly. He trained his pale eyes on Beatrice.