Five (33 page)

‘She was likely to have been studying composition too. And she probably had dark hair.’

To her credit, Zoubek tried to hide the flicker of mockery in her eyes. ‘Dark hair? Do you realise how many girls here change their hair colour on a monthly basis?’

It was hard to imagine Zoubek being popular with her students. A schoolmarmish nature seemed to be inherent to this woman’s character, as firmly rooted as the nose on her face.

‘The problem is,’ explained Beatrice, ‘that I can’t even narrow down the time period. It’s just as possible that the student in question left the institute six years ago as six months. It’s even possible that she’s still here. The information I have is very vague.’

‘I’m inclined to agree with you there.’ But Beatrice’s admission seemed to make Zoubek more sympathetic. ‘Personal crises. Let me think … yes, one student lost her parents in a car crash last year and then went back to Munich. It was very tragic.’ The woman stopped for a moment and lowered her gaze. ‘A very gifted young woman. Although her second subject was singing, not composition, and her hair was always blonde.’

‘Could you tell me her name anyway?’

‘Tamara Kohl.’

If the subject and hair colour had matched it would have been worth a try, but given they didn’t Beatrice could probably rule her out. The Owner was always very precise with his clues.

‘Can you think of anyone else? Was there a suicide attempt, perhaps? Self-harming behaviour? Or aggression towards others?’

The way Zoubek glanced away told Beatrice that her questions had struck a raw nerve. ‘Was there?’ she persevered. ‘Please tell me anything that comes to mind – it could be exactly the information I’m looking for.’

‘There was this shy girl … a little plump and always on a diet. She had dark hair, yes. I taught her in flute, and if I’m not mistaken composition was her second subject. She worked very hard – not as gifted as the others, but she was very diligent.’

Diligence was, if Beatrice had judged her correctly, an indispensable virtue in Zoubek’s universe. ‘What happened to her?’

‘It was such a long time ago now. She wasn’t even in my class at the time it happened – she had switched to my colleague Dr Horner’s group, but I think she had some kind of breakdown. She was picked up by an ambulance and unenrolled from the university shortly after.’

‘Can you remember what kind of breakdown it was? What it was caused by?’

Zoubek shook her head briskly. ‘I wasn’t there. I just heard that she started to scream and cry and that no one was able to calm her down. Maybe it’s better if you speak to Dr Horner – he’ll be able to tell you more.’

I certainly will, thought Beatrice. ‘Could you please tell me the girl’s name?’

With a demonstratively thoughtful expression, Dagmar Zoubek pursed her lips. ‘It was a long name, not an easy one to remember – I’d have to check.’

‘That would be very helpful, thank you.’

Clearly a little disgruntled, the teacher got up from her chair and left the room. Ten minutes later, she came back with a blue ring binder.

‘Here she is. Melanie Dalamasso. Flute and composition. There’s a note here – ex-matriculated due to health reasons, roughly five years ago.’

‘Thank you.’ Beatrice shook the woman’s hand and went out into the fresh air of the Mirabell Gardens, where the sun was shining hazily. She found a bench and stretched her legs out in front of her.

Bingo
. There was no need to look any further; Dalamasso was an Italian name, which fitted the dark hair the Owner had mentioned. And Beatrice didn’t even need to bother Google in order to solve the rest of the puzzle. As a child, she used to have a dictionary of names, and would always flick through it eagerly whenever she met someone new.

Her own name had often been cause for amusement, as Beatrice meant ‘Blessed’. Her best friend at school had been called Nadine – meaning ‘Hope’. Sitting a row in front of them in class back then was a Melanie, a girl with strawberry blonde hair and freckles on her face, neck and arms. They had always had fits of giggles about the fact that Melanie meant ‘Dark’.

It seemed that Melanie Dalamasso hadn’t just stopped studying, but had also shelved her entire life of independence. She was now living with her parents, and spent from eight in the morning until half-four in the afternoon in a psychiatric day clinic.

‘She’s under observation around the clock, but we won’t question her, not yet.’ Florin looked at each of them in turn, pausing when he came to Hoffmann. Eventually, their boss nodded.

‘Anyone who attempts to get close to her will be checked out by our guys. I’ve spoken to her parents and her doctor, and we’re getting full support from both sides. Unfortunately there’s no information that could be of use to us – no one knows what caused Melanie’s breakdown.’ He took the glass of water Stefan handed to him and sipped at it. ‘Apparently she was always quite difficult growing up, with a tendency for depressive moods.’

Beatrice had read through the parents’ statement before their meeting. They were at their wits’ end. They described Melanie as a silent, withdrawn girl, who had hidden herself away with her flute from a young age. She was eight when she first went to a psychotherapist, because she’d stopped eating after two girls from her class had come up with the idea of nicknaming her the ‘Italian Hippo’.

What might have prompted other children to run in tears to their teacher or parents, or to kick the bullies in the shin, left Melanie reeling for weeks on end. She insisted that a change of schools be the condition for her agreeing to eat again. Her parents gave in and registered her at a private school which specialised in music. A few years followed in which they believed she had ‘grown out of’ the problem, as her mother put it. But when puberty set in, Melanie began to suffer from extreme mood swings that led to renewed anorexic and bulimic episodes. Her parents were convinced that, had it not been for the flute, she would probably have died. Once again it led to psycho therapeutic intervention, and a three-week hospitalisation during the summer holidays.

Six years ago, at the age of eighteen, Melanie had passed the entrance exam for the Mozarteum. She moved into a tiny studio apartment near the Salzach river, dreamt of a career as a soloist and fell in love with a fellow student who, although he didn’t return her feelings, let her down very gently and became a close friend. He introduced her to a group of students who went on hikes, to cafés or the cinema in the evenings, and who also studied together for music theory exams. For a while, Melanie even lived with two of the girls from the group in a student flat share.

‘She wasn’t at the centre of everything, but she was at least part of it, and she was doing so well,’ Melanie’s mother was quoted as saying in the report. What happened next, no one can really explain. She turned her back on the group and went her own way. She retreated into herself again and started another of her numerous missions to lose weight. Questioning and probing her hadn’t helped; it never had. One of the mother’s friends had reported seeing Melanie with a man old enough to be her father. They had apparently been strolling through the Christmas market in Hellbrunn, their arms wrapped around each other, oblivious to the rest of the world.

Melanie’s mother had been torn back and forth between happiness and worry. Her child was in love and happy – but hadn’t thought to introduce or even mention the man to her parents. She stormed out of their regular Sunday lunches any time they tentatively tried to bring the conversation around to him.

Six months later came the breakdown. Frau Dalamasso received the call at ten in the morning, right before the start of the summer holidays. They told her that Melanie had suddenly started screaming during orchestral rehearsals for an upcoming concert, and that she had been inconsolable ever since. When her mother arrived, the ambulance was already there, and Melanie had been sedated by the doctor.

‘She’s been in a completely different world ever since. She hardly speaks any more, and if she does then only sentence fragments that don’t make any sense. The doctors suspect she’s suffered from a kind of autism since birth, and that it’s only now reached its full force,’ concluded the father.

Why would the Owner want to kill someone like Melanie Dalamasso?

‘… speak to the woman anyway.’ Beatrice only heard the last half-sentence of Hoffmann’s objection. ‘Kossar could do it. He’s a psychiatrist, he knows how to handle sick people.’

‘He’s a forensic psychiatrist,’ objected Florin. ‘I don’t think Melanie Dalamasso’s doctors would take too kindly to that. I suggest we leave it for now and instead concentrate on trying to protect Melanie. So far our conversations with the Owner’s targets have brought us either very little or nothing.’ Florin interlaced his fingers and nodded briefly at the photos spread out in front of them on the conference table. ‘I’ve shown the parents the pictures of the other victims, from Papenberg to Estermann. There was no sign of recognition in their faces at all. In order to show the girl the pictures we’d need the approval of her doctors, but even if we get that, we may do considerable damage without accomplishing anything from it. Melanie hasn’t spoken in five years, and that’s not going to change just because we show her a few pictures. So as long as she can’t tell us what she knows, or what she’s thinking …’ He shrugged his shoulders.

A torn woman
. Back in her office, leaning over the desk, Beatrice laid out the photos of the victims in front of her, adding a new one: Melanie Dalamasso. Her dark hair framed a round face. Heavy-lidded brown eyes, a nose that tilted slightly upwards. A pretty mouth, the contours of which were out of focus, making it look a little lopsided.

Papenberg. Liebscher. Beil. Sigart. Estermann. Dalamasso. An unsolvable puzzle. With a few brief hand movements, Beatrice shifted the photos around, letting the new order take effect. Papenberg was in the middle now, Beil next to Dalamasso, Estermann on the outside right, Liebscher above him. Sigart’s photo was a little askew, the upper right-hand corner of his photo touching the corner of Papenberg’s mouth.

Beatrice laid the photo of the last message down. The Owner, expressing himself through Papenberg’s hand.

Something connects you all
, Beatrice thought.
A puzzle behind the puzzles
.

But the photos stayed silent. Just like the dead.

N47º 28.813 E013º 10.983

There was no doubt about Dalamasso’s birth year – 1985 – but there was about the accuracy of the coordinates. The members of the team found themselves right by the Bundesstrasse again, just a few kilometres away from the bridge where they had found Rudolf Estermann’s body. A narrow fork in the road led past detached houses, up an incline, then tailed off approximately a kilometre into the forest.

‘He can’t have hidden anything here.’ Drasche was stalking up and down with the GPS device in his hand. ‘This is a residential area. Unless he buried the body parts in someone’s front garden.’

‘Or perhaps he didn’t keep exactly to the coordinates.’ Squinting, Beatrice turned around slowly on the spot. The surrounding area had a number of potential hiding places – at distances of roughly fifteen, twenty and fifty metres there were trees (
fucking trees
, she thought to herself), crash barriers and an area of greenery. But there, right on the spot they had calculated, there was nothing but the road and a traffic sign limiting the speed to thirty kilometres an hour.

They must have made a mistake. The Owner had always been very precise. ‘Where’s the second GPS device?’

Stefan had taken the day off, on Florin’s strict advice. ‘Your eyes are so red they’re competing with your hair,’ he had commented, prescribing him a twenty-four-hour break.

Their younger colleague had given in with a mixture of reluctance and relief, pressed his navigation device into Florin’s hand and set off home – by bus rather than car, as he was worried about falling asleep at the wheel. But even Stefan’s Garmin, tried and tested on so many caches, still came up with the same answer as Drasche’s mobile software.

With the last coordinates, it had been the right place but the wrong time. They’d got there before the Owner had dumped Estermann’s body. Would he do the same thing again?

Beatrice tried to tune into the surroundings, looking from the wet asphalt up to the sky. Until just now, thin threads of rain had woven a grey cloth across the landscape. Now the clouds were slowly starting to break apart.

Dalamasso is the solution to the new puzzle
, she thought. But it was virtually impossible that the Owner could kidnap her, kill her and dump her here. Two armed guards were keeping an eye on her around the clock, both in the day clinic and at home. When Melanie first noticed them she had burst into tears, a wordless howl. After that, at her mother’s request, they had relinquished uniforms for plain clothes and kept their distance. Now Melanie just stared right through them, as if they were invisible.

The sun came out, making the road glisten. Beatrice shielded her eyes with her hand, not having reckoned on needing sunglasses. Something was blinding her. A round, reflective sticker on the traffic sign, placed right in the middle of the zero, beside to three. Next to it, someone had scrawled ‘
Don’t eat animals
’ with a black marker.

‘Maybe we’ve thwarted his plans this time.’ There wasn’t much hope in Florin’s voice, but Beatrice nodded all the same.

‘Yes. Maybe he thought we’d take longer to find Melanie Dalamasso, or didn’t predict that we’d put her under police protection.’ But she didn’t believe that one bit. The Owner must know that they wouldn’t – couldn’t – let the young woman out of their sight for a second. They should have acted sooner and convinced Sigart of the necessity of accepting police protection.

‘Search everything within a hundred-metre radius,’ Florin ordered. ‘We’re keeping a lookout for containers, paper, anything that could be a message. It’s possible that it’s very well disguised.’ Three officers from the dog team set off obediently with their animals. If there were any body parts hidden around, they would find them.