by David Young
‘No, OK? No, I do not recognise that case. Why?’
‘Karsten’s dead body was dumped in that case,’ said Müller.
‘Dead? I thought you said he was missing, like his sister?’
Vogel shrugged. ‘No. He was killed. Beaten and killed. So I’d have a good long think, Citizen Hildebrand. It will be better for you if you tell us everything. The quicker you do, the more chance the court will be lenient towards you. But murder is a very serious matter.’
Hildebrand’s face suddenly looked ashen. ‘Murder? I haven’t murdered anyone. I haven’t taken any babies. What would I want with babies? I have enough trouble feeding myself.’
Müller and Vogel didn’t answer the man, but just gathered up the photograph and the evidence bag and left the room.
*
‘Well?’ asked Malkus, who was still waiting next door with Eschler.
Müller folded her arms across her chest. ‘I can’t believe he’s our man. Yes, he shouldn’t be living down in the tunnels. Yes, he ought to have a proper job and live in a regular apartment, just like everyone else. But we don’t really have any evidence against him.’
‘The blanket? The dog handlers seemed convinced,’ said Eschler.
Müller rolled her eyes. ‘As I said earlier, all that means is that it found a similar scent to the one on the blanket that we know was used for Maddelena, Comrade Hauptmann. Perhaps the blanket is from the same ward, perhaps it’s a particular disinfectant they use in the hospital. It’s not really evidence, is it? Yes, we could perhaps build a case against Stefan Hildebrand. But if he’s not our man – and I very much doubt that he is – then we’d just be wasting time while the trail to Maddelena gets even colder. Perhaps you could get Wachtmeister Fernbach and his men to check with the hospital itself. See if they recognise the blanket. It’s got some numbers and letters on. That may mean it belongs to a particular ward.’
Malkus got to his feet, stroking his chin with one hand. ‘So what would you recommend we do with Hildebrand?’
‘Keep him here for the moment. You can always charge him with vagrancy or theft of food if you want. Meanwhile, Unterleutnant Vogel and I will get back to checking on new and recently born babies in Ha-Neu. Maybe we should schedule a catch-up at the incident room this evening?’
Malkus furrowed his brow. ‘I’m not sure if Hauptmann Janowitz and I can make it, but you go ahead without us.’ Then he gave Müller a thin smile. ‘After all it is, as you keep telling me, Comrade Oberleutnant, your case.’ He reached into his bag, pulled out an envelope and handed it to Müller. ‘By the way, I need to give you this. It’s a list of families who – for security reasons – must not be included your so-called ‘nutrition check’ campaign. There are only about ten names. Get in touch if it becomes a problem.’
‘For security reasons?’ Müller felt annoyed that her plan was being compromised before it had really started.
‘Exactly. On the orders of the Ministry for State Security. But you can be sure the person we want, and Maddelena, will not be found on this brief list.’
‘How can I be sure of that?’
‘Because the Ministry for State Security guarantees it, Comrade Müller. That should be good enough for you.’
It wasn’t, and Malkus knew it. But there was little Müller could do about it.
*
The sense that they were going nowhere fast sat heavily on Müller that evening. She and Vogel had completed another three or so visits each to families with young babies following the interrogation of Hildebrand. None of those they had visited so far were on Malkus’s list. In fact, she noticed most of the ‘forbidden’ addresses were located in Komplex VIII – the residential area nearest to the Stasi regional headquarters, on the north-east edge of Ha-Neu. It almost certainly wasn’t a coincidence. She scanned down it now, comparing the addresses to her street map: families living in Blocks 358, 354, 337, 334. All of them, she knew, were right next to the Ministry for State Security buildings. Only one of those buildings was shown on the map, however. The main headquarters. The rest of the map was blank. A triangle of nothingness, and to the north of that, the main Soviet base. Somewhere else that they really ought to search, but she doubted they’d be able to get permission.
Their evening catch-up had shed no new light on things either. They had no real clues, nothing to crack the case open. The longer it took, the colder the trail would be. The less likely they were to find Maddelena alive.
Müller surveyed all the photographs on the wall of the incident room again. Then, putting on protective gloves, she shuffled through the various evidence bags. There must be something here, she thought. Something that they’d missed. She’d detailed Schmidt to go over everything the local forensic officers had found, but he’d so far failed to come up with anything new.
The summer sun outside was fading now. She reached for the electric light switch, and as she did so the incident room door opened. It was Schmidt.
‘Jonas. What are you doing here at this time?’
‘I could ask you the same thing, Comrade Oberleutnant.’ She’d given up on trying to get Schmidt to drop the formalities. Even when there were just the two of them, it was always Comrade this and Comrade that. ‘You look tired, if you don’t mind me saying,’ he added.
Müller moved to the wall mirror and studied her face. The Kriminaltechniker was right. The telltale bags under her eyes had returned. Dark circles. Not yet turned thirty, and already bags under the eyes. A bit like the down-and-out, Hildebrand. She smiled at her reflection. ‘Some women would take offence at that, Jonas. But you’re right.’ She moved across to a faux-leather swivel chair and sat heavily into it. ‘I don’t just look tired. I am tired. Tired of this case.’
Instead of replying, Schmidt put on protective gloves and began opening one of the evidence bags.
‘What have you got?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it’s probably nothing.’
‘Come on, Jonas. We’ve known each other long enough. Probable nothings with you often turn into probable somethings.’
Schmidt was taking the newspaper which had been found wrapped round Karsten’s body from the bag, and what looked like the meat counter advertising flyer from the Kaufhalle. The one where Klara Salzmann worked. ‘It was the newspaper. Something I saw earlier today, and when I was having dinner just now it came back to me. I had this clear image in my head that wouldn’t go away.’
‘What was it?’
The forensic officer was smoothing out a double-page spread of the newspaper. ‘Look. Here.’
Müller got up, crossed the room, and peered over his shoulder. Schmidt was pointing at the puzzle section in the centre of the paper. What on earth could be the relevance of that? ‘And?’ prompted Müller.
‘The crossword puzzle. It’s partially completed.’
Müller looked, as instructed. She could make out a few words, DEZEMBER being about the longest. She frowned. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly unusual about it.’
‘Take a closer look at the capital “E”s.’
Müller bent down. The clues that had been filled in were all in capital letters. All legible. Reasonably neat. ‘OK. If it was done in lower-case handwriting, it might be worth getting in a handwriting analyst. But capitals? So many people write them similarly.’
‘True, true,’ nodded Schmidt. ‘But not in this case.’
Müller’s heart began to pound. What had Jonas seen that she couldn’t? She looked again at the three capital ‘E’s in DEZEMBER. Then it clicked. The ‘E’s had all been formed like a capital ‘L’, with the bottom horizontal stroke slanting upwards. The top and middle horizontal strokes also slanted up, but in most of the examples they failed to connect with the vertical downstroke.
Schmidt picked up a pen and a piece of paper and began to write a series of capital ‘E’s. He offered the pen to Müller. ‘You try it. Do it quite quickly, without thinking too much about it.’
She did her own row o
f about ten letters.
‘Now look closely at them, and compare them with the ones in the crossword puzzle.’
Müller did as instructed. ‘All the middle strokes of our “E”s either bisect, or at least touch, the downstroke. The top strokes too.’
‘Exactly, Comrade Oberleutnant. So whoever completed the crossword puzzle has a fairly unusual way of writing the letter “E”. That gives us a chance of tracking that person down. And whoever did the puzzle . . .’
‘. . . is possibly connected to the abductor of Maddelena?’
‘That would be my conclusion, Oberleutnant.’
19
Nine years earlier: July 1966
East Berlin
I still think of her all the time. Of course I do. I don’t think I’ll ever fully get over it. I always worry that it was my fault, even though Hansi tells me it wasn’t. It’s just one of those things. And she never seemed a very happy child. Almost as though something was missing. She loved her papa, Hansi, but somehow the bond between me and Stefi was never there. Perhaps it was because she had such difficulty feeding. I’m sure I was right, though. It’s only natural that a baby should feed from a mother’s breasts. I’m not against new ideas, but . . .
The apartment here in Johannisthal is similar to the lovely one we had in Halle-Neustadt, but not quite as new, or as big. In Ha-Neu, Hansi had managed to get us a two-bed, because his doctor friend suspected I might be having twins, I was so large. But in the end, there was just Stefi. And now it’s just Hansi and me. If he was annoyed about having to give up his job at the chemical works, he never complained about it to me. Now he seems to be doing more and more work for the Ministry, in Lichtenberg. He can’t really tell me what he gets up to. It’s supposed to be secret. But I know it’s something important. And as well as the long hours, he has to bring work home. He hides himself away in the bedroom – telling me that because what he’s doing is so important, I mustn’t interrupt. One evening, there was nothing good on the television, so I went to the bedroom to see what he was up to. There were papers strewn about the floor, although I didn’t manage to get a good look at them because he was immediately terribly angry, shouting at me to get out and never come in without knocking in future. I think perhaps he’s working too hard, and the stress is getting to him.
It took a long time for the baby weight to come off, even though I’ve been really trying. It hasn’t completely come off even now. But Hansi likes my new shape. After we’d made things up with each other again following the bedroom incident, he bought me a new bikini – my first ever – as a ‘thank you’ for trying so hard. I’ve been building up a bit of a tan as a reward to myself. Each day this week I’ve been going on the S-bahn and tram right up to Weissensee, virtually the whole way across the Hauptstadt. They’ve got a lovely Strandbad there by the shore, with a beach bar and real sand. I was a bit self-conscious at first, revealing myself in the bikini when there were all these younger girls and students with their perfectly toned bodies. But in the end I just went for it, and stretched out on my beach towel. The guy at the beach bar was even eyeing me up, I’m sure of it. Hansi wouldn’t have been too happy. Although I don’t suppose he could have done much about it. This man was all muscles in his T-shirt, and Hansi . . . well, Hansi isn’t. He’s more the brainy sort. But he’s always been so kind to me, and the other night he was showing interest again. I said no, not yet. It’s still a bit soon. After Stefi and everything. He understood. But I can tell he likes the new me. My shapeliness and tan excite him. It’s easy to tell with men, isn’t it? They can’t really hide it. That barman couldn’t when he came over just now in his shorts and offered to put up the umbrella for me. I could tell what he actually wanted to do. Anyway, I shouldn’t really be thinking like that. It’s too soon after Stefi. I’m still upset about it. Of course I am.
But overall, I am feeling much better. My head’s clearer. I think those pills I was having to take to prevent any morning sickness made me a bit woozy and unclear sometimes. And my exciting news is that Hansi has sorted me out a new job. Doing what I love best, what I was trained for. Working as a nurse again, and – would you believe it – in a children’s hospital, here in the Hauptstadt. With the youngest ones. I love the smell of young babies, their soft skin, their lovely little smiles. It’s what I was born to do, I think. I just wish I could have done more for Stefi. But it’s not too late. I’m still in my early thirties. Well, just about. Hansi and I can start again. Although I’ve lost weight, my breasts are still full. Maybe I’ll give him a treat and wear his new bikini to bed tonight. He’d like that.
20
July 1975
Halle-Neustadt
Only now, a week after Karsten and Maddelena Salzmann had gone missing, was the investigation truly swinging into gear. Müller’s feelings of tiredness had evaporated as soon as Schmidt had pointed out the distinctive capital ‘E’s in the partially completed crossword. It felt as though the police had simply been treading water so far – now they had at least two fronts to fight on. Müller had got permission for one of the Republic’s leading handwriting experts to try to help them match the handwriting. And there was still a chance that the fake nutrition campaign would produce results.
Müller called a meeting with Vogel, Schmidt and Eschler in her office the morning after Schmidt’s discovery.
‘I thought it would be useful to get our heads together and try to decide on a way forward. You’ll have heard by now about what Jonas has found in the crossword. Later today, Professor Karl-Heinz Morgenstern will be arriving from Berlin. He’s the Republic’s top handwriting expert. He’s going to examine the crossword and talk to us about what we need to look out for.’
Eschler scratched his chin. ‘We’ll need to gather handwriting samples for that to be of much use. Samples from pretty much every adult in Halle-Neustadt, from Halle itself, surrounding towns and villages. It’s the same problem we faced with the babies but on a larger scale.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that overnight,’ said Müller. ‘Although overall in this inquiry I’ve been keen to keep clear boundaries between us – the People’s Police – and the Ministry for State Security, this might be a case where we appeal to them for help.’
‘Malkus and Janowitz don’t seem that enamoured with us so far,’ said Vogel, frowning.
Müller shrugged. ‘Maybe. But they have the resources, the personnel, to mount a big operation like that. We don’t. And if we ask them to do it, at least they can’t accuse us of breaking the rules.’ While she was saying this out loud, Müller’s brain was going over the other aspect of the case which the Stasi – according to Eschler – had already investigated. Checking handwriting samples was all well and good – it was something for which she was content to enlist Stasi helpers. But Eschler’s earlier assertion that the Stasi had already questioned people on the night trains to and from Leuna and Buna was something that still nagged at the back of her mind. And there was only one way to dispel that nag. For the moment, though, she kept that to herself.
‘But that’s only one line of attack,’ she continued. ‘Our other priority is to visit all the babies of the right age in Ha-Neu.’ She smiled at Vogel. ‘Martin, I need you to take charge of that on your own now. Jonas and I are going to be busy with Professor Morgenstern – and hopefully liaising with the Stasi – over the handwriting evidence.’
Vogel nodded.
‘Bruno, I want you to continue with the searches of the pipe tunnels and waste ground. How are your men getting on?’
‘Well, we found Hildebrand yesterday. But it turns out he has an alibi. At the time the twins went missing, he was being held by a security guard at the Kaufhalle on suspicion of shoplifting. He’d managed to give them the slip before we arrived – that’s why it didn’t show up on his file.’
‘But we’re sure it was him?’ asked Müller.
‘Pretty much. Matches the description from the Kaufhalle staff. And he independently gave that as
his story when we questioned him about his movements on that day.’
‘So how much of the pipe complex have you covered?’
‘Probably about two thirds of it by now. Once we’ve finished, we’ll move on to the various parks in Ha-Neu, and then we’ll start on the Dölauer heathland, but that will be a big job: more than seven hundred hectares.’
‘What about the banks of the river Saale, even the Saale itself?’ asked Vogel, polishing his glasses with a paper handkerchief.
Blowing out his cheeks, Eschler snorted. ‘Pah! We could spend years doing that. How far up- and downstream do we go? We’ve got the Vopos in Halle itself helping. They’ve combed Peissnitz island in the middle of the river. Ziegelwiese island too.’
‘Should we bring in frogmen to search the river itself?’ asked Vogel.
Eschler shrugged. ‘It’s up to Oberleutnant Müller here.’
Tidying the papers on her desk, Müller shook her head. ‘I want us to assume that Maddelena is still alive, until we have any direct evidence to the contrary. So I want to concentrate on places she might be being held, or hidden. Bringing in divers would be expensive, and the only body they’d be finding at this stage would be a dead one.’
‘I fear that’s probably the case anyway, Oberleutnant.’
Müller said nothing for a moment, slowly breathing in and out. ‘You may be right, Bruno. But let’s try to stay positive. If nothing else, if the team believes they’re searching for a living baby – that they have a chance of saving her, being the hero – I think that will energise them.’
The jangle of her office telephone interrupted her. She reached to answer it. ‘Oberleutnant Müller. Hang on a moment, please.’ She cupped her hand over the receiver and then addressed the three other officers. ‘OK, so we’ve all got stuff to be getting on with. Let’s have another catch-up this evening.’
Vogel, Schmidt and Eschler took that as their cue to depart, and once they had, Müller removed her hand and spoke into the mouthpiece.
