Stasi 77

by David Young

  She soon discovered that most of the building was no longer given over to hunt gatherings. The sign over the door was the giveaway – FDGB-Heim Hermsdorf Ernst Thälmann. It was a trade union holiday home named after the former Communist Party leader, who had been executed towards the end of the Second World War; something she knew about from both history and socialism lessons at school.

  So where was the hunting club? Her confusion was allayed in a few seconds at the reception.

  ‘You’ll find it round the back. There’s the clubhouse – well, it’s little more than a bar really – and the gun store and workshop.’ The young receptionist glanced up at the clock. ‘You’ll only find the members here at the weekend, but the technician might still be there.’ She rattled off a series of directions and pointed out a side door to Müller. ‘It’ll be quickest if you go through there.’

  The route took her round the outside of the hotel, through a yard, and then round a corner. She spotted the door to the club, adorned with two pairs of antlers on each side of the doorway. She tried the door – it was open. Immediately, the contrast with the hotel reception assailed her senses. There, everything had been modernised and sparkled, in what seemed like a deliberate attempt to glue a veneer over the capitalist history of the lodge. The smells were of new plastics, cleaning fluids, polish. Here, her nose was hit by a mustiness, an earthiness, a maleness. This was the preserve of men, and despite the prominent notices proclaiming the egalitarian nature of the Volksjagd – the People’s Hunt – Müller suspected the members here were the privileged few, perhaps police officers like herself, though male. Or Party high-ups, such as Martin Ronnebach. And, of course, Ministry for State Security officials. The club would be monitored by the Stasi – but how actively? She glanced around, looking for security cameras or listening devices. There was nothing obvious. But there wouldn’t be. Just like it hadn’t been obvious at the Strausberger Platz apartment, until Johannes had thrown his toy car at the wall, and the damage had exposed the hidden microphone wire.

  The place seemed deserted. But if it was, why was the front door unlocked? She gave an involuntary shiver, and felt her scalp prickle. Was she walking into a Stasi trap, designed to expose her continued involvement in the case? She stood stock still and listened.

  Nothing.

  Just the ticking of the antique wall clock, outpaced by her fast-beating heart.

  She was tempted to shout out, asking if anyone was there. Then she spied what appeared to be a membership list pinned to the green baize of the club notice board. The date indicated it had been updated two months previously. Her eyes scanned to the ‘R’s – Ronnebach, Martin. That told her nothing new. She glanced through the other names, starting with the ‘A’s and working through the list. None seemed familiar. She reached the ‘R’s again, past Ronnebach, and then the ‘S’s.

  She breathed in sharply.

  Strobl, Ole.

  The Stasi officer who’d prevented her from questioning Frau Ronnebach properly.

  As her mind tried to digest the significance of this link, she heard a sound. A rhythmic, metallic, banging noise.

  She followed it through a door. The noise grew louder, sharper, and the smell of musty maleness was replaced by the tang of metal and cordite.

  The technician looked up in surprise, stopping work on what was – presumably – a gun part he’d been hammering back into shape.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, a note of annoyance in his voice.

  Müller hadn’t really thought things through. If she announced she was a police officer, that would get back to the Stasi, no doubt within minutes of her leaving. She needed another tactic.

  She tried to affect a catch in her voice, and make her face look upset.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘But . . . it’s . . . it’s personal.’

  The man laid down his tools, looking confused.

  ‘Are you sure you’re in the right place?’ he asked. He had an almost Nordic appearance, and looked like the sort of man Müller could have easily fallen for in different circumstances. If he felt the same way, hopefully she could use that to her advantage. She sat down on a chair in his eyeline, hitching her skirt up slightly as she did. His gaze followed the movement, and when he raised it again to meet hers she could tell he’d realised he’d been caught looking.

  ‘It’s slightly awkward,’ she said, with what she hoped was a smile full of hidden possibilities. ‘My boyfriend’s a member here.’

  ‘Oh yes. Who’s that?’ The man had taken a chair opposite her, in front of his workbench. He settled into it with a proprietorial air, his legs spread wide, as though he was inviting Müller to admire them in the same way he’d been ogling her.

  ‘Can I trust you? I don’t even know your name.’ She angled her head, with a small smile. And pushed her bottom forward a fraction in her seat, her skirt rising by that same fraction. The man’s eyes gave away that he’d noticed.

  ‘Berndt Siekert. I’m the gun technician here. And yes, you can trust me.’ He glanced down again at Müller’s legs, still tanned from the curtailed holiday on the Black Sea coast. Then his eyes were fixed on hers again. ‘But can I trust you? It’s not every day I get a visit from a gorgeous woman.’

  Müller bit her bottom lip at the same time as fashioning a smile. Such a blatant come-on would normally be met by her with an icy stare. But she had started this game – he was just continuing it. What she said next was a gamble. It was time for payback.

  ‘My boyfriend is Ole Strobl.’ She hadn’t liked the way the Stasi officer had so coolly blocked virtually every question of importance she’d tried to put to Martin Ronnebach’s widow.

  The man tried to suppress a half gasp. Did he know Strobl was a Stasi officer?

  ‘Well, well,’ he laughed. ‘And does Ole’s wife know about you?’

  ‘No. Ole keeps me well hidden. He’s also tried to keep his other girlfriend hidden – that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Müller had no qualms about trashing Strobl’s reputation – although she had a sneaky feeling that within the confines of the hunting club, a reputation as a lothario might be seen as something to admire rather than revile.

  ‘Another girlfriend? Ha!’ The man slapped his outstretched thighs as he laughed. Müller tried to affect a hurt look.

  ‘It’s not a laughing matter,’ she said. ‘I think he’s been led astray by his friend, Martin Ronnebach.’ It was a stab in the dark. It also conspired to move the direction of their strange conversation to what she really wanted to talk about – the murdered deputy Party head from Karl-Marx-Stadt. ‘I hear Ronnebach’s a bit of a one too.’

  The man looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t realise Martin and Ole were friends. I never saw them together much.’

  Müller nodded. ‘Ronnebach has a weekend cottage near here. But I hear he uses it as a love nest. For his French lover.’ She thought of the women’s black knickers. The watermarked French envelope. Were they really evidence of an affair? And did it have any relevance to the other killings – all of which seemed more to be linked with the history of Gardelegen?

  Siekert blew out his cheeks. ‘Pah! I’m not sure about that. Martin certainly used to play the field. But as far as I know, all of those he was involved with were German girls.’

  ‘So more than one?’ asked Müller. She felt her mouth drying with excitement. She was getting somewhere.

  In an instant, Siekert’s features changed, and suspicion cast a shadow across his face. He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, pulling his legs together, hugging his arms in on himself. ‘This is getting horribly like an interview I had with another blonde woman a few days ago. She was asking similar questions.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ asked Müller, innocently. But she had a good idea who that person was. People’s Police detective Elke Drescher. But she didn’t reveal that, and instead continued the charade. ‘Do you think she was another of his mistresses?’

  Siekert coughed, rose from his chair, and made his way ba
ck to his workbench. ‘No. She was a policewoman. You do know what’s happened to Martin Ronnebach, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ lied Müller.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the man, lifting up his hammer again. ‘Let’s just say he won’t be going hunting any more.’ With that the man started fashioning his metalwork again. The rhythmic clanging told Müller all she needed to know.

  The conversation was over.

  26

  Once she had been reunited with Helga and the children, Müller headed towards Karl-Marx-Stadt. She hadn’t learnt a great deal at the hunting club, but at least she hadn’t given her real name away. There was a chance Siekert might relay the contents of her conversation to the club high-ups, and they in turn might report it to the Stasi. But the technician really shouldn’t have been gossiping himself. That might give her some protection – for his own sake, he might consider it better to forget all about his flirty chat with a woman who’d identified herself as ‘Ole Strobl’s mistress’. And Müller had at least established one thing – Martin Ronnebach had been unfaithful to his wife. According to Siekert, on more than one occasion. That might provide a motive for his murder. It might even point the finger of suspicion at his widow. But it didn’t tie up with the deaths of Ingo Höfler at the Leinefelde cotton mill, or of Lothar Schneider near Gardelegen.

  *

  Soon after entering Karl-Marx-Stadt, Müller spotted what she took for a Stasi car tailing her in the rear-view mirror of the Lada. She’d been expecting it – but as far as she knew it hadn’t followed all the way from Hermsdorf.

  She didn’t alert Helga or the twins, not that Jannika and Johannes were old enough to understand. Instead, she found a children’s play area and tried to smoke the Stasi man out. The capacity of Jannika and Johannes to entertain themselves in a sandpit was almost limitless. When Helga suggested it might be time to leave, Müller insisted there was no rush. The Stasi man, observing from a distant park bench, eventually looked down at his watch and sauntered off. Perhaps he’d been told to follow her for a certain amount of time. Perhaps he’d simply been attracted by the Lada’s Berlin number plate and followed her on spec. Whatever his instructions, it left her free to visit Frau Ronnebach – hopefully, this time, without a spy in tow. Although it took a little persuasion to convince Helga to spend yet more time in the play area, Jannika and Johannes needed no convincing.

  On returning to the Lada, Müller opened the boot and took out an evidence bag she’d brought with her. It was one of the items she’d taken from the Ronnebachs’ country cottage. She’d already handed the blue envelope to Schmidt for tests – he’d managed to get some fingerprints from it and established that it was, indeed, manufactured in France as she thought. She’d kept the other item from him for now – the pair of black western women’s knickers. Should she confront Frau Ronnebach with them? That’s why she hadn’t handed them to Schmidt yet. Snapping on protective gloves, and glancing round to check no one was watching, she opened the bag and took the underwear out. As she did, a piece of oval fabric fluttered out into her lap. She picked it up and examined it. It didn’t make much sense. On the fabric was what looked like two irregular yellow straw bales – one larger, one smaller – surrounded by a ring of lighter coloured straw. The stitching was terrible, naïve. Then she realised. What she was looking at was the back of the stitched pattern. She turned it over, with a mixture of excitement and foreboding. Now the design was clear. A golden bird of prey in mid-flight, swooping down at a forty-five-degree angle, its talons poised for the kill. Her excitement turned to revulsion as she looked more closely.

  It wasn’t the bird’s clenched talons beneath it.

  It was a golden swastika.

  *

  Frau Ronnebach seemed surprised – but not displeased – to see her.

  ‘I wondered if you’d try to get in touch again. I wanted to say more last time, but – you know – it was difficult.’

  ‘I don’t want to put you in any danger, Frau Ronnebach. Comrade Strobl was most insistent we shouldn’t meet again unless he was present. But I do have a few more questions. And I suspect, if he was here, he wouldn’t let me ask them. Are you willing to talk to me?’

  ‘Up to a point. There are things I can’t say, but I will try to help as much as I can. Would you like a coffee?’

  *

  Once the coffee was made and poured – the real thing again, noted Müller – they sat in the lounge, Müller with her pen and notebook poised at the dining table, Frau Ronnebach perched on the end of the sofa, just like the previous occasion.

  ‘Some things have come to light since my last visit that I wanted to ask you about, Frau Ronnebach. Firstly, I believe you and your husband didn’t always live in this area, did you?’

  ‘That’s correct. We used to live nearer to Magdeburg – further north. That’s where we met.’

  ‘Gardelegen, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you or your husband know a man called Ingo Höfler? Either when you were living in Gardelegen, or after you moved to this area?’

  The small, bird-like woman cocked her head, and paused before answering. With her bright green blouse and electric blue skirt, she almost looked like a parrot.

  ‘Höfler. The name does sound familiar. I think there may have been a Höfler family in Gardelegen. Were they bakers?’

  Müller shrugged.

  ‘The trouble is,’ continued the woman, ‘though it’s a small town, it’s not that small – if you know what I mean. There must be – what? – twenty thousand or so people who live there. So there might be people I knew to say hello to in the street, but I wouldn’t necessarily know their names. But I think there was a Höfler family that owned a bakery.’

  ‘And your husband didn’t have any dealings with an Ingo Höfler later, through his relationship with the cotton mill at Sachsenburg?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say he had a relationship with the mill. His only link – as far as I’m aware – was that he was involved in the decision to nationalise the mill. But really, locally, he would simply have been rubber-stamping decisions made by the Party in the Hauptstadt.’

  ‘What about Lothar Schneider?’

  ‘Sorry?’ The woman looked perplexed.

  ‘Did you know a Lothar Schneider – or a Schneider family – in Gardelegen?’

  The woman’s eyes darted to the left, as though she was checking something through the window. Then back to Müller. ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Do you have any theories about your husband’s murder, Frau Ronnebach?’

  ‘No, well . . . perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps?’

  ‘I got the feeling the Ministry for State Security officer was most insistent that I shouldn’t talk about anything from the past, as we’ve been doing today. As that’s the case, I’m sure that’s where the answer must lie.’

  ‘And you’re sure your husband wasn’t having an affair?’ Since her last visit, Müller now had an advantage over the woman. She knew – unless what the hunt club technician had said was simply bluster – that Martin Ronnebach had been unfaithful, and not just on one occasion or with one woman. ‘Did he have contact with anyone in France, for example?’

  ‘France?’ echoed the woman, frowning. ‘Not that I know of. You seem very insistent about this line of questioning.’ Frau Ronnebach stared hard at Müller. ‘Perhaps you know something that I don’t.’ The widow’s face took on a momentary look of wistfulness – as if she were remembering past times, when she and her husband had been happy with each other. When they’d enjoyed that first, thrilling rush of love and lust. Then her look hardened. ‘If Martin was having an affair, then as I said before, he would have had ample opportunity when at the hunting club or weekend cottage. As I suggested before, you should concentrate your inquiries there.’

  ‘I already have,’ said Müller.

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s not really for me to say, Frau Ronnebach.’ Although she was stonewalling, Müller tr
ied to convey in her tone of voice and expression the answer the widow was really seeking – confirmation of the suspected infidelity.

  ‘Ah. Well then, if anything like that led to his death, well . . . I can’t say I’d wish it on him, because I wouldn’t. I certainly had no part in his murder, if that’s what you’re implying. But if that was what he was doing, and that was the end result, well . . . it was rather his own fault, then, wasn’t it?’

  Müller let the woman’s answer hang in the air for a few seconds, almost inviting her to say more. When she didn’t, Müller produced what she hoped was her trump card. She’d decided confronting Frau Ronnebach with the black lingerie was a step too far, and had left the underwear in the Lada’s boot. Instead, Müller took out the fabric badge and showed it to the woman.

  Immediately there was a look of recognition.

  ‘I found this hidden in a drawer at your cottage,’ the detective said. ‘Your husband was a member of the Nazi Party, wasn’t he?’

  The woman toyed with the badge, but otherwise seemed unperturbed. ‘You do know what this is, don’t you?’

  ‘I know what the emblem at the bottom of the design is.’

  ‘All such badges from this period would have included that,’ said the woman, coolly holding Müller’s gaze. ‘It is simply a Fallschirmjäger or paratrooper badge. Gardelegen had a Fallschirmjäger barracks – my husband was a young officer stationed there. That’s how I met him. I was involved in amateur dramatics – it was my passion. We put on a show for the paratroopers.’

  ‘That’s all very well, Frau Ronnebach. But the fact is your husband was a Nazi, wasn’t he?’

  The woman dropped her eyes, and initially didn’t answer.

  When she raised them, there was an icy coldness in them which made Müller shudder.