Stasi Winter

by David Young

  ‘Right!’ he shouted. ‘You all know what you’re supposed to be doing! Now let’s get on with it!’

  In formation, they began to march along the harbour wall. The first part had already been partially cleared of snow – or at least enough snow had been cleared to provide a narrow passageway. Tilsner was marching behind his motley group – a regular army sergeant taking the front. In between was a gang of about twenty construction soldiers. Three of them he’d been asked to keep a close eye on by Jäger. One – a certain Dieter Schwarz – was the boyfriend of Irma, the girl who’d been caught up in the Jugendwerkhof case four years earlier. Müller seemed to have a soft spot for her, but to Tilsner she spelt trouble, and therefore it was a fair bet her boyfriend would be of the same ilk. From what Jäger had said, that was indeed the case. A Stasi officer had seen them gain illegal access to a room under the lighthouse at the far end of the harbour wall. He’d later inspected it and found evidence that it was being used as some sort of illegal drugs den. In Tilsner’s view, it sounded like the man’s report had been over-egged – as though he was trying to get a gold star for his homework. A bit of dope smoking wasn’t anything to get excited about. But Jäger seemed convinced that there was some link between the army base at Prora – either the construction soldiers’ barracks or those of the regular Fallschirmjäger – and the murder of Richter. With luck, Schmidt might succeed at his end of things – in the warmth of the medics’ unit – and pin down what was going on. Then they could all get out of this godforsaken shithole and back to Berlin. It might be OK in the summer – Tilsner himself had taken girlfriends to the beaches on summer camping holidays in the dim and distant past – but now in the winter it was unremittingly awful. Still, he thought, patting his stomach with his gloved hands, the weather might present opportunities. There might be other possibilities. He used the thought to try to cheer himself up.

  Their official mission was twofold: to liberate some of the tools and construction materials at the end of the harbour wall that had been abandoned when the Arctic conditions suddenly closed in, and use them – and what other tools they had – to clear away more of the snow and ice from the harbour wall. The aim: to enable all the crew of the fishing boats and other vessels berthed here to get out and inspect their vessels to guard against ice damage.

  For Tilsner, though, this stated task was window dressing. His objective was to watch, and listen. To find out if whatever Dieter Schwarz and his friends were involved in was anything more than rolling up a few joints and getting off their faces.

  On both sides of the wall, ice stretched as far as he could see.

  The lee side – the actual harbour – was relatively smooth and covered with a thick layer of snow, like a blanket. Dotted around the harbour, and particularly at the quayside, lay scores of fishing boats, iced in and going nowhere, every exposed surface that wasn’t near vertical coated with either frozen sea spray, snow or a combination of the two.

  The angular shape of the wall had been rounded off by frozen spray. On the far side of the barrier, the Ostsee was a much wilder picture. The vast expanse of sea ice was far from smooth. The waves and wind, the force of the water as it froze into larger sections, had produced weird, irregular patterns of white and grey – almost like a moonscape.

  As they continued along the wall, it became clear they couldn’t walk in formation. In fact, walking at all was near impossible. Instead they were clambering, sliding over blocks of ice and layers of snow. How the fuck they were going to clear all this, he had no idea. They would have to do the best they could.

  ‘Watch yourselves!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t take any risks. I don’t want any daft bugger falling through the ice into the harbour. You wouldn’t last five seconds.’ Although as he said it, and peered at the icy surface, he doubted anyone would fall through that. It was solid. Tens of centimetres worth. Perhaps a half metre thick, or more, he had no idea. Even the icebreakers seemed to have given up following day after day of sub-zero temperatures.

  *

  Tilsner felt exhausted by the time they got to the lighthouse, and they hadn’t started the real work yet. With the extra layers he was wearing, even though his extremities – fingers, toes and nose – felt like they were about to drop off from the cold, the rest of his body was too hot. Under his arms, the sweat felt sticky and uncomfortable. The pickaxes, shovels, sand and cement were stored below the automatic light, in the room Schwarz and his mates seemed to use as their illegal smoking den. After a group of the young men cleared away the snow with a combination of boot kicks and hand shovelling, the sergeant got out a key. He unlocked and opened the door with a groan and screech of unoiled metal.

  He saw Dieter flick back his overlong fringe and exchange a sly grin with his two buddies. He tried to remember their names – Joachim was one, and – Holger! That was it. But seeing them grin at each other took him nowhere. What he needed was to overhear conversations. To find out what – if anything – was really going on.

  ‘Right – everyone either take a pickaxe and a shovel, or a bag of sand – and then let’s get to work.’

  He grabbed the smallest pick and shovel he could see for himself before anyone realised he was taking the easy way out. Dieter, Joachim and Holger meanwhile lounged in a corner – as though they were hoping by the time it was their turn, the equipment and material would have been claimed. As the other soldiers made their choices, Tilsner stood off to one side with the sergeant. Like Tilsner, he’d got in quickly and found a small pick and a shovel that was hardly bigger than a child’s beach spade. Neither of them were leading by example, but then – themselves apart – these were all construction soldiers. Refuseniks. As near to being a counter-revolutionary you could get to without being labelled that. They wouldn’t be inspired by good deeds for the Republic. They’d already made their choices.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tilsner kept watch on his three targets. All the picks and shovels had gone. They finally slouched towards the bags of sand, and made half-hearted attempts to pick up a bag each.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ said Dieter. ‘They’re too heavy.’

  ‘No, me neither,’ said Joachim.

  Holger shrugged, standing with his hands on his hips.

  Tilsner moved forward. ‘This is how you do it,’ he said. He bent and lifted the bag of sand, trying not to stagger under its weight. Then he edged it up over his shoulder. ‘Like that,’ he said, glaring at Dieter, and lowering the bag to the floor again. The youth made a half-hearted attempt to copy, but dropped the bag to the floor.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ he whined.

  Joachim made an even more feeble attempt, dropping his bag with a thud at Tilsner’s feet.

  The detective sighed. ‘OK. Take a bag between two of you. But I want all these five bags brought down to the other end of the harbour wall. Holger, you stay and sweep up after everyone.’ He handed the youth a brush that he saw propped in the corner of the room. ‘And then you can swap round – so one of you is always here, and two of you are always carrying the bags. No slacking though. Sergeant Adler and I will be watching you.’

  He saw Dieter give a small grin to his friends, as though that’s what they’d been planning all along. To make sure they had time on their own, away from the rest of the group. To do what, though? Perhaps they really were just dope heads and once everyone else was gone their plan was to roll up another joint.

  Tilsner left them to it. He lifted his own pick and shovel, and followed the rest of the gang to the other end of the harbour, where they planned to begin their efforts to drive a clearer route towards the lighthouse.

  *

  After he and Adler had set the company to work, and Dieter and his cronies had – with almost deliberate slowness – brought the first two of the bags of sand, Tilsner decided to follow them back.

  It was Dieter and Holger: their friend, Joachim, had been left on sweeping duty. To make sure they didn’t see him, Tilsner tried to keep up in a crouch on the seaward si
de of the wall. The path here was even less clear. But with the sea silenced by its icy covering, he could make out snatches of conversation from the other two.

  ‘What do you make of that new captain?’ asked Holger.

  ‘He’s a lazy fucker,’ replied Dieter. ‘Did you see how he picked out the two smallest and lightest tools for himself? And like the rest of them, he follows orders like a fucking sheep.’

  ‘Do you think he suspects anything?’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘I dunno. It seems strange, him suddenly turning up like this. Why did we need a fucking captain, anyway?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t trust Adler. Let’s face it, Adler’s a soft touch. We usually manage to twist him . . . ’

  The conversation died away on the wind. Tilsner realised they must have been making better progress than he was. He saw some ice- and snow-encrusted steps which led to the other side of the wall, and risked climbing one then raising his head. The two youths had put more distance between themselves and him – some thirty metres or so. Tilsner knew he wouldn’t be able to catch them up without climbing over to their side and giving himself away. Instead, he carried on his struggle on the seaward side, knowing any slip would be more dangerous than sliding onto the ice in the harbour. The ice on the seaward side would be thinner. Fall on that and it could be certain death.

  *

  When he reached the lighthouse, Tilsner had half-expected two of the youths to meet him on their way back with one of the remaining bags of sand. But as he waited out of sight by the door, he could hear not a lot was happening. The three of them were just talking – by their raised voices it sounded like an argument – but Tilsner had missed half of what they were saying. He struggled to understand what it was about.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ said Dieter. ‘Not without Irma. And we’re not prepared.’

  ‘Dieter’s right,’ said Holger.

  Tilsner heard a sarcastic laugh. ‘You’ve changed your tune.’ The accusation came from Joachim.

  ‘There’s another problem,’ said Holger. ‘I don’t know how, but that Markus guy seems to have found out what we got up to in Sellin.’

  ‘Scheisse!’ shouted Joachim.

  ‘Shhh!’ hissed Dieter. ‘That Tilsner fucker could come back and check on us at any moment.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Joachim. ‘If he knows about Sellin, does he know the rest? And who the fuck told him? Was it your girlfriend?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t know her. He must have found out from one of us. Anyway, I don’t think Schmidt will be a problem. He’s gone AWOL. The word is he’s been arrested.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ asked Holger. ‘He might be one of their spies. And even if not, he could have already blabbed, which means others might know.’

  A moment’s silence followed. Tilsner was tempted to burst into the room, and use strong-arm tactics to find out what they were on about. But he knew that would be futile. A waiting game was better.

  ‘So is that the end of everything? Do we give up?’

  ‘No we fucking don’t,’ insisted Dieter. ‘We’ll have to bring everything forward. It’ll have to happen tonight.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Holger.

  ‘Here,’ said Dieter.

  It seemed to be the end of the conversation. Tilsner heard scrabbling and swearing – they were picking up another bag. As quickly as he could, he climbed out of sight to the seaward side of the wall, and started the long journey back to the rest of the company.

  His struggle over the snow and ice gave him plenty of opportunity to chew over what he’d discovered and try to make sense of it.

  What was it in Sellin that Markus had discovered?

  What was it they planned to do tonight at the lighthouse?

  And – perhaps most importantly – did it have anything to do with the murder of Monika Richter?

  20

  Sellin, Rügen, East Germany

  28 December 1978

  I hear the crack first – like a bullet. Then another, then another.

  I whip my sheet-covered head round. Surely they wouldn’t open fire on us?

  There’s no one there. Just blackness.

  Then more cracking sounds.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to run but I feel the ice collapsing beneath me. My brain has time to register that was what the bullet-like cracking noise was.

  Then I’m falling.

  Into the sea.

  The sudden cold shoots through my entire body. I try to shout out, but the icy water rushes into my lungs. Then I’m flailing, fighting for breath.

  A huge blackness is trying to claim me.

  I know it’s Death.

  Its fingers clawing at me.

  I start to black out. Then something does grip me. By the shoulders. It’s painful – I try to shrug it off and realise through semi-consciousness that someone is trying to save me. Dieter. It must be Dieter.

  Huge hands manage to haul me back up onto the ice. But it’s so very, very cold. Like an ice devil has licked me all over and wants to devour me, my body convulsing like someone has put electrodes on my legs.

  ‘Scheisse!’ yells Joachim.

  ‘Keep your voice down and help me,’ hisses Dieter. ‘We’ve got to get her somewhere warm. Quickly. Otherwise she’ll die.’

  The three of them prop me up. I can’t put one leg in front of another. I’m dimly aware of them dragging me towards the beach, then to the sea wall. They let me rest on a bench. Giant shivers are coursing through my body.

  ‘What do we do?’ pleads Joachim.

  In the fug of semi-consciousness, I can feel Dieter start to undress me. ‘We’ve got to get these wet clothes off her.’

  ‘Someone’s going to see us from the bit that remains of the Seebrücke if we’re not careful,’ says Holger. ‘They’ll think we’re raping her or something.’

  I think I must be slipping away into dreamland, the dreamland before death, because I see a dark silhouette approaching. I realise it’s a person – a woman – we’ve been caught. Even if I survive, they’ll lock me up again just like my mother.

  My nightmare gets worse when the silhouette starts to take human form.

  Now I know we’re finished.

  It’s her.

  ‘Hello, Irma,’ she says, smiling and friendly to them, but to me I see her leering at my half-undressed body.

  She’s like a wolf bitch, licking her lips. Salivating at what she’s stumbled on and how she can use it to her advantage.

  I want to warn the others. It’s the woman of my nightmares, as bad as Neumann, if not worse. But I can’t speak. As I try to, my mouth blubbers and shivers; no words come out.

  ‘You four look like you need some help,’ she says. ‘My summer house is at the top of the cliff. I’m staying there for Christmas. It’s warm inside. I can give her dry clothes. She knows me. I used to be her teacher.’

  They believe her, I can see it in their eyes even though I’m pleading for them to understand.

  But they go along with her suggestion.

  They deliver me into the wolf bitch’s lair, and there is nothing I can do about it.

  Nothing at all.

  21

  Jugendwerkhof Prora Ost, Rügen, East Germany

  New Year’s Day 1979

  Once they were safely away from Trautmann’s office, Müller turned to thank Frau Schettler.

  ‘You could have blown my cover straight away. You didn’t. Thank you. But why?’

  Schettler just put her finger to her pursed lips, and gave a shake of her head.

  ‘I’m going to show you some of the facilities you need to be familiar with now, Frau Herz.’ The woman was refusing to acknowledge what Müller had said. She must have her reasons, thought the detective.

  Schettler was pacing ahead, her mousy hair bobbing as she walked, her thin frame full of energy all of a sudden. Müller realised she was being led outside, into the exercise yard, the place where I
rma Behrendt had nearly met her death in trying to save her friend, Beate. In the end, her efforts had been in vain – but not until several months later.

  ‘I want to show you the isolation cell,’ said Schettler, a look of shame plastered across her face, her hands pressed against her cheeks. She sighed, as though showing Müller the ‘facility’ wasn’t her intention at all. Müller had heard about it anyway from Gottfried – but seeing it first hand would be another thing entirely. As they approached, she noticed the low, wooden structure seemed to have burn marks on the outside.

  Schettler saw her inspecting them. ‘They’re cigarette burns. If someone’s locked up here that the others don’t like, sometimes they throw cigarettes at the bunker from the windows up there in an attempt to set fire to the whole thing.’

  Müller gasped in horror. ‘Doesn’t anyone try to stop them?’

  Schettler stared at her – a grim look on her face. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I think you’ve met our director on your previous visit. Does that answer your question? Or should I say our former director. But Trautmann is little better. It’s like Neumann all over again.’ She started turning the dials of a combination padlock. ‘Anyway, let’s go inside. There’s barely enough room for one, never mind two, but at least we can talk freely in there.’

  Müller crouched so as not to hit her head on the low lintel at the entrance, and followed the other teacher inside.

  Schettler sat on the bench-like bed, and Müller squeezed alongside her.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Oberleutnant Müller. Sorry for that little charade. But I didn’t think it was safe to talk in the school.’

  Müller gave a nod. ‘It’s Major now, actually. Not that that’s important. And while I’m here, it has to absolutely be Frau Herz.’

  ‘I understand. But why are you here?’

  From the way she’d referred to her in the present tense, it seemed as though Schettler – unlike Trautmann – wasn’t aware of Richter’s fate. Perhaps it was in Müller’s interests not to tell her just yet.