Five

Afterword

Most geocachers are nice people. I know, because I’m one of them. They love nature, treat it with the utmost respect, and even tend to clear away other people’s rubbish if they stumble across it. I just wanted to say that.

If you happen to own a GPS device, find yourself near the coordinates in the book, and feel the urge to seek out the places depicted in it, then I hope you have a great time – you’ll get to see some of Salzburg’s idyllic spots. I admit I had to tweak reality here and there for the sake of the story – like moving the odd rock face by a few hundred metres, for example. But in general you’ll find the places look pretty much the same as they did to Beatrice and Florin, apart from the caches and their gruesome contents, that is. A word of warning: if you get to the final coordinates, watch out for the stinging nettles.

You’ll find a wooden shed there too, by the way, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you what’s inside it (it’s not my shed, after all); here, too, I adapted the facts to fit the story. While I’m on the topic, I’d like to apologise to the owners for what I did to their property in my imagination.

A thank you to:

Ruth Löbner, for driving the indecisiveness out of Beatrice and cracking a few really hard nuts with her. I initially used a good few superlatives here when writing about Ruth, before deleting them because she would probably be embarrassed. But that doesn’t make them any less true;

Lieutenant Colonel Andreas Huber, who offered me important and fascinating insights into the work of the Salzburg criminal investigation department, an indispensable help during the writing process. But the ‘poetic licence’ which I employed for the novel and any possible mistakes that slipped past me are solely on my head;

My editor Katharina Naumann, who I overburdened not only with my Austrianisms, but also with number puzzles – the former are probably here to stay, but the latter won’t be. That’s a promise;

My agency, AVA International, who took my announcement at our first meeting (‘I’d like to live from writing, and I’d like to start doing so quickly’) more than literally;

Leon and Michael, who roamed all over Salzburg with me searching for good hiding places for body parts.