Stasi Child (6 page)

Jäger himself said nothing for a moment; Müller found the silence unnerving. When he did finally reply, it was in the same quiet, measured voice he’d used throughout his exchanges with the attorney. ‘I don’t think we should jump to any conclusions, Comrade Seiberling.’ He turned to Müller and held her gaze. ‘I’m sure that
Oberleutnant
Müller will examine all the evidence in her usual thorough fashion, and will arrive at the correct conclusion.’ There was no real menace in his tone, yet Müller understood it as a veiled threat. Then Jäger turned back towards Seiberling. ‘And you’re right, of course. We can leave now confident that you will provide us with a full and detailed report. But please don’t suggest to us what our conclusions will be. That’s not really your job, is it?’

He then reached across the girl’s body on the mortuary table and tapped Professor Feuerstein’s miniature dictation apparatus. ‘You’ll make sure you send me a copy of the recording of your autopsy notes, won’t you, Feuerstein? And our other conversations.’ Feuerstein clicked the machine off, and Müller watched Seiberling’s face fall as he realised his verbal sparring with Jäger was all recorded on it.

The pathologist smiled. ‘Of course, Comrade
Oberstleutnant
. Of course.’

6

Day Five.

East Berlin.

An S-bahn train rattled overhead. In the temporary offices of the Mitte Murder Commission – shoehorned into a railway arch below Marx-Engels-Platz station – Müller watched the contents of her overflowing in-tray battle gravity as it shook with the vibrations. She lifted a folder off the top of the pile, opened it and began turning the pages.

On each page there was the picture of a girl, first name, family name, address, date of birth, height, hair colour, eyes, shape of nose, comments about teeth and then details about other distinguishing marks. She’d been through the entire file at the weekend, and now here she was, starting her day doing the exact same thing again. They had to be seen to be doing something – and perhaps there was a detail she’d missed. The trouble was that all these girls were missing from the Hauptstadt and neighbouring
Bezirke
, and none of them seemed to match with the girl whose mutilated face she’d last seen on the mortuary table of Charité Hospital. And, if the official explanation for the case was correct, the girl wouldn’t be found in the missing files of the Republic in any case, because she’d come, allegedly, from the West to the East. Müller sighed, and banged the olive-green folder shut.

‘Werner!’ she shouted through the side office door. ‘Come here a moment.’

Through the dividing window, she watched her deputy stretch at his desk in the main office, pick up a file of his own and then lope towards her, as though deadlines were something to which
Unterleutnant
Werner Tilsner didn’t have to adhere. All very well for him, the handsome bastard, thought Müller. But he wouldn’t have Stasi
Oberstleutnant
Jäger or police
Oberst
Reiniger breathing down his neck and wanting answers every five minutes.

‘What can I do for you, Comrade Müller?’

Müller felt herself blush at Tilsner’s sham subservience. ‘
Karin
. Just call me Karin when it’s us two. Or boss if you insist. I’ve told you that enough times.’

‘Of course, Comrade Karin.’

‘And you can cut that out too. What’s that you’re holding?’ Müller pointed at the forest-green file embossed with gold lettering that Tilsner carried in his left hand.

‘Missing girls.’

Müller frowned, and tapped her own differently shaded green file. ‘But I’ve already got that file here.’

Tilsner placed his file on Müller’s desk, and rotated so she could read the writing on it. The gold-embossed emblem of an eagle – flexing its wings like some unlikely avian bodybuilder – told her all she needed to know. It was from the West.

‘How did you get this?’

‘I didn’t.
Oberst
Reiniger got it for me.’ Müller tried to hide her annoyance – why had Reiniger given it directly to Tilsner? It should have come to her. Tilsner was unfazed. ‘He’s on the Inter-Berlin police liaison committee or something. It’s his pet project. Willy Brandt started it – part of his reaching out to the East –’ Tilsner rolled his eyes, and smirked.

Müller began leafing through the file. Other than a few more colour photos and better-quality paper, it was remarkably similar to its DDR equivalent. ‘Is this just for West Berlin?’ she asked.

Tilsner walked round Müller’s desk and drew up a chair next to her. She felt his thigh touch hers. She didn’t move her leg away, and found to her annoyance that she could feel the heat rising in her face. ‘No,’ he replied, with a slight smirk. ‘The whole of the Federal Republic.’

Müller placed the two files side by side and squeezed each in turn between her thumb and forefinger. Then turned and looked questioningly at her deputy. He shrugged. ‘
Republikflüchtlinge
. That’s why the file for one city is as big as the other for a whole country. Although I’m surprised there are so many. I thought there was some sort of agreement where the younger ones got returned to their parents or guardians back here.’

‘Presumably only if that’s what the parents want. Anyway, the Federal Republic is not a country – it’s a fascist anachronism.’

‘Yes, yes, whatever,’ said Tilsner, leafing through the West German file. ‘The question is: is she here?’ He tapped the open western folder. ‘Or here?’ He pointed at the olive-green eastern file. Then he turned and eyeballed Müller. ‘Or do we have no record of her at all?’

‘We’ll just have to go through them all systematically,’ said Müller. ‘Let’s cross-check her physical details with the entries in each file.’

‘I need something to help me along the way first. Elke!’ Tilsner shouted out into the main office. Student detective Elke Lehmann looked up from her desk. ‘Two coffees, please, for me and
Oberleutnant
Müller here. Quick as you can. Two sugars for me, one for the
Oberleutnant
.’ The girl started busying herself with tins and mugs at the side of the room.

‘I see you’ve got her well trained, Werner, but she’s supposed to be learning about police work, not making coffee.’

Tilsner shrugged and smiled at his superior. ‘She’s happy to do what I want.’

Müller glanced at the side of her deputy’s face as he began unclipping the pages of missing girls from the West German folder. Strong chin, hint of stubble and fierce blue eyes. I bet she is happy to do whatever he wants, thought Müller, then chided herself for the ridiculous flash of jealousy.

Another train went through the station overhead, and Tilsner swore when the pile of papers he’d taken from the file fell to the floor from the table’s rattle. ‘
Scheisse
. Can’t they get us a proper office?’ They collected up the pages and files and moved out together to the outer office. Müller crossed to the long side table, moving the empty coffee cups and textbooks.

‘So where do we start?’ asked Tilsner. ‘Height? Hair colour? Eye colour?’

‘We don’t know her eye colour. We can’t even check for dental records.’ Tilsner grimaced at her reminder. ‘Let’s take all the pages out, divide them into piles and just work through them like that. We could maybe start with age. We know from the pathologist that she was between thirteen and seventeen years old. Maybe we should add another year’s leeway each side and discount any of the girls under twelve or over eighteen?’

Tilsner nodded, and they began leafing through the pages of each file, collecting a pile of rejected girls who didn’t meet the age criteria.

Elke approached with the two cups of coffee. Tilsner took a sip from the one he was offered and recoiled in disgust. ‘Elke, what the hell is that?’ The girl reddened and dropped her gaze.

Müller sipped from her own cup. It
did
taste disgusting, but she simply said, ‘Thank you, Elke. Just ignore him. He got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.’ She immediately felt a pang of guilt –
his
marital bed, the one she had sullied with her presence, clothes on or not. Tilsner grinned at her, as though he knew what she was thinking. Then he pushed his mug to one side and left it there.

They continued shuffling through the papers until they had been through the whole pile. Evidently teenage girls were the most likely to be reported as missing, because the reject pile was actually smaller than that of those who met their age criteria.

‘What next?’ asked Tilsner.

‘Height?’ suggested Müller. ‘How tall was she? About a metre and a half?’

Tilsner got his notebook out of his pocket. ‘Just over. It says here 1 metre 52. That’s what the pathologist put in his report.’

‘OK, so she could have grown if she’d been missing a while, and if she was young enough. So we still can’t discount girls who were shorter when they went missing.’

‘But we can reject taller ones, because she won’t have shrunk. Everyone over, say, 1 metre 55 for starters.’

They divided the pile in two, and worked through it, pulling out the papers of any girls over their height limit.

‘That’s helped,’ said Tilsner. He fanned out the three reports he had left. ‘How many have you got?’

She spread them out on the table. ‘Just seven.’

The details of ten girls to look through. They spread the ten pages out, side by side, along the table. Müller went along flattening each with a sweep of her hand. Then she returned to her own office and brought back two black-and-white photographs of the girl – one taken at the scene where the body had been discovered, and the other from the autopsy report. She took the autopsy photo first, showing the girl’s face after the pathologist had done his best to repair her injuries; the result didn’t look particularly human. She moved it – left to right – along the table, pausing above the details of each girl and comparing photographs. None looked like even a distant match. She did the same with the photograph taken at the scene. That was more difficult because of the obvious facial injuries. Again nothing.

She sighed and turned to look at Tilsner. Her deputy was staring trance-like at the photos.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He took the original photo from Müller, the one from the cemetery, and held it – almost reverentially. ‘It’s this picture. It just makes me so sad. It’s how I felt at the cemetery as well. You know –’

‘What?’

‘That she could be Steffi, my daughter, in a few years’ time.’

Müller nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She’d felt the exact same thing at the cemetery and in the autopsy room.

‘Steffi’s six now. A little curly-haired fireball. Full of energy. I can do no wrong in her eyes. But in less than ten years, well . . . she could end up like this.’ Müller could see his eyes moistening, his hand shaking slightly. It wasn’t the Tilsner she thought she knew. His devil-may-care mask had slipped, if only for an instant.

‘You were telling me the other night that family life doesn’t agree with you.’ She laughed, trying to lighten the mood. ‘Or was that just your usual chat-up line?’

Tilsner snorted, and tossed the hair back from his forehead. ‘No. It wasn’t. It’s true. I got married too young, didn’t I? When Koletta fell pregnant. We’d both just turned twenty. That’s no age at all. And then Marius came along straightaway; it just felt we didn’t have the time to live our lives. He’s the same age as this girl. But it’s always the girls, isn’t? Always the girls who end up like this.’

He continued to finger and stare at the photograph. Then his face creased into a frown as he picked up the autopsy photo.

‘Hang on,’ he said, his voice suddenly animated.

‘What is it?’

Tilsner put the photo back on the table above girl number six. Then he got some scissors and started cutting round the face of the girl from the autopsy, and then did the same for the report for missing girl number six.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, destroying evidence like that,’ said Müller.

‘They’re only copies. But look!’

He pointed excitedly at the two photos, placing them side by side, having cut the hair from the picture of each photograph.

‘Don’t you see? It looks like the same girl. Only the hair is different.’ He placed the cut-out faces back in the surrounding frame of hair, making the photos complete again. In the missing report, the girl had a large mass of blonde hair. In the autopsy photo, the hair was dark, short and straight. Müller examined the photos closely. Tilsner was right, up to a point. There was a resemblance, although – given the injuries – she wasn’t as sure that it was the same girl.

‘East or West?’ she asked.

Tilsner picked up the piece of paper and read the address. ‘East,’ he said. ‘Friedrichshain.’ He read the report on the girl. ‘Silke Eisenberg. Suspected of wall jumping – but, as usual, it was the other way, escaping to the West.’

‘Perhaps she could have gone there, but then attempted to return?’ suggested Müller.

‘Well, anything’s possible – if pigs had wings,’ replied Tilsner in a deadpan voice.

Müller sat down on a chair next to the table, exhausted, even though it was still early in the day. Checking out this girl’s home address was all they had to go on. It wasn’t much, but at least it was a start.

7

Day Five.

Friedrichshain, East Berlin.

As Müller and Tilsner arrived at the Eisenberg family’s apartment block in Friedrichshain, Müller found herself wanting to shield her ears from the furious clanging and crashing of building noise. The dust and smell of new cement and render made her want to cover her mouth and nose, reminding her of her childhood and the post-war rebuilding of destroyed homes. They picked their way to the block mentioned in the missing persons’ file, careful to stay on the wooden duckboard – the only way of safely negotiating the mess of mud and melted snow between the two buildings.

Opposite the Eisenbergs’ block, another concrete high-rise was emerging from the ground, seemingly expanding upwards metre by metre as Müller watched. It reminded her of her nephew’s
Pebe
toy set: the gift she’d given him at the family Christmas at her mother’s guesthouse in Thuringia the year before last. He’d constructed a modernist high-rise from the interlocking plastic bricks in just a few hours, while the adults digested their festive lunch. Now here, grown-up workers from the workers’ and peasants’ state were building the socialist dream in its full-scale form. But while that filled Müller with hope for her country’s future, the memory of the Christmas gift was a source of guilt. This year, she hadn’t been back to the family home in Oberhof – the Republic’s answer to St Moritz – and she knew her mother, sister and brother would feel she’d let them down. Müller had claimed she was too busy with work, but –