Five (39 page)

Stefan’s mobile went straight to the mailbox. ‘You’re missing something here,’ she said in her message. ‘Stage Five is a night cache. I’ll bet you’ve never done one of those before, have you?’

They parked the car in a clearly visible spot near the fork in the road, then set off. The path was narrow and zigzagged up the hill past cattle pastures and farms. Beatrice discovered the next reflector on the wall of a wooden barn. ‘The owner is marking all the turn-offs,’ she realised. ‘We have to go right here.’

They followed the trail of shining clues into isolation. The beams of light from their torches danced along the path, intermingling against a grey, brown and green background. They heard the muffled sound of a cowbell nearby. Beatrice couldn’t help picturing Nora Papenberg’s corpse again, on her stomach in the meadow, the cows alongside her. Was the tinny clang of a cowbell the last sound she had heard in her life?

The path plunged into the even deeper darkness of the forest. A reflective gleam from the knothole of a tree trunk confirmed that they were on the right path. Something scurried past them, disappearing with a rustling sound into the bushes to their left. Birds protested the disturbance at such an unusual hour.

The path wound its way steeply upwards, and Beatrice began to regret not bringing along anything to drink. The gentle sound of a nearby stream could be heard amidst the nocturnal rustle of the leaves, but to find it they would have to fight their way through the undergrowth.

After an hour, they stopped for a rest, and Florin called back to base to report that everything was under control. ‘I’ve only got two bars,’ he said with a frown after hanging up. ‘How’s your mobile reception?’

‘Not much better. There aren’t very many radio masts out here.’

Nor were there many houses or farms. Beatrice and Florin had passed the last one about twenty minutes before, and since then they hadn’t seen any signs of human dwellings. But at least the path was in good condition, albeit not tarmacked, as it had been at the start of their climb.

Before long, they found themselves searching around another fork in the path, and for a few moments Beatrice felt as though she was deep underwater, too deep to ever get back to the surface. They shone their torches into the forest, but the beams only penetrated the first row of trees; behind it, the world was absorbed by darkness. Above them, rustling sounds and the gentle sway of the treetops in the night-time breeze. Beatrice was freezing beneath her light jacket. Where was the next damned reflector? To the right, she hoped, for the path there seemed fairly even. But of course they soon realised they had to go left, where it looked much steeper. She was the one to spot the small shining disc, impaled on a thorny bush.

They spoke only when necessary now, battling their way further into the solitude. Something around them had changed in the course of the last few minutes: the forest had taken on a new form of darkness. It wasn’t so dense any more. It was bleaker, sparser. Beatrice pointed her torch at the trees. Stunted, dark trunks, interspersed with young spruces and their vibrant green. Then, the blackness again.

It reminded her of something. Some painful research she had undertaken.

He’s mocking his victims. He’s mocking us. He wants us to find Sigart’s severed fingers and some witty message about how strange life can be
.

Without realising, she had quickened her pace. Her breath came out in gasps and her heart was racing, but she didn’t stop. Florin caught up with her. She felt his questioning look and shook her head. First they had to get there. First, certainty.

They almost missed the next reflector. They had just emerged from the forest and it was there, right in front of them, fastened to a flat stone at the edge of the path.

Beatrice was convinced the cache must be hidden beneath it, but she was wrong. The only things they found as they lifted it up were a worm and two beetles, who fled in panic from the beam of light. A loud, snapping sound, like the lashing of a branch against wood, announced that they had probably startled even more wildlife.

‘I think the path must go down there.’

‘Here? But there’s nothing.’ The terrain sank down before them, densely overgrown with bushes and hip-high brambles. ‘We’d need a machete to get through there.’

‘Then we’ll have to manage without.’ Florin looked at his watch and pulled his mobile out from his trouser pocket. ‘Hi, Chris.’ He spoke in hushed tones. ‘We’re okay, we’re leaving the path now and heading off into the thicket. In an hour … Hello? Can you hear me? Okay, yes, I’ll call again in an hour.’

Florin took a tentative step forward into the undergrowth. ‘Come on, Bea, we can go through here.’ He stepped down a little and took her hand. ‘There must have been a path here once.’

A step. Another. A third. They made their way slowly, unbearably slowly, down an overgrown slope, until Beatrice got her foot caught in a tree root. She dropped the torch and grasped around for something to hold onto, feeling a searing pain shoot from her right palm to her elbow as she finally found her grip.

At first she thought it was barbed wire, but it was only stinging nettles. Florin pulled her up, and that was when she saw it.

A shining number five. She pointed towards it in silence, then groped around on the ground for her torch. The number was fixed to a small wooden shed, and seemed to be swinging back and forth.

‘Stay behind me.’ Was it a gust of wind that had set the ‘5’ in motion, or someone who was lying in wait for them here? Florin pulled out his gun, and they both listened into the night. Wind. The gurgling of the stream. The sounds of birds, more distant than before. And the soft scraping sound which accompanied the movements of the swaying number.

They walked over to it.
Slowly
, thought Beatrice. Yet, unfortunately, not without making a noise. Dry twigs and rustling leaves betrayed their every step.

‘It’s just the wind,’ said Florin, as they reached the wooden shed. A cut-out of the number five was affixed onto a battered tin container, which in turn was dangling from a thin, rusted wire. Beatrice pulled a pair of silicon gloves from her jacket pocket.

Fingers
, she thought, like before.
Eyes, toes. What else could fit in a tobacco tin?

She carefully pulled the looped wire from the wooden ledge it was wrapped around. The wire wouldn’t relinquish its grip on the tin itself; it was wound around the entire cylinder and fixed with several layers of thick tape.

‘It doesn’t look new,’ observed Florin.

‘No.’ Beatrice struggled with the screw cap, twisting several times before it loosened with a grinding sound. Preparing herself for what was to come, she lifted the lid. For the first few moments, she couldn’t comprehend what she was looking at in the beam of torchlight.

A pale blue hairband. A one-yen coin. A key. A heart-shaped stone. Beneath all of that, a plastic bag with something orange inside. ‘The logbook.’ Beatrice pressed her torch into Florin’s hand and pulled the small book out of its wrapping.

It was a little damp despite the packaging, but the pages could still be turned without needing to be prised apart.

‘It’s just a normal cache,’ she said, reading through the various thank-yous. ‘Why is Stage Five suddenly the odd one out?’ She flicked further back. The cache was old; the first entries had been made over six years ago.

Following her instinct, she turned the pages without reading, on and on, until she found the last entry in the logbook.

There it was. The connection they had been searching for all this time, in black and white. Nora Papenberg’s handwriting was unmistakable.

12th July

Two hours of hiking in the searing heat and then a hiding place like this! But it was worth it! TFTC, Wishfulthinker28, AlphaMale, GarfieldsLasagne, DescartesHL, ChoristInTheForest
.

‘On the twelfth of July five years ago, they were all here, all the Owner’s victims.’ Beatrice spoke in hushed tones, trying to order her thoughts. ‘Since then, no one else has found the cache. Except us. Nora Papenberg gave up her hobby afterwards, just like Herbert Liebscher, although he did start up again later. And do you know what, Florin? Neither of them registered having found this cache.’ Something must have happened, and it must have been after Nora wrote the note in the logbook. She held it up, ‘ChoristInTheForest’ – that must be Christoph Beil, no question …’

Blackened trees. Destroyed lives. Beatrice went through the signatures. Five stages. Five names.

That’s one too few
.

She shook her head. Did she know what had happened, or did she just
think
she knew? 12 July: she would have to check the date, but it was possible – no, probable – that it had been the day of the forest fire.

Five deaths. Five names. The joker in the pack.

The words of the logbook entry hammered inside her head as she shone the light towards where the slope began to even out. There was something there, something angular, stony. ‘Down there.’

Step by step by step. Beatrice thought she would recognise the place as soon as she was standing before it, but she would have walked straight into it if Florin hadn’t pulled her back by the arm.

A foundation built of stone, half in, half outside the forest. In the middle was a cover of sorts, square and made of metal. It was pushed a little to the side, just far enough for someone to be able to put their hand through. From the space beneath, a faint shimmer of light forced its way out, making the opening a pale grey gash in the blackness of the night.

They communicated with a quick glance. It had been a mistake to assume they would only find a cache container. There was someone here, and he must have been listening to them. Florin pulled out his gun.

‘We’re not going in without backup. Two cars, maybe three. No risk-taking,’ he whispered.

They retreated back into the forest, into the darkness between the trees. Mobile reception here was bad, but at least there was some. Beatrice listened to the dialling tone and her own breathing, both of which seemed much louder than usual. ‘We’ve found something, send us some backup. There’s a cellar with a light burning, and we have reason to suspect someone’s down there, even though we’ve seen no signs of life yet.’

While she described their location, Beatrice replayed her own words in her mind.
No signs of life
. She remembered the mobile photos of the hacked-off fingers, only half-listening as the base announced that there would be three cars with them in around twenty minutes.

‘You know what that cellar is, right?’ she whispered after she had ended the call.

‘I think so. There are still scorch marks in the forest.’

The moon shone above them, the clear sky saturated with stars. In comparison, the shimmer of light making its way up to the surface from below the ground was hazy and milky. Beatrice didn’t take her eyes off it for a second, waiting for it to expand and then darken behind a looming figure. But no one appeared.

The minutes seemed to pass at a painfully slow pace. Everything within Beatrice wanted to creep towards the crack, open it wide and climb down.
If it is the Owner’s hiding place, then we’ll probably find Sigart there too
.

The thought intensified her impatience. Florin’s hand grabbed her wrist, and she realised she had already started to crawl out of the thicket. He pulled her back and laid an arm around her shoulder. ‘No going it alone this time.’

‘But what if Sigart’s down there?’

‘Then he’ll have to hold on for another five minutes.’

Beatrice fingered the round metal cache tin through her jacket pocket. Its contents shed new light on the events, although she couldn’t yet figure out how, not conclusively at any rate. She closed her eyes and counted the minutes. Was that the sound of someone whimpering? The wind carried a quiet, feeble noise towards her – but maybe it was just the sound of the wind itself, a plaintive, restless whisper.

By the time the three police cars were parked on the path, Beatrice was already kneeling down by the cellar opening. She had heard the approaching engine sounds, and from then on had been deaf to Florin’s warnings.

Could she hear anything? A voice, breathing?

She laid her ear against the crack, recoiling involuntarily as a puff of air wafted out of the cellar towards her.

All of a sudden, she was back in Evelyn’s bedroom with the smell of blood – but here it was mixed with the stench of putrid flesh. Beatrice sat down, took a deep breath and tried to banish the unwelcome images. Images of red.

Shadowy figures armed with lights climbed down the slope. Whispered instructions, hushed voices.

Then Florin was standing next to her. ‘Let’s go in.’

They were only halfway down the steps before Beatrice cursed herself for having waited so long.

Sigart was lying on the floor, shaking. He was pressing his maimed left hand to his chest, his mouth moving silently.

‘Call an ambulance!’ Florin shouted to one of their colleagues.

Beatrice knelt down next to Sigart. There was a cut on the side of his neck, but they didn’t need to worry too much about that as it seemed to be healing well. She ignored the stench coming from his hunched-up form. And she only half took in the surroundings: the noose hanging from the ceiling, the wooden table she recognised from the Owner’s photos, the saws on the wall. She concentrated all her attention on Sigart, touching his forehead gently. He flinched away from her as though she had electrocuted him. Then he lay there, motionless, wheezing and trying to say something.

I have to calm him down. Explain that we’ll talk later
. But her curiosity was stronger. She leant over to him, tried to breathe evenly and put her ear next to his mouth.

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘Not … another … one. Please don’t …’

Ashamed, Beatrice sat back up. Florin had come over to her side. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘Nothing that can help us. He’s pleading with us not to cut another of his fingers off.’