Stasi 77

by David Young

  ‘Reasonably accurate?’ Müller took a bite of her own lunch, savouring the sweet, herby flavour of the grilled chicken and the sharpness of the sauerkraut.

  ‘Yes. It can’t be one hundred per cent accurate, because each voice is a melange of various accents the subject will have picked up over the years, influenced by those he or she works with, makes friends with, and so forth. But your formative years tend to have the most effect on any accent you carry, so, what you learnt as a child from your mother, your father, your schoolteachers. But even a short period – as little as a year – spent somewhere else with a strong accent can leave an indelible impression on the subject’s voice.’

  Müller took a slow drink of the cold beer. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself still on a beach somewhere hot, with a hunky waiter in front of her, rather than a rotund, sweating forensic scientist. ‘So how confident are you about your northern Harz assertion?’

  ‘Very confident, Karin. That will have been ingrained in the nurturing phase, in the subject’s first ten or fifteen years of life.’ He brought out a chart headed ‘Nordharz’ and another titled ‘Sudharz’. Then he began comparing them to the charts of the late Herr Höfler and Herr Ronnebach. ‘Look. You can see all the similarities. Here . . . and here . . . and here.’

  Müller’s eyes followed Schmidt’s pointing finger. What he said seemed to be borne out by the evidence in front of her eyes. She was no expert, but perhaps she had been hasty. Perhaps the mistakes in all this weren’t Schmidt’s. Perhaps she had been leaping to conclusions, something a detective should never do.

  *

  The lunch continued in a convivial fashion, and although Schmidt declined the offer of a second beer, he did accept Müller’s offer of the uneaten half of her snack. Over the course of the meal, his nervousness seemed to dissipate – even if his appetite remained as strong as ever. By the end of it, he had convinced her. It was she who must have made the mistake. Perhaps the town halls at Gardelegen and Quedlinburg were very similar and she had simply seen what she wanted to see when she was in the first town. Nevertheless, after saying their goodbyes, Müller decided to double-check at the library before travelling on the U-bahn back to Strausberger Platz to take up the childcare reins again.

  At the reference library, she quickly found the book in the architecture section. She took it to a desk to consult, and looked in the index for an entry for Quedlinburg.

  Turning to the page, Müller wasn’t exactly surprised by what she found. But she was shocked. Shocked because it indicated Jonas Schmidt had tried to deceive her.

  She consulted the index again, and this time turned to the page for Gardelegen town hall. There was more written here. It was a Hanseatic building. Interesting, but not what she was looking for. She wanted to see the accompanying photograph.

  The town hall in Quedlinburg was similar to that at Gardelegen at first glance, it was true. She leafed between the two. Both were double-storey affairs, with voluminous, steeply sloping roofs, in which – judging by the dormer windows in each – there was another floor. Both were covered in ivy, and had a series of regular windows on the first floor. But it was on the ground floor where the difference lay.

  The photograph for Gardelegen matched exactly what she’d seen with her own eyes, and the Höflers’ photograph from the 1930s. She remembered how she’d described it in her own mind: An historic town hall, ivy clad, with a steep red-tiled roof punctuated by low dormer windows, above a grand-looking first floor which in turn straddled the arches of a colonnade at ground level.

  That was the most striking difference.

  Quedlinburg town hall did not have a colonnade.

  Schmidt must have taken a photocopy from the book, but carefully attached a photograph from Gardelegen to substitute the correct entry.

  He had deceived her.

  She had gone out of her way to help him the previous year when his son, Markus, had disappeared. Markus had been a victim of a rogue scientist’s experiments. For Jonas Schmidt to betray her now was almost unthinkable. Someone must have been putting pressure on him to lie.

  24

  Later that day

  When the twins were finally down for the night, Helga had expected another evening of the two of them relaxing in front of the television. Müller had other ideas. She asked her grandmother if she’d mind if she popped out for an hour or so.

  ‘You go ahead, dear. I’ll be fine on my own. I think we managed to tire them out at the park. They’ll sleep like stones.’

  *

  Müller waited until she knew he’d be back from work. Then she drove the Lada out to Pankow, and to the apartment she’d last visited in the run-up to Christmas.

  Frau Schmidt opened the door to her.

  ‘Major Müller. What a lovely surprise. Jonas will be pleased to see you.’ Schmidt’s wife seemed oblivious to the fact that for Müller to turn up at his home address, it probably wasn’t good news. She was pleased the atmosphere in their apartment was so much better than it had been just a few short months ago. Unfortunately, she was about to ruin all that. ‘Jonas is in the bedroom working on something. I’ll just go and get him.’

  ‘I’ll need to talk to him in private, Frau Müller. Is there anywhere we can go?’

  ‘Of course. You two can be in the lounge. I’m just doing some baking in the kitchen anyway, and Markus is out with his friends. Did you hear his news? He’s been accepted at a university. After all that trouble last year, we thought it would never happen.’

  Müller smiled at the woman, still feeling guilty she was about to rob her of her happiness. ‘Jonas did tell me, yes. How wonderful.’

  ‘Anyway, you sit yourself down in there. I’ll just get him.’ Müller showed herself through, and then sat at the dining table.

  When he entered the room, Schmidt wouldn’t meet her eyes. He knows full well what this is about, thought Müller.

  ‘Sit down, Jonas. I’m sorry to have to deal with this in your own home, but it couldn’t wait.’

  Schmidt sat opposite her, his head cradled in his hands, his forearms resting on the table. Still he refused to meet her gaze.

  She leant down, and pulled the book out of her briefcase. The library assistant had initially refused. To take a reference book away – even for the one night – was out of the question. Only the sight of her Kripo ID and a warning about failure to cooperate with a police inquiry had changed her mind.

  ‘You know what I’m going to show you, Jonas, but I’m going to show it to you anyway, and then you can explain to me exactly what is going on. Your explanation had better be very good indeed.’

  She knew Schmidt could see the cover title. A History of German Architecture from the Middle Ages to the Modern Day. It was probably the exact same copy he had used to fabricate his photocopy with. She’d already bookmarked the relevant pages, so quickly turned to the entry for Quedlinburg town hall, and then rotated the book so it was the right way up for Schmidt.

  ‘Can you tell me the difference, Jonas, between this original entry for Quedlinburg town hall and the photocopy you showed to me?’

  Schmidt took a long sigh, drawing his hands down across his face. His eyes were still closed. He opened them and finally held her gaze.

  ‘You will have my resignation in the morning, Comrade Major.’

  ‘It’s not your resignation I want, Jonas. Although I will admit your job is at risk, and I never thought it would come to this. You lied to me. You didn’t just lie, you fabricated evidence. I assume the voice analysis report was fabricated too?’

  Eyes cast down at the table, Schmidt nodded.

  ‘Well, not only are those both sackable offences, they are criminal offences, Jonas. You could be looking at a jail term. You imagine the consequences then. Markus’s university place might get taken away.’ Müller wasn’t trying to frighten her forensic scientist. She was simply stating the facts. If the process of prosecuting him was started, she wouldn’t have any control over the o
utcome or the consequences. And the families of those convicted of criminal offences often suffered along with the criminals themselves.

  ‘No,’ wailed Schmidt. ‘Not that, please.’

  ‘Well then, start talking. Explain to me everything that has happened. I want the complete truth. Did someone put you up to this?’

  Schmidt sighed, then nodded. Behind his thick, wire-rimmed spectacles, Müller could see his eyes glistening.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jäger.’

  Jäger? Now Müller was alarmed. If Jäger was getting involved at the level of corrupting People’s Police forensic scientists then perhaps what they were facing was something even more serious than Müller had imagined.

  ‘Did he bring pressure to bear on you?’

  ‘What do you think?’ There was almost a note of malice in Schmidt’s reply. It was totally out of character for the normally mild-mannered man. ‘Do you think I would do something like this and throw my job away for a mere trifle?’

  ‘Don’t start getting clever with me, Jonas. We go back a long way. If I can help you, I will. But not unless you tell me the whole truth. Not unless you prove to me that I can rely on you. The most upsetting part of this for me is that you’ve let me down, you’ve deceived me, and you’ve disgraced yourself. The only way back from here is to be absolutely truthful and tell me everything you know.’

  Schmidt nodded reluctantly. ‘Jäger contacted me soon after you left Karl-Marx-Stadt. He insisted on knowing what I was working on. At first I refused to tell him, but then he claimed that he’d already asked your permission.’

  ‘You know what to do in that situation, Jonas. You must always contact me. Your loyalty lies with the People’s Police, not the Ministry for State Security. At least I hope it does.’

  ‘Of course it does, Comrade Major. I’m deeply ashamed about what I’ve done.’

  ‘So in what way did he put pressure on you?’

  ‘He said what you’ve just said. That Markus would lose his university place unless I cooperated.’

  ‘And what did that cooperation involve?’

  ‘I had to make sure that none of my research showed any link to Gardelegen whatsoever.’

  ‘So you doctored the photocopy of the architecture book?’

  Schmidt’s shoulders slumped. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘And you fabricated the voice analysis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t really need you to tell me what the analysis of the two murdered men’s voices really showed, Jonas, but just for the record, let’s hear it from your own mouth.’

  ‘It’s as you suspected, Comrade Major. I’m one hundred per cent certain both men grew up in the same region, and lived a substantial amount of their time there.’

  ‘And that wasn’t the Nordharz. So where was it, Jonas?’

  ‘The Altmark.’

  ‘Which is a fairly sparsely populated area. But one of the main towns in the Altmark is what, Jonas?’

  ‘Gardelegen, Comrade Major. Gardelegen.’

  25

  Müller was tempted to drive straight to Gardelegen, get in touch with the People’s Police captain Janson and begin house-to-house searches, to discover the link between Ronnebach, Höfler and Schneider. Off the case or not, a burning desire to uncover the truth and to stop further killings, drove her forward.

  But now it was absolutely clear that Stasi colonel Klaus Jäger was determined to stop her. Had he been the one who’d forced her off the case too? She would have to tread carefully. Rather than go straight to Gardelegen, resume her inquiries, and face arrest, she needed to try to piece this together better. There were loose ends back in Karl-Marx-Stadt, where all this started. She wondered if she could trust Elke Drescher to bring her up to speed without the younger detective alerting the Ministry for State Security. If not, she would have to come up with another reason to return to the south of the Republic and look further into the Ronnebachs’ background. His widow had given the impression she would have cooperated, if the Stasi officer hadn’t been sitting in the corner of the room. Frau Ronnebach had – after all – given her the information about the country cottage. And there they’d found the women’s underwear, the watermarked envelope that perhaps suggested Martin Ronnebach had been conducting an affair with a French woman. New leads had meant they hadn’t really followed that up properly.

  Müller also wondered if there would be anything to gain from visiting Ronnebach’s hunting club. Maybe someone there knew who his secret mistress had been – if indeed there was one. If so, how did that connect with this apparent link to the small, rural town of Gardelegen, hundreds of kilometres further north?

  She was sure that one ally in her continued investigations would be Jonas Schmidt. The forensic scientist was a broken man. He had disgraced himself, and would have difficulty living with it. But the only person who knew that – other than Jäger – was Müller herself. She needed an ally. Before leaving his apartment, Müller had promised Schmidt that if he cooperated with her, if he dedicated himself to seeking the truth like she was, then she would defend him. He had already done enough to get himself thrown off the force, but only she could make that happen. He had nothing more to lose. The best way of protecting Markus’s education now was to cooperate fully and utterly with Müller – even if that meant being in direct opposition to Jäger and the Stasi. It was a dangerous game to play, and she felt a passing wave of guilt about forcing the forensic scientist into this position. But he had brought it on himself.

  *

  Back at the apartment in Strausberger Platz, she outlined her plan to Helga.

  ‘We need to keep the children occupied somehow, as well as making sure we get some rest and relaxation. So I’m proposing we go back on holiday for the rest of my leave. I’ve got some money saved up. My adoptive family in Thuringia would love to see how the twins are getting on now. Sara and Roland still feel like a brother and sister to me. And I’ve always wanted to visit Saxon Switzerland. We’ll combine that with my adoptive home town of Oberhof. Perhaps do a little tour. I’m sure we’ll find things for the twins to do.’

  Helga smiled. ‘I’d love to. I’ve never visited the area either. Could we perhaps go via Leipzig on the way, or on the way back? I’d love to show off Jannika and Johannes to my old friends there.’

  *

  What Müller hadn’t told Helga was that it wasn’t the beautiful natural sights of Saxon Switzerland she was interested in. The place she wanted to go to lay a little to the west near the village of Hermsdorf, close to the Czech border. Where Herr Ronnebach had had his weekend cottage and was a member of the hunting club. The trip from there to Oberhof would take them right past Karl-Marx-Stadt, and she would be making a surprise call on Herr Ronnebach’s widow to see if she could get her to speak without the interference of the Stasi. And while Leinefelde wasn’t exactly directly on the way back to Berlin, if she claimed she wanted to spend a night in the Harz Mountains, she might just get away with it.

  There was another reason she wanted to take Helga and the twins with her. On her own, the Ministry for State Security would certainly take an interest. If they did detail an agent to tail her, once he saw she was on holiday with her grandmother and the twins, with luck the Stasi might get bored and leave her to her own devices.

  *

  ‘I am going to go away for a few days for the rest of my leave after all, Comrade Oberst,’ she told Reiniger in a phone call. ‘But I’m taking the Lada. If there is anything urgent, you will be able to get in touch via the car’s radio receiver. Although we’re going to the mountains, so the reception may not be good.’

  ‘It sounds lovely, Karin. And certainly very sensible. I’m sure we’ll have a new case for you by the time you’re back. I’d rather like some rest and relaxation in the mountains myself. Whereabouts are you going?’

  ‘We’re starting in Saxon Switzerland and going via Leipzig where my grandmother used to live. She wants to show off her great-grandchildren
to her old friends.’

  ‘She has every right to be proud of them. And it’s a lovely area. I can recommend it. You have a good time. I wouldn’t worry too much about listening out for radio messages. I’ll try very hard not to interrupt things this time.’

  *

  The visit to Leipzig was a huge success. Müller had included it to try to get in Helga’s good books – so that she wouldn’t complain too much when Müller had to go off piste and revisit the case she was supposed to have been relieved of. Jannika and Johannes both behaved well and attracted glowing praise from Helga’s old friends.

  It meant that when Müller wanted to make inquiries amongst Ronnebach’s hunting colleagues, and asked for a little time to allegedly visit an old friend of her own, Helga was all too willing to look after the children on her own.

  *

  As a young girl, Müller had always thought of her adoptive family’s bed and breakfast in the winter sports resort of Oberhof as a fairy tale house. Now, it seemed more like a witch’s house, given the strained relationship with the woman she’d thought for so long was her natural mother. This building in front of her was more like a witch’s castle, with its brooding exterior of dark-stained wood cladding. The sharp-pointed turrets of its towers could be witches’ hats – the bright red shutters reminded her of tempting poisoned apples. Rather than a hunting lodge in a socialist republic, it looked more like somewhere Hitler and the Nazi high-ups would have gathered to plot their next mad, murderous scheme.