Stasi Child (17 page)

There was a rap on the door. Müller jumped up and opened it to find Tilsner dressed in various blue-and-white striped items. She ushered him in.

‘Do you like it all? I’ve got the figure of a footballer, don’t you think?’

Müller laughed at the too-tight replica Hertha Berlin football shirt. ‘No, I don’t.’

Tilsner attempted to flex his pectoral muscles. She just shook her head. He looked ridiculous. A blue-and-white knitted hat and striped scarf completed the ensemble. ‘I feel a bit disloyal. I’m a Dynamo fan, after all. I’d better not show Marius. I don’t want him transferring his affection to a western club.’

Müller sat on the bed and said nothing. It was well known in the Hauptstadt that Dynamo was a Stasi-backed team, Mielke’s pet project.

‘So, what are we going to do to while away the time?’ asked Tilsner. She watched him look at all her shopping bags. ‘Shall we give each other a fashion show?’

Müller shook her head. ‘No, let’s not bother. I’m tired.’ She rubbed her stockinged feet and then lay back on the bed again. ‘I thought I might get some sleep, then we could perhaps go out and get something to eat?’

Tilsner shrugged. ‘OK.’ He laid his hand gently on her nylon-clad leg. ‘You wouldn’t like me to lie on the bed with you?’

Müller rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘No, Werner. Just forget about that. I’m married. You’re married. I’m your boss. You’re supposed to be my deputy. Let’s just keep it all straightforward. OK?’

Getting to his feet and stretching, Tilsner moved towards the door, and then met her eyes. ‘OK, Karin. Have it your way.’ He opened the door and slammed it behind him.

Müller let her head fall back on the pillow, and closed her eyes.

The strained atmosphere between the two detectives continued into the evening. Perhaps a pre-marriage tiff was authentic, and Tilsner had certainly lapsed into a morose sulk. When it came to paying the bill, they realised that between them they barely had enough of Jäger’s cash left.

As they left the restaurant, Müller looked up at the neon advertising signs, flashing with false bonhomie, and the Mercedes building’s star. It rotated amid a fluorescent glow, casting eerie flickers into the night sky.

Back in Charlottenburg, they packed their respective purchases into the limousine and the Mercedes.

‘Will you be OK driving the Mercedes at night?’ asked Tilsner, a sullen note in his voice.

‘I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ll follow you. Just don’t go too fast and keep a look out in the rear-view mirror.’

They began the return journey, car horns sounding regularly as Tilsner attempted to negotiate the traffic. Müller kept as close as possible to the rear lights of the Volvo. It was all very well driving an unfamiliar vehicle in the daylight, but it was already well past one in the morning. She knew the Hauptstadt would be virtually traffic-free by this time, but here in the West it was still surprisingly busy. Jäger had been mistaken in his insistence that it would be quieter after midnight.

Soon after they turned onto the ring road at Westend and began to head north, Müller got the sense that they were being followed. The headlights of the car behind were on full beam, alternately coming right up to the rear of the Mercedes and then dropping back again. She tried to ignore them, and flipped the tab on the rear-view mirror to its anti-glare position.

Then the car behind pulled out, and she was conscious of it directly alongside her, so close that it felt as though the two cars would touch at any moment. Müller took her foot off the accelerator slightly. The car alongside did the same. She risked a glance across. There was a man with sunglasses, gesturing at her to pull over. It didn’t look like a police car. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel, trying to stop her hands shaking. She was determined to ignore the other driver and just concentrate on the Volvo’s rear lights.

Suddenly a crash. The other car had buffeted into her, and she felt the Merc’s steering wheel torn from her grip. Müller fought to control the unfamiliar car. Then another crash. She saw sparks flying. Heard the groans and grinding of metal tearing against metal. The Merc’s wheels slid, whiplash threw her forward and her body jolted against the seat belt. Then . . . nothing. Just the hiss of the radiator.

Disorientated, Müller switched off the engine. She felt pain from her left breast where the seat belt had cut into it, but otherwise seemed unhurt. She opened the driver’s door and climbed out. Immediately, she was dazzled by onrushing cars, blaring their horns but failing to stop. She flattened her body against the side of the car and then edged round to the front. Steam rose from under the bonnet. Müller tried to investigate the passenger side but the car was wedged tight against the crash barrier, the front wing dented where it had hit. Tilsner and the other car had already disappeared to the northeast, around the ring road. No sign of either of them. She looked the other way: blue lights and sirens in the distance.
Scheisse!
Then she realised a vehicle was pulling into the hard shoulder behind her. She shielded her eyes from the glare, momentarily blinded, and thinking in that split second that she now knew exactly how a rabbit in the headlights felt. Paralysed. Thinking that perhaps she should run, rather than stay and meet her fate.

‘Are you OK, Karin? What happened?’

It was Tilsner! She ran forward, and crushed him in a hug.

‘Thank God!’ she said. ‘I thought the others had returned.’

‘The others? What do you mean?’

‘You didn’t see the crash?’

‘No. I just realised that you’d stopped following me. I thought I’d better double back and check you were OK. Are you?’

Müller was conscious that he was patting her, rubbing her back. It was the first time she’d known him to touch her in a platonic way. She breathed in deeply.

‘I think so,’ she replied, finally. ‘But I’m not sure about the car. Someone deliberately forced me off the road. It was terrifying. You didn’t see them? A black car? A man with sunglasses?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’ He looked at the Mercedes doubtfully. ‘We need to try to move it before the police spot us, even if we have to tow it back with the limo.’

Tilsner asked her for the keys; she gestured with her eyes to indicate they were still in the ignition. He climbed in, started the car and then shouted from the door. ‘Mind out of the way. I’m going to try and reverse.’ She heard him rev the engine, then a groaning sound, and finally the tearing of metal as he forced the car away from the barrier. Well, most of the car. Part of the wing had come free and was still stuck at the roadside.

He climbed out, yanked the torn-off metal away from the barrier and then put it in the car’s boot. ‘It’s still driveable . . . I think. Do you want me to drive it and you take the limo? Only this time don’t have any tangles with imaginary assailants.’

‘I wasn’t imagining it – they tried to force me off the road. Who do you think it was?’

‘I don’t know. Look, if you want, I’m happy to say I was driving. I get on well with Jäger. We know each other from way back. He won’t hold it against me.’

Müller said nothing, but gave a small nod.

After a few near misses, Müller successfully negotiated the limousine to the Bösebrücke and the
Grenzübergang
. The western police just waved them through. On the eastern side, the dyed-blonde major was nowhere to be seen. But when Tilsner – ahead in the mangled Mercedes – flashed their authorisation, they were immediately let through.

Müller felt a definite sense of relief as they entered the Hauptstadt. This was home. This felt right. The after-effects of shock from the crash were lifting. It was somehow less tense away from the freneticism of the West.

By the time they had delivered the limousine to Schmidt at police headquarters and debriefed Jäger over the phone about the Mercedes, it was nearly two in the morning. Müller wondered if she ought to go straight back to the Schönhauser Allee apartment, and try to make her peace with Gottfried. If she let the tensions between them fester then a break-up was inevitable. Was that what she really wanted? To throw away her marriage? She glanced at her watch again. The trouble was, given the time, he would be fast asleep and in no mood to be wakened. She couldn’t face another argument.

Müller made up her mind. She asked Tilsner to take her back to the office in Marx-Engels-Platz. It would be the emergency blankets and pillow from the cupboard, then an early start. She would work the Sunday. The way things were, it seemed easier than returning home.

In the office, she allowed herself one reminder of the West. She piled the shopping bags on the long table, under the noticeboard, and then lifted out the large shoebox that contained the boots. She opened it, and peeled back the protective tissue paper. Then she removed one boot, and caressed the fur-lined top, as though stroking a cat. A small touch of luxury. Then she looked up at the photographs pinned to the noticeboard. The dead, nameless girl. The girl without teeth. The girl without eyes.

Müller dropped the fur-lined boot as though it was infected.

24

Day Nine.

The near total blackness and smell of urine and faeces closed in on Gottfried Müller. The movement of the vehicle jolted his body from side to side, up and down, the bile of panic and nausea rising in his throat. He made to reach with his hand to try to cover his mouth, fighting with the steel cuffs that chafed at his wrists. But there wasn’t enough room to move.

Taking a long breath of the putrid air, he tried to stand from his contorted half-sitting, half-crouching position, but gave up as his body pressed against the walls, the floor and the roof. It was like being in an upright, foreshortened coffin, a space less than a metre square in width and depth, and perhaps a little over a metre and a half high.

He thought of Karin. Was his arrest – if that was what it was – connected with their fractured relationship? Had she finally had enough of his accusations of infidelity and reported him to the authorities for anti-state activities?

Already it felt like they’d been driving for hours, his sense of direction destroyed by turn after turn. Acceleration, deceleration. Stop. Start. Banging him around like the contents of a washing machine drum, with no way of seeing outside to check where he was. From the length of the journey, it must be somewhere far from Berlin.

Light! Blinding, piercing white light, but he had no way of shielding his eyes. The vehicle had stopped, the doors opened, the smell of diesel and exhaust neutralising for an instant the odours of out-of-control body functions.

‘
Raus! Raus! Hände hoch!
’

Guards in East German military uniforms were manhandling him, jabbing him, forcing his arms upwards. Still in the Republic, then. The journey had seemed so long, so disorientating, he hadn’t been sure – thinking perhaps he was being taken as far as Poland, as far as the Soviet Union. He tried to keep his hands raised in front of his face to protect himself from the glare of row upon row of strip lights shining on dazzling white walls. They were in some sort of garage.

Then the guards were pushing him in the back, ignoring his questions, as they manoeuvred him through an iron-grilled door. A red light in an empty corridor. He was shoved into a cell, the clang of metal on metal, and then maximum darkness.

What have I done? What am I supposed to have done? Shout it out! Tell them!

‘Guards, guards! I demand you tell me why I’m here!’

No response. Not even an answering echo from the walls, because the shouts just seemed to have been sucked into them. He began to feel around in the silence. The walls were soft, padded. He tried to orientate himself, searching with his hands, shifting them along an arm’s length at a time. No corners. He couldn’t even decipher where the door had been. A never-ending circle of cushioned pads in the blackness. His nose pressed against one, he breathed in the sweet smell of rubber like one of the glue-sniffing addicts he’d seen on the West German TV news.

Exhausted, mentally and physically, Gottfried slumped down in the middle of the freezing concrete floor. He had never felt so alone. The temporary exile to the
Jugendwerkhof
on Rügen last year had been bad enough, but nothing like this. Was this how those children felt? Was that what had driven Beate to attempt suicide? He wondered how they were. Had Irma ever acted on his suggestion about the route from Sassnitz to Sweden? Maybe that was it . . . Maybe the book had been discovered and traced back to him.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep had never felt so wonderful. A release from the nightmare. He thought of Karin. He longed for her. The younger Karin. The one he’d married. How it once had been for them. Not how it had recently become, with her career taking over her whole life.

After several hours in the padded room they’d finally moved him to what appeared to be a more regular cell. A bench for a bed. A blanket. Even heating. A window, or something approximating it, constructed of translucent glass bricks. Shafts of light from the night of whichever town or city they were in entered feebly, though he could see no detail through the rippled glass. He rolled onto his side, pulled the blanket over his head and drifted in and out of sleep.

Then light. Piercing white light again, from a square hole above the door.

Verdammt!
He’d only been dozing a few minutes, then this. He counted to ten. The light was extinguished, and Gottfried turned onto his side again, doubled the blanket up. Counted to sixty. To a hundred and ten. Then the light again. Controlled from the outside. Tormenting him. On, off, on, off, but the doubled-up blanket worked and he finally managed to drift off again.

Then a metallic clang as the hatch was pulled down. A fat-faced female guard screamed through the hole.

‘Hands off the blanket. Blanket off your face. Lie on your back!’

Gottfried was too exhausted to ask why, or where he was, or what he was supposed to have done.

25

Eight months earlier (June 1974).

Jugendwerkhof Prora Ost, Rügen.

I had two weeks’ respite in the sanatorium, but Beate’s attempted suicide had made me even more determined to find a way out of this hateful place – for myself and for her.