Something resembling protest flickered in the man’s eyes, but only briefly. Then he tilted his head to the side and smiled. ‘Of course, when would be good for you?’
‘This afternoon, around four?’ Stefan suggested. ‘Florin could be there then too,’ he said, speaking more softly as he turned to address Beatrice.
‘That’s fine. Do you want to come to my house? My wife has been baking, and we could sit out in the garden.’
‘You call Florin,’ said Beatrice, once they were sitting back in the car.
Stefan raised his eyebrows in surprise, but did what she had asked.
‘Four is fine,’ he said after hanging up. ‘He’s dropping his girlfriend off at the airport now, so he can come round to us at half-three.’ Lost in thought, Stefan played with the car keys. ‘Why didn’t you just come out and ask him right away?’
‘About what?’
‘The year of his birth, of course! I mean, that’s what this is all about. Then we could have started working out the coordinates already and might even find what we’re looking for!’
‘I want to see some form of ID with his birth date on it, preferably his birth certificate, and in general get a better idea of who Christoph Beil is. Or do you think it’s just a coincidence that he’s part of all this?’
Stefan shook his head, still a little reluctant. ‘I know. It’s just that our progress feels so slow.’
Slow. The word was haunting her.
‘I’m as keen to get the coordinates as you are, but I want to do things properly. Cover as many bases as possible. I don’t want to be kicking myself later for stupid mistakes.’ Or have Hoffmann rub her nose in them.
Stefan seemed convinced, albeit a little disappointed. ‘Okay. It’s just that I brought along my GPS device and thought, if we manage to find the guy we’re looking for…’
An idea sparked in Beatrice’s mind. There was still plenty of time before four o’clock, and the opportunity to fill a gap in her knowledge seemed advantageous.
‘You know what? Let’s go and look for a cache. I want to have done it at least once, and you can show me how it works. Okay?’
He looked surprised, but the prospect of taking on the expert role seemed to have cheered him up. ‘Okay, let me fire up my laptop then.’
Christoph Beil stood in the shadow of the basilica, his eyes fixed on the police car. They were leaning over something together, presumably their notes.
With the tips of his fingers, he stroked thoughtfully over the scar where the birthmark had once been. It was the only thing the policewoman with the honey-coloured hair had been interested in. She had searched for it intently, turning his hands over and around like a doctor.
If only he knew what all this was about, but he didn’t dare ask again. He wasn’t used to dealing with the police and didn’t want to take any risks. It might lead them to ideas it would be better for them not to have. He wasn’t under suspicion; the woman had said that very clearly.
Was she the gawky red-haired guy’s boss? It seemed so, for the man had stayed silent the whole time, just listening and staring at him attentively.
‘Have a good afternoon, Christoph! Give Vera my love!’ The hearty slap to his shoulder startled Beil, making his heart skip a beat. Heavens, he would have to be more aware of his surroundings; he didn’t want to end up having a heart attack over something like that. Hopefully he hadn’t yelped out loud. But Kurt, the man responsible for his now-racing pulse, had headed off without noticing the reaction unleashed by his rough farewell.
It was fine. Everything was okay; he hadn’t made a fool of himself. Wiping his hand across his brow, he realised it was wet with sweat and felt annoyed at himself. Where had these sudden nerves come from? After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong; he didn’t need to worry. Not about Vera, either. She wouldn’t leave him – she loved him. And it was very unlikely that the police visit had anything to do with all that. He wasn’t guilty, as he had to keep reminding himself.
And if it really turned out to be necessary, he would just come clean.
The caching game was fun – much more so than Beatrice had expected. Stefan logged into Geocaching.com and searched through the maps for a hiding place that was relatively nearby. ‘Nothing too difficult, nothing too small,’ he murmured. ‘Voilà! Look, this cache is called “The Hole”, and it’s a regular.’
‘A what?’
‘A regular. That means it’s about this big.’ Stefan sketched something the size of a loaf of bread in the air. ‘Like the one you found the hand in. And it’s also a traditional – which means the given coordinates are also where the box is stashed. No stages, no puzzles. The difficulty rating is two stars, so that means we won’t end up searching for hours on end. Although the terrain is three and a half stars, so it’ll be more than a light stroll.’ He gave her Timberlands an appraising glance, then nodded contentedly. ‘Let’s head off then.’ He connected the navigation device with the computer via a USB cable and clicked ‘Send to my GPS’. ‘Done. The good thing is that we can drive almost all the way by car, so it won’t take too long.’
The GPS device worked with astonishing precision. It led them from their parking space by the edge of the path directly to a wooded slope. Stefan switched into compass mode, and now they could see the distance between them and their target reducing with every step they took. In the end, it was Beatrice who found the entrance to the hole – a gap under a steep crag that she could only reach by lying on her stomach and easing herself along by the elbows.
‘If I crawl in there my T-shirt will be in tatters,’ she said.
‘Yep. That’s all part of the fun. Here’s a torch.’
She took a deep breath, struggled to contain a fleeting impulse of claustrophobia, and crawled into the darkness. She only switched the torch on when she literally couldn’t see a thing ahead of her.
After the narrowness of the first few metres, Beatrice was surprised to see a tunnel open out in front of her. She could even stand and walk along it if she ducked. As she moved forwards, she heard someone following her in the darkness. For a split second, she was convinced it must be Nora Papenberg’s killer, that it hadn’t been enough for him to simply thank them for the hunt this time – he had picked up their tracks and wanted to trap his prey in the hole.
But it was just Stefan, of course. ‘Shine the torch into all the nooks and crannies,’ he advised her. ‘The box is a big one, so it’ll stand out, but any owner worth his salt tries to hide his caches in a well-camouflaged spot so they don’t get muggled.’
Hearing the word ‘owner’ made her jump involuntarily. She shook her head at herself. ‘What does “muggled” mean?’
‘It’s a Harry Potter reference. Muggles are people who can’t do magic – so in this context, the non-cachers. They’ve been known to throw cache containers in the bin if they stumble upon them by chance.’
The light of the torch made every protrusion inside the crag throw shadows that could easily be taken for niches, so a good ten minutes passed before Beatrice found the cache, right at the back of the hollow. A plastic container, very similar to the one they had found at the stone chasm.
‘Well done,’ Stefan praised her. ‘Now open the box. That’s the logbook, you see?’
She nodded, shone the light on the pages and started to read:
Great cache, found it quickly. Out: Smurf. In: dice. TFTC, Heinzweidrei & Radebreaker
TFTC, Wildinger
All caches should be like this! TFTC, Team Bier
At least half the pages in the small spiral notepad were scribbled full.