by David Young
The college. The vile memories of him. She tried not to think of his name, tried to forget, but she couldn’t – he was with her day after day, and had been for the last fourteen years. Walter Pawlitzki, her lecturer at the People’s Police college. He’d been her mentor. She’d looked up to him. And then . . .
Scrabbling with her fingers, Müller suddenly remembered why she thought the top of the wardrobe was such a good hiding place. Because she’d used it herself before, to conceal a small object. Not cardboard, but metal. It didn’t take long for her to find it. She picked it up, stepped off the chair and opened the wardrobe door. It was something she shouldn’t do, she knew that. An addiction she tried to fight, but that, at times like this, she could not resist.
She jiggled the tiny key into the locked bottom drawer in her side of the wardrobe. Her drawer. And then she opened it.
There were two sets of clothes, neatly stacked, on the left and the right. The tiniest clothes possible. Baby blue and white on the left. Baby pink and white on the right. The male–female cliché. She resisted the temptation to take the clothes out and unfold them. That was only for when it got really bad. Instead, she contented herself with stroking the top of each pile of material, left and right, and wondered what might have been, if things had turned out differently.
Then she closed the drawer again and locked her memories away.
The Bäckerei Schäfer van was still there, although when Müller closed the apartment block front door, and lined her eyes on the street light on the opposite side of Schönhauser Allee, she realised it had moved a few metres. The vehicle no longer obscured the foot of the lamp post.
She set off at a fast walk towards the centre of the Hauptstadt, following her usual route towards Marx-Engels-Platz, then turning towards Alexanderplatz and the television tower. The bread van preyed on her mind: when she got back to the office she would ask Elke to look into it: how could a private bakery, which by definition was only permitted a handful of employees, afford to have a delivery van sitting mostly idle outside her apartment block? It didn’t make sense.
The police building on Keibelstrasse was a warren of small rooms and corridors. Having shown her pass, Müller set off to try to locate the forensics lab. She’d been here enough times before, but still usually managed to make at least one wrong turning. The corridors seemed to close in on her.
Müller finally located the correct door for the lab. She saw Tilsner hunched by Schmidt at his desk; evidently he’d only just arrived – and with shadows under his eyes, he looked as tired as she felt.
Schmidt was fiddling with his camera, squinting at the top. ‘I just want to make sure it’s wound through properly,’ he explained. ‘We don’t want any mishaps.’ Finally, he nodded in satisfaction, extracted the fully wound film roll, and then placed it in an envelope. ‘Come on then, you can both come into the darkroom and see what we’ve got.’
Müller glanced both ways to see if anyone might be listening. ‘Is it secure, Jonas? There won’t be any of your colleagues in there?’
‘It’s fine,’ replied Schmidt. ‘I’ve booked it out for the next couple of hours.’
After processing the negatives and hanging them up to dry, Schmidt started using the first of the celluloid strips to produce black-and-white prints, gently bathing the photographic paper in a shallow layer of developing agent as Müller and Tilsner watched. He moved the tray from side to side, taking care not to spill any of the liquid as it rippled over the paper.
As Schmidt swirled the liquid, the image of a tyre impression captured in the layer of building sand gradually started to appear. He worked his way through the photographs.
‘What do you think, Jonas?’ asked Müller, unable to handle the silence.
‘Well, I’ll have to check with a magnifying glass once the prints are dry. But look.’ He held up a photocopy of a tyre pattern he’d brought into the darkroom with him. ‘This is the Gislaved pattern, on this photocopy. Look at these angled grooves. Very distinctive. And then look at the photographs.’
Müller and Tilsner both craned their heads over the developing tray as Schmidt used tongs to move a print from one bath of agent to another.
‘Fixing agent,’ he explained. Müller pulled back slightly from the acidic, vinegary smell. But she could clearly see what Schmidt meant. There were none of the same distinctive patterns. Whatever make of tyres were on the cars in the government compound and service area in Lichtenberg, it didn’t appear as though it was Gislaved. If their small sample of three limousines represented the entire fleet – and since all three were the same they had no reason to believe it didn’t – none of these cars had been at St Elisabeth cemetery. They’d hit another dead end.
15
Day Seven.
Mitte, East Berlin.
Back in Marx-Engels-Platz, Tilsner and Müller sat opposite each other in her side office. Through the glazed window, Müller could see Elke talking into the phone, presumably checking up on the bakery.
Tilsner rested his elbows on the desk, and gave a slow sigh. ‘We don’t seem to be getting very far.’
‘Slow steps, Werner. You know that. I still think those tyre tracks are significant.’
‘At least we now know it doesn’t seem to have been a government car.’
Müller nodded, then frowned. ‘Which means the likeliest explanation is that it’s a car from West Berlin. No citizen in the East can afford a Volvo. By now, we should really have asked for the details of all vehicle movements at the crossing points.’
‘Let’s just go to the checkpoints now. Ask to see the files. Jäger will be able to give you the necessary authority. Give him a ring at Normannenstrasse.’
Müller felt herself biting her bottom lip. She didn’t want to involve Jäger more than necessary, but Tilsner was right. She picked up the receiver and began to dial.
Grenzübergang Friedrichstrasse. She knew it was called Checkpoint Charlie in the West. They parked the Wartburg in a side street a hundred metres or so before the crossing, and then went the rest of the way to the East German checkpoint on foot.
As they walked, Müller leafed through the authorisation documents that Jäger had provided. One of his minions had biked them to Marx-Engels-Platz from Normannenstrasse less than an hour after she’d made the phone call. The southerly wind that had been thawing the snow suddenly lifted the key piece of paper from her grip and deposited it in the gutter. Tilsner leant down, fished it out and then wiped it with his sleeve. He checked none of the ink or the signature had smudged. ‘No harm done, except a bit of road dirt. Lucky for you.’ He winked at her. She glowered back.
Checks were carried out by a strange combination of Stasi officers and border guards. That was why Jäger had the authority to send people to look through the books, and why they’d been able to get permission so quickly, rather than waiting for the Republic’s usual cumbersome red tape to take its course. His immediate agreement to her request had been a little surprising, and Müller was still unsure as to the Stasi lieutenant colonel’s exact motivation. On the one hand he was forever outlining clear parameters they shouldn’t cross. Warning them. But at the same time, he seemed to be opening doors for them to dig deeper and deeper, whatever the consequences. She wondered again about the risks they took to get the tyre prints – might Tilsner have been right, that they could just have asked Jäger?
As they entered the checkpoint, Müller glanced up the road, past the barriers, to the bustle of West Berlin beyond. She wondered if it really was as glamorous as the adverts on western TV made out. Or were Der schwarze Kanal’s accounts of strikes, homeless unemployed begging on the streets and ruthless greedy bosses nearer to the truth?
All the border guards were busy. Most were frantically shouting to each other, running to and fro as the weekend rush of tourists began; others had their heads buried in paperwork. Eventually, Müller found the senior officer and showed him their authorisations, and they were led to a side office with several volumes
of files, divided into each day of the week. They split them up, three each. Tilsner showed no eagerness to take the seventh, so Müller added it to her pile. She looked over Tilsner’s shoulder. Spread in front of him were the files for the Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Müller’s four covered the remaining period up until the previous Friday, when the girl’s body had been discovered.
They began to check through them. Müller found her eyes scanning down the columns rapidly, discounting all the Mercedes, BMWs, Opels and Volkswagens that made up the majority of the entries. She moved from column to column, page to page, file to file.
‘No Volvos,’ she said to Tilsner by the time she was about halfway through.
‘No. Same here.’ He scanned down the list. ‘Mercedes, VW Beetle, Opel Kadett . . . All West German. We’re talking about a pin in a haystack here.’
‘Are we sure, if it was a customised Volvo, that the border guards would even recognise the make?’ asked Müller.
‘I think so,’ Tilsner replied, looking up from the lists for a moment. ‘Even if some of them aren’t the brightest brains our Republic has ever produced. Volvos have a very distinctive shape and front grille.’ He turned his attention back to the files. ‘Here’s a Chevrolet. Makes a nice change, but it doesn’t help us.’
Müller tore her eyes away from him and busied herself in her own file, still without a Volvo in sight.
‘Hang on a mo. Here we go, boss. A Volvo. Swedish plates, Swedish male driver. Danish female passenger.’ Tilsner noted the details. ‘But it was just a regular saloon model, a 144.’
Müller was nearly at the end of her own four files. She still hadn’t found a single Volvo.
‘And here’s another. But again, a saloon. Danish plates, this time.’ Tilsner noted that too, then continued scanning his final file, until he shut the folder with a resigned expression. ‘That’s it. Two Volvos. What about you?’
Müller shut the cover of her final folder. ‘Nothing.’ She sighed, and got to her feet, picking up the files and carrying them back to the checkpoint’s main room. They were going to have to go through this exact process at another five or six crossing points. And, at the back of her mind, was the thought that perhaps – after all – the tyre tracks had no connection with the girl’s death.
They decided to work anticlockwise around the zigzag barrier that enclosed the western sector. In any case, the next nearest Grenzübergang in the other direction, Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, was mainly used by commercial goods vehicles. Schmidt had been insistent the tyres belonged to a long-wheelbase car, rather than a van.
At Invalidenstrasse and then Chausseestrasse they failed to find a single Volvo in the files. Their next stop was Bornholmerstrasse – between the districts of Wedding in the West and Prenzlauer Berg in the East.
From the queues on the western side of the barriers, Müller could already tell that their search had more chance of succeeding here. Again, she sought out the senior officer. This time it was a stocky woman in an army major’s uniform, permed and dyed blonde hair straggling messily from under her cap.
‘This is very irregular,’ she said, as she fingered Müller’s Kripo ID. She ushered the two detectives to sit on the opposite side of her desk as she peered at the authorisation from Jäger, and lifted the telephone. ‘I shall have to check with the Ministry.’ Müller watched her dial and wait for an answer, and then listened as she explained the circumstances. The name that seemed to do the trick was that of Stasi Oberstleutnant Klaus Jäger. The answer the major got when she read the name down the phone immediately changed her attitude. Now there was nothing she couldn’t do to help Müller and Tilsner, getting the relevant files herself for the two detectives and letting them use her own desk to check through them.
They divided the files – covered in the similar olive-green cloth – the same way. Müller took Tuesday to Friday; she gave Tilsner the ones for Saturday through Monday. But, just to relieve the boredom, Müller worked through hers the opposite way. Starting with the last page of the Friday file, and then working backwards, eyes scanning from entry to entry, car to car, pages turning regularly. The rustling of the paper was almost drowned out by the near-constant shouting of the guards checking waiting vehicles outside.
The breakthrough didn’t take long. ‘Here, Werner,’ Müller said, the excitement in her voice causing the major to look round quizzically. ‘Look.’ She traced her finger under the entry in the file for the Thursday night – eight days before the girl’s body was found. She watched Tilsner’s face as he read the entry. 11.47 p.m. A black Volvo limousine. A West German male driver and a West German male passenger. Even if these were the murderers Müller couldn’t believe that they would have used their real names. Almost certainly they would have had fake IDs. But now they had the registration number. They had the make of car. And – in the ‘extra information’ column – something else. According to the log, the driver and his passenger were making their journey to the East to attend a friend’s wedding, and this was supposedly the bride and groom’s luxury transport.
‘What do you make of that?’ asked Tilsner. ‘Perhaps they did just come over for a wedding. Perhaps it’s not the vehicle we’re looking for.’
Müller frowned. ‘Possibly. But the timing would be too much of a coincidence.’ She stood up, straightened her clothing and smiled at her deputy. ‘I think this may just be it. The breakthrough we’ve been searching for.’
16
Day Seven.
East Berlin.
Events unfolded rapidly once they’d radioed back their information from the Wartburg to Kriminaltechniker Schmidt. It wasn’t strictly forensic work, but Müller knew Schmidt’s assiduous methods were the best way of pinning down the car via its West Berlin registration plate. She just hoped that the suspects – if they had used false IDs – hadn’t used false plates too.
They’d only just got back to the office in Marx-Engels-Platz and started their coffees – which Tilsner had ordered from Elke despite her previously undrinkable effort – when the phone in Müller’s side office rang. It was Schmidt.
‘They did use fake plates, I’m afraid. That registration plate corresponds to an Opel Kadett in Charlottenburg.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘One of my Kriminaltechniker friends from Weissensee applied to go to the West last year. His West German mother was ill, and she needed a relative nearby, so they let him go. He helps me out now and then.’
Müller took a sip from her coffee. Thankfully Elke had used the genuine expensive coffee this time, as instructed by Tilsner. She glanced across at her deputy. ‘What’s he saying?’ he mouthed, silently.
She ignored him, and instead continued her phone conversation with Schmidt. ‘So does that mean we’re no further on?’ asked Müller.
‘No. I’ve got something really interesting, Comrade Müller. I wondered if the wedding story might have a grain of truth in it, so I asked my friend to go out and get a bridal magazine. They’re very popular in the West for women who are planning their weddings. You can imagine the sort of thing, Oberleutnant: glamorous pictures, models in white dresses, adverts for catering companies –’
Müller had no need to imagine. She’d seen the adverts on West German television programmes, but didn’t want to reveal that to Schmidt.
‘Well, the magazine had an advert at the back for a limousine company, and one of their offerings is a black Volvo. But as I told you the other day, Volvo don’t actually manufacture limousines, so that seemed a little odd. I got my contact to get in touch with Volvo car dealers in West Berlin. They confirmed it was impossible to order a limo from Volvo, but – and here’s the interesting thing – they’d heard that this wedding hire company had one on their books.’
She watched Tilsner tapping his fingers ostentatiously against the desk. He always claimed Schmidt used two words when one would do.
‘Carry on, Jonas,’ she said into the mouthpiece.
‘This limousine seems to be
quite famous in West Berlin, at least among those who are interested in that sort of thing. Apparently it wasn’t imported, but constructed and welded together from the front and back of two Volvo saloons. So, in effect, it’s one of a kind. Anyway, I got my West Berlin forensic officer contact to check with the car hire company on the phone. It was hired out nine days ago – the Wednesday – on a three-day cheap midweek rate, and returned on Friday afternoon. It was needed for a ceremony in the West on the Saturday. What was a little odd is that it looked as if it had been steam-cleaned – even though cleaning is included in the hire rate.’
Müller grinned. ‘Good work, Jonas.’ She could imagine Schmidt smiling proudly at the other end of the line.
‘Thank you, Oberleutnant.’
‘But if the car has been thoroughly cleaned, then even if we did somehow manage to get hold of it, there may be no forensic evidence left.’
‘That’s possible, of course, Oberleutnant. But in my experience they always miss something.’
Müller nodded thoughtfully. ‘And what about the victim’s clothes? Any luck with those, Jonas?’
‘Not yet, Oberleutnant, but I’m still waiting for some of the lab tests to come back.’
‘OK. Well, let me know when you have anything more.’
She put the phone down and then relayed to Tilsner the half of the conversation he’d missed.
‘We’re going to need to get hold of that car,’ he said.
‘How? We can’t just go over there, hire it and bring it back, and we can’t ask the West Berlin police for help. There’s never been a joint East-West police operation in the entire history of the Republic, despite Ostpolitik.’
