Ursula Archer - Five

Beatrice decided to have Beil’s phone calls looked into right away, to find out where the call which had upset him so much the previous evening had come from. It wasn’t improbable that it had come from a phone box in Maxglan. Or from a certain mobile phone with a prepaid card.

Until the response from the phone company came back, she hoped to be able to immerse herself in Drasche’s findings, assuming that he had already sent the pictures of the new messages. Another puzzle, Stage Four.

But Beatrice didn’t manage to find out, because there was someone waiting for her in front of the office. A tall, lanky man with curly hair and glasses that were a little too fashionable to be tasteful. When he saw her and Florin approaching, he jumped up from his chair and stretched his hand out.

‘Dr Peter Kossar, pleased to meet you. You must be Florin Wenninger, hello. And Beatrice Kaspary, am I right? I’ve heard about you – a quasi-colleague, one might say?’

Confused, she returned the firm pressure of his handshake. He didn’t break eye contact, and she noticed he had pronounced Peter the English way. ‘How do you mean, quasi ?’ she asked.

‘Well, I heard you studied psychology.’

The penny dropped. ‘Are you the forensic psychologist we requested?’

It was as if the man considered blinking to be a weakness of some kind – Beatrice found the intensity with which he was gazing at her physically unpleasant.

‘Exactly. Your boss has filled me in on the key details of the case, and the fact that the perpetrator has made contact with you. That’s a highly important detail. I’ve already studied the text messages thoroughly, and I’ll soon be able to tell you how to respond to them.’

He walked into the office ahead of Beatrice. At last, his gaze had left her, fixing instead on the photos she had pinned up over her desk.

‘We will of course make copies of all the relevant files for you,’ said Florin. It was quite clear, at least to Beatrice, that he wanted to get rid of the guy as soon as possible.

‘Excellent.’

‘What happened to Dr Reichenau?’ enquired Beatrice. ‘Up until now we’ve always collaborated with him on occasions such as these, and – please don’t take this the wrong way – it always worked excellently.’

If Kossar was offended by her question, he didn’t let on. ‘My colleague is in the process of applying to be the head of an institute and is very busy right now. But I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear that you spoke so highly of him.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down next to Beatrice. ‘My method of working is different to Dr Reichenau’s. He gleans his knowledge predominantly from the written material available, whereas I find that the more closely intertwined I am with the investigations, the better I can assess the perpetrator.’

Just what they needed. Beatrice avoided making eye contact with Florin, but hoped he would say something before she blurted out the words that were poised on her tongue. You’re getting in the way .

‘That sounds very interesting.’ She knew Florin well enough to be able to detect the coldness behind his polite words. ‘But I’m sure you’ll want to catch up on the details of the case first.’ He reached for the telephone and pressed a button. ‘Stefan? Could you please put together all the important info on our Owner for Dr Kossar? Yes, a copy of the file. No, he’s a forensic psychologist, and I’ll send him over to you right now. Exactly. Thank you!’

‘Well,’ said Kossar, ignoring the subtle request for him to leave, ‘perhaps I should just tell you a little about myself so that you can get an idea of my qualifications.’ He straightened his glasses.

Translated, what he really meant was: So that you are appropriately impressed . Beatrice had studied long enough to be able to spot the traits of a narcissistic personality at first glance, and Kossar had them in abundance. While the psychologist pontificated about his additional qualifications and the fact that he had acquired them in the USA, Beatrice’s thoughts wandered back to Christoph Beil.

‘Impressive,’ she murmured, dialling the number of the mobile network provider the Owner was using. ‘Excuse me, I have to get back to work now,’ she explained to a visibly irritated Kossar, watching out of the corner of her eye as he finally got up and allowed himself to be escorted to the door by Florin.

The technical support assistant she got through to was the same one as the day before.

‘You’ve got a match,’ he explained. ‘The same prepaid card, registered to a network in Parsch. The number dialled was the exact one you mentioned, and the call lasted around three and a half minutes. From six twenty-four to six twenty-eight. After that, the mobile immediately went offline again.’

‘Thank you.’

Florin, who had been trying to reach Drasche while she was on the phone, looked at her with his eyes narrowed. ‘He phoned Beil, right?’

‘Yes. It’s the first time he’s made a call on Nora Papenberg’s mobile. We need a bugging authorisation.’

Lost in thought, she drew a circle around the notes she had made. Three and a half minutes. She would have given so much to know what was discussed in this short time period. And, even more importantly…

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about Christoph Beil,’ she said.

Florin frowned. ‘Me too. We’ll write up a missing persons report – perhaps we’ll get lucky.’

She rested her forehead in her hands. ‘The worst-case scenario is that the Owner has silenced him.’ And, to make matters worse, after dangling him under our noses like bait, like the promise of a solution to all the puzzles .

She sent a description of Beil to all stations in the area, along with the instruction to keep an eye out for his car. Florin carried out the necessary calls with a dark expression on his face. He didn’t say anything, but Beatrice was convinced he was harbouring the same fear she was: that they would see Beil again sooner than expected. Vacuum-packed in small portions.

That afternoon, they received news from the pathologist’s office that the two hands were a genetic match; they came from the same body. Whether the DNA matched that of Liebscher, the missing teacher, would only become clear in the next day or two, but the colleague whom Beatrice had managed to insult – Bechner, his name was Bechner , she had it fixed in her memory now – had managed to find a comb in Herbert Liebscher’s pigeonhole at the school, next to a tube of cough sweets and numerous packets of antacids.

Florin scanned through Bechner’s report. ‘It looks like Liebscher was… or is known amongst his colleagues as being friendly and conscientious. Not very sociable, but reliable. Although somewhat lacking when it comes to a sense of humour apparently. He teaches maths and physics.’

‘And there’s nothing about any recent changes in behaviour?’

‘No, nothing of the sort. He was planning a two-day trip with his class which was supposed to take place next week. The director said the last time he saw Liebscher he was annoyed about the fact that not everyone had paid yet, which meant he couldn’t book the bus.’ Florin lowered the piece of paper with a shrug.

‘Maybe he’s not our guy after all.’ Beatrice stretched her hand over the desk and Florin handed her the files, including three photos, one of which was a typical class picture. Twenty-six children aged around fourteen, Liebscher standing alongside them with a strained smile. A thin man with thinning hair. Another picture was a portrait shot, and a third had been taken while he was teaching. He was facing the class, a piece of chalk in his right hand, and with the left he was pointing at a functional equation on the blackboard.