‘Problem?’ she asked.
‘Unsolvable.’
‘Anything I can help with?’
A thoughtful crease formed between his eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. The selection of antipasti is a serious matter.’
She laughed. ‘Ah, I see. So when does Anneke arrive?’
‘In three days’ time. I think I’ll make vitello tonnato. Or maybe bruschetta? Damn it, I wish I knew whether she’s eating carbs at the moment.’
Discussing menu planning wasn’t a good idea; Beatrice’s stomach immediately made itself heard. Quickly thinking back over what she had eaten so far today – an inventory which amounted to two biscuits – she decided she was perfectly entitled to feel hungry.
‘I’d vote for vitello tonnato,’ she said, ‘and a quick trip downstairs to the café.’
‘Already?’ He caught her gaze and smiled. ‘Okay then. I’ll just print this out and then—’
The telephone rang, interrupting him. Once he answered the call, it was only a few seconds before his dark expression told Beatrice to forget about the tuna baguette she had been dreaming of.
‘We’ll be there right away.’ He hung up the phone and looked at her. ‘We’ve got a body, female, near Abtenau. It seems she fell from the rock face.’
‘Oh, shit. Sounds like a climbing accident.’
Florin’s eyebrows knitted together, forming a dark beam over his eyes. ‘Hardly. Not unless she was climbing with her hands tied.’
The corpse was a bright stain against the green, flanked by two uniformed policemen. A tall man, bare-chested under his dungarees, looked at them curiously. He was standing in the adjacent field, holding a small herd of cows in check. He raised his hand, as if wanting to wave at Beatrice and Florin, but then lowered it again.
A rocky crag with an almost vertical twenty-metre drop towered over the meadow, jutting out in stark contrast to the idyllic landscape.
The forensic investigators, Drasche and Ebner, had clearly arrived just a few minutes before them. They were already clad in their protective suits, busying themselves with their instruments, and only nodded briefly in greeting.
A man was kneeling down right next to the pasture fence, filling out a form. He was using his doctor’s case as a makeshift desk. ‘Good morning,’ he said, without even looking up. ‘You’re from the Landeskriminalamt, I take it?’
‘Yes. I’m Florin Wenninger, and this is my colleague Beatrice Kaspary. Is there anything you can already tell us about the deceased?’
The doctor pushed the top back onto his pen with a sigh. ‘Not much. Female, around thirty-five to forty years old. My guess would be that someone pushed her off the rock face last night. Cause of death probably head trauma or aortic rupture – the neck wasn’t broken in any case. You’ll need to ask the forensic pathologist for more detailed information.’
‘Time of death?’
The doctor blew out his cheeks. ‘Between two and four in the morning, I’d say. But don’t hold me to that. All I’m supposed to do here is certify the death.’
Drasche trudged over, carrying his forensics kit. ‘Did anyone here touch the body?’
One of the policemen spoke up hesitantly. ‘The doctor. And me. But just to feel for a pulse. I looked for ID or a wallet too, but couldn’t find anything. We didn’t alter her position.’
‘Okay.’ Drasche beckoned to Ebner, who was poised with his camera at the ready. While the forensics team took photographs and collected samples, sealing them in small containers, Beatrice’s gaze rested on the dead woman. She tried to fade out everything else around her: her colleagues, the traffic noise from the main road, the chiming of the cowbells. Only the woman mattered.
She was lying on her stomach, her head turned to the side. Her legs were bent out to the right, as though she had been paralysed mid-sprint. Her hands were behind her back, her wrists lashed together tightly with cable tie.
Eyes closed, mouth half open, as if death had caught up with her while she was still speaking.
Beatrice’s mind instinctively filled with images. The woman being dragged along through the darkness. The precipice. She struggles, digs her heels into the ground, pleads for her life, but her murderer grips her tightly, pushes her towards the edge, waits until she can feel the depths of the abyss beneath her. Then, just a light push in the back.
‘Everything okay?’ Florin’s hand touched her arm for a second.
‘Sure.’
‘I’m just going to talk to the others. I’m guessing you want to immerse yourself for a bit, right?’
That’s what he called it. Immersing oneself. Beatrice nodded.
‘Don’t go too deep.’
He walked over to the two officers and engaged them in conversation. She took a deep breath. It didn’t smell of death here, just cow dung and meadow flowers. She watched Drasche as he pulled a plastic bag around the woman’s hands. Ideally, she would have liked to climb over the fence to have a closer look at the body, but forensics wouldn’t take too kindly to that; Drasche in particular could get very touchy. Without taking her eyes off the dead woman, she walked in a small arc along the pasture fence, trying to find another vantage point. She focused her attention on the woman’s clothing: a bright-red silk jacket over a floral-patterned blouse. Expensive jeans. No shoes; the soles of her feet were dirty and speckled with blood, as if she had walked a long way barefoot. Amidst the dirt, there were dark flecks on each foot. Small, black marks. Or perhaps something else…
Beatrice knelt down, squinting, but she couldn’t see clearly from this distance. ‘Hey, Gerd!’
Drasche didn’t stop what he was doing for even the blink of an eye. ‘What?’
‘Could you take a look at the victim’s feet for me?’
‘Just a second.’ He fastened the transparent bag with adhesive tape before moving down to look at the lower end of the corpse.
‘What the hell?’
‘There’s something there, isn’t there? Characters of some kind, am I right?’
Drasche gestured to Ebner, who snapped a series of close-ups of the feet.
‘Tell me!’ She lifted the barbed-wire fence and ducked underneath. ‘What is it?’
‘Looks like numbers. There’s a series of numbers on each foot. Could you please stay where you are?’
Beatrice struggled against the temptation to go further forward. ‘Can I see the photos?’
Drasche and Ebner exchanged a glance which betrayed both irritation and resignation.
‘Show her,’ said Drasche, clearly disgruntled. ‘It’s the only way she’ll leave us in peace.’
Ebner put his camera onto viewing mode and held it out for Beatrice to see.
Numbers. But not exclusively – the first character on the left foot looked like an N. Written in an unsteady hand, the oblique line tailed off in the middle before starting again. It reminded her of Mina’s handwriting back in kindergarten, the strokes leaning precariously against one another like the walls of a ramshackle old hut. The N was followed by a four, a seven and something that looked like either a zero or a lower-case o. Then another four, a six, another six, a zero and a five. Black, irregular strokes.
She zoomed in. ‘Are they painted on? With a waterproof pen maybe?’
She looked at the other foot. Again a letter first, then a series of numbers. An E with crooked horizontal lines, followed by a zero, a one, a three. Then another of the little circles. A brief gap, then five more numbers. Two, one, seven, one, eight.
‘No, they’re not painted on.’ Drasche’s voice sounded hoarse. ‘I’d say they were tattooed.’