by David Young
(CAPTAIN WAGNER ENDS THE SESSION AT 1021 HOURS)
55
August 1977
Strausberger Platz, East Berlin
Müller didn’t know if her game of brinkmanship with Jäger would pay off. She wasn’t certain what connections the Stasi colonel had inside police headquarters at Keibelstrasse: it was possible he could make inquiries of any unofficial informers within the People’s Police ranks and find out that Müller’s claim to have a fingerprint match had been premature. But what she was banking on was his fear of Müller exposing the fact that he’d been a member of the Hitler Youth movement and involved in the Gardelegen massacre. That, despite holding a senior position in an organisation dedicated to flushing out fascists and counter-revolutionaries, he’d been part of a disgusting fascist atrocity – albeit as a teenager.
But as the hours ticked away in her curiously empty flat, the phone failed to ring. Müller felt like there was a huge weight pressing ever more firmly on her chest until she was almost struggling to breathe. She twisted her blonde hair in her fingers as she waited. She knew there were things she had to do, like expose the cover-up that happened after the massacre, prevent further murders and catch the culprit – whether that really was Verbier, or not. If it was Verbier, was his motive revenge? If so, why wait until now? Yet she felt paralysed and impotent in the face of her twin children’s potential entry into the Republic’s severe children’s home system, and her grandmother’s incarceration in one of its most feared jails.
She heard a key turning in the apartment’s front door, which suddenly sent hope soaring. She clasped her hands to her chest.
Helga!
The two women rushed into each other’s arms.
‘I’m so, so sorry, Karin,’ cried the older woman, burying her head into her granddaughter’s shoulder. Then she pulled back, alarmed. ‘But where are Jannika and Johannes?’ The desperate look in Müller’s face must have been all too clear. ‘Oh no! What’s happened?’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ lied Müller. ‘Come and sit down first. I’ll make you a coffee.’
But Helga stayed rooted to the spot. ‘Where are they, Karin?’
‘Come and sit down at least, then I’ll explain. I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding that will be sorted out soon.’
Helga allowed herself to be led through to the living room, and gently eased down onto the sofa.
‘It’s not my fault, is it? It was like a nightmare. I was stopped by MfS agents on the way to the holiday club. They were insisting on going through my papers. They wanted to know why I was still registered as living in Leipzig, yet I gave my address as Strausberger Platz. It meant I was late to pick up the twins.’
Müller held her grandmother in a tight hug. ‘No, it’s absolutely not your fault, Helga. If anything, the fault is mine. I ought to be able to separate work from home life. But I’m afraid—’
Once again, Helga pulled out of the hug, and stared hard at Müller. ‘Tell me they’re all right, Karin. Where are they?’
‘Temporarily, they’re being cared for by Friedrichshain’s children’s services department.’
‘Why?’ cried Helga. ‘You’re here. I’ve been freed now. They have no reason not to be at home with us, where they belong.’
‘I know. I agree,’ said Müller, fighting back tears. ‘It will be sorted out, I’m sure. Very soon, I hope. What about you? It must have been a horrible shock.’
‘I don’t think they were ever serious. I think it was all designed to put pressure on you. I wasn’t even assigned a proper cell. Yes, I was frightened. I didn’t know what was going on at first. But I never really believed they were going to be able to keep me in prison. I hadn’t done anything wrong.’
Müller was tempted to say that an obstacle such as being innocent wouldn’t necessarily stand in the way of the Stasi. For example, her own apartment was bugged – something she had kept from Helga, and the children themselves, who in any case were far too young to understand. And, of course, there were the visits of the Barkas campervan with the twitching curtains outside the apartment block. It was there less often these days, and the occupants inside didn’t always bother to properly conceal their surveillance cameras behind the curtains. But she bit her tongue. It was nothing Helga needed to know.
*
Within a couple of hours of Helga’s return, Müller received a phone call. A glowing warmth suffused her body as the disembodied voice at the other end of the line explained that Jannika and Johannes were being returned to her custody. She could collect the twins immediately. Müller’s tears began to fall at last – tears that she couldn’t stop, no matter how hard she tried.
‘Oh God, Karin! What is it?’ asked an alarmed Helga.
Müller beamed at her grandmother, though she knew her mascara would be running down her face by now: that she would look like the bereaved spouse of the victim from one of those West German crime dramas Helga was addicted to.
‘It’s nothing to worry about, Helga. These are tears of happiness. We can go and collect the twins right away. They’re coming back home.’ She didn’t mention that the only reason it had all been sorted out so swiftly was because of her threat to expose Jäger. For him to have acted so fast, he must be a very scared man.
*
Müller pushed thoughts of Gardelegen, Verbier, and the series of murders he may have been responsible for out of her mind for the rest of the day. She was officially off the cases, and therefore felt no guilt in devoting the rest of the afternoon and evening to her family. They deserved it.
They travelled out to the Müggelsee in the Lada, and Müller treated the whole family to ice creams in a lakeside café. Then Müller and Helga sat on deckchairs at the Strandbad, the twins playing happily together – for once – with their buckets and spades in the sand in front of them. In a few hours, Müller’s life had been transformed. But as she felt the glow of happiness in having her family back together, a passing cloud that shielded the sun temporarily reminded her of the darker forces that had brought her to her knees. She wouldn’t forget. She wouldn’t forgive. She would solve this case, and if this meant the downfall of Jäger and Tilsner, well, so be it. She knew things about them now – she had a powerful hand. The fact that her children had been returned and Helga had been freed, merely served to demonstrate its power.
*
‘So what are you saying?’ asked Reiniger, studying the photographs from the memorial of Verbier, Jäger and Tilsner.
‘I’m saying, Comrade Oberst, that a senior member of the Ministry for State Security may be caught up in all this – is caught up in all this. Therefore I don’t think justice is best served by leaving this in the Stasi’s hands. They’re potentially compromised.’
‘But when we had this conversation before, I asked you to bring me not just the actual photographs, but also the fingerprint evidence you said you have.’
Müller could see the colonel was considering her request. She didn’t want this to be the stumbling block. ‘Comrade Kriminaltechniker Schmidt is confident of finding a match with the prints I provided from the wrapper the flowers were contained in. But he wants to be certain, and there is a lot of fingerprint evidence from the various crime scenes to sift through. Some of those prints are partial ones. So he’s not quite there yet. But if we delay now, the Stasi could just close ranks. I believe I’ve identified the murderer.’ Again, Müller felt uncomfortable about using the ‘M’ word, given what she now knew about Verbier. ‘But he may not have been working alone. We need to do house-to-house inquiries in Gardelegen to try to piece this together. To try to find out who from that time was involved, and whether they may have been working together with our suspect to commit these crimes – or whether they may be next in line to be targeted. If you delay, Comrade Oberst, and then there is another murder, how would you feel? I believe I have demonstrated that this is clearly nothing to do with the Committee for the Dispossessed as the Ministry for State Security allege.’
> Reiniger rubbed his hands across his face. He looked tired and conflicted by a choice between doing what good police work demanded, and what his political masters would require. ‘You realise you’re asking me to go to my superiors, to get them to go to the very top, and then countermand the Stasi? If you’re wrong, that’ll be you finished. You’ll lose the flat in Strausberger Platz. The Lada. Everything. You might be putting your children’s future in jeopardy, too, because Stasi officers have long memories.’ Müller knew what Reiniger was saying was correct. ‘And I won’t be able to defend you this time, because I’ll be finished too.’ He looked rather forlornly at the three gold stars on his silver-braided epaulettes – first the left, then the right, as though if he went ahead with Müller’s plan, he might be saying goodbye to them sooner than he’d like to.
‘I understand what I’m asking of you, Comrade Oberst. But what we’re talking about here are former Nazis who now serve the Stasi.’
‘They were members of the Hitler Youth, Karin. There was no choice for them.’
‘There’s always a choice, Comrade Oberst. Perhaps not in joining the Hitler Youth. But they could have defied their orders if they’d had the courage to do so. You know that as well as I do.’
56
The next day
Gardelegen, East Germany
Reiniger’s solution, if it was one, was something of a compromise in Müller’s view. He managed to get permission for Müller’s house-to-house inquiries, but only if they were conducted by local People’s Police officers in Gardelegen, overseen by Müller. The local officers would be sensitive to what had happened there more than thirty-two years earlier – just before Müller herself had been born. For Müller, it was a lifetime ago. But the shame was still there. Everything was still raw. The name of the town itself would always be tainted by what had gone on in that barn on the night of 13 April 1945 and the following day. Where Müller and Reiniger disagreed was that she wanted to ringfence the inquiry from Tilsner. With what she now knew about the inquiry, she believed her deputy would be compromised. Reiniger demurred. Whether she liked it or not, Tilsner would be going back to Gardelegen with her.
*
The blond-haired, blue-eyed Hauptmann Janson couldn’t hide his delight at seeing Müller again, or the fact that she’d managed to prise open the inquiry once more. In facing the same frustrations when the Stasi had taken over the inquiry into Schneider, Müller had forged an important ally.
‘My men and I are thrilled to be asked to assist you, Comrade Major.’
‘Good. And call me Karin, please. My deputy here is Werner.’
Tilsner nodded sullenly. He’d said little to her all journey, and she hadn’t revealed to him that she now knew of his involvement at the Isenschnibbe barn massacre. But all throughout the drive from the Hauptstadt, little memories kept on jumping into her brain. Memories that only now made sense; Tilsner slamming the shot glass down when drinking Schnapps, which she’d been told was the Fascist way, and his over-the-top reaction to the West German politician’s Nazi comments at the Eisenhüttenstadt steelworks.
Janson clapped his hands together, bringing her thoughts back to the present. ‘Good. And you must both call me Berti. So, where would you like to start?’
‘I think friends and relations of Lothar Schneider, and those of his contact inside the Potsdam Stasi jail, Ernst Lehmann. Schneider wanted to give me information – I got some of that via Lehmann. What do you think, Werner? Do you have any local knowledge? Didn’t you say that you had relatives living in the area?’
Tilsner held her gaze and his face failed to give much away. If he knew that Jäger had told her about his previous life – as Günther Palitzsch, the teenage Hitler Youth member – then he wasn’t revealing it. Perhaps she should have taken him aside and questioned him in private. But something told her she would find out more if she didn’t reveal her full hand. ‘I’m happy to go along with what you and Hauptmann J . . . , sorry, what you and Berti feel is best,’ said her deputy. ‘I told you. They were only distant relatives.’
*
Müller and Tilsner’s first house call was once again to Lothar Schneider’s widow in Stendaler Strasse. Müller was particularly interested in finding out what Verbier had been to see her about, that night she’d tracked him from his hotel in Magdeburg.
Tilsner and Müller sat next to each other on the sofa, while Frau Schneider turned her armchair round to face them.
‘Did you get anything useful from the man my husband referred you to?’ asked the woman.
‘We did, yes,’ nodded Müller. ‘Everything seems to lead back to something that happened in Gardelegen at the end of the war.’
The woman shrugged, with a resigned expression on her face. ‘It’s something that we all have to carry the shame for. Everyone round here, though some more than others.’
‘Was your husband one of those, Frau Schneider?’
‘No. He was in the Hitler Youth brigade. But he refused to go up to Isenschnibbe that day. He risked his own life to do that. In effect, he was disobeying orders. He could have been shot himself. He and his friend. Perhaps that was the one who he left the note about. But he still felt the guilt, we all did. And he volunteered to carry one of the crosses.’
‘So he did feel some involvement?’ asked Tilsner. His voice seemed nervous again to Müller, as though he would rather be anywhere else than he was right now. Talking about any other subject than he was right now. As though he was simply asking a question to go through the motions and to make Müller think he was playing an active part in the inquiry.
‘Yes, but from what he said, he helped save someone, rather than kill anyone.’
Müller’s ears pricked up at this. ‘How so?’
‘He and his friend found an exhausted, starving prisoner in a barn – another barn, not far from Isenschnibbe. He was a Frenchman. They gave him food, water. Guarded him almost, to make sure none of the other townsfolk could get to him. And then they told the Americans where he was. That man – that Frenchman – has always been eternally grateful for their help, but Lothar said it was the least they could do. Lothar was a good man, Major Müller. A kind man. He always insisted he had no choice but to join the Hitler Youth. But his family were no Nazis. They had a small farm between Gardelegen and Estedt. His mother tried to feed some of the prisoners when they marched past. She was prevented from doing so by the guards.’ Her voice quietened almost to a whisper. Müller glanced at Tilsner to watch his reaction. He had his head lowered looking at his notebook, but not taking notes. Is that a tear in his eye? Is he crying for himself, or in shame at what happened? ‘They are a good family, and he was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.’
‘Was their farm nationalised when others were?’ asked Tilsner, still barely looking at the woman. Müller rolled her eyes. He was still desperately clinging to that theory. It wouldn’t wash any more.
‘No,’ said Frau Schneider. ‘Some of the smaller ones weren’t, but of course they had to give a portion of their income and their production to the state, like everyone else.’
But Müller knew that line of questioning was a red herring. A red herring planted by the Stasi. And Müller now knew Tilsner was closer to that organisation than she’d ever been led to believe.
She wanted to move the questioning to something more productive. ‘The prisoner you talked about, the one your husband helped in the barn, has he visited you recently?’
‘He was French. Why would he be here in the Republic now?’ Müller noticed the woman’s eyes dart to the right. Normally that would indicate she was telling the truth, yet Müller knew she wasn’t. Unless . . . unless she hadn’t been in that night. Or Verbier had actually been visiting her neighbour, Frau Rost, the servant from Isenschnibbe estate. The one who’d thought she recognised Tilsner.
Müller pressed the point. ‘We know who this Frenchman was.’ She turned to Tilsner and gave him a meaningful glare. ‘Don’t we, Comrade Hauptmann
?’ She saw him cover his eyes with his hand. What’s going on in his brain? Can he see them? The prisoners? The prisoners he herded to their deaths, along with all the others? Then she turned back to Frau Schneider. The woman was doodling on a piece of paper, possibly to calm her nerves. She was doodling with her left hand. That was why – when she’d constructed the lie about Verbier – she’d looked to the right. Straight out of the police manual. The lies of right-handed people tended to lead to leftward glances. Those of left-handers, to the right. She was definitely lying.
‘I know you want to protect him. But I know he visited you. I was following him.’ The woman gasped. Müller felt Tilsner give an involuntary shudder alongside her on the sofa. Both had something they were hiding. ‘What did he say to you, Frau Schneider? Can I also remind you that obstructing a police inquiry is a very serious offence.’
The woman dropped her doodling pen onto the pad and was instead wringing her hands together, her eyes downcast. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that.’ She gazed with pleading eyes at Müller. ‘I was just trying to protect him, just as my husband tried to protect him all those years ago.’
‘Why does he need protecting, Frau Schneider?’
‘He was devastated when he heard about Lothar. He was comforting me, too. But I could tell he was nervous. That he didn’t want to stay too long. I got the feeling that he almost felt he was being hunted again. He asked about the same names as you.’
Müller felt a flutter in her belly, like a trapped bird or flying insect trying to escape. ‘What do you mean, he asked about the same names?’
‘Ronnebach . . . Höfler . . . Unterbrink . . . the same list of names you had. I knew something must have happened to them. Yet he was asking if Lothar had left him a message – about those very same names. I thought he must be in some sort of trouble when I heard that.’
