by David Young
Müller shrugged. ‘Possibly . . . Or perhaps a murderer who simply spotted an opportunity. A pretty sick murderer . . .’
‘So is there any way uniform can help you, Karin? You’re a small team and . . . well, you’re fairly new to the job.’ He didn’t add ‘and you’re a woman, and a young one at that’. But she’d heard enough similar comments since her promotion to know that was what he was thinking. She felt herself bristle at the implied put-down. But perhaps he was just trying to be helpful, in his slightly clumsy, patronising way. Perhaps he could tell how much this was all affecting her. He almost certainly didn’t know the full reason why.
‘I think we need a rigorous check on known and suspected sex offenders, starting in Berlin. But perhaps taking in neighbouring districts too. Maybe even in the whole Republic, if there’s anyone we know of that –’ She paused. What sort of person was a necrophiliac? A pervert? A madman? ‘If there’s anyone of that persuasion.’
Reiniger gave a slow nod. ‘I can certainly get officers onto that. We don’t have to connect it to this case, if you’re worried about Jäger thinking we’re going beyond the missing person brief. It can simply be an operation to check on the movements of sex offenders. No one’s going to object to that. What else have we got?’
‘There’s the felt-tip pen ink. Jonas, you were going to get in touch with the pathologist and examine that, weren’t you?’ Müller eyeballed Schmidt.
‘Yes, I haven’t quite had a chance to do that yet. But there are these . . .’ Müller watched him start to reach into his briefcase, and while Reiniger’s eyes were trained on what the forensic officer was about to pull from his bag, Müller shook her head at Schmidt and mouthed a ‘no’ across the table. She knew he was going to start talking about the tyre marks, and didn’t want him to. Not in front of the colonel. Schmidt caught her look. ‘Well actually, that’s not quite ready yet either,’ he said, replacing the folders. ‘If that’s the priority, I’ll get onto the felt-tip pen ink straightaway.’ He made to stand, but Müller motioned him to sit down again.
‘So what exactly is the relevance of this ink?’ asked Reiniger, his frown betraying his bemusement at Schmidt’s apparent change of heart.
‘Her fingernails had been inked in,’ explained Müller. ‘I think it was an amateur’s attempts to make it look like black nail polish.’
‘Black nail polish?’ asked Reiniger. ‘That’s unusual.’
Tilsner snorted. ‘Kids these days. They get up to all sorts.’
Müller ignored her deputy, and instead answered the colonel. ‘I agree it’s unusual, but not unheard of. It’s the sort of thing I used to do as a child on Walpurgisnacht.’
‘But Walpurgisnacht is still several weeks away,’ said Reiniger. ‘Surely it can’t have been anything do with that?’
Müller shrugged. ‘I agree, it seems unlikely. Nevertheless, the ink is a lead. Your officers may be able to help us with that, Comrade Oberst. I was wondering if you could detail people to find out which state-owned enterprises make felt-tip pens in the Republic, or whether any are imported. There must surely be only a few manufacturers.’
Tilsner huffed. ‘Yes, but millions of pens. Thousands of shops. I can’t see how that’s going to get us very far.’
The colonel gave Müller’s deputy another withering look, and then started to rise from his seat. ‘We can try to help with that, Oberleutnant. And if there is anything else, be sure to call.’
‘I will certainly do that, Comrade Oberst. Your help is appreciated.’
‘He’s a stuffy old fart, isn’t he?’ said Tilsner, once the colonel was safely out of earshot.
Müller smiled. ‘Maybe. But he’s offering to help, so why look a gift horse in the mouth? We can get Elke to liaise with the People’s Police uniform officers on both the sex offenders search and the felt-tip pen manufacturers.’
‘So what will we be doing?’ asked Tilsner.
Müller raised her eyes towards Schmidt. ‘Jonas? You wanted to show us something. Sorry about earlier, but if – as I expect – it’s about the tyre marks, I’m not sure I want to share that with the colonel at this stage. It’s bad enough that Jäger seems to know.’ She searched Schmidt’s face for any sign of embarrassment, any give-away that he might have been the source of Jäger’s information.
Schmidt moved all the coffee cups to one side, and then reached into his briefcase and littered the table with a series of photographs and photocopies of tyre tracks and patterns. ‘I’ve made negative prints of the tracks from the scene of the crime. That way the pattern shows up more easily.’ He pointed at two of the negatives. ‘These are the two key photographs. Notice anything?’
Müller studied all the sheets. And then pointed to three of them: the two negatives and one of the photocopies of tyre patterns. ‘These three,’ she said, smiling. ‘They match. In fact, they’re an exact match.’
‘Precisely, Comrade Müller. Precisely. This,’ he held up the matching photocopy of a tyre pattern, ‘is a pattern from a Swedish tyre made by the Gislaved tyre company. The firm’s named after the town where the company was formed, approximately equidistant from Gothenburg and Jönköping.’
‘Swedish tyres. That confirms your theory from the scene,’ said Müller, reaching for the cup the forensic officer had moved to one side. She took a sip and then spat it back into the cup. It was stone cold.
Schmidt nodded. Tilsner, too, looked impressed with Schmidt’s work.
‘And not just that. Gislaved is the main supplier for Volvo cars.’
Tilsner slapped Schmidt’s back, making him splutter. ‘Well done, Jonas. So that’s that sorted – we know that Volvo supplies cars to party bigwigs and the Stasi.’
Schmidt screwed up his face. ‘It’s not as simple as that, unfortunately.’
‘Why not, Jonas?’ asked Müller.
‘Well, although the Republic uses Volvos for official functions, the stretch limousines – well, they’re customised, adapted Volvos. Volvo don’t actually manufacture a long-wheelbase limousine themselves.’
‘Why’s that a problem?’ asked Müller, frowning.
‘It’s like camper vans,’ said Schmidt. ‘A lot of vans in the Federal Republic are based on a Volkswagen van body, but not all of them are sold by Volkswagen. They have their coachwork built by another specialist firm. It’s the same with the Barkas vans over here, and it will be the same with the Volvo limousines. There’s no guarantee that the tyres they leave the Volvo factory with will still be on them after the bodywork has been completed.’
‘So who adapts them?’ asked Tilsner.
Schmidt spread his arms out on the table, palms upwards, in a gesture of apology. ‘I haven’t managed to find that out. And I’ve tried blowing up the various photos of official state parades, but I can’t get a clear enough image of the tyre pattern on the vehicles to be of any use.’
Müller frowned. ‘So what can we do, Jonas?’
‘Well, what I have discovered is that there’s a central garage where all the official cars are serviced, and stored when they’re not in use. It’s in Lichtenberg. Near Normannenstrasse –’
‘– near Stasi headquarters,’ said Tilsner. ‘How are we going to get in there? Shouldn’t we discuss it with Jäger? He might be able to get us the information we want, without us having to do anything underhand.’
Müller vigorously shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to involve Jäger this time.’
Tilsner shrugged. ‘OK. But I don’t see how we’re going to talk our way into this garage without his help. It will be closely guarded, won’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Schmidt nodded. ‘But overnight there are fewer guards – in the early hours, sometimes just the one.’
One guard. If Schmidt was right, thought Müller, perhaps some sort of diversion might be a way of getting into the compound, and surreptitiously taking photos of the car tyres. She remembered the document signed by Mielke, which she still had in her inside pocket. That might help, b
ut it wouldn’t be of any use on its own. The guard would be sure to insist on phoning his superiors to check its authenticity.
‘Isn’t the whole of the area around Stasi headquarters a restricted zone?’ asked Tilsner.
‘Yes,’ said Müller. She turned to the street map of the Hauptstadt, pinned to the office wall. ‘Where exactly is it, Jonas?’
Schmidt stood and pointed to an area just east of Normannenstrasse.
‘So that’s just outside the restricted zone,’ said Müller. She rubbed her chin. What Schmidt seemed to be suggesting was horribly risky. If any of them were caught it would be the end of their police careers – at the very least.
12
Later the same day.
Over the next few hours, Müller, Tilsner and Schmidt had discussed their possible options, with Müller eventually concluding that any scheme to try to trick their way into the limousine compound was far too risky. They were all party members, they were all working for the state. Müller wasn’t prepared to put all three of their careers, their futures, in jeopardy. Nevertheless, she was determined to get the information they wanted without making the direct approach to Jäger favoured by Tilsner. Although she didn’t voice her fears aloud to the others, Müller at the back of her mind had the suspicion that this whole case might be some sort of elaborate set-up by the Stasi lieutenant colonel. Any attempt to cross-check whether a government limousine was involved in their case had to be made in absolute secrecy.
A plan began to formulate in Müller’s mind when she started asking Schmidt if there was a way, other than directly taking photos of the tyres themselves, that they could verify their design, and therefore pin down their make and rule them in – or out.
‘Well, we discovered the vehicle in the cemetery was on Gislaved tyres through the imprints in the snow,’ Schmidt replied.
Müller stared up at the pictures of the tyre prints, pinned to the noticeboard in the Marx-Engels-Platz office, thinking hard.
‘The trouble now,’ said Tilsner, ‘is that a lot of the snow’s melted. Certainly the roads are all clear in the Hauptstadt. So that’s not going to be much good.’
Müller continued to fix her gaze on the tyre pattern photos, an idea forming in the back of her mind. Then she turned.
‘We don’t need snow,’ she said. ‘What we need is sand.’
Once Müller had outlined her idea, Schmidt and Tilsner had worked to set it up. Schmidt quickly established a fortuitous connection. Although the limousines were stored in a compound near the Stasi HQ at Normannenstrasse, they were serviced and cleaned in an industrial zone just off Siegfriedstrasse – still in Lichtenberg, but further east, and outside the Stasi-controlled zone. On the same business estate, there was a depot of the VEB Autobahnkombinat – the state-controlled motorway construction company – currently involved in building an autobahn from the Hauptstadt to Rostock, on the Ostsee coast. Trucks loaded with building materials regularly moved between the depot and construction site. And the freshly serviced and washed limousines for state officials also regularly travelled between the depot and the Normannenstrasse compound. Usually in the evening, or at night, to avoid the traffic and prying eyes.
The next piece of the plan was implemented in a phone call received at Marx-Engels-Platz by Elke, the student detective.
Enthusiasm bursting through every pore, she rushed through to Müller’s side office to tell her the news.
‘Comrade Oberleutnant,’ the girl gushed. ‘I’ve just received an anonymous tip-off you may need to know about.’
Müller pretended to finish working on some documents on her desk, then looked up at the trainee, trying to appear bored and disinterested.
‘What about, Elke?’
The girl brandished a piece of paper full of notes towards Müller. ‘It’s an allegation that some members of the VEB Autobahnkombinat are involved in a black market operation. Smuggling western contraband hidden in their construction trucks, under loads of sand or gravel, to villages and towns north of the Hauptstadt – along the route of the planned autobahn to Rostock.’
‘Was the caller a man or a woman?’ asked Müller, trying not to break into a smile as she examined Elke’s handwritten account. She knew full well who the caller was. ‘Did he or she have any sort of accent, anything which might help identification?’
‘Well, it was a man. He had a very rough, muffled voice. But quite a strong accent. Low German. Northern.’
Müller pictured Tilsner putting on his best regional accent, speaking with his hand over his mouth or through a handkerchief to disguise his usual tones. He’d insisted Elke wouldn’t recognise him. He was right.
‘Thank you, Elke. This would normally be a matter for the uniform division, but it sounds interesting. If you’re not doing anything else, why don’t you contact the operator and see if you can trace where the call was made from?’
‘I’ve already done that, Oberleutnant,’ said Elke, the pride clear in her voice. ‘I thought it would be from somewhere up north. But it wasn’t. It was from a call box here in the Hauptstadt. In Mitte. Near Alexanderplatz.’
Probably from outside one of Tilsner’s favourite bars, thought Müller. But Elke didn’t appear to suspect anything.
‘That’s good work, Elke.’ Müller picked up the girl’s handwritten notes and put them in her pocket. ‘I’ll pass these onto the uniform division. I think we’re a little too busy with the murder investigation to look into it ourselves. But well done.’
The only remaining thing to do was to use the anonymous call, and Elke’s account of it, to persuade Reiniger to authorise a spot check – and if necessary the temporary confiscation – of one of the construction trucks. Schmidt would try to discover which one was likely to be transporting suitable sand.
Standing nervously in front of his office desk, Müller could see the suspicion in Reiniger’s expression. But he nevertheless agreed to sign the necessary form of authority.
‘I hope you’re not bending the rules here, Karin.’ Then he lowered his voice. ‘And if you are, make sure you don’t get caught. I don’t want any of your shit left at my door. Understand?’
Finding a suitable truck proved easier than Müller expected – Schmidt seemed to have strange contacts everywhere. She and Tilsner had tracked it along Siegfriedstrasse, and then – with the Wartburg’s siren blaring and blue light flashing – pulled it over in Herzbergstrasse. The driver and his mate protested their innocence, but once Müller made it clear that they would be arrested if they defied Reiniger’s signed order, they calmed down. Müller insisted she and Tilsner would explain the situation to the motorway construction company, but that they would have to confiscate the vehicle to check its contents thoroughly, grain by grain.
They were in the truck now, driving slowly back towards Lichtenberg for the second time in the space of a few hours: their first visit had taken place the previous afternoon, to check that the slightly hare-brained scheme at least had a chance of success. The next significant movement of limousines from the service depot on the industrial estate to the storage compound was due in a few hours’ time – and would be under cover of darkness. Müller and Tilsner were heading there now in the tipper truck, with Schmidt following behind in the unmarked Kripo Wartburg. Both vehicles with just their sidelights on to try to make sure they didn’t draw attention to themselves down the wide boulevards of the eastern part of the Hauptstadt. Müller glanced to her left in the lorry’s cab, where Tilsner had his hands gripped to the IFA W50 tipper’s steering wheel, shirtsleeves rolled up despite the winter weather. He seemed all too at ease in what ought to have been an unfamiliar role. There was a lot to her handsome but mysterious deputy that she still hadn’t fathomed.
The wide avenues they were driving down were the scene of the parades that had played in her head at the cemetery. She recalled the most recent: celebrating the Republic’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the previous October. Müller had stood at the edge of the crowd, filled with a sense of pride
about what her small country had achieved, watching the massed ranks of People’s Army soldiers on their synchronised march, followed by party and government leaders – in Volvo limousines. Now, that pride was replaced by a sense of foreboding. Karl-Marx-Allee, and its monolithic wedding-cake-style buildings, held a much more sinister air in the semi-darkness of weak street lighting. Were they doing the right thing? It felt slightly treacherous. But then she remembered the mangled face of the girl, and what had happened to her in the hours immediately before and after death. If anyone from the government or party was involved in that, well, they deserved to be brought to justice and shamed.
Schmidt had provided them with their disguises – the hard hats and overalls of construction workers – together with diversion barriers and lanterns from the People’s Police’s supply depot, which they’d thrown on the back of the tipper truck. They needed to work quickly, closing off a section of Siegfriedstrasse between two junctions and putting up the diversion signs. Schmidt had established that a convoy of limousines would move between the two bases tonight, and had even pinned down an exact time. Müller didn’t ask him how he’d obtained the information. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Traffic was thin at this time of night, and the drivers of the few vehicles that did reach their makeshift roadblock simply followed the signs for the alternative route. Closed-off roads were a daily occurrence in the Hauptstadt, so they didn’t arouse suspicion.
Tilsner manoeuvred the tipper truck to one side of the road, crunching through the gears, making Müller want to hold her hands over her ears. He didn’t seem such a confident driver now.
Once in position, all was silent, other than a beeping sound from inside the truck’s cabin.
‘Scheisse!’ he exclaimed from the open driver’s window. ‘I can’t get the back to tip up.’
Müller climbed up to the cab to try to help.
