by David Young
‘Sorry about that, I was just finishing a meeting. Oberleutnant Müller here.’
‘Hello, Karin,’ a male voice at the other end of the line said. She didn’t recognise the man.
‘Who’s speaking, please?’
‘It’s Emil.’ Müller racked her brains. She couldn’t think of any Emils she knew, not since her school or college days, anyway.
‘Sorry. Do I know you?’
‘Apologies. You probably don’t know my first name. Emil Wollenburg. Doctor Wollenburg. From the Charité hospital in the Hauptstadt. I said I might ring you about meeting up.’
21
That night
Müller’s old Vopo uniform was something she usually packed for assignments away from the Hauptstadt, and it had been no different for this inquiry in Halle-Neustadt. Now it would come in useful at last.
She checked her make-up in the police apartment mirror, tucking her blond hair under the green People’s Police cap. The dark circles under her eyes were less prominent thanks to the action of sun on skin, though still there – as Schmidt had helpfully pointed out. But the face staring back at her – with the prominent cheekbones that had always seemed to her a touch Slavic, rather than Germanic – was, she knew, a lie. Inside, the longer she spent in Ha-Neu without finding Maddelena, the more it felt like her guts were twisting. The streets without names, the forbidding concrete buildings, the ever-watchfulness of Malkus and his team – it all had her longing to be back in Berlin, teamed up with Tilsner again. In charge of her own destiny, if that were ever possible in the Republic. Living in a slightly shabby but historic apartment in Schönhauser Allee. But then going back to Schönhauser Allee without a successful conclusion to this case would mean going back to the drudgery of Keibelstrasse.
She breathed in slowly to steel herself and straightened the collar of her uniform. There was also the complication of Emil Wollenburg. Yes, she was attracted to him, but his phone call had come as a shock. It felt too soon after the messy, emotional split from Gottfried. And now she’d been told the handwriting professor – Morgenstern – had had to delay his visit. But she still needed to try to move the inquiry forward. That was why she’d come up with this new idea.
She continued to stare at her reflection in the mirror. Dressing as a regular beat policewoman would – she knew – arouse fewer suspicions with what she was about to do. If Tilsner were here he’d say she was mad: mad to once more set off on a one-woman mission without back-up. But it was something she needed to do alone. There was less chance of being watched, less chance of Stasi interference.
For a few seconds Müller held her breath, straining to hear the sounds of the television through the thin apartment walls. The instantly recognisable, hypnotic voice of Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler presenting Der schwarze Kanal told her all she needed to know. Schmidt – who’d prepared dinner for the three of them – would be hanging on von Schnitzler’s every word, just in case he was quizzed on it by Weidemann. Vogel was not as slavish a Party follower – though like all People’s Police officers he was a Party member – and he too was almost certainly glued to the Republic’s Channel One, and its interpretation of stories from the West. Müller knew she should be too, but tonight she was going to have to miss it.
She exited the bathroom, grabbed her coat from the rack, opened the front door and hurriedly shouted a ‘See you later’ over her shoulder. Then she slammed it behind her without waiting for a reply.
*
The S-bahn train heading south towards the chemical works was full, with almost every seat occupied, yet strangely silent, as though there was little joy to be had in going in for another night of work. Amongst the sea of faces, Müller noticed tired eyes aplenty. She wasn’t surprised, given the shift work involved to keep the chemical factories operating twenty-four hours a day.
Müller worked methodically, beginning at the front of the train, and working her way backwards. For the first couple of rows there was sullen acceptance of her questions and little interest in the colour photo she passed around of the battered red suitcase in which Karsten’s body had been discovered.
But as she worked her way down the aisle, at the fourth row, a middle-aged man in a dark suit challenged her.
‘Why are you asking these questions?’ he said, holding her gaze, perhaps trying to show that he wasn’t afraid of – or had no respect for – the People’s Police.
‘It’s an investigation we’re working on,’ Müller replied, passing the photo along to the next passenger, a young woman. ‘We just want to know if anyone going to work at Leuna or Buna saw someone carrying this case. On Friday evening two weeks ago.’
‘It wouldn’t have been this shift two weeks ago,’ said the man, pushing his dark, greasy hair back from his forehead, and smirking slightly. ‘Most of us here would have been on earlies then.’
Müller found herself reddening under his glare. She hadn’t thought of that. It was a stupid mistake.
‘Not everyone,’ interjected the young woman. ‘Some of us ask to do more nights to get time off during the day. I have to help my grandparents who are ill. So I do alternate weeks of nights, rather than one week in three. Quite a few here will. There’ll even be a few who’ve asked to do permanent night shifts.’
The greasy-haired man snorted, and then turned his attention back to the puzzle section of his newspaper.
‘Thank you,’ said Müller to the woman. ‘And when you were on this train two weeks ago, did you see anyone carrying that case?’
The woman held the photograph so the weak lighting of the carriage highlighted it better. Then she shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. Not that I remember.’
Müller had similar conversations with workers through the first half of the train, occasionally having to give a further explanation that the police were investigating a robbery in which the suitcase was thought to have been used. It was a lie, but the cover she needed to ensure she didn’t directly alert citizens to the baby abductions. But no one could shed any light on the suitcase; no one had seen it being carried, or being thrown out of the train window.
When she moved through the interconnecting door between carriages two and three, Müller realised the train was approaching the spot near Angersdorf where Karsten’s body had been jettisoned. She opened the window of the external door, at the lobby end of the third carriage, to peer out at the scene. The spot where she and Schmidt had been at the trackside – and where she’d first encountered Malkus and Janowitz – was approaching quickly. She held her hands on her head to stop her Vopo cap being blown off. The rushing air was warm, pleasant almost, despite the tang of chemical pollution which was evident even here – several kilometres from the chemical works. Darkness had almost fallen, but she could still make out the silhouettes of foliage in the marshy ground of the Saale floodplain. A haunting, wistful beauty in the fading light. It seemed so wrong that the tiny baby’s body had just been dumped and abandoned here.
The force that hit her from behind came as an utter shock. Müller tried to turn desperately, fighting to get her arms, neck and head back fully inside the train. But someone stronger was determined she shouldn’t. Her cap flew off immediately, then she felt her upper body being lifted as she strained back against whoever was pushing her. She shouted out, but felt the air being squeezed from her lungs as she realised the man – she couldn’t turn to see but she assumed it was a man – was lifting her body, trying to push her through the window gap. She felt one of his powerful hands on the back of her head, pushing it downwards. The smell of his warm breath filled her nostrils. Something familiar that made her want to retch, but in her panic she couldn’t place it, instead concentrating on gripping the lip of the window to try to stop herself losing her balance and falling to an almost certain death.
Müller tried to wrench her head to the side to see her attacker. She couldn’t, but the fractional movement allowed her to see further up the track. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she saw the lights of cars driving
along a main road up and over the single-track rail line in the distance. Over a bridge.
As she strained backwards, she suddenly realised the pushing force had stopped, but as she tried to scrabble back inside the train her legs were just kicking against thin air. She couldn’t breathe, could feel a panic attack coming on as she realised her body was slowly slipping out of the window. And then she saw the road – now much closer – wasn’t crossing a bridge, but a low hill silhouetted in the near darkness, punctured by a black hole. A tunnel. A tunnel fast approaching.
‘Help me. Help me,’ she tried to shout with what little air she could force from her body. But her screams just died in the onrushing air, as her fingers finally lost their grip.
And then the mouth of the tunnel arrived.
‘No, no!’ she yelled.
Her eardrums were hit by the pressure rush, she was falling, and all was black.
22
Eight years earlier: July 1967
East Berlin
I wonder if time is running out for me to get what I truly want. Just eighteen months ago, everything seemed so perfect. That Christmas in 1965, back in Halle-Neustadt. Hansi had been a bit annoyed with me on Christmas Eve, but we soon got over it and had a lovely festive period. I even fed little Stefi with the bottles Hansi made up. The thing is, I’d rather have fed her naturally, but as he was home most days, he was keeping watch on me, and he always said that bottle was best. Because he’s a scientist, he’s hard to disagree with.
For a few days, it was wonderful. But then when Hansi went back to work, it started to go downhill. I try to think of positive things these days, Hansi says it’s best, but sometimes I can’t help myself going back to that day when Stefi . . .
Sorry. I really shouldn’t look back, but it does remind me how things could be. If only we could be a little family again. We’ve been trying, of course. Since last summer, when I got the baby weight off, and once I felt comfortable in my new shape, well . . . it seemed to inspire Hansi. He couldn’t keep his hands off me, if truth were told.
‘Pass the forceps, Nurse Traugott.’
Gosh. I was daydreaming again. Pull yourself together, Franzi.
‘Sorry, Doctor.’
The thing is, this is my last chance, so Hansi says. That’s partly why my mind wandered back to that lovely Christmas in Ha-Neu. Things here in the Hauptstadt haven’t been going so well, ever since ‘the incident’. That’s what I call it. Anyway, the incident led to me losing the job in the baby ward at the hospital. It wasn’t my fault. At least, I don’t think so. But they didn’t want to listen. Hansi said I still had to be earning though, he didn’t want me moping at home.
So he got me a job here. At Doctor Rothstein’s clinic. Only it’s not really a clinic. Not in the official sense. And it’s not an official job. The doctor pays me cash in hand, without it going through any books. That’s how the patients have to pay too. It’s all unofficial, of course. That’s why Hansi was able to get me in here. The Ministry wanted the place watched. Mostly they turn a blind eye, and there have been moves to try to legalise everything. But it’s not legal yet. So it’s useful information for the Ministry – for Hansi – to know exactly who comes in here for procedures.
‘The curette, please, Nurse Traugott.’
The doctor didn’t catch me so unawares that time. I was ready for him, and had the tool in my hand. Horrible thing. Makes me shiver. I remember the definition from my training. A small hand tool, with a scoop or gouge at the end, for scraping material – usually human tissue.
I do think it’s a bit mean of Hansi to start me working here. He knows what I want. What I’ve always wanted. What I had for a few, precious months, then lost, or had taken away, or . . . I suppose that was what led to the incident, if I’m honest with myself. Perhaps a baby ward wasn’t the best place for me to be working. The temptation was too much. Luckily, Hansi had it all swept under the carpet. In his job, he can do that. Now he’s with the Ministry full-time.
We’re getting to the end now. I don’t like this part. Try not to watch too closely what Doctor Rothstein’s doing between the legs. I’ve got the metal vessels ready for the contents. I know what it will all look like. These late procedures, which have to be by dilation and evacuation if there are complications, they’re the worst. It’s the eyes you have to try not to look at too closely. The eyes and the face. Especially if they’re smiling. Not many people know they can smile so young, but they can, you know. They wouldn’t be smiling if they knew what was about to happen. What their mothers are choosing to do to them. They wouldn’t be smiling then. Poor little mites.
23
July 1975
From Halle-Neustadt to Oberhof
Falling.
Being sucked into the blackness of the tunnel.
As time had slowed, that was what Müller thought was happening.
But it wasn’t.
The guard had yanked her back, out of the window, just as the train plunged into the darkness. She’d fallen back, with him, into the safety of the train.
Disoriented, shaking with shock, but safe.
By the time she reached the hospital, Müller had already resolved to say nothing about the man who had pushed her out of the window – she had no wish to draw the Stasi’s attention to her decision to defy them and ask questions on the train. The guard who had so fortunately been passing seemed not to have seen anything, so thinking on her feet she had told him she had simply been looking out of the window and had overbalanced. It was clear he didn’t believe her, but luckily Müller wasn’t the only one who knew the danger of asking too many questions.
After taking precautionary X-rays, the doctors assured her nothing was broken. Her neck and back ached, and her head pounded, and so she was unsurprised when they advised her to rest. The trouble was, she didn’t want to. She couldn’t, not until Maddelena – and the person who abducted her and caused the death of her twin brother – was found. Eschler and Vogel agreed, though – she should make sure she took the weekend off. Müller wasn’t sure she wanted to do even that, at least not in Halle-Neustadt. She wouldn’t be able to relax, knowing the Salzmanns were still frantic with worry, still missing their daughter.
The natural thing at a time like this – in the immediate aftermath of the sort of shock she’d had on the train – would be for someone to seek solace in the bosom of their family. Müller knew, from past experience, there would be precious little solace there for her. She was hesitating: it was a visit she’d told herself she must make, and this was the ideal chance to get it out of the way – although the drive possibly wouldn’t be the best prescription for her aching neck and back. What tipped the balance for her was someone she saw – or thought she saw – in the hospital, as she was waiting for her X-ray results.
She’d always had this sense that her brother and sister had been treated more kindly than her in childhood. Perhaps it was her determination to prove herself to her parents that had led her to Berlin and to a career with the police in the Hauptstadt. Sometimes she told herself it was either her imagination, or a mother’s natural inclination to favour the only son – Roland – and the baby of the family – Sara. But there were two incidents which stood out in her memory and gave the lie to that notion.
The first happened when she was just five years old, when an elegant, forty-something woman had turned up on the doorstep of the family guest house and addressed Müller by her first name, Karin, when she answered the door. Her mother had been so, so angry with her then. Shouting at her, shooing her away. And she’d never understood why. The woman on the doorstep had stayed in Karin’s mind ever since – and then who should walk into the hospital waiting room that very afternoon but, so it seemed, the woman herself.
It wasn’t her, of course. Müller knew it couldn’t be the same person – nearly a quarter of a century had passed, and when she looked more closely she saw at once that the stranger bore only a passing resemblance to the woman she remembered. But s
eeing the woman’s Doppelgängerin was like scratching at an insect bite. It reawakened the memory of the hurt, the look of longing she’d fleetingly glimpsed in the woman’s eyes. Müller had a family duty to visit her mother, brother and sister. But she also had a duty to herself. She’d suffered in silence long enough – she needed to challenge her mother once and for all.
*
Müller headed to her home village from the north, skirting Erfurt and Gotha on the autobahn, taking the Wartburg above the national speed limit to allow the natural ventilation through the open driver’s window to take the edge off the midday summer heat.
As she drove, she stretched her neck and shoulders from side to side to try to dissipate the ache and hurt that had persisted since the incident on the train. She’d been lucky, she knew that. The guard had yanked her back from the window at the very last second. She’d fallen back against him, into the carriage, as the train catapulted into the blackness of the tunnel. She’d been uncertain what was actually happening, or which way she was falling or being pulled in the fog of panic. It was a few seconds until she’d realised she’d been saved – not sucked out of the train to her death.
More than any physical pain, what was troubling her was the knowledge that someone had tried to at least sabotage the investigation. Even if it wasn’t an actual attempt to kill her, it was at best a warning. And she had no idea who had been behind her. There was just some faint recognition on her part. Not visual recognition – she hadn’t been able to turn to confront him. It was, instead, the smell of his breath. But try as she might, she couldn’t think why it was familiar. When she tried to visualise her attacker, even though she hadn’t seen him, the face that danced in front of her eyes, that taunted her, was that of Janowitz. But she had no idea why, it was just a hunch.
Thankfully, the guard had believed her story that she’d simply been checking something through the open window and had got stuck through her own actions. She didn’t want to have to explain to Malkus why she’d disregarded his orders, and why she’d been double-checking his own supposed investigation. She was certain now that the Stasi hadn’t carried out any checks on the trains. Otherwise one of passengers on permanent or semi-permanent night shifts would have recalled it.
