She wouldn’t beg. ‘Just for a moment.’
He sighed resignedly. ‘Fine, go ahead then. But it would be better if you could look after them properly while they’re with you instead and leave them in peace for the little time I have with them.’
She stared over at the corner of the balcony, at a red plant pot in which a small conifer was leading a miserable existence. Nothing she would have liked to say to Achim right now would make the situation any better.
He sighed once more. ‘Mina, Jakob, do either of you want to speak to your mother?’
‘Later,’ called Mina, but Jakob’s ‘Yes’ echoed loudly down the phone.
The sound of running, crashing. ‘Hi, Mama!’
‘Hello, my darling! Are you having a good time?’
‘Yes! Papa really did get us a cat! Mina wants to call her Miley, but that’s a totally stupid name! Can we call her Lou? Like Tobias’s cat? I think that’s much better, but Mina says it sounds like loo…’
Beatrice listened to him talk, feeling the relief rush through her. Of course the children were fine; what had she expected? Even though the Owner clearly had her mobile number, none of the messages had been personal; no one had threatened her. The messages were a good thing, not a danger. But she still felt safer once she had retreated from the balcony back into the lounge, closing the glass door behind her.
She let Jakob go back to the nameless cat, hung up and looked at the text message again. After staring at the number for a few moments, she pressed the green button. It had barely begun to ring before the recorded voice kicked in. The number you have dialled is not available right now. Please try again later.
He hadn’t activated his voicemail, which meant Beatrice didn’t have the chance to say all the things she wanted to blurt out. That was probably for the best.
She was still holding the phone in her hand when it started to ring, prompting her to nearly drop it in shock. Florin.
‘Is there any news? How was this afternoon?’
‘We went to the agency. And it seems like the Owner has made contact with me. Three times.’
‘What?’
She brought him up to date on the events of the last few hours.
‘I’m coming into the office tomorrow,’ he said.
‘No, enjoy your time with Anneke. Stefan and I have things under control. We’ll check out a couple of the choir singers, and if we don’t have any luck then we’ll see the others on Sunday.’
She heard him sigh. ‘You two are making me feel guilty. And Bea, it worries me that he’s sending you anonymous text messages. Are you alone in the apartment?’
The creeping sense of unease from before returned. ‘Yes, but you can’t seriously think that he’ll pay me a visit. That’s nonsense, Florin.’ Good – she had even managed to convince herself.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it. We don’t yet know what makes him tick. Be careful, okay?’
‘Of course.’ Seeing her nod reflected in the balcony door, she pulled the curtain closed. ‘How was your evening? Was the carpaccio a hit?’
‘Don’t try to change the subject.’ But she could hear from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Are you sure about tomorrow? I could come in for an hour or two, at least.’
‘There’s no need. Really. You always have my back when I need to go and pick up the children, so it’s the least I can do to repay the favour now and again. Give my best to Anneke, even though I’ve never met her, I mean.’
‘I will. Have a nice evening, Bea. And remember—’
She interrupted him. ‘You, too. Both of you, I mean.’
Ending the call, she collapsed onto the sofa and closed her eyes.
Schubert’s Mass in A flat.
A noticeable birthmark on the back of the hand.
Why these particular clues? What was their relevance?
They reminded Beatrice of bad witness statements. Sometimes the strangest things stick in people’s memories while they forget the really important ones.
She clapped her laptop shut and went off to bed, not because she was tired, but because she knew she needed the sleep to be able to function tomorrow. She wouldn’t unplug the phone this time; she wanted to be contactable in case something was wrong with the children. Presumably Achim would leave her in peace tonight.
She only hoped the Owner would too.
‘I have no idea what you want from me, and I have no intention of letting you inspect my hands.’ The chubby, angry man in a dressing gown who had opened the door to them was the third Christoph they had called on today, and by far the least cooperative. ‘Show me your ID again,’ he demanded, looking Beatrice up and down in a leering fashion. The fatty was lucky she was feeling well rested, she reflected. She had slept through the night as if drugged. No calls or messages had startled her awake.
‘We’re investigating a murder case,’ she explained. ‘If you don’t want to get this over with quickly, we can happily take you down to the station.’
The man made a big fuss of examining the ID, then stretched his hands out. ‘If this is some hidden camera thing, you won’t hear the end of this,’ he grumbled.
‘Don’t worry.’ Gripping his hands a little more tightly than necessary and prompting an involuntary yelp, she looked at his palms. Nothing.
And the backs? Still nothing, even though she pushed up the sleeves of his dressing gown to be sure.
‘Thank you, we’re done now. Enjoy the rest of your day.’
Clearly the fat man wasn’t content with that. ‘Aren’t you going to at least tell me what murder case this is in connection with?’
‘Sorry, but no. Goodbye.’
The next man on their list wasn’t at home, and the one after that didn’t have any noticeable birthmarks either. Frustrated, Beatrice and Stefan made their way back to the police station, disappearing into their respective offices without another word. As she walked in, Beatrice was surprised to see Florin sitting at his desk.
‘Just a couple of hours,’ he explained. ‘I discovered yesterday evening that if you enter coordinates on Google Maps it shows you the exact location on the map. Look.’ He angled his screen so she could see. ‘This is the place where we found the hand. More or less exactly. This should make the work easier for us in future, if—’
Stefan rushed into the room, waving a piece of paper over his head. ‘This email arrived an hour ago, and you were right,’ he cried, thrusting the printout into Beatrice’s hand.
The Nokia N8 with the International Mobile Subscriber Identity she had investigated yesterday was registered to Nora Papenberg.
‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Beatrice. ‘He’s got her phone, and he’s sending us messages from it.’
‘Not us, you,’ Florin corrected her. ‘Which I still find very worrying, by the way.’
‘And I still think it’s very unlikely he wants to harm me,’ she answered, with a conviction that she only half felt. ‘He’s just trying to demonstrate his superiority.’ All the same, she knew she would be double-locking the door and closing all the windows tonight.
Florin nodded, but still looked doubtful. ‘It’s high time we brought a forensic psychologist onto the case – perhaps he’ll read more into the messages than we’re seeing. I don’t want to risk making mistakes or overlooking anything.’
Midday gave way to afternoon, and the striped pattern on Beatrice’s desk cast by the sunlight stretching through the blinds wandered from left to right. At half-past two, an email arrived from the network provider with a PDF attachment listing the connections made by the owner’s prepaid card.
The pickings were slim; only one number appeared, and that was Beatrice’s own. He had connected to the network cell for just two minutes at a time to send her the two messages, once in Hallein and the second time right there in Salzburg, in the Aigen district. Apart from that, the mobile had been offline the entire time.