Stasi Child

by David Young

  Ice and frozen snow crunched and popped underfoot as they followed the cemetery path back to the scene of the body, Müller stamping hard with each stride to work some blood and warmth into her feet. She lagged behind the other two, a sense of foreboding settling over her. Something here was awry.

  The handful of officers from the various ministries parted to let the three of them get in close. Jäger gave a nod, and one of the men pulled the shroud away.

  Müller looked at the body: a girl, face down in the snow. One leg apparently lacerated – by the barrier’s barbed wire? – the other at a crazy angle to the rest of her body. Wounds in her back, evidenced by a blood-besmirched white T-shirt, partially showing through a top covering of torn, black material, which looked as though it had once been some sort of cape. She didn’t appear to have been dressed for the winter weather. The regular pattern of the injuries suggested automatic gunfire, and the body was facing away from the protection barrier, towards the Hauptstadt. At least that fitted with the official account. She looked back towards the Wall, the searchlights, watchtower and the buildings of the capitalist West on the other side, adorned with their garish advertisements. From where exactly had she been shot? How had she managed to struggle so far?

  ‘Verdammt!’ exclaimed Tilsner suddenly, from his vantage point behind the girl’s head. Müller watched Jäger raise his eyebrows, but there was no formal admonishment. ‘There’s no way we’ll be able to identify that. The face is a complete mess.’

  This time Jäger did intervene. ‘Her face please, Unterleutnant. She wasn’t some inanimate object. And someone, somewhere, will be missing her. But yes, unpleasant. The cemetery gardener discovered her at dawn, but a stray dog had apparently got there first.’

  Müller moved around to Tilsner’s position, and saw what had provoked his reaction. Skin torn away from her chin to her eye socket. In its place was raw flesh, like a cheap cut of meat on a butcher’s slab. The side of her mouth was open, but no teeth – just bloody, mangled gums. An animal couldn’t have done that, could it? The sight – and the thought – was too much. Müller suddenly found herself retching, and quickly moved behind a gravestone, bending out of sight as the remains of last night’s meal and vodka made a return journey out of her mouth. To try to hide her embarrassment, she started faking a cough, kicking snow with her boot to cover the evidence.

  ‘Are you quite alright, Comrade Müller?’ asked Jäger.

  She nodded, avoiding Tilsner’s gaze. Steeling herself, Müller looked back towards the body. It was then that she saw the girl’s hand, splayed out in the snow. A teenager’s hand, with pure, unlined skin. But what startled the detective were the black nails at the end of each digit. It was clearly supposed to resemble nail polish, but the coating had a matt, streaky appearance. Müller knelt down. Up close, she could tell the nails had been inked in, like a schoolchild might with a felt-tip pen. It was a sharp reminder of how young she was. Mid- or early teens. Someone’s daughter. The same age as her own daughter would have been, if . . . She stopped the thought. Her throat tightened again, her eyes moistened. She met Jäger’s gaze. Throwing up had been bad enough, but she wasn’t going to cry – not in front of a senior officer from the Ministry for State Security.

  It took the arrival of People’s Police forensic scientist Jonas Schmidt to lighten the mood. He was half-running – which was about as fast as he could manage – and panting, his flabby body threatening to burst out of his white overalls, with a brown kit bag swinging over his shoulder. Müller’s stomach spasmed as the Kriminaltechniker stuffed the remains of a sausage sandwich into his mouth, wiping the grease from his face with the back of his hand.

  ‘Many apologies if I’m late, Comrade Oberleutnant,’ he spluttered through the food. ‘I came as quickly as I could.’

  Still not trusting herself to speak after her examination of the girl’s body, Müller simply nodded, leaving Jäger to make his own introduction. As he did so, Schmidt made a strange little bow towards the Stasi officer.

  ‘I hope we might be able to use the Ministry’s own forensic laboratories, should the need arise, Comrade Oberstleutnant. Your facilities are so much better than those of the People’s Police. Will there be any State Security forensic officers working with me?’

  ‘No, Comrade Schmidt. This is now a police investigation. You will report to Oberleutnant Müller as usual. We have already photographed the body, but there are some other photos we need you to take.’ Jäger looked up at the ever-darkening sky. ‘And we’d better do it quickly, before it starts snowing again. First, let’s go over to the platform.’ Jäger gestured with his head towards a small temporary scaffold with a ladder alongside, which had been built next to the Wall – presumably by the border guards earlier that morning as part of the initial examination of the incident. They followed him towards it, careful to stay on the gritted tarmac of the pathway, stretching like a ribbon of liquorice through the otherwise pristine whiteness of the cemetery. Müller smiled to herself. Jäger might say this was a police investigation, but the way he was acting, only one person was in charge.

  Jäger, Müller and Tilsner climbed to the top of the platform, followed a few moments later by Schmidt, now even more out of breath.

  ‘Well . . . this is a view . . . you . . . don’t often see,’ he said between gasps. ‘Not without risk of . . . getting shot.’ Müller threw Schmidt a withering look, but Jäger merely smiled.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The border guards know we’re here. We have clearance. No one will be shooting anyone. At least not today. But last night –’ Jäger stopped mid-sentence, and Müller followed his gaze to a building that looked like a rundown warehouse, on the western side of the barrier. ‘Up there.’ He pointed. ‘Fourth floor. See the broken window?’ Müller nodded. ‘That’s where the gunmen are said to have been shooting from.’ She noted the slight equivocation in his words. He doesn’t believe it either, she thought.

  ‘Was it witnessed by our border guards?’ asked Tilsner.

  Jäger gave a small shake of his head. ‘No. It’s from the calculations of line of sight. And the blood patterns in the snow. Look there.’ The Stasi officer pointed to the centre of the anti-fascist barrier’s defences – between the inner and outer wall. ‘You can see her footprints.’ He gestured between the line of the two walls.

  ‘How did she know that she wouldn’t get blown up by a mine?’ asked Müller, shivering as the wind whipped the top of the platform.

  ‘I don’t think you would give a lot of thought to that if you were being shot at and running for your life,’ said Jäger. ‘In any case, the strip isn’t mined – that’s all just an unsubstantiated rumour.’ Despite the cold, Müller felt a blush warm her face.

  ‘And the bullets? Or bullet marks?’ asked Schmidt. ‘Will I be able to get permission to go inside between the two walls to check there, Comrade Oberstleutnant? Is that why you needed me?’

  Jäger snorted. ‘No, Comrade Kriminaltechniker, it’s not, and no, you cannot go inside the restricted zone.’ He turned and gestured with his hand towards the side of the cemetery path. ‘Your work is here. There are footprints, presumably hers, on this side of the Wall. Bloodstains as well.’ Then he lowered his voice, although there was no one else on the platform, and the officers near the body were too far away to hear in any case. Müller wondered why. ‘There are some tyre tracks too. Make sure you take photographs of those. Check them against any vehicle the church gardener uses.’

  Müller was about to ask why, but then met Jäger’s gaze, and received a look that made it very clear he didn’t want to be asked.

  When they got back down to ground level, Schmidt started busying himself with a Praktica camera, snapping shots of both the footprints and the tyre tracks. Müller and Tilsner wandered around the various graves together, as though the long-buried dead might give them inspiration about the girl’s killing. Jäger meanwhile had returned to the scene of the body.

  ‘I’m not
sure how much of an investigation this is,’ said Tilsner. ‘It seems it’s all wrapped up, and we’re an afterthought.’

  Müller shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to do the best we can. Did it look to you as though she could have been shot from that building?’

  ‘What, the one over in the West? Maybe. It’s plausible . . . at a stretch.’ He shaped some snow from the top of a granite headstone into a ball, and then threw it to the ground. ‘But then to scale two walls, while injured, without our guards noticing? Were they all asleep? I very much doubt it.’

  After a few minutes, they heard the breathless wheezing of a man behind them. Müller knew who it was without looking. Schmidt. ‘What is it, Jonas?’ she asked, as she turned around to be greeted by his florid features.

  ‘I think . . . you should come . . . and look at this, Comrade Oberleutnant.’

  Schmidt ushered them back towards the protection barrier and over to the tracks made by the footprints, some twenty metres or so from the taped-off area of the body. He knelt down in the snow, and gestured for Müller to do the same.

  ‘Here, Comrade Müller.’ He reached into his pocket, and pulled out an envelope. ‘Look at this photograph of the girl’s shoes on the body.’

  Müller took the picture from the envelope, and frowned. ‘Where did you get that from so quickly?’

  Schmidt smiled and pushed the camera that was hanging round his neck towards her. It was smaller than the Praktica he’d been using earlier, and looked altogether cheaper and flimsier. ‘It’s a Foton. A Soviet instant camera. It might not look up to much but the results are just as good as from those American Polaroids. Anyway, look at the photo. Do you notice anything odd?’ The photograph was a close-up of the soles of the girl’s training shoes, still on her feet.

  Müller shook her head slowly. ‘No, Jonas, I can’t say that I do.’

  Schmidt passed it along to Tilsner, who held it up to shed more light from the leaden sky, but also shook his head.

  ‘Alright. So you’ve had a look at the photo. Now look at the actual prints in the snow. Notice anything strange there?’

  The two detectives bent over the line of prints, puzzled. Tilsner gave a long, slow sigh. ‘Come on, just tell us. We haven’t got time for games.’

  Müller’s face lit up all of a sudden. ‘Gottverdammt!’ Then, in a whisper: ‘Have you told Oberstleutnant Jäger yet, Jonas?’ The forensic officer shook his head. ‘Well, for the moment, please don’t.’

  Tilsner was still bent down, frowning at the prints. ‘I don’t get it. They just look like footprints to me.’

  Müller pointed at Schmidt’s photo. ‘Look at her feet in the photo. She’s got her shoes on correctly. Left shoe on left foot, right shoe on right foot.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tilsner, the furrow on his brow deepening. ‘So what?’

  Müller gestured towards the actual prints in the snow. ‘Look at those. Yes they’re pointing in the right direction, as though she was shot running away from the Wall. But look at the shapes. The right-hand shoe has made all the left-hand prints, and vice versa. It’s all the wrong way round.’ She looked up at Schmidt, who was standing now, stroking his pudgy chin. ‘What do you think it means, Jonas?’

  ‘Well, I don’t really know, Comrade Oberleutnant.’ He smiled. ‘I was rather hoping you two might tell me.’

  ‘What it means,’ said Tilsner, ‘is that someone’s disturbed the body. She was wearing her shoes the wrong way round when she was killed; maybe she put them on in a hurry if she was being chased. But whoever’s disturbed the body hasn’t noticed that, and when they put them back on, they put them on the correct way round.’

  Now it was Müller’s turn to emit a long sigh. ‘That’s the most obvious explanation. But not the only one.’

  ‘What, then?’ asked Tilsner, meeting her eyes.

  ‘Best not talk about it here,’ she hissed, flicking her head towards Jäger, who by now had noticed their fixation with the footprints, and was walking towards them. When he reached them he cleared his throat, and the two detectives rose from their crouching position.

  ‘Anything of interest, Comrade Oberleutnant?’

  ‘Oh, bits and pieces,’ replied Müller. ‘We were just checking the direction of the prints. It appears the preliminary findings are correct, that she was running towards the East, away from the protection barrier.’

  ‘Yes, quite so.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘Though I think you’ll agree that there are discrepancies, and no doubt you’ve now noticed some of these. I don’t want to go into too much detail here. But we need to meet tomorrow to go over everything.’

  Müller watched Tilsner’s face fall at the news his weekend would be disrupted. She wondered what else he had planned for his Saturday and Sunday without the wife and kids.

  ‘Do you want us to come to the Ministry offices at Normannenstrasse?’

  Jäger shook his head. ‘It’s better if we meet somewhere quiet.’ As he whispered this, he glanced over at the other officers gathered around the site of the body, who seemed to be supervising its removal. ‘I’ll let you know in due course where that will be. Until then, keep any information strictly between yourselves.’

  He shook hands with the three of them, and then strode towards the cemetery exit. Müller watched him depart, wondering what sort of a case they’d been handed. One in which a senior Stasi officer wasn’t prepared to share information with his own Stasi colleagues. She looked up at the sky, and its ever-darkening clouds, then glanced at Tilsner. His sarcastic smile had been wiped clean: in its place, a look of apprehension, almost fear.

  2

  Later the same day.

  The specks of white fell rapidly now. Oberleutnant Müller watched as the arc lights spaced along the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier periodically highlighted the fall of the tiny frozen flakes, glistening in the shafts of light, before the blackest of nights took hold again. They needed to work fast.

  As she went over the case in her head, her stomach rumbled. Hours without proper food – just a quarter broiler from the outdoor stand in Marx-Engels-Platz when they’d returned to the office earlier in the day. She could do with a good home-cooked meal. Would Gottfried have one waiting for her? That seemed unlikely after her night with Tilsner, and her failure to return to the marital apartment. At least this case was likely to feature in tomorrow’s newspaper – and the story might give her the cover she needed.

  A few paces ahead, Tilsner lifted the red-and-white tape and ducked underneath. The sweep of the searchlights periodically illuminated their path, but when their brightness moved away Müller was grateful for the torches they had brought. It wasn’t the site of the now-removed body they were interested in, but the approach to it. The approach from the wall side of the cemetery, where Jäger had showed them the footprints and tyre tracks a few hours earlier.

  Tilsner shone his torch along the path. It had only just started snowing again, so the tracks – their general outlines at least – were still relatively clear. And that was enough.

  Forensic officer Jonas Schmidt had telephoned them at the Marx-Engels-Platz office some thirty minutes earlier – just as Müller and Tilsner were about to finally call it a day and return home, separately this time. The chance to delay her showdown with Gottfried had been something of a relief, despite the tiredness that weighed her down.

  Schmidt had a theory about the tyre tracks, and needed them to return to the cemetery immediately. Now – alongside Müller – the forensic officer reached into his overcoat pocket.

  A rustle of protective cellophane punctured the cemetery’s silence, as Schmidt started jabbing his finger at one of the monochrome photos he’d taken earlier in the day.

  ‘Here, Comrade Müller. It’s just as I said on the phone,’ he said, spitting the words out in his excitement. He flicked his torch between the photo in his hand and the tyre tracks on the ground. ‘It’s the pattern in the snow. They certainly don’t match any of the tyres that would have been
on the cemetery groundsman’s vehicle. They’re western tyres. Car tyres.’

  Müller frowned, concentrating on the flashing torch beam. Why had a car from the West been in the cemetery, near where the girl’s body had been found? As she mulled over the peculiarity of the case, she looked up and followed the beam of one of the searchlights. Her eyes tracked its movement to the southwest, along the line of the anti-fascist barrier, towards the entrance to Nordbahnhof S-bahn station – or at least to what had been the entrance. Now it was walled up, forgotten.

  Müller rubbed her gloved hands together to try to keep the blood circulating in her fingers, and returned her gaze to the tyre imprints. ‘We’re not going to be able to see much detail now because of the new snow,’ she complained to the Kriminaltechniker. ‘Have you already checked the photos against the files at the lab? When you say a western car, can you pinpoint a make and model?’

  ‘Yes, I went through all the files, comparing against each tyre pattern we have a record of. It took me several hours. As I say, it certainly wasn’t a gardening vehicle. Definitely not a Trabi. Or a Wartburg, or anything from the Republic. Not Soviet either . . .’

  Tilsner sighed in exasperation. ‘Spit it out, Jonas. My bollocks and every other piece of me are turning to ice, and I don’t quite understand why you’ve dragged us all the way back here if you’ve already worked out what car it was.’

  Schmidt stood now, frowning, and shoved the photographs back inside his coat pocket. ‘Well, that’s just it. I’ve a good idea of the make, but not the model. That’s why I wanted to come back and for you two to come with me.’

  He got his torch out again and scanned it over the tyre tracks.

  ‘Ah good! I wondered if that might help. Whatever it was, it had a long wheelbase,’ he said. He gestured with his arm, sweeping the torch beam in an arc, like a mini-version of a barrier searchlight. ‘See. You can tell from the width of the turning circle. In fact, a very long wheelbase. Strange.’