Stasi Child (29 page)

Müller leant across Tilsner. ‘Would that include Franz Neumann, the
Jugendwerkhof
director we asked you to investigate?’

Baumann slapped his oversized gloved hands together in the cold. ‘It would. But we haven’t found any trace of him in this area. And the children’s home at Schierke has no record of the three teenagers who were supposed to have been transferred there.’

‘So how come all the records show they
were
transferred?’ asked Tilsner.

The
Kripo
captain sighed and shrugged. Then he clapped his glove against the Wartburg’s windscreen, shaking the car on its suspension springs. ‘We can talk about all that back at the office. First you must get your snow chains on, so we can show you the site of the body.’ He walked back towards the car in front, opened the boot and started to remove his chains. Tilsner mirrored his actions for their own vehicle.

When he was back in the car, and they’d begun to follow the Harz officers again, Tilsner turned to Müller. ‘Neumann obviously faked those records in Rügen,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Müller. ‘But somehow he also seems to have altered state records in the Department of Education. Or else someone helped him to do that. We need to find him, and fast. Jäger said he would send a picture through to Wernigerode. We need to ask them about that when we’ve finished here.’

As they continued to carefully follow the Wernigerode officers, the two detectives could see tracks in the snow on the road ahead, presumably where the police had been back and forth, sealing the area, taking photographs, removing the body.

After about three kilometres, the tracks came to an end – the road blocked by a red-and-white barrier. Baumann pulled over and parked, and Tilsner followed. The
Hauptmann
and his assistant,
Unterleutnant
Vogel, walked back to Müller and her deputy, who themselves climbed out.

‘It’s about fifty metres into the forest, just there.’ Baumann pointed to where the snow had been trampled into a makeshift path by the repeat journeys of various police officers; their boot prints disappeared down an old forest track. He saw Müller examining the snowy ground. ‘The footprints all belong to us, I’m afraid.’ Baumann strode off with Vogel alongside him, and Müller and Tilsner immediately behind. ‘However, my officers were very careful not to disturb the tracks they did find. They made sure they photographed them before they could be contaminated.’

‘What sort of tracks?’ asked Müller.

‘Tyre tracks.’

‘Have you identified the make of tyre?’ asked Tilsner.

Baumann glanced at his young
Unterleutnant
. ‘Any progress on that, Comrade Vogel?’

‘No,’ admitted Vogel, scratching the tight dark curls of his hair. The younger detective was a stark contrast to his superior. While Baumann was all agrarian ruggedness, Vogel looked slightly out of place – almost like a younger Gottfried, thought Müller. As though he should still be at university. ‘We haven’t been able to find a matching pattern,’ said the
Unterleutnant
. ‘To be honest, we were hoping you lot from Berlin might be able to help with that.’

Baumann nodded his giant head. ‘That’s partly why we contacted you, Comrade Müller. We’d read about your case in
Neues Deutschland
. This seems, on the surface, to be a similar killing.’

‘But the tyre tracks at our site weren’t mentioned in that report,’ said Müller.

Baumann shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, there are similarities I’m sure you can help us with.’

The two local detectives started walking down the track again, with Müller and Tilsner following. In a few metres, they came to a small clearing. Sunlight streamed through overhead, throwing sharp, knife-like shadows from the spruce trees; the shadows appeared as sentries, standing guard over the small patch of ground. The purity of the forest had been violated here, thought Müller, just as the sanctity of St Elisabeth cemetery had been violated in Berlin. The difference was that here the West Berlin traffic noise was replaced by virtual silence. There was the odd howl of what Müller assumed were guard dogs at the border – but far more distant and irregular than in the Hauptstadt.

‘Do you have the photographs of the body?’ asked Müller.

Vogel reached into a grey canvas bag he carried over his shoulder and produced a series of black-and-white prints, enclosed in cellophane. He handed them to Tilsner, who divided them approximately in half, and in turn handed one half-pile to Müller.

Müller’s first photo showed the body as discovered by a local forest worker. The teenager had been left in a similar position to his female counterpart in Berlin: on his front, facing east. Bullet holes in the back. A bloody T-shirt. Broken and twisted leg. There was nothing to confirm this was Mathias Gellman – the face had again been badly mutilated, but Tilsner had already established in his initial radio conversation with Wernigerode the previous day that his physical characteristics matched.

‘Here, boss,’ said Tilsner, drawing her attention to one of the photos from his bundle. ‘Training shoe footprints, apparently running away from the direction of the border.’ She held up the photographs against the real-life background, comparing the two, trying to imagine the scene. It was all depressingly, disturbingly consistent.

Whoever had done this was capable of pure evil.

They had to find him. Stop him.

Before he killed again.

41

Eight months earlier (June 1974).

Hamburg, West Germany.

The female customs officer convinces me that her dog is harmless, and I agree to come out of the self-assembly-bed box. She helps me get my shoulders free, and then slides me out. I can see her recoil slightly from the smell, but her dog leaps up, licking my face, until she orders it to heel.

I follow her up the stairwell and out onto the deck.

‘You must have had a horrible journey,’ she says as we walk along the deck to the gangway. ‘How long were you on the boat?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I reply. ‘It felt like days. Maybe it was only a couple?’

She looks me up and down and sniffs, a faint hint of distaste in her face. ‘You must be hungry.’

I laugh. ‘Hungry, thirsty and filthy. I’m looking forward to my first western drink, my first western meal and my first western bath.’

She steps to one side, as a male officer joins us. ‘We’re taking you to a hostel while we process everything,’ he says. ‘You’ll get a meal there, something to drink and you can wash. We’ll provide you with a change of clothes.’

I can see that on the quayside a green
Bundesgrenzschutz
minivan is waiting, its blue light flashing and motor running. A male officer leads me down the gangplank, and the woman with the dog follows behind. They seem friendly enough, seem to want to help. At the bottom of the gangplank, there’s just an instant where I could make a run for it if I wanted to. But why would I want to? I’m here, on western soil at last.

I climb aboard the van. Mathias and Beate are already there, holding hands on one of the bench seats. Beate smiles, and squashes up to let me sit next to her. But Mathias won’t meet my eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’ I ask him. ‘Aren’t you happy to be here?’

The journey through the port and into the city is one of excitement. The shop signs fascinate me, with their flashing coloured lights. It’s the same feeling I used to get as a young child on Christmas Eve in Sellin, at Oma’s – that tingling feeling, waiting for Oma to ring the bell and open the locked door to the room with the presents and tree inside. What would
der Weihnachtsmann
have brought me this year?

Beate is just as elated. ‘Can you take us to see the Reeperbahn?’ she calls to the driver.

There’s an exchange between the driver and a suited official, who I guess is also with the
Bundesgrenzschutz
, but in plain clothes. The besuited man nods, and turns to us smiling. ‘We will drive past it. You can’t get out though, not until we’ve processed you at the hostel.’

Beate and I giggle. But Mathias is stony-faced, miserable. What’s wrong with him?

‘We can’t go down the main bit of the Reeperbahn,’ the suited man calls back from the front. ‘It’s pedestrianised. But you’ll be able to see some of the nightlife.’

In a few minutes, we’re there. Beate and I look left and right, pointing things out to each other. There are young girls in tiny miniskirts on the corners. I’m not sure if they’re prostitutes or just dressed to look sexy. And there are nightclubs, and burger bars. It’s so different from the Republic, and this – though I almost want to pinch myself to believe it – is my new home. I wonder whether Fürth, where my aunt lives, is as exciting.

All too quickly, we leave the bright lights behind, and now seem to be in the suburbs. All the road signs are different, all the shop signs are different, all the cars are different. Schools, hospitals, petrol stations, supermarkets: the same, yet different. As though someone has lifted up an East German town, coated it in bright paint, added lots more traffic and people, and then dropped it down in another part of the world. For a moment I think of the
Jugendwerkhof
and those I’ve left behind. I feel sorry for the ones who showed me kindness. Herr Müller, Frau Schettler, even Maria Bauer. Once a sworn enemy, yet she had helped me to escape. But then I think of Richter, and Neumann, and thank God I’m no longer there.

Beate grips my hand as we turn into some sort of barbed wire-topped compound. Maybe she’s scared this is the West German equivalent of Prora Ost. But the female officer with the dog smiles reassuringly at us, and the dog itself is barking and wagging its tail in the back of the van, as though it knows it’s home.

We’re taken straight to the canteen, urged to sit down, and then the officers and the suited man are all helping us; they’re fetching us Coca-Colas, crisps, bowls of hot soup, which seem out of place given the season. I feel as though I could eat as much as they’re able to put in front of us. Beate and I slurp the soup noisily, then break off bread from the rolls, dip it into the meaty broth and stuff it into our mouths. Even Mathias seems to have thawed slightly and is eating as eagerly as us.

‘I don’t want to ever drink Vita Cola again,’ I say, even though it was a luxury in the East, for which we saved up our pocket money.

‘Or eat Spreewald pickles,’ says Beate.

‘Or Nudossi,’ adds Mathias. And then I feel slightly sad again, because Nudossi – when we occasionally got it for breakfast in Prora – was a real treat. I can almost taste the memory of the nutty chocolate spread.

As soon as we finish the soup, suit man grabs our bowls, and nice woman officer is back with the next course. Currywurst with chips, the steam rising from each hot plate. I just look at mine for a moment, then lean down and breathe in the spicy aroma, letting the saliva gather in my mouth – savouring the smell. Then I cut a slice of wurst, add it to a few chips on my fork, dunk it in the curry sauce, add some tomato ketchup and thrust it in my mouth. There’s too much, the curry gets up my nose and I splutter it all out again onto the plate.

‘Yuck!’ exclaims Beate, laughing. ‘Don’t they teach you any manners, you Ostlers?’ She winks at me. Even Mathias grins.

After our meal, we don’t have to clear away our plates; the officers tell us to leave them as they are, and direct us to our bedroom and the showers on the first floor.

There are two sets of bunk beds in the room, and I realise with surprise that Mathias will be sharing with us. I know I won’t get much sleep tonight now, because the two lovebirds will be noisily entwined. Oh well. Even the thought of that is not going to dampen my spirits.

Then Beate and I are in the showers, spraying each other, shampooing each other’s hair, washing each other’s backs. And I realise, in our nakedness, that we are not so very different. Being in the West has made me feel more beautiful, more confident. Yes, I’ve got curly red hair. But I’ll get it cut, in a fashionable western style. Yes, I’m overweight. But I can go on a diet. Yes, Beate is absurdly pretty, but here in the West there will be lots of pretty girls, all with the latest fashions and make-up, and she will have to start again. So we are not so very different. And we are friends. She smiles at me, and we hug under the shower spray, the water cascading over our faces. Two very happy girls who are free at last – the very best of friends until our dying day.

In the middle of the night, I hear Mathias hiss Beate’s name. I see her shape climb down from the top bunk above me, and move to his bed – the bottom bunk of the opposite set. She climbs in, and at first they are just whispering very quietly together. I toy with the idea of asking them to be quiet, but I don’t really care. They are happy, they are together, why shouldn’t they whisper to each other? And even when the bed starts rocking and creaking, even when Beate starts shamelessly calling his name, even when he is grunting on every thrust, I cannot work up any anger. I just lie, and listen, and dream of the West and of one day finding a boyfriend of my own – someone who will take me as I am; someone who will cherish my curly red hair, my determination, my sense of adventure. The attributes that have helped both Mathias and Beate win new lives in the West. Because I know they could have never done it without me. It was my plan. And it worked.

The next day – over breakfast – the officers begin what they call ‘processing’. I expect it’s to provide us with our new West German passports, maybe some Deutschmarks. Perhaps they will give me train tickets down to Fürth to my aunt’s. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. I don’t look at the paperwork, just sign where they want, knowing that I am free.

Then we’re in the van again. The three of us, and the same officers, and the same suited man. I try to catch the female officer’s eye, but she’s looking down at her hands with a slightly sad demeanour. Oh well, I guess people still have their troubles in the West. Maybe she’s had an argument with her husband.

Beate and I are still holding hands childishly as the van sets off, out into the Hamburg suburbs again, and onto the autobahn. Sleek luxury cars overtake us at lightning speeds. We take the A7 towards Hanover. Beate and I start singing
Hänschen Klein
, clapping along; Mathias puts his hands over his ears. I glance again at the female officer, but find her eyes wet with tears. She looks away.