Ursula Archer - Five

‘Yes?’

‘Twigs.’ He looked at Beatrice almost apologetically. ‘A few metres away from where we found the man, there were these short twigs on the ground, and they formed a word—’

‘Not a word,’ interrupted one of the two younger men. ‘Just meaningless letters. TFTL, I think.’

‘No, it was TFTH,’ said the third man.

‘Are they still there?’

‘No, we dragged the body across them when we pulled it out.’

‘I see.’ How incredibly helpful . ‘Nonetheless, if you could please show me where the twigs are.’

The spot was just inside the cordon, directly on the river bank where the ground was soft. Beatrice waved Ebner over, who collected the twigs up one by one and stowed them away carefully.

‘The Owner left us his usual message,’ she said to Florin, after pulling him a few steps away from the uniformed policemen. ‘Thanking us for the hunt. We’ll have to…’ She closed her eyes, trying to bring some order to her thoughts. ‘We’ll have to speak to Konrad Papenberg again. Tell me if you disagree, but I believe Beil was killed because of something he knew. The Owner tortured him to find out exactly what, then killed him. Whatever it was – this information he had – must be connected to Nora Papenberg.’

‘The accomplice the Owner disposed of.’ Florin was gazing off over the lake into the distance. ‘That seems the most likely explanation to me. Maybe Beil even knew why they murdered Herbert Liebscher.’

Twenty minutes later, Hoffmann’s car drove up while Beatrice was asking the fishermen some further questions. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Hoffmann look at the body, pace around the scene, then speak briefly with Drasche before heading over in her direction. ‘You knew the victim, is that correct?’

‘Yes. Christoph Beil. We questioned him last Sunday, and two days later his wife reported him missing.’

Hoffmann nodded gloomily. ‘The third murder in such a short period of time – this is ruining our safety stats for the entire year. I expect this case to speed up, Kaspary. For heaven’s sake, the murderer is giving you clues, communicating with you – there must be a way to work with that! Why aren’t you following Kossar’s suggestions?’

Beatrice was silent. Letting herself get drawn into an argument would be just as futile as pointing out Kossar’s overly relaxed approach. Any attempt at self-defence had a tendency to spur Hoffmann on to self-opinionated tirades. More often than not, they started with the words: If I were in your position, I would have…

‘You’ll attend the autopsy today and report back to me afterwards.’ Before she had a chance to respond, he marched over to Florin, who was kneeling down at the edge of the cordoned area talking to Drasche, the body firmly fixed in his sights. She watched Hoffmann go, allowing herself to daydream for a moment that it was his autopsy she was attending instead.

‘Male corpse, 184 centimetres tall and weighing 93 kilos, in a healthy state of nourishment with a strong build.’ Dr Vogt’s scrawny figure moved around the autopsy table with measured steps as he talked into his Dictaphone. ‘The subject’s back – with the exception of the area which was in contact with the ground – reveals fixed, reddish violet livor mortis that doesn’t fade when finger pressure is applied.’

As Vogt continued with the external examination of Beil’s corpse, Beatrice reached for her mobile, which she had tucked into the pocket of the white coat lent to her by the forensics unit. Archived had been the Owner’s last message. He still hadn’t responded to her reply. Did he not care that she knew who he had been dismembering and hiding away? Did it please him, unsettle him?

‘Rigor mortis has set in, the eyelids are closed. There are dotted traces of bleeding around the upper and lower lids. Moving on now to the skin injuries –’ Vogt stopped next to Beil’s shoulder. ‘There are abrasions around the inside of the upper arm, four centimetres wide and six centimetres long, which have penetrated the upper layers of the dermis. The wounds are uneven in depth, which suggests they were inflicted by a serrated object. Lesions of the same sort are also located to the left of the navel, in both armpits and on the inner left thigh, five centimetres above the knee.’

As Vogt detailed one injury after the other, Beatrice closed her eyes, trying to picture a tool that would create wounds like that. Maybe a blunt saw blade? It was possible, but the cuts seemed too small in surface area for that.

‘There are sharply outlined wounds around the ankles and wrists, suggesting that the subject was forcibly restrained. On the back of the left hand is a violet-pigmented scar, two centimetres in diameter, which predates the victim’s injuries and death.’

The scar which had enabled them to find him. The Owner had led them to Beil with his clues, waited until they had spoken to him, then attacked almost as soon as their backs were turned.

But why not sooner? Was it all about provoking the police, was that really part of his motive? It felt as though they were just running around haplessly, dashing to wherever he wanted them to go. Yet the Owner was always there in front of them.

A thought that had occurred to her when she arrived at the scene earlier that day reared its head again with renewed force: if that was the killer’s trick, then they would have to keep an eye on Sigart.

The autopsy lasted two and a half hours. It seemed Beil had died as the result of a stab to the heart. A sharp object, presumably a knife blade, had penetrated the front wall of the thorax and the pericardium, as well as the anterior and posterior walls of the heart. He had died of internal bleeding.

‘What about the strangulation marks?’ Beatrice pointed at the blue marks which ran around Beil’s neck in ring formations.

‘There are two choke marks which suggest he was hanged, but not fatally,’ Vogt explained.

‘Aha. And what do you make of that?’

‘Either he tried to hang himself and failed, or his murderer couldn’t decide which method to use. Are you familiar with Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio ? “First beheaded, then hanged, then impaled on hot stakes…”’ He sang with an astonishingly full and deep voice.

Beatrice knew a few pathologists and was familiar with their unique sense of humour, but the sight of Vogt singing in front of the corpse while the liver was being weighed by the assistant pathologist was almost enough to make her flee the room.

‘Two choking marks, you say?’

Vogt interrupted his performance. ‘Yes. So either the rope slipped or someone tried to hang him twice.’ He shrugged, looking at Beatrice with his head tilted to the side. ‘I’ll leave it to you to make sense of that one.’

It was just before five in the afternoon when they rang Sigart’s doorbell, and it took him a long time to answer.

‘You’ll have to excuse me. I was sleeping.’ He was shockingly pale, and a deep red crease stretched diagonally across the right side of his face, clearly the imprint of a pillow. ‘Come in.’

He sat down on the edge of the couch, awkwardly pulling on a pair of socks.

‘Sorry that we woke you,’ said Florin.

‘Don’t worry. Maybe I’ll be able to get a few hours’ sleep tonight now.’ He looked up. ‘It’s the pills, you know? My doctor prescribed me new ones which make me very tired, but unfortunately only during the day.’ He gestured towards the folding chairs, which, it seemed, were still at the table from their last visit.

‘Herr Sigart, we’d like to know whether you’ve noticed anything unusual in the last few days,’ Florin began. ‘Anything unsettling?’