by David Young
*
She leaves me alone to get dressed and retreats downstairs. I can only guess what she is doing – perhaps contacting some of her Stasi friends to try to construct a story, in case I decide to go to the police.
Once I’m dressed, I make my way downstairs – avoiding her bathroom. I want to have a bath, a shower, I want to scrub myself till my skin bleeds raw. But I’m not doing it with her soap, in her bath. I want nothing more to do with her.
She’s holding something behind her back. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s a knife or heavy object, arming herself in case I suddenly lunge at her. I ignore her and continue towards the door.
‘Irma. Don’t go straight away. I want to give you something.’ You’ve already given me quite enough, you fucking bitch. ‘It’s a peace offering.’ She holds out the object. It’s a beautiful, delicate, porcelain figure – a nude. The flesh tones are pale, like my own skin. The hair, of course, is red. A miniature version of me. Perhaps that’s what I was. Perhaps she’d obsessed on finding her own real red-headed porcelain doll to play with.
She turns it round to show me the base. ‘It’s Meißen. A very special friend gave it to me. I want you to have it – it’s priceless. If you ever got into trouble you could sell it – you’d never have to worry about money again. Although, of course, I hope you’ll keep it, to remind you of me.’
I take the figure and let out a huge manic laugh.
The woman is so deluded. She has no idea what’s coming to her.
For a few seconds, I humour her and pretend to admire the figure, turning it round and round in my hands, smiling sweetly at it.
Then I tighten my grip. I can see the look of fear in her face, thinking I’m about to smash it over her head.
Instead, I hurl it at the wall and watch it fracture into a thousand pieces.
25
Rügen, East Germany
Late evening, New Year’s Day
Müller braced herself, gripping the Wartburg’s dashboard as the car was thrown this way and that. Tilsner seemed determined to test the snow tyres to their limits.
‘I appreciate we’re in a hurry to get to Sassnitz, Werner!’ she shouted. ‘But it would be better to get there in one piece.’
She watched as he leant out of the window to attach the magnetic blue light to the car’s roof, hunching down into her anorak as the cold rushed into the car. ‘We will, don’t worry!’ he yelled above the roar of the tyres and vibrations. By now, the caterpillar tracks of military vehicles had torn up much of the smooth, impacted snow on the roads – leading to a bumpy ride. He closed the window. ‘But maybe we should have done this first.’
‘Why?’
‘To head them off before they try and leg it across the ice.’
‘If that’s their plan. In any case, we’re investigating a murder, not mounting an anti-Republikflucht operation.’
‘You’ve seen the evidence,’ said Tilsner. ‘If Irma’s with them, by stopping them escaping we kill two birds with one stone.’
*
They skidded to a halt in the car park by the quayside, at the beginning of the harbour wall. Just before Sassnitz town limits, Tilsner had detached the flashing blue light. They didn’t want to lose any element of surprise, in case Irma, Dieter and their friends hadn’t set off yet.
‘We’re on foot from here on,’ he said, climbing out of the car door. He leant back to give her a warning. ‘Just watch your footing in the dark. We cleared a lot of it earlier today, but it’s probably refrozen.’ He opened the rear door, pulled out a small rucksack, and swung it over his back. ‘A People’s Army portable radio,’ he explained. ‘It might come in useful. I’ve retuned it to the People’s Police frequencies.’
Müller followed in his footsteps in a crouching run. The wall curved round slightly towards the sea, following the shape of the coast. In the distance, Müller could see buildings on the shoreline illuminated at regular intervals by the rotating light. They were like ghosts of buildings – there one second as the bright light hit them, gone the next as darkness reclaimed them.
On and on they ran. The harbour wall seemed endless, its strange-shaped covering of sea ice and snow looking like frozen slime when it – in turn – was lit by the rotating beam. All Müller could hear was the panting of her own breath, and their footfalls, softened by the ice and snow.
‘How much further?’ she asked, between gasps. They’d come to a dead stop.
‘Another couple of hundred metres. But it gets harder now. We’ll have to crawl. Is your Makarov ready in case we need it?’
Müller checked her shoulder holster and nodded. Tilsner passed her something. It felt cold to the touch, even beneath her gloves: a spare magazine for the gun. ‘I got a few from the barracks gun room, in case.’
Müller had never used the full eight of her semi-automatic’s bullets. The thought of having to carry spare ammunition made her shudder. ‘Shouldn’t we get backup from uniform? Or the army even?’
Tilsner had started to crawl forward again, but more slowly, using his hands to cling to the wall. ‘You know the answer to that,’ he whispered. ‘If we ask for backup, what we’ll get is Jäger and his mob. I’d rather arrest them ourselves if we can, and persuade them to confess.’
*
They were within fifty metres of the lighthouse. Tilsner risked lifting his head above the parapet of the sea wall. Müller followed suit. She could see the lighthouse beam and its regular flash, and at the base of the structure – each time the beam passed – a group of figures going in and out.
‘Looks like they’re there. And looks like they’re preparing something.’
Müller strained to see. Tilsner got his field glasses from his breast pocket. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Take a look at that.’ He handed her the binoculars.
The figures were clearer, larger now. She could make out Dieter and Irma. But what made her heart sink was what they were doing: loading a sled with various boxes. Poking out from the open top of one of them, she could see what looked like the barrels of rifles.
26
Sellin, Rügen, East Germany
28 December 1978
I rush to the yellow phone box – the one I used four years earlier to ring Hauptmann Steiger. If Richter is watching, she probably thinks I’m about to ring the police this time. But I’m not. Instead I ask the operator for the People’s Army construction soldiers’ barracks in Prora. What I want to do is wash myself at Oma’s. Wash all the evil away. But first I need to act otherwise it will be too late. Richter could already be on the phone to the Stasi – constructing lies about me. I know Ministry agents will be listening to this call – at least they will hear the truth.
I put my coins in, dial the number, but have a struggle persuading them to bring him to the phone. Eventually he comes on the line.
‘Dieter,’ I sob. ‘Something terrible’s happened.’
‘What, Schatzi?’
‘At Frau Richter’s. I can’t say over the phone.’
‘If I don’t know what’s happened, how can I help?’
I shiver in the phone box. Snow is falling heavily outside. I breathe in deeply and tell him my story despite my terrible shame.
*
I shelter further down Wilhelm-Pieck-Straße in the veranda of a house that doesn’t look like it’s occupied in winter, and wait for him. He said someone at the barracks owed him a favour and he’ll try to get a vehicle and come right away. He’s bringing a couple of his friends.
He says we need to make her pay for what she’s done to me.
They arrive and pick me up, then we drive to the end of the road by the cliff and the phone box. Right by Frau Richter’s house. They set up warning barriers and ‘Road Closed’ signs, as though they’re a roadworks crew. That’s what they’re dressed as too. Dieter takes me by the hand, and drags me through the freshly fallen snow to Richter’s front door. In his other hand, what looks like some sort of toolbox. The others hide each side of the door.
/> I’m not sure I want to be part of this any more. I want her punished for what she’s done but I don’t want to involve the police and have it raked over again. But this feels evil – more evil, even, than she is. In the heat of the moment, I’d told myself I wanted her dead. Now I don’t think I do.
Dieter looks around, making sure there are no witnesses. Richter’s house isn’t overlooked – except by the sea and beach, and no one will be out there on a night like this. He knocks on the door.
Richter comes to it, but sees me and him, and doesn’t open it.
‘It’s all right, Frau Richter. Irma would like you to come out and apologise to her in person, and then we’ll say no more about it.’
I see the relief on her face. It’s what she wants to believe.
As she steps out onto the threshold, as though to take my outstretched hand, Dieter’s friends act. One drops a corded sack over her head and clasps his hand over her covered mouth; the other wraps what looks like webbing round her torso, immobilising her arms. She tries to kick back, but another set of webbing is wrapped round her legs. She’s taken on the appearance of a partially unwrapped Egyptian mummy. She’s trying to struggle against her bindings, but there’s nothing she can do.
‘Irma says you drugged her, Frau Richter. Drugged her, then molested her.’
The woman is shaking her head, trying to mumble ‘No, no.’ That’s what I think she’s saying.
Dieter has another look round to check no one has seen, then he points inside the house. ‘Let’s go and check, shall we?’
‘I think this has gone too far, Dieter,’ I say. ‘We’ve given her a fright, as long as she agrees not to go to the police, let’s leave.’
But he looks at me fiercely. ‘This isn’t just about you, although that’s bad enough.’ He’s almost spitting with venom. ‘She saw what we were trying to do under that demolished pier. That puts us in danger. We have to see this through to the end. Otherwise she’ll report us.’
Joachim and Holger have lifted her inside. Dieter drags me after them.
I can’t understand what he’s doing. He seems to be rooting round in the kitchen. He emerges, clutching a dirty mug. It’s the one I drank the hot chocolate from – there’s a dark residue in the bottom. He smells it.
‘Just as I thought, Frau Richter. But if you go around spiking drinks, it’s not advisable to do it to the girlfriend of someone whose parents are both hospital doctors, and had hoped to go to medical school himself. It might come back to bite you. You might get a taste of your own medicine, almost literally.’
The other two have replaced her makeshift hood with webbing round her mouth. She still can’t shout for help – but she can see, and that seems to be Dieter’s intention. He’s rifling through his ‘toolbox’, preparing something.
He brings out a hypodermic needle, with a colourless liquid inside. He looks at the woman’s fingers, and spies one with a fat ring on it.
‘Irma, can you get the washing-up liquid from the kitchen?’
‘I don’t like this, Dieter. Let’s go, please.’
‘Just do it,’ he spits.
‘She’s right, Dieter,’ says Joachim. ‘We ought to be on our way. It’s like a blizzard outside. Soon we won’t be able to get back.’
‘Shut up, Joachim. Remember, she’s seen what we were trying to do. At any moment she could tell someone.’ He looks up at me. ‘Do I have to get it myself, Irma? You heard Joachim, we need to get back quickly.’
I don’t have any option, though I don’t understand what he wants it for. I hope he’s not going to pour it down her throat. I go to the kitchen, find the washing-up liquid propped by the taps, bring it back and hand it to him.
He squeezes some around the ring then, using a cloth, works the silver band off her finger. He pinches her skin together, and plunges in the needle.
I see a damp patch around her groin, and realise she’s pissed herself in her terror. But she doesn’t seem to be struggling any more. ‘Can you hear me, Frau Richter?’ She doesn’t nod, she doesn’t blink her eyes. But they’re still open.
It’s like she’s turned to stone.
Dieter uses a knife to cut free the webbing around her mouth, torso and legs. She doesn’t move.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ I ask, panicking.
‘I’ve used a drug to paralyse her. But don’t worry, Frau Richter. It’s only temporary. It’ll wear off after a few hours.’ He gets close to her ear, and almost snarls into it. ‘Just like whatever you gave Irma, but she’ll have the memories of that for ever.’
It’s true. But I didn’t ask him to do this. I didn’t want it to go so far.
He stands, and looks around, his eyes settling on the curtains. ‘Holger,’ he says. ‘Help me rip it down.’
‘Why?’
‘We can wrap her up in it. Use it as a kind of stretcher.’
The two of them yank down the curtain. Part of the rail comes away from the wall. They wrap her body in it, but Dieter is careful to leave her face uncovered.
So that she can see everything that is going to happen to her.
*
It’s clear I’m not going back with them to Prora. Whatever their plans for Richter, I’ll never know.
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ I say to Dieter as he hugs me, after he and the others have lifted her body into the back of the truck, together with all their roadworks apparatus. I can see other equipment in the back too. Boxes. What looks like a sled. A tarpaulin.
‘Don’t worry, Irma.’ He squeezes me tight. ‘Whatever happens, remember it’s to ensure your and our safety – and to pay her back for what she did to you.’
*
I feel a terrible dread settle over me as I trudge back to the campsite through the snow. The wind has begun to howl, and drifts are already forming. I wonder if they will get back to Prora, or whether they’ll be snowed in with their semi-comatose cargo. What would happen then?
I won’t answer Oma when she asks where I’ve been. I slam the front door behind me and run up to my room. I tear off my clothes and stuff them into a plastic bag in the wardrobe. I never want to see them again. I’ll burn them if necessary.
I run naked carrying a towel to the shower. I don’t want to put on my dressing gown – I don’t want it sullied with her scent.
I run the shower as hot as possible, till it’s almost scalding my body.
I scrub and scrub, every part of me, until my skin stings and burns.
*
The next day, when the snow is metres high, I hear that there has been a fatality because of the weather.
A middle-aged woman has been found, lifeless, under a drift near Binz.
Apparently she’d been out shopping, judging by what she’d been carrying, but had been caught out in inappropriate indoor clothing when the snows fell.
They’re already calling it a hundred-year winter.
A ‘catastrophe winter’.
I know I should be horrified by what Dieter’s done, by what I helped him do.
But I’m not. Instead I feel a lightness of being, a fuzzy warmth, as though the world has been rid of an evil spirit.
And, perhaps, it has.
27
Stasi HQ, Normannenstraße, East Berlin
Late evening, 1 January 1979
Briefing by the Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke
‘Welcome, Comrades. Thank you for giving up your evenings for this meeting. As you’re aware, we have a critical situation because of the weather along the Ostsee coast. Some of our officers will be joining us by conference call from there, but I’m sure you’ve seen the weather reports. In fact, you only have to look outside this window. But I can assure you, things are much worse in the north. The first person we’re going to hear from is Comrade Oberst Klaus Jäger who joins us from Binz on the island of Rügen. Jäger? Mielke here. Can you hear us?’
‘Yes, receiving you loud and clear, Comrade Minister.’
‘Go ahead with your rep
ort, Jäger. I understand there have been some new developments since we last talked to you?’
‘Yes, Comrade Minister, the situation is very serious here. According to helicopter reconnaissance, the Ostsee is almost completely frozen as far as Denmark and Sweden. Only a narrow shipping channel is being kept relatively clear by icebreakers, but we don’t know how long they can continue operating. The situation is equally bad further west along the Republic’s coast, at Rostock, Warnemünde, and Boltenhagen.’
‘And what’s your assessment about what this means for us? Have any Republikflüchtlinge tried to take advantage of the conditions? What about that cell you’ve identified within the construction soldiers’ barracks? Presumably you’ve sorted that by now?’
‘There’s been a complication, Comrade Minister.’
‘I don’t want to hear about complications, Comrade Oberst. You’re aware of your orders and duties.’
‘The complicating factor is that some members of the cell are suspects in a murder investigation being carried out by the People’s Police.’
‘The Kriminalpolizei on Rügen? Just tell them we’re taking over.’
‘No. It’s the Serious Crimes Department from Keibelstraße.’
‘Not that Müller woman again, Jäger? I thought I’d told you to make sure you deal with her. I thought she’d resigned.’
‘She did, or rather she tried to. Reiniger at Keibelstraße refused to accept her resignation.’
‘Well, he’s a buffoon, Comrade Oberst. I’ll get in touch with his boss at the People’s Police and pull him into line. Anyway, I thought we had one of ours working in that department?’
