Ursula Archer - Five

She almost spat out her half-chewed mouthful of cabbage. ‘Yeah, sure. Listen, he doesn’t even talk to me when he picks the kids up. He looks at me as if I’m a stinking pile of rubbish that someone forgot to take out.’

Richard wiped a serviette across his forehead. ‘I believe you. But only because you’re the one who took everything he cared about away from him. If you were to give it back—’

‘You can’t be serious.’ She put her knife and fork down. ‘We’re not good for one another, Achim and I. We never were. He wants someone who enjoys the same things as him, who laughs at the same jokes. Who likes cooking and only works to bring money in.’ She snorted. ‘You would probably get on much better with him than I ever could.’

‘But it would make your life so much easier.’

‘Except it wouldn’t be my life any more.’

Richard twisted the serviette between his hands as though he wanted to strangle someone with it. ‘It’s because of what happened back then, right? You’ve become so much harder since then, Bea. You have to move on at some point, you can’t bring someone back to life by—’

‘That’s enough, okay?’ She pushed her plate away; at least she had eaten half of it. ‘I’m really grateful that Mama always helps out when I need it, and that you look after the children too. Really I am. But when it comes to Achim and what happened back then, as you put it, you don’t get a say.’ Without giving him a chance to react, she stood up, ruffled his hair and gave him a hug. ‘Everything’s fine. I’m not on the brink of burning out, but thank you for teaching Jakob a new word.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He held her at arm’s length for a moment and gave a sigh. ‘Is there anyone who understands what’s going on in your head, Bea?’

She smiled and shrugged.

Not that I know of .

She drove home slowly, the car radio turned up louder than usual. Once she got back, she would have a shower and then try to look at Stage Four with fresh eyes.

The car behind her seemed to have its headlights on full beam, because the reflection in the rear-view mirror was blinding her. Aggravated, she stepped on the accelerator to put some distance between them. But by the next traffic light, he was right behind her again. And at the next, and the one after that.

An uneasy feeling started to creep over Beatrice. She turned around. Was the car following her? It was impossible to see the driver’s face, but maybe she could at least make out the model of the car… No, she couldn’t.

At the next crossroads, she turned left, then right at the one after that. The car was still behind her. It was keeping to the same speed, not even overtaking when she slowed down and gave it the opportunity to.

There were two more turns before she would be back home. Then she would park and get a better look at her pursuer. But when she turned right at the next crossroads, the car drove straight on. She tried to catch a quick glimpse of the driver’s profile, but couldn’t see clearly enough; even the number plate was too dimly lit to be made out. She shook her head. She didn’t normally get so worked up about things. What was it that Richard had said about a burn-out?

Nonsense. She had all her wits about her and would only worry about it if she saw the car again in the next few days. It had been red, four-door – a Honda, if she wasn’t mistaken.

A thought rushed into her mind.

A red Honda Civic. The car Nora Papenberg used to drive. She sat at the living-room table, searching through her notes. It was probably just a coincidence; there was always a time in the midst of the investigations when it was common to overanalyse everything, and Beatrice was very familiar with this phenomenon.

Had the car following her really been a Civic? She had only seen it briefly from the side – it had been red, yes, and definitely a Honda, but other than that?

She filed the thought away for the time being and took the photos from the most recent cache out of her bag. For the next two hours, she sat there studying the photos and letters, staring at Nora Papenberg’s writing and trying in vain to find someone on Geocaching.com whose profile would prompt that familiar ‘click’ in her mind.

His quota is over 2,000. He never concedes defeat . Was there a way of filtering users with over 2,000 finds? Apparently not. That night, in spite of all her efforts, Stage Four refused to reveal its secrets.

The news reached Beatrice on a cool morning from which the drizzle had slowly but persistently washed away all colour. She arrived in the office at the same time as the phone call: a male body had been found near the Salzach lake. Three fishermen had pulled the corpse from its hiding place after spotting a naked foot protruding from the reeds at the water’s edge.

On the way to the scene, Beatrice thought about Beil’s wife. She would now have to identify the man she had affectionately named Grizzly Bear. The description given by the police officers at the scene seemed to fit his profile.

The third victim. She looked across at Florin, who was driving. ‘We should arrange some police protection for Bernd Sigart.’

Beil’s body had been laid out on the shore of the lake, and it was a horrific sight. Naked down to his underpants, his body was covered with wounds, some of them deep, narrow and jagged, as if a small animal had been trying to burrow something out from beneath his skin. Blue strangulation marks ran around his neck, and the face above it was already bloated. But there was no doubt that it was him.

‘Do you know what instrument the cuts might have been inflicted with?’ asked Beatrice, but she didn’t receive any answer from Drasche, who was busy taking Beil’s fingerprints. Typical. She spotted the medical officer standing just outside the cordoning tape, making notes whilst he leant over the bonnet of his car.

‘Good morning, Doctor. I know I’m impatient, but I need all the information you can give me.’

He nodded, without breaking the contact between his pen and the paper. ‘The man has been dead for roughly three days, but he was brought here a good while later. He has grazes and deep scratches all over his body, and a stab wound on the left side of his ribcage. That could be the cause of death, but the victim was definitely strangled as well. He was found lying on his stomach, but the livor mortis is on his back, which means the corpse must have been in another position for a good two days.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That’s all I can tell you right now.’

‘The scratches and cuts – what do you think they were inflicted by?’

The doctor sighed loudly. ‘I don’t know. Presumably it was a jagged instrument, something like a blunt saw that both scrapes and cuts the surface.’

‘While he was still alive?’

‘Yes, that’s very likely.’

Beatrice glanced over her shoulder back at the dead body. Beil had been tortured, and she would bet anything that someone had been trying to force information out of him. Presumably the same information he hadn’t wanted to tell her.

Florin spoke to the uniformed policeman who had been the first one on the scene, while Beatrice went over to the three fishermen who were waiting, palely and silently, by the squad car.

‘The guy over there had a go at us about moving the body,’ said one of them. ‘But we wanted to see if he was still alive, whether there was anything we could do.’

‘Of course. Don’t worry,’ Beatrice reassured them. ‘My colleague is a little quick-tempered – it’s nothing personal. Did you notice anything else that might be significant? Did you encounter anyone on your way down to the lake, for example?’

The three men looked at each other, then shook their heads in consensus. ‘It was half-five in the morning, and there’s hardly ever anyone here at that time,’ said the oldest man, whose grey-flecked hair came down almost to his shoulders. ‘But there was something I noticed – well, nothing really compared to the dead body, but still –’