Stasi Child

by David Young

  Vogel leafed through his notebook. ‘I’m not sure. But he was categorical it was from a saloon car. Quite a large saloon, but definitely a saloon. And he was adamant he’d never seen that tyre pattern before.’

  Tilsner nodded thoughtfully.

  Baumann slumped down in a chair. ‘I could tell this one was going to be trouble. If it had been a hundred metres or so further west we could have left it to the border troops. Now it looks like we’ll have to inform the Stasi. Usually they leave us to our own devices, which – to be honest – is how I prefer it.’ He eyeballed Müller. ‘Is that why this Stasi Oberstleutnant is involved? He’s faxed through a photograph of this Neumann fellow. Most of the phones are down due to the snow, but the fax is still working.’

  ‘Can you bring it to me?’ she asked.

  Baumann walked over to a desk, opened the top drawer and picked out two pieces of paper.

  The first was the faxed photograph, and as he handed it to Müller, she immediately felt a sense of dread come over her. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the black patch over Neumann’s left eye, or the scar that ran down his cheek. He certainly looked capable of the killings, but Müller knew that looks were almost always deceptive.

  Something else nagged her about the poor-quality faxed photo – a sense of familiarity, although she was certain she’d never met the man before.

  Baumann coughed. Müller looked up, and saw him proffering the second faxed sheet. She took it.

  It was a terse note, telegram-style, faxed from notepaper headed with the Ministry for State Security emblem, addressed to her.

  Went to basement at Charité with mother. Confirmed as B.E. Good luck with the investigation. KJ.

  Less than two lines of text, and just two initials instead of her name. B.E. After days without a proper face, without a name, the dead girl in the cemetery suddenly had one; the one Müller had suspected ever since the visit to Jugendwerkhof Prora Ost: Beate Ewert, Irma Behrendt’s best friend. Beate, the one who’d found life so unbearable in the youth workhouse. As Baumann and Vogel looked on quizzically, she handed the note to Tilsner. Her deputy shook his head, a grim expression on his face, and then gave it back to her. As Müller held the note between her fingers, she stared at her unpainted nails. And tried to picture Beate. In her last happy moments. Colouring in her nails with a black felt-tip pen.

  If the circumstances of the Harz killing gave Müller and Tilsner a sense of déjà vu, that was heightened still further two hours later in the mortuary at Wernigerode Hospital. The pathologist, one Dr Eckstein, looked as ancient as his surroundings and tools, white hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. To Müller, he looked like he’d probably done the exact same job in the Nazi era, possibly even in the Weimar Republic.

  His actual findings were remarkably similar, and so was the rigmarole they had to go through to get a ringside seat for the autopsy. Once again, the provisions of the Order on Medical Post Examinations were haughtily quoted, but here, Baumann’s local connections seemed to hold sway. When the Hauptmann explained that the Berlin detectives might be able to shed some light on the difficult case, Eckstein agreed to allow all four detectives to witness his examination of the body.

  Just as Feuerstein had in Berlin, Eckstein demonstrated why the bullet wounds had almost certainly been inflicted post mortem.

  Müller nodded. ‘Our killing in Berlin was exactly the same, Comrade Eckstein.’

  The pathologist looked slightly taken aback, but then went on to explain how blood had been applied to the body and clothes from the outside, only he’d already gone one step further in analysing the blood from the clothes.

  ‘I could tell straight away something didn’t look right, so I tested the blood from the T-shirt before we started the autopsy.’

  ‘And?’ asked Müller.

  ‘And it’s from an animal,’ said Eckstein.

  ‘Same story in Berlin again, Doctor,’ said Tilsner. Müller noticed the sharp looks from Baumann and Vogel. Clearly they weren’t best pleased that the Berlin detectives had withheld information from them.

  Eckstein gave a heavy sigh. ‘I can see it’s going to take quite a bit to impress you city types. However, that’s not the whole story.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Tilsner.

  ‘As I say, I could tell from the shape of the cells under the microscope that the blood was from an animal, not a human. A cat, in fact. And then I managed to run some tests using isoenzyme analysis of the red blood cells.’

  Müller could see the pathologist was enjoying bamboozling them with science, and drawing out his moment of drama. ‘What I’m trying to say,’ continued Eckstein, ‘is that the blood is from a very special moggy: Felis silvestris, the European wildcat. And this was a particularly pure beast; its forebears hadn’t been fraternising with any local village cats.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Müller.

  ‘It means the blood was obtained from an animal in a relatively remote location.’

  Baumann stepped forward at this point, turning to Müller. ‘The Brocken. A colony resides there on the slopes. We’re often getting ramblers claiming they’ve sighted a leopard or a lion.’

  ‘They must be pretty short-sighted,’ joked Tilsner. ‘Anyway, I thought the Brocken was a restricted zone.’

  ‘It is,’ agreed Baumann. ‘And the main colony of cats is thought to be inside that zone, but occasionally one or two stray outside.’

  Müller nodded thoughtfully. More evidence pointing to the highest mountain in the Harz, but hardly conclusive.

  The mortuary assistant tried to pass the pathologist a saw to begin opening the body cavity, but Eckstein waved him away and continued to discuss the case. ‘Do we know who the victim is?’

  ‘We’re not certain, but we have a good idea,’ replied Müller. It wasn’t the entire truth. The receipt of the faxed note from Jäger had removed what little doubt Müller had left as to the boy’s identity. She retrieved her briefcase from a chair at the back of the room and pulled out some pieces of paper. ‘These are the dental records from a Jugendwerkhof on the island of Rügen. If the boy is who we think he is, they should be a match.’ Out of the corner of her eye she could see Baumann and Vogel frowning. More information she should already have passed to them.

  Eckstein studied the sheets. Then, with his hands protected by rubber gloves, he eased open the boy’s jaw and asked the assistant to angle a spotlight to highlight the inside of the buccal cavity. Unlike the girl in Berlin, his teeth were still intact. ‘I’ll take a full cast of the teeth later, but from a superficial examination I’d say you have the right boy.’ He waved Müller forwards. ‘See here, this gap in the lower dentures. On the right-hand side of his jaw, or left as you’re looking.’ Eckstein was rubbing his finger on the empty gum. ‘Two teeth are missing: the second premolar, and the first molar.’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with the cause of death, then?’ asked Müller.

  ‘No, no, Oberleutnant. I should think perhaps he was involved in a fight a year or two ago, something like that. The teeth became cracked and rotten as a result.’ He let the mouth close, and picked up the dental records again. ‘The reason isn’t given here, but the missing teeth are. So you can be fairly certain you have the right boy. What’s his name?’

  ‘Mathias Gellman. Aged fifteen at the time he disappeared. Now sixteen,’ said Tilsner.

  Eckstein nodded, then began examining the rest of the exterior of Mathias’s naked, mutilated body. As he dictated his observations to his assistant, Eckstein said something which left all four detectives bemused.

  ‘Your case in Berlin. I assume it was murder?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Müller. She felt a small flutter in her stomach.

  ‘Well, I can tell you this isn’t, at least I don’t think so. Even before I begin any incisions I can tell you that it looks as though this boy died as the result of a fall. Of course, he may have been pushed, but there’s no bruising consistent with a struggl
e.’

  He began pointing to lesions on Mathias’s torso and limbs, and finally to one on his forehead. ‘This is probably what did for him. He’s hit his head on a hard stone surface at the end of a fall of some three to four metres I’d say, so perhaps just one flight of stairs. I won’t be able to confirm this until I have opened the skull, but I don’t think you all need to stay for that. It’s not a spectator sport I’d recommend.’

  ‘So he died from a blow to the head? Couldn’t it have been from a blunt instrument? After he was pushed downstairs?’ asked Müller.

  Eckstein shook his head. ‘The head injury is not consistent with that, Oberleutnant. This appears to me to be a fairly simple case of craniocerebral trauma after a fall down stairs. Albeit the stairs were stone stairs. And that he hit his head on a hard, angular rock at the bottom of his fall. I managed to retrieve some grit fragments from the wound. I will analyse them and give you the results later.’

  ‘What will that tell us?’ asked Tilsner.

  Müller glared at her deputy. ‘It may help us locate where he died, because it clearly wasn’t in the middle of the forest where the body was found. And that may lead us to Neumann. We’ve accounted for two of the three missing teenagers. Let’s try to find the other while she’s still alive.’

  Soon afterwards, Eckstein ushered the four detectives from the mortuary, insisting he needed peace to continue with the rest of the procedure.

  Once back at Wernigerode People’s Police headquarters, Müller was informed that Reiniger was trying to get through to her on the police radio. The connection was poor and Reiniger’s voice barely cut through the static.

  ‘Oberleutnant Müller,’ he said, in a formal tone. ‘You and Unterleutnant Tilsner must return to Berlin immediately. I never gave you permission to leave the Hauptstadt in any case. Furthermore, I regret to inform you that your husband is having charges brought against him. They include undermining the political or social order of the Republic, exploiting the moral immaturity of a minor for the purposes of intercourse or similar acts and, most seriously, in respect to your current investigation, the –’

  The two-way radio that Müller was using in the police station side office crackled and cut to static.

  ‘Oberst Reiniger. Could you repeat that please? I’m afraid the line is very bad.’

  ‘He is being charged with murder. The murder of the girl found at St Elisabeth’s cemetery. As I believe you now know, that girl has been identified as Beate Ewert, the girl you have seen in compromising photographs of your husband.’

  All of a sudden Müller felt breathless, as though she might faint. She found it difficult to believe the photos of Gottfried with Beate were genuine, but she certainly couldn’t accept he was a murderer. And Mathias’s body had been dumped while he was in jail, so clearly he couldn’t be directly responsible for that. What game was Reiniger playing? She wondered if Schmidt had yet been able to analyse the photograph of Gottfried in the sanatorium, the one her husband insisted had been doctored – his last plea to her before they parted in the interrogation room at Hohenschönhausen.

  ‘Until your divorce is finalised you are still married to a suspect, now charged, in this investigation. So you are being suspended and must return to –’

  She remembered Jäger’s pledge to back her. She patted the letter of authority from Mielke she still carried in her inside jacket pocket. It gave her the courage to take a gamble. ‘Hello, Oberst Reiniger. I’m unable to hear you. I’m afraid the line has gone again. I haven’t been able to hear any of this conversation.’ In fact, Reiniger’s voice was clearer than at any time in the exchange. He was telling her that the suspension was effective immediately and had been approved at the highest level at Keibelstrasse. Her only defence was in the lie. ‘Oberst Reiniger. If you can hear me, I’m afraid I cannot hear you.’ Reiniger kept on repeating what he’d just said, the anger in his voice mounting, but Müller still insisted the reception was too bad, and finally terminated the conversation.

  43

  Day Fifteen.

  Wernigerode, East Germany.

  Back at the incident room at the Wernigerode People’s Police headquarters, Müller and Tilsner sat down with Baumann and Vogel to take stock of where they were. Müller didn’t reveal to the others any of her conversation with Reiniger. She ran her hands backwards through her hair, with her elbows resting on the table. They would need to work quickly. If Reiniger had been able to get through on the radio once, he would surely try again – and given what he’d said, would almost certainly order her arrest.

  Leaning back in his chair, Tilsner sighed. ‘We need to find Neumann. But if he’s not at the children’s home at Schierke, and if he’s not on Rügen, where do we start?’

  Müller picked up a pen, and tapped it on the desk. ‘We must be missing some clue. Either Neumann or someone else has led us here so far. All the evidence in the car, when it had apparently been steam-cleaned . . . it was just too staged. Too easy. He or they want us to find them.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Tilsner.

  The phone rang, and Vogel went to the side of the room to answer it. Müller knew it meant that phone communications had been restored. She ought, therefore, to ring Reiniger back in Berlin. But she wasn’t going to.

  ‘The phones are back on then?’ she asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Baumann. ‘Some local lines, yes. But phone lines to Berlin and the rest of the country are still down. There’s some fault with an exchange near Blankenburg.’

  He began to spread out a large-scale map of the Brocken area on the table. ‘Maybe the wildcat colony is significant? Most of the sightings have been around here.’ Müller followed his finger to a section of the map where the narrow-gauge railway which led to the Brocken summit swung out to the west.

  ‘That’s very near to the border defences, isn’t it? Is the public allowed there?’

  ‘Only with special permission,’ said Baumann. ‘But for the local farm workers and foresters that’s not so difficult to obtain.’

  ‘And what about the Brocken itself? Isn’t that heavily patrolled?’ asked Tilsner.

  Baumann nodded. ‘That’s correct, Comrade Tilsner. There’s a company of border troops barracked in the railway station at the summit.’

  The three detectives looked up from the map as Vogel returned to the table. ‘That was the forensic pathologist, Dr Eckstein, on the phone.’

  ‘And?’ asked Baumann.

  ‘He’s managed to analyse the grit from the boy’s head wound under a microscope. Says it might help us. Apparently it’s Bleiglanz.’

  Baumann shrugged. ‘That means nothing to me, Comrade Vogel.’

  ‘It didn’t to me, Hauptmann, to be honest.’ Vogel looked down at his notebook. ‘But Dr Eckstein explained it’s lead sulphite or galena. It’s the ore you get lead from, but silver deposits are often found in the same vicinity.’

  Müller rubbed her forehead. ‘And why does he think that might help us?’

  ‘Well, as you could probably tell, Comrade Müller, the good doctor’s been around the block a few times. He says in the old days there used to be silver mines dotted throughout the Harz. A lot of the area’s wealth came from silver mining.’

  The four detectives looked back at the map, searching around the Brocken area to see if there were any marks signalling an old mineshaft, anywhere where Neumann might be holding Irma Behrendt.

  Tilsner suddenly tapped the map.

  ‘There. Heinrichshöhle. Right near the Brocken summit. That’s a cave!’

  Baumann put his reading glasses on to examine the map more closely. ‘No, Comrade Tilsner,’ he snorted. ‘Take another look. It’s Heinrichs-höhe not höhle. That’s a mountain, not a cave.’ Müller smirked as she saw Tilsner’s face redden.

  Lifting the map towards her slightly, she pointed out two small black rectangles a couple of kilometres east of the Brocken summit.

  ‘What are they?’ she asked Baumann.

 
; ‘They look like ski huts. They provide shelter to anyone trapped up there when conditions turn nasty – like now.’

  ‘It’s worth investigating those, isn’t it?’

  Baumann shrugged. ‘We could, but we’re dealing with an area surrounding the summit of . . . what? Twenty square kilometres? Maybe more. And anyway it’s getting late, the road beyond Schierke hasn’t been ploughed yet, but it may have been by tomorrow morning. I suggest you go back to your lodgings and get a meal and some sleep, and then meet again here first thing tomorrow morning.’

  Tilsner seemed subdued during their meal at the guesthouse, perhaps embarrassed by his höhe/höhle slip in front of the others. They barely said a word as they sipped their soup, other than Tilsner suggesting it might actually be better for her to try to contact Jäger again. But then Jäger didn’t know that – officially – they were once again off the case. Worse than that, Müller was supposed to be suspended. By tomorrow, no doubt Reiniger would have sent someone to arrest her.

  Before finishing his main course, her deputy announced he was off to bed for an early night. There were no other guests in the restaurant, so Müller was left alone with her thoughts. She’d hoped by now she might have heard something positive from Jäger about Gottfried. Instead, the communication from Reiniger seemed to be pointing the other way: that things were getting worse for her husband, not better. The accusations against him were preposterous, but the best way of disproving them was to find the real killer. Somewhere near here were Neumann and the one remaining teenager from Rügen, Irma.

  As soon as the phone line to Berlin was once again operational, Müller vowed to ring Schmidt, and see if he’d got anywhere in his examination of the incriminating photographs. That’s if she got the chance before Reiniger ordered her arrest.

  Before going up to her room, she visited the wooden-panelled sitting room. The bookshelf in the corner, below the portrait of Erich Honecker, contained several books on the Harz area, but what Müller was looking for was a map. A map on a larger scale than the one at the police office, with more detail.