Five (17 page)

‘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.

Beatrice rummaged around in her desk drawer for a magnifying glass and looked at Liebscher’s hands. Was it possible to ascertain whether they were the same ones that had been found in the caches, tinged with blue?

She scanned the picture at the highest resolution and zoomed in on the section showing his hands, comparing what she saw with the photos of the shrink-wrapped dismembered ones. It was certainly possible that they were the same, but she couldn’t be sure. The hands in the picture were as unremarkable as the man they belonged to. She suppressed a sigh and tried to get through to Drasche again. This time, he picked up.

‘You’ll have your written report soon,’ he boomed, without a word of greeting. ‘It took longer because I had to use every damn method that’s ever been invented, but we still only have Papenberg’s fingerprints.’

‘On a note?’

‘Yep. Do you want to know about the ears? It might interest you.’ That was probably the closest Drasche would get to a friendly tone in this lifetime.

‘Are they from the same victim?’

‘They’re a matching pair, if that’s what you mean. We’ll need to wait on the genetic analysis to find out whether they were cut off from the same guy as the hands though.’ He inserted one of his typical pauses, indicating that he wanted to be asked for further details.

‘Okay.’ She decided to humour him. ‘Is there anything else of interest?’

‘Yes.’ Drasche cleared his throat and coughed. ‘They weren’t cut off with a saw, but a tool with two opposing blades.’ He stopped, giving the information time to seep deeply enough into Beatrice’s imagination to create a vague image. ‘My guess would be a pair of garden shears,’ he added.

All of a sudden, the image was crystal clear. Beatrice swallowed. ‘I see.’

‘That’s only half of the story. The ears weren’t vacuum-packed together, but individually. The pathologist will have to confirm it, of course, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t cut off at the same time. The left one looks much more decomposed than the right.’

Beatrice took a sharp intake of breath through her teeth.

‘You’ve guessed it, right? I think the right ear was cut off while the victim was still alive. One or two days before the left one, in any case.’

‘How wonderful. Okay, please send everything over. The photos, particularly the ones of the letters, and the others too.’

‘Will do.’ He hung up.

A pair of garden shears. Beatrice pictured the monstrosity with steel blades which Achim had always used to trim the boxwood hedge.

‘Are you not feeling well?’ The concern in Florin’s voice made her smile involuntarily.

‘I’m fine. It seems our Owner started to mutilate his victim while he was still alive. One of the ears was probably cut off before the man died.’

‘Shit,’ whispered Florin hoarsely.

‘Yep. Drasche is sending everything over now. Including the clues about the next stage.’ Realising that she had started to arrange the pens on her desk so they were all parallel and aligned, she gave them an impatient shove before standing up and switching on the espresso machine. Caffeine was a better option than indulging in OCD-like behaviour. ‘I wish we had Reichenau in the team instead of that narcissistic fool.’ Beatrice quickly tipped the rest of the coffee beans from the packet into the grinder, causing about a quarter of it to spill out and tumble down onto the floor. ‘Wow, I’m really on form today.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ said Florin. ‘And go easier on Kossar too. We barely know him – perhaps he really knows his stuff.’

‘Maybe.’ She cleared up the scattered beans and threw them in the bin. ‘I’ll do my best to be objective, okay? But don’t forget he was holding us up from doing our job earlier.’

The coffee eventually helped to reunite her with her concentration. She drank the cup quickly in the knowledge that she would no longer be able to enjoy it once Drasche’s photos arrived.

She went through the existing files one more time. Hands. And now ears. Was that purely arbitrary, or was there some symbolism behind it? Had the victim touched something forbidden? Heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear? She tried to stop her mind going off at a tangent. Getting to the bottom of questions like those was Kossar’s job, not hers.

A few minutes later, Drasche’s photos arrived in her inbox. The first data files showed the ears: blood-soaked lobes, one more advanced in the decomposition process than the other. Then the letters.

The first was word-processed, as the previous ones had been, and again started with the same words.

Congratulations – you’ve found it!

We’re still playing the same game; you should be getting familiar with it by now. What do you think of this container? I’d like to know if you draw the correct conclusions from its contents. You may well manage to, but it’s unlikely to help you any further
.

How are things going with your boss? And the media? Are people getting impatient yet that you haven’t come up with anything?

Come on, police! Try harder
.

TFTH

The noises from the street outside forced their way in through the closed window, while someone wearing high-heeled shoes could be heard walking along the corridor.
Clackclackclack
. Beatrice waited to see whether Florin would say anything, and when he didn’t she cleared her throat. ‘He’s trying to provoke us.’

‘Well, as far as I’m concerned he’s doing a very good job of it.’ He put his cup down a little too firmly; some of it lapped over the edge and formed a brown lake next to the telephone. ‘Come on, police,’ he whispered.

Just in time, Beatrice managed to save a pile of interrogation minutes from the spilled coffee. ‘He seems to have some personal battle with us. We should go back through all the old files and look for someone who might feel they’ve been mistreated by the police, someone who blames us for their life being ruined.’

Florin grimaced. ‘Well, there’ll be no shortage of candidates there.’

‘But, you know, sometimes it goes beyond the normal level.’

Suddenly Bechner rushed in without knocking, ignoring Beatrice and addressing Florin. ‘Do you have a minute to speak about the statements from the Papenberg relatives?’

‘No. Later.’

He waited until Bechner had pulled the door shut behind him, clearly affronted. ‘Do you think he’s doing this because of us? Torturing and killing people just to get material for his puzzles, to make life difficult for us?’

‘No, I don’t think that’s his motive. But humiliating us and boosting his own ego is clearly important to him. Why else would he write letters like this to us?’

Beatrice clicked on the print icon. With a whirring sound, two copies of the latest cache note peeled out of the printer. Then she opened the next data file from the attachment in Drasche’s email.

Once again, the puzzle was composed in Nora Papenberg’s handwriting. Erratic at first, almost illegible, but halfway through it looked as though the writer had got a hold of herself.

Even after the first read-through, Beatrice could tell it was going to be exceptionally difficult this time.

Stage Four