‘Passwords, nicknames, forum pseudonyms – make me a list, please.’
Stefan’s hair was standing up at a strange angle, as if he had only just woken up. His unshaven chin supported this theory, but his eyes looked wide and alert. ‘For Papenberg? Sure.’
‘For Beil and Estermann too. Sigart and Dalamasso don’t have computers, but we should check out Dalamasso again just to make sure.’ She reached out and tried to tame the unruly strands of his hair, but they resisted all of her efforts. ‘I didn’t wake you last night, did I?’
He shook his head, grinning from ear to ear. ‘No. I put my phone on silent. I wasn’t at home.’
Aha. ‘Are you going to tell me her name?’
The left corner of his mouth wandered upwards, followed by the right. ‘I think you’ll have to content yourself with Nora Papenberg’s nicknames for now.’
She had the office all to herself. Florin was leading another interrogation marathon. Someone had seen a red Honda Civic parked by the Wallersee lake two weeks ago, late in the evening.
Nora’s car. Had she gone there with the Owner in order to hide Liebscher’s head in the treetops? Nora, alias NoPap1; Norissima; radishes_are_red.
Beatrice raised her eyebrows as she looked at the last lexical invention – how did someone come up with something like that?
FrankaC. Wishfulthinker28.
These were all Nora’s nicknames, as found by Stefan so far. Names she had used online. There were possibly more to come. ‘But five is quite a lot, already too many to keep track of,’ he had observed. He was right, as Beatrice realised a few minutes later. She could no longer remember what nickname she had used to register on Geocaching.com, until she eventually thought of Jakob’s cuddly owl. Elvira the Second.
She logged onto the site and went to Find User. NoPap1 didn’t bring up any results, and nor did Norissima. FrankaC had one hit, but she was clearly in excellent health and had found her most recent cache just two days ago. There was a detailed profile, including photos showing her at a number of different locations – particularly around Hamburg, where she lived.
Wishfulthinker28. Type and enter. Beatrice crossed her fingers. Bingo.
There was no information on the profile, nor any photos – maybe it had never been updated, or even deleted. But the user clearly existed. There were 133 smiley faces denoting 133 successfully found caches.
Feeling as though she’d finally found the hidden door leading to the right path, Beatrice opened the list. As always, the most recently logged find was at the top.
Wishfulthinker28 had been out caching near the Mondsee lake. The entry was red and crossed out, meaning that the cache was now archived, as were the majority of the user’s finds. No wonder, for the last one had been five years ago. Wishfulthinker28 had clearly found another hobby.
Okay, thought Beatrice. Let’s go with this for a moment. Let’s assume this is Nora Papenberg’s account. The area was correct, as most of the found caches were in or around Salzburg. Five years ago, Nora Papenberg hadn’t even met her husband – so she would have had a different surname then.
Within seconds, she reached Stefan on the internal line. ‘Before she got married, Nora Papenberg’s surname was Winter, if I’m not mistaken. I need the site admin team to tell us whether there’s a Nora Winter behind Wishfulthinker28.’
Beatrice circled the cursor around the last entry. Great view, I’d definitely come back. The hiding place for the container is really inventive, but I still managed to find it quickly. Had fun! TFTC!
It didn’t sound like a farewell comment, nor did it suggest she had lost her enthusiasm for geocaching. Okay, there were a number of reasons why someone might give up a hobby – a new boyfriend, a new job, a pregnancy or illness. But she didn’t believe that, because…
Following a sudden flash of inspiration, Beatrice opened Herbert Liebscher’s profile and scrolled through the entries that DescartesHL had made at around the same time. Inside her mind, something began to lock into place.
There it was, the connection. Barely perceptible, but it was there nonetheless, like a thin strand of light in the darkness.
Nora Papenberg’s last entry was on 3 July. Herbert Liebscher had been in Vienna between the 6 and 8 of July that same year, had found eighteen caches – and then stopped. For one and a half years. Papenberg had stopped for ever.
That’s no coincidence, no doubt about it. There has to be a common cause.
Beatrice printed out the profile pages and compared the caches listed on each – yes, there were overlaps, but that was no surprise with two people who lived in the same city. There wasn’t a single entry, however, where one of them referred to the other. With the caches that came up in both DescartesHL and Wishfulthinker28’s lists, there were months, if not years, in between each of them finding the same cache. There was nothing at all to indicate that the two of them had known each other.
‘You were spot on,’ announced Stefan shortly before midday. He was still very chirpy, and had even managed to clamp down the rebellious strands of hair. ‘Wishfulthinker28 is a Nora Winter with an Austrian postal address – I just got the confirmation through.’ He laid a printout on Beatrice’s desk, shaking his head slightly as if trying to chase away an unwelcome thought. ‘Do you think we’re dealing with someone who’s targeting and killing geocachers?’
‘It’s too early to say. But could you please do something for me? Ring Carolin Dalamasso and ask her whether her daughter used to be a geocacher before—’
She stopped. Of course. It all fitted.
‘Before the breakdown, you mean? Of course, will do. What’s up?’
The dates. ‘Sorry, Stefan, I have to check something.’
Melanie Dalamasso’s breakdown. Yes, that was it. The same summer. Twelve days after Nora Papenberg had found her last cache.
Four cups of coffee later, Beatrice was no longer sure whether her agitated state was a side effect of the caffeine or whether she really was on the brink of what she and Florin called the ‘last twist of the kaleidoscope’. One more detail, one more piece of information, and the chaos would give way to meaning: the picture would become clear. Beatrice could feel the moment drawing close, just as she did every time. She wished the realisation would come, but at the same time she was afraid of it. Because, in most cases, the final picture was a particularly ugly one.
When she packed her bag at around half-past nine that evening, the moment still hadn’t come. If anything, that afternoon it had taken a step backwards. It may have been surprisingly simple to find out Nora Papenberg’s cacher alias, but their attempt to do the same with Christoph Beil and Rudolf Estermann had been fruitless.
Beil had been active on very few Internet forums, and he hadn’t concealed his identity in the slightest. The different combinations of forenames and surnames he had used online hadn’t brought up any results on Geocaching.com. And nor had Grizzly Bear.
When it came to Estermann, it seemed he had only used his computer for business purposes. His browser history was a mix of the homepages of pharmacies and beauty salons.
‘Rudo’, as his wife had called him, had been a damp squib too, regardless of the combinations they tried. Beatrice had got tired, worrying that her dwindling concentration might make her miss something if she continued to push.
She was just putting on her seat belt and about to turn the key in the ignition when her phone rang.
‘I’m taking the children to my place tomorrow,’ said Achim, without a single word of greeting. ‘What on earth goes on in that head of yours? Do you really think you can just shove them aside whenever it suits you?’