by David Young
Tilsner looked dubiously at her, then took a long gulp of his coffee. He leant back, savouring it, and then folded his arms across his chest. Müller watched the muscles flex under his shirt, then chided herself silently.
‘We can’t go there, but the Stasi can. They’re already there.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Müller.
‘Oh, come on, Karin. You know as well as I do that there will be Stasi agents at every level in the Federal Republic, and especially in West Berlin. One of them could help us. You just need to give your friend Jäger another ring.’
Müller sighed. This was becoming a habit, but she nevertheless picked up the receiver again. She was less sure than before that he would support their request. Was this a step too far? One word from the Stasi officer, and they would almost certainly be taken off the case. But they needed to get hold of that limousine.
With a shaky finger, she slowly dialled Jäger’s office at Normannenstrasse.
17
Nine months earlier (May 1974).
Jugendwerkhof Prora Ost.
Beate has disappeared, and none of them will tell us where she is. When I tried to find out from Richter before lights out, she slapped my face and told me not to be insolent. That it was none of my business.
So I lie here, unable to sleep. Moonlight filters in through holes in the blue curtain material, casting ghoulish shadows about the room from the metalwork of the bunk beds. I look across at the bottom bunk next to mine, where Beate would normally be, but it has been stripped. Folded sheets, blankets and pillow neatly arranged at its foot. Without Beate’s body shape in the way, I can see further across, to the next bunk bed. Bauer. Lying there snoring. But to be fair to her, she seemed as worried about Beate as I was before lights out, trying to back me up in my confrontation with the detestable Frau Richter. To no avail.
My mind races. I imagine all sorts of things happening to Beate. There has to be a reason why she cries every night. I can’t believe that it’s simply because she’s locked up here in Prora Ost. Yes, it’s awful, but until all this happened – until the nightly tears – Beate seemed to cope with it all well enough.
I find myself twisting my messy red hair into even more knots. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I turn away from Beate’s bed and instead look at the pinpricked, moth-eaten curtain, and try to count the shafts of moonlight. I usually find the sound of the Ostsee waves calming, lulling, but tonight each wave seems to echo through my head – each crash on the sand prevents me from slipping into sleep. Is the sea trying to tempt me, to remind me of Herr Müller’s thinly disguised message in the history book? Maybe the sound of the waves is the sea talking to me, luring me to break free. As far as I know, no one has yet managed to escape from Prora Ost.
The underlined words from the book dance before my eyes. Sweden and Sassnitz. Sassnitz and Sweden. The two words almost being spoken aloud by the surf as it crashes on the sand. A link. A route. But I have no idea how to use it.
No one has ever escaped from Prora Ost.
Sleep did come eventually. It always does. But as daylight replaces moonlight at the curtain’s holes, I make no effort to get up. Eventually Bauer comes over and shakes me, but there is no malice, no vindictiveness in her actions. She is just trying to make sure I’m not late, so that Richter has no further excuse to punish me. She, too, is worried about Beate. Maybe I have misjudged her.
At breakfast, I get my first clue. Beate’s place is empty, and I whisper my question about my friend to Frau Schettler. She looks at me kindly, takes my hand and holds it for a moment, and then frowns. ‘Beate is unwell. In the sanatorium.’ As she says it, her eyes are looking at the floor, and I feel this is not the whole truth. ‘Perhaps she will be better by this afternoon, and back in the dorm by tonight.’ She releases my hand quickly, and I see her eyes look over my shoulder. I turn. It’s Richter. I make my way quietly back to my place at the breakfast table, a gap next to me where Beate should be.
I’m in the packing room again this morning – I feel so rotten that I don’t think I could have coped with anything else, despite the harder work. I look at the rota on the wall for the next month to check I’ve got my usual shifts, hoping they coincide with Beate’s. I trace my fingers down the columns but I seem to have just three shifts in the packing room instead of my usual ten. The others will be in the workshop, which I enjoy far less. The bastards! No doubt that is another of Richter’s or Neumann’s ideas. Further punishment for Behrendt, they probably thought. And what’s more, there’s only one shift where mine coincides with Beate’s. That’s if she’s even recovered by then. It’s an extra evening half-shift in the middle of the month. The 22nd of June. The date seems familiar for some reason. I move my finger across to see who else we’ll be with. Mathias Gellman. So it’s not even as though I’ll get a chance to chat with Beate. She will only have eyes for Mathias, and he for her, the way it’s always been recently. Mr Perfect Mathias, with his looks of a western pop star or footballer. And that thought triggers my memory. The 22nd of June, when West Germany plays East Germany in the World Cup. Mathias will hate to miss that. I wanted to watch it too. Now I know they are punishing us.
I move to my workbench, getting ready for the routine of kitchen door, left cabinet side, right side, back, shelves, top, bottom. But I look at the components to pack, and I look at the size of the box. Everything is bigger, like it has all been magnified, and we have a sheet of new instructions. I look across at Maria Bauer, who, like me, is fumbling with the various pieces. Frau Schettler sees our confusion and walks over.
‘Beds,’ she says. ‘We have a new order.’ I look at the parts again, and the larger shapes of veneered chipboard and timber start to make sense. A headboard. Bed slats. Bed posts. All in clean, functional lines. I guess this is the sort of thing they like in Sweden.
Schettler sees me biting my lip as I survey the huge piece of cardboard which – when folded as per the instructions – will form the box that all the pieces will fit into, like a giant 3D jigsaw. ‘Yes, they are big boxes, Irma,’ she says. ‘When each is complete and loaded, it will take at least two – maybe three – of you to lift each one onto the trolley. If you need the help of one of the boys, just raise your hands.’
By the end of the day I know I will be exhausted. I begin to regret my eagerness to work in the packing room. But after a day doing this, at least I should be so drained that sleep will welcome me, whether Beate has returned or not.
I have an hour’s free time before dinner when I end the shift. I drag my feet, one in front of the other, as I trudge back to the dorm. It’s as though someone has added hundreds of tiny lead weights to the insides of my work trousers.
It’s the shouting that alerts me. Richter – a scared note in her voice. Telling someone not to move. To hang on. I have never heard Frau Richter scared before. I run towards the noise and find myself in the exercise yard at the back of the building. Richter is there, and Neumann, their faces staring upwards at an acute angle. Neumann is holding Mathias tightly, as though to stop him intervening in the drama.
I follow their line of sight.
A body.
Clinging to the wall, on the narrow ledge that runs under the fifth-floor windows. The floor of our dorms. The highest point in Prora to prevent us escaping. Beate’s arms and legs stretched, like a spider with four legs missing, precariously attached to the vertical surface. The drop is twenty metres, thirty. Maybe more.
In an instant, my tiredness evaporates. I race past Richter, Neumann and Mathias. Richter tries to put an arm out to stop me, but I have found an inner strength and I wriggle from her grip towards the stairwell. Another teacher is there, Herr Küfer, stopping everyone from entering. I just put my head down and charge into him, my head aiming for his stomach, my hand for his groin. At the moment of impact, I squeeze his balls, and as he doubles up in pain, I thrust through the doorway. By the second floor I’m already out of breath and feel a stitch in my side, but I force myse
lf on and up the remaining three flights. I’m nearly knocked over by Bauer and another girl coming the other way, carrying a mattress.
There is another teacher at the entrance to the washroom, but it is Herr Müller. He doesn’t try to stop me. ‘Be careful, Irma,’ he shouts as I race past. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t put yourself at risk too.’ But he knows that pleading with me is useless.
I reach the toilet window and open it. There are bars across the lower half, but I lever myself up with my arms, get a knee on the window ledge and climb up, then stick my head out.
Beate has her eyes shut tight, face to the wall. One hand – her right, furthest from me – is grasping the downpipe, and the other is groping along the wall, stretching millimetre by millimetre, trying to reach this window – the window where I am. I can hear her breathing. Shallow breaths, rapid. Frightened breaths. I try to stretch my arm to reach hers, but I cannot.
‘Beate,’ I whisper.
She opens her eyes. I see her chin and lips trembling, the fingers on the hand nearest me shaking. ‘Irma. Oh, Irma. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to jump. I got on the roof, and they caught me and took me to the sanatorium, but I got out. I was going to try again, but now I’m scared. I don’t want –’
‘Shh,’ I say. ‘Shh. You’re safe now. You’ll be able to edge back along here. I’ll talk you through it. You’ll be OK. Remember, we all love you. Mathias loves you.’ My own skin feels clammy, and I am breathing rapidly like her. The skin on Beate’s face is white, almost translucent, and across her perfect bone structure it looks like the skin of an angel. An angel without wings. I climb to the second rung of the window bars, hook my feet under and stretch still further out of the window. My heartbeat pulses in my ears. ‘Just try to move very slightly towards me. Try to stretch,’ I say.
She does. Maybe a centimetre. Then freezes. ‘I can’t! I can’t let go of the pipe. I’ll fall. Oh, Irma.’ I see the tears welling in her eyes. I stretch too, but our hands are still some fifteen centimetres apart. I look down. I shouldn’t have. It makes me feel giddy. I see Richter and Neumann. But they are silent now. Children continue to pile mattresses on the floor. Army soldiers from the base next door arrive with ladders. They test them against the wall in turn, but all are too short to reach.
‘You can do it, Beate. We can do it,’ I say. I loosen my right foot from under the iron window bar and move it to the top rail. Now only the toe of the boot on my left foot is holding me, but freeing my right leg allows me to twist further, stretch my arm out further. I can see the beads of sweat on Beate’s brow as she stretches in turn. And then we touch. But that is all we can do. Touch our fingers together. I am stretching every sinew in my arm. It will go no further. I try moving my right leg again so it is completely out of the window, digging it into the ledge. The manoeuvre gives me a few extra centimetres. I clasp Beate’s hand.
‘Just gently edge along towards me,’ I say. ‘I’ve got you. You won’t fall.’
She tries. I see her clenching her eyes closed with the effort, her grip on my hand so tight it sends shooting pains down my arm. I’m now balanced half-in, half-out of the window. But suddenly her foot nearest to me slips. She makes a grab the other way, to grasp the downpipe again.
The movement pulls me fractionally. I claw at the window with my free hand, but my right leg loses its footing, sliding on something. The pulpy mess of Herr Müller’s history book. I realise I’m about to take Beate down with me. ‘Let go,’ I scream. Her grip loosens, just in time.
I scrabble with my left leg, trying to hook it back under the window bar.
Too late.
Balance gone. Slipping. Falling. Arms windmilling against a rush of air. Thinking. Of Sassnitz. Of Sweden. Of freedom.
Of what it will be like to die.
18
February 1975. Day Eight.
East Berlin.
Jäger used his usual method to arrange his next meeting with Müller. A motorcyclist delivered a telegram to the Marx-Engels-Platz office instructing her to be at the Märchenbrunnen – the fairy-tale fountains in Friedrichshain People’s Park – at eleven o’clock prompt.
It was easier to get to than the Kulturpark. Perhaps, thought Müller, that first meeting was intended to unnerve her; to show her his power. Inadvertently, he’d probably disturbed her more with his second choice of locale. The fountains held a special significance: it was where she and Gottfried had returned to time and again when they were first dating, when she had just finished police college and he was a trainee teacher. One of the things that attracted her to him was the way he’d known – without it being spelt out – that her air of melancholy spoke of a deeper wound. The way, in their meetings in front of the statues at the Märchenbrunnen, he’d taught her to laugh again, to enjoy life. On their second date, he’d surprised her with a gift of a miniature witch’s house from Hansel and Gretel – edible, of course. Little touches like that had allowed her to smile again. The dark cloud of her past wasn’t addressed, other than for her to admit – when Gottfried knelt down and proposed that summer in front of the fountains – that they would never be able to have children. She’d seen the sadness in his eyes, but he’d just held her tightly, and let her shed her tears on his shoulder.
The tram to Friedrichshain suddenly moved off, jostling her into the middle-aged man sitting next to her. She tried to smile an apology, but he stared fixedly ahead, his chin sinking into the fleshy rolls of his neck, and his arms flopping like rabbit paws on top of his briefcase. Was that how Gottfried would turn out in a few years? Greasy hair centre-parted, and with a vacant, defeated expression?
They’d finally been in the flat together at the same time last night, but not in the same room, and not speaking. He’d arrived back after she’d gone to sleep, exhausted and depressed by the slow progress of the case. By the time she’d got up, he’d already left his makeshift bed on the sofa, and exited the apartment. His note from yesterday morning had said they needed to talk, but neither of them seemed to be prepared to make the first move.
The barked announcement ‘Volkspark Friedrichshain!’ jolted her from her daydream, and she rushed for the exit before the doors swung closed. The fresh air – or East Berlin’s excuse for fresh air – was a relief after the smoky atmosphere inside the tram. She stood for a moment by the tram stop, pulled her make-up mirror from her coat pocket and opened it. The eyes staring back at her were bloodshot with dark circles underneath.
The Märchenbrunnen looked transformed in winter: nothing like Müller remembered from her visits with Gottfried all those years ago. The eleven-arch arcade still dominated the fountains, but the pools themselves were blanketed in white and the fountain pumps had been closed off to protect them from ice. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and all their fairy-tale friends were hidden away under hollow cubes of wood, each one topped by its own snow-covered pitched roof. The only figure on show was Jäger himself, who’d cleared snow away from the low wall at the front of the fountain complex, and was huddled there in the same sheepskin coat he’d worn at the Kulturpark.
‘No new coat yet, Comrade Oberleutnant?’ he asked her, with a warm smile.
Müller grinned back. ‘I told you, Comrade Oberstleutnant. Not on my salary.’
Jäger gave a small laugh. ‘Maybe I should recruit you? But that will depend on the outcome of this case.’
‘And will I have any say in the matter?’ asked Müller, taking her seat on the wall next to the Stasi lieutenant colonel. She tucked her overcoat under her to protect her skirt.
Jäger chuckled. ‘Perhaps. But more importantly, how are your inquiries progressing, and why did you want to see me?’
‘Well, as you know, we’re at a dead end in terms of identifying the girl. There’s nothing that’s a match in the missing-persons’ files. Well, other than the girl we already ruled out from Friedrichshain, and some possible girls from the West – but we have no way of chasing up those leads.’ Müller paused, and searched Jäger’s eyes for a
flicker of a clue, but he wore his best poker face. ‘We’re examining her clothes, of course. And uniform officers from the People’s Police are trying to pin down exactly what sort of ink was on her fingers. They’re also checking the movements of known sex offenders, particularly ones with a predilection for –’
‘You don’t have to spell it out, Karin. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t. I get the gist.’
The use of her first name briefly derailed Müller’s train of thought. ‘But we have made significant progress with the tyre tracks. I know it might seem at first glance to be a bit of a wild goose chase, but I feel if we can locate the car that was at the scene, then possibly we may find new clues to help us to identify the girl.’
He frowned. ‘I’m not sure that is the way forward. It risks the danger of your taking the investigation in the direction which I’ve already warned you you cannot.’
Müller held his gaze. ‘It’s solely my intention to try to identify the poor girl involved. I’ve already given you my word about that.’ Müller knew she was lying to him, lying to herself. But she got the feeling that for all his protestations, Jäger wanted this case solved just as much as she did. In all respects. ‘There is, however, a serious problem,’ she continued.
Jäger sighed. ‘And what’s that?’
‘As you’re aware, our inquiries show that those tyre marks are from a Volvo . . . a Volvo limousine. Our first thought was that perhaps it was a car linked to senior officials in the Republic.’
Jäger cocked his head to one side quizzically. ‘But you’ve discounted that, I take it? And how exactly did you discount it?’
‘Through our inquiries.’
Jäger frowned. ‘I hope those inquires didn’t involve the faking of a tipper truck losing its load of sand in Lichtenberg?’ Müller felt her face redden and her heart rate increase as Jäger challenged her, his eyes locking onto hers. She didn’t answer, just dropped her gaze. ‘I heard about the incident,’ said Jäger, more gently. ‘I knew immediately it was you and Tilsner. It was a very stupid thing to do. If you wanted to check that information you could simply have asked me. I want to make it clear to you that if you exceed your authority, if you break the rules, then the consequences for you will be very severe. You already know this is a sensitive inquiry, otherwise the Ministry for State Security would not be involved. So be careful.’
