Stasi Child (13 page)

‘Let’s just go to the checkpoints now. Ask to see the files. Jäger will be able to give you the necessary authority. Give him a ring at Normannenstrasse.’

Müller felt herself biting her bottom lip. She didn’t want to involve Jäger more than necessary, but Tilsner was right. She picked up the receiver and began to dial.

Grenzübergang
Friedrichstrasse. She knew it was called Checkpoint Charlie in the West. They parked the Wartburg in a side street a hundred metres or so before the crossing, and then went the rest of the way to the East German checkpoint on foot.

As they walked, Müller leafed through the authorisation documents that Jäger had provided. One of his minions had biked them to Marx-Engels-Platz from Normannenstrasse less than an hour after she’d made the phone call. The southerly wind that had been thawing the snow suddenly lifted the key piece of paper from her grip and deposited it in the gutter. Tilsner leant down, fished it out and then wiped it with his sleeve. He checked none of the ink or the signature had smudged. ‘No harm done, except a bit of road dirt. Lucky for you.’ He winked at her. She glowered back.

Checks were carried out by a strange combination of Stasi officers and border guards. That was why Jäger had the authority to send people to look through the books, and why they’d been able to get permission so quickly, rather than waiting for the Republic’s usual cumbersome red tape to take its course. His immediate agreement to her request had been a little surprising, and Müller was still unsure as to the Stasi lieutenant colonel’s exact motivation. On the one hand he was forever outlining clear parameters they shouldn’t cross. Warning them. But at the same time, he seemed to be opening doors for them to dig deeper and deeper, whatever the consequences. She wondered again about the risks they took to get the tyre prints – might Tilsner have been right, that they could just have asked Jäger?

As they entered the checkpoint, Müller glanced up the road, past the barriers, to the bustle of West Berlin beyond. She wondered if it really was as glamorous as the adverts on western TV made out. Or were
Der schwarze Kanal
’s accounts of strikes, homeless unemployed begging on the streets and ruthless greedy bosses nearer to the truth?

All the border guards were busy. Most were frantically shouting to each other, running to and fro as the weekend rush of tourists began; others had their heads buried in paperwork. Eventually, Müller found the senior officer and showed him their authorisations, and they were led to a side office with several volumes of files, divided into each day of the week. They split them up, three each. Tilsner showed no eagerness to take the seventh, so Müller added it to her pile. She looked over Tilsner’s shoulder. Spread in front of him were the files for the Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Müller’s four covered the remaining period up until the previous Friday, when the girl’s body had been discovered.

They began to check through them. Müller found her eyes scanning down the columns rapidly, discounting all the Mercedes, BMWs, Opels and Volkswagens that made up the majority of the entries. She moved from column to column, page to page, file to file.

‘No Volvos,’ she said to Tilsner by the time she was about halfway through.

‘No. Same here.’ He scanned down the list. ‘Mercedes, VW Beetle, Opel Kadett . . . All West German. We’re talking about a pin in a haystack here.’

‘Are we sure, if it was a
customised
Volvo, that the border guards would even recognise the make?’ asked Müller.

‘I think so,’ Tilsner replied, looking up from the lists for a moment. ‘Even if some of them aren’t the brightest brains our Republic has ever produced. Volvos have a very distinctive shape and front grille.’ He turned his attention back to the files. ‘Here’s a Chevrolet. Makes a nice change, but it doesn’t help us.’

Müller tore her eyes away from him and busied herself in her own file, still without a Volvo in sight.

‘Hang on a mo. Here we go, boss. A Volvo. Swedish plates, Swedish male driver. Danish female passenger.’ Tilsner noted the details. ‘But it was just a regular saloon model, a 144.’

Müller was nearly at the end of her own four files. She still hadn’t found a single Volvo.

‘And here’s another. But again, a saloon. Danish plates, this time.’ Tilsner noted that too, then continued scanning his final file, until he shut the folder with a resigned expression. ‘That’s it. Two Volvos. What about you?’

Müller shut the cover of her final folder. ‘Nothing.’ She sighed, and got to her feet, picking up the files and carrying them back to the checkpoint’s main room. They were going to have to go through this exact process at another five or six crossing points. And, at the back of her mind, was the thought that perhaps – after all – the tyre tracks had no connection with the girl’s death.

They decided to work anticlockwise around the zigzag barrier that enclosed the western sector. In any case, the next nearest
Grenzübergang
in the other direction, Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, was mainly used by commercial goods vehicles. Schmidt had been insistent the tyres belonged to a long-wheelbase car, rather than a van.

At Invalidenstrasse and then Chausseestrasse they failed to find a single Volvo in the files. Their next stop was Bornholmerstrasse – between the districts of Wedding in the West and Prenzlauer Berg in the East.

From the queues on the western side of the barriers, Müller could already tell that their search had more chance of succeeding here. Again, she sought out the senior officer. This time it was a stocky woman in an army major’s uniform, permed and dyed blonde hair straggling messily from under her cap.

‘This is very irregular,’ she said, as she fingered Müller’s
Kripo
ID. She ushered the two detectives to sit on the opposite side of her desk as she peered at the authorisation from Jäger, and lifted the telephone. ‘I shall have to check with the Ministry.’ Müller watched her dial and wait for an answer, and then listened as she explained the circumstances. The name that seemed to do the trick was that of Stasi
Oberstleutnant
Klaus Jäger. The answer the major got when she read the name down the phone immediately changed her attitude. Now there was nothing she couldn’t do to help Müller and Tilsner, getting the relevant files herself for the two detectives and letting them use her own desk to check through them.

They divided the files – covered in the similar olive-green cloth – the same way. Müller took Tuesday to Friday; she gave Tilsner the ones for Saturday through Monday. But, just to relieve the boredom, Müller worked through hers the opposite way. Starting with the last page of the Friday file, and then working backwards, eyes scanning from entry to entry, car to car, pages turning regularly. The rustling of the paper was almost drowned out by the near-constant shouting of the guards checking waiting vehicles outside.

The breakthrough didn’t take long. ‘Here, Werner,’ Müller said, the excitement in her voice causing the major to look round quizzically. ‘Look.’ She traced her finger under the entry in the file for the Thursday night – eight days before the girl’s body was found. She watched Tilsner’s face as he read the entry. 11.47 p.m. A black Volvo limousine. A West German male driver and a West German male passenger. Even if these were the murderers Müller couldn’t believe that they would have used their real names. Almost certainly they would have had fake IDs. But now they had the registration number. They had the make of car. And – in the ‘extra information’ column – something else. According to the log, the driver and his passenger were making their journey to the East to attend a friend’s wedding, and this was supposedly the bride and groom’s luxury transport.

‘What do you make of that?’ asked Tilsner. ‘Perhaps they did just come over for a wedding. Perhaps it’s not the vehicle we’re looking for.’

Müller frowned. ‘Possibly. But the timing would be too much of a coincidence.’ She stood up, straightened her clothing and smiled at her deputy. ‘I think this may just be it. The breakthrough we’ve been searching for.’

16

Day Seven.

East Berlin.

Events unfolded rapidly once they’d radioed back their information from the Wartburg to
Kriminaltechniker
Schmidt. It wasn’t strictly forensic work, but Müller knew Schmidt’s assiduous methods were the best way of pinning down the car via its West Berlin registration plate. She just hoped that the suspects – if they had used false IDs – hadn’t used false plates too.

They’d only just got back to the office in Marx-Engels-Platz and started their coffees – which Tilsner had ordered from Elke despite her previously undrinkable effort – when the phone in Müller’s side office rang. It was Schmidt.

‘They did use fake plates, I’m afraid. That registration plate corresponds to an Opel Kadett in Charlottenburg.’

‘How did you find that out?’

‘One of my
Kriminaltechniker
friends from Weissensee applied to go to the West last year. His West German mother was ill, and she needed a relative nearby, so they let him go. He helps me out now and then.’

Müller took a sip from her coffee. Thankfully Elke had used the genuine expensive coffee this time, as instructed by Tilsner. She glanced across at her deputy. ‘What’s he saying?’ he mouthed, silently.

She ignored him, and instead continued her phone conversation with Schmidt. ‘So does that mean we’re no further on?’ asked Müller.

‘No. I’ve got something really interesting, Comrade Müller. I wondered if the wedding story might have a grain of truth in it, so I asked my friend to go out and get a bridal magazine. They’re very popular in the West for women who are planning their weddings. You can imagine the sort of thing,
Oberleutnant
: glamorous pictures, models in white dresses, adverts for catering companies –’

Müller had no need to imagine. She’d seen the adverts on West German television programmes, but didn’t want to reveal that to Schmidt.

‘Well, the magazine had an advert at the back for a limousine company, and one of their offerings is a black Volvo. But as I told you the other day, Volvo don’t actually manufacture limousines, so that seemed a little odd. I got my contact to get in touch with Volvo car dealers in West Berlin. They confirmed it was impossible to order a limo from Volvo, but – and here’s the interesting thing – they’d heard that this wedding hire company had one on their books.’

She watched Tilsner tapping his fingers ostentatiously against the desk. He always claimed Schmidt used two words when one would do.

‘Carry on, Jonas,’ she said into the mouthpiece.

‘This limousine seems to be quite famous in West Berlin, at least among those who are interested in that sort of thing. Apparently it wasn’t imported, but constructed and welded together from the front and back of two Volvo saloons. So, in effect, it’s one of a kind. Anyway, I got my West Berlin forensic officer contact to check with the car hire company on the phone. It was hired out nine days ago – the Wednesday – on a three-day cheap midweek rate, and returned on Friday afternoon. It was needed for a ceremony in the West on the Saturday. What was a little odd is that it looked as if it had been steam-cleaned – even though cleaning is included in the hire rate.’

Müller grinned. ‘Good work, Jonas.’ She could imagine Schmidt smiling proudly at the other end of the line.

‘Thank you,
Oberleutnant
.’

‘But if the car has been thoroughly cleaned, then even if we did somehow manage to get hold of it, there may be no forensic evidence left.’

‘That’s possible, of course,
Oberleutnant
. But in my experience they always miss something.’

Müller nodded thoughtfully. ‘And what about the victim’s clothes? Any luck with those, Jonas?’

‘Not yet,
Oberleutnant
, but I’m still waiting for some of the lab tests to come back.’

‘OK. Well, let me know when you have anything more.’

She put the phone down and then relayed to Tilsner the half of the conversation he’d missed.

‘We’re going to need to get hold of that car,’ he said.

‘How? We can’t just go over there, hire it and bring it back, and we can’t ask the West Berlin police for help. There’s never been a joint East-West police operation in the entire history of the Republic, despite
Ostpolitik
.’

Tilsner looked dubiously at her, then took a long gulp of his coffee. He leant back, savouring it, and then folded his arms across his chest. Müller watched the muscles flex under his shirt, then chided herself silently.

‘We can’t go there, but the Stasi can. They’re already there.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Müller.

‘Oh, come on, Karin. You know as well as I do that there will be Stasi agents at every level in the Federal Republic, and especially in West Berlin. One of them could help us. You just need to give your friend Jäger another ring.’

Müller sighed. This was becoming a habit, but she nevertheless picked up the receiver again. She was less sure than before that he would support their request. Was this a step too far? One word from the Stasi officer, and they would almost certainly be taken off the case. But they needed to get hold of that limousine.

With a shaky finger, she slowly dialled Jäger’s office at Normannenstrasse.

17

Nine months earlier (May 1974).

Jugendwerkhof Prora Ost.

Beate has disappeared, and none of them will tell us where she is. When I tried to find out from Richter before lights out, she slapped my face and told me not to be insolent. That it was none of my business.

So I lie here, unable to sleep. Moonlight filters in through holes in the blue curtain material, casting ghoulish shadows about the room from the metalwork of the bunk beds. I look across at the bottom bunk next to mine, where Beate would normally be, but it has been stripped. Folded sheets, blankets and pillow neatly arranged at its foot. Without Beate’s body shape in the way, I can see further across, to the next bunk bed. Bauer. Lying there snoring. But to be fair to her, she seemed as worried about Beate as I was before lights out, trying to back me up in my confrontation with the detestable Frau Richter. To no avail.