Blood Relative

by David Thomas

  Again Fredi pocketed the money. He seemed to need Dutch courage pretty badly because he ignored the beer and sank his second schnapps. When he looked around at the other men, as if seeking their advice or encouragement, their eyes were blank, giving nothing whatever away. Whatever Fredi was going to say, they didn’t want to be part of it.

  Finally he muttered to himself, ‘I must be mad,’ then said, ‘There was a man at the orphanage, a caretaker. There were rumours that he was hurting the children … hurting them very badly, if you know what I mean.’

  Haller had jotted a couple of notes on a small pad. ‘Did you pass these rumours on to the authorities?’

  ‘You mean, did I report them to the Stasi … like I was supposed to?’ There was a bitterness in Fredi’s voice, a simmering self-hatred. ‘Yes, of course I did. That was my job. But I only did it once. Then it was made very clear to me that they were not interested in hearing anything about the orphanage. They were very specific. They wanted to know about everything that happened in the rest of my area. But at the orphanage … nothing!’

  Haller looked up from his pad: ‘So what was the name of this caretaker?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten.’

  Haller reached for his wallet again: ‘Maybe I can help you recover your memory.’

  Fredi shook his head. ‘No, it would make no difference. I do not want to remember. That would not be a good idea. In fact, it would be a seriously bad one. Understand?’

  ‘So this man is still around?’

  A shrug: ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Where?’ Haller asked.

  Fredi laughed derisively and waved an arm in the air as if tracing it across the sky. ‘Here, right here. He watches over us all … like God!’

  His pals snickered and shot nervous looks at one another. I wasn’t really concentrating on them, I was trying to make the connection and then it came and without thinking at all I blurted out, ‘Of course! The name at the orphanage … Tretow! Tretow Immobilien!’

  Haller gazed up at the ceiling, shaking his head at my stupidity and his for allowing me to come with him. A look of genuine fear crossed Fredi’s face and he snapped at me, ‘Shut up! Are you trying to get us all killed? Get out of here. Now. Both of you! I’m not saying another thing.’

  Haller got up, grabbing my arm and almost dragging me out of the bar and onto the street.

  ‘That!’ he almost shouted when we were standing on the pavement. ‘That, right there, is the reason I didn’t want you coming with me. Shit! Serves me right for letting an amateur come along on a job …’

  He stalked off down the street then stopped, pulled himself together, took a deep breath and turned back to me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, meaning it. ‘I didn’t mean to screw it up like that.’

  ‘It’s OK … We weren’t going to get much more anyway. However, next time you have a bright idea, just wait till we are in the car.’

  ‘So now what? Do we track down this Tretow?’

  ‘And say what? We don’t know what he did, or when. We have no evidence …’

  ‘Well we have to do something. Mariana was in that orphanage. He was obviously harming the kids there … and for some reason the Stasi were turning a blind eye to it. He could be the key to everything.’

  ‘Exactly. Which is why we have to get our facts straight before we approach him. We will only have one chance. We must not waste it.’

  An uneasy silence fell between us as the door of the Kneipe swung open and one of Old Fredi’s drinking pals, the one who’d asked for potato chips, came outside. He looked at us, then concentrated on the tricky task of pulling a packet of cigarettes from an inside pocket, extracting one and lighting up, his shoulders hunched against the wind. He dragged the first long breath deep into his lungs and then walked over in our direction.

  ‘You still want to know about the orphanage?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ Haller replied.

  ‘I can help you. But I need some of that money you were handing out to that tight-fisted bastard Fredi, because he won’t be sharing any of his. And this one …’ he jerked his chin at me, ‘better keep his mouth shut this time.’

  Haller peeled off another hundred and handed it over. ‘So …?’

  ‘There’s a woman round here, Magda Färber. She worked at the orphanage, looking after the children. She’ll know what went on there.’

  ‘And are you going to help me find her?’

  ‘Another hundred …’

  ‘Fifty. I can find her myself. You can save me some time, but that’s all.’

  ‘She works at the school now, part-time, serving lunch to the kids. She’ll be out in an hour or so, once they’ve cleaned up.’

  ‘How will I recognize her?’

  The man gave a hacking laugh. ‘Magda? Can’t miss her. Look for the orange hair. Same colour as an orangutan … and about as filthy too.’

  Haller handed over a fifty. ‘Then she’s perfect for an ape like you.’

  36

  ‘She does not resemble an orang-utan to me,’ said Haller, and I agreed. The Magda Färber who came walking out of the kitchen entrance of the Grundschule Rudower might have given her hair a startling, vivid ginger dye job, but the rest of her was hardly ape-like. She was small, trim and made up like a glamour girl, albeit one from the mid-1980s. Her stonewashed jeans weren’t exactly Paris fashions, her short, quilted ski-jacket was a cheap, garish pink, and her face had been given a battering by time and poverty. But compared to the soaks on Old Fredi’s table she was a vision of beauty.

  ‘Bet she said no and he never forgave her,’ I speculated.

  ‘Very likely. Let us see if she says yes to us.’

  Färber did indeed agree to talk, and for the price of a cup of hot chocolate at a nearby cake shop, not a stash of high-denomination notes. But the tale she told was not what we had expected.

  ‘Of course I remember, Herr Tretow,’ she said. ‘He was a lovely man. And so friendly. He always used to ask how I was and compliment me on my appearance. He used to say I looked so young and pretty it was hard to tell me apart from the children sometimes. Of course that was a very long time ago. I was barely twenty…’

  Haller gave her an impish smile. ‘But you are still a very attractive woman today. If I wasn’t married …’

  Färber looked at me with raised eyebrows and gave an exaggeratedly limp, drag-queen flick of the wrist: ‘Ooh, listen to your boss, the charmer! Is he like this with all the girls? Hansi was just the same, bless him … Herr Tretow, that is. He had a golden tongue, that man. Mind you, his wife was a total bitch. She walked out within weeks of them getting there, taking the children with her. She was spoiled, that was her problem. She’d been used to the good things in life and when her husband had a bit of misfortune, she didn’t stick by him like a good wife should. Oh no! She went off to find some other man to leech off. Let me tell you, that was not the way I’d been taught a proper socialist woman should behave. Poor Hansi was devastated. His children were his pride and joy, his life. And then she made it so hard for him to see them, it was awful watching him suffer so.’

  If Haller was surprised that Färber’s opinion of Tretow was the exact opposite of what we’d expected, he didn’t show it. ‘Can I get you some cake?’ he asked. ‘Or some strudel, maybe?’

  A large helping of spicy apple pastry, topped, like the hot chocolate, by a generous dollop of whipped cream, duly appeared, and Färber tucked in with an appetite that belied her slender figure.

  Haller made inconsequential chit-chat while she ate, and then, almost as an afterthought, added, ‘Of course, there are stories, idle gossip I’m sure, about things that happened at the orphanage … to the children. People have even suggested that Herr Tretow might have had something to do with it all.’

  A heavily laden forkful of strudel came to an abrupt halt in mid-air, halfway between the plate and Färber’s already opened mouth. She put it back down, rattling against the plate, and fixed us both in turn with
a fierce stare.

  ‘That is nothing but a pack of lies and slander,’ she snapped crossly. ‘I know people said things, cruel things. But they never had a shred of proof. Hansi was devastated. I remember him pouring his heart out to me, begging me not to pay any attention to it all. And I believed him. You know why …?’

  Färber glared at us again, daring us to reply, before providing the answer herself: ‘Because he never got into any trouble. Not once. No one came to investigate. Hansi was never taken away for questioning. He certainly wasn’t arrested. And you gentlemen must know what this country was like in the old days – the good old days, if you ask me. The authorities knew what was going on. It wasn’t like now when there are gypsies and Turks stealing things without anyone trying to stop them; drug addicts everywhere; the streets filled with muggers, rapists … even murderers. We had none of that because any criminal was caught and dealt with at once. And if Hansi had been doing anything wrong that would have happened to him too, and I would have said, “Good riddance. You deserve it.” Because that was how it was. The guilty were punished and the innocent had nothing to fear. But Hansi was not punished. So he must have been innocent.’

  She picked up her fork again and shovelled down the final mouthfuls of strudel before anyone could challenge her logic.

  ‘Another slice?’ Haller asked when she’d finished.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t eat another crumb.’

  ‘Some coffee perhaps … for your digestion.’

  ‘Oh yes, that would be nice.’

  Haller ordered and then took out a copy of the picture of Mariana as a little girl. ‘Do you recognize her?’ he asked.

  Färber looked at the blurred image for a moment, frowning before her face cleared and the frown gave way to an affectionate, even indulgent smile. ‘Ah, my little Mariana! Our princess. Of course I recognize her …’

  ‘What can you tell us about her?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what happened to her, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. We’re more interested in how she was back then. What can you remember about her … and about her family?’

  Färber shook her head disapprovingly. ‘Oh the parents, they were bad people. Traitors, that was what I heard. The father was executed, most likely, and quite right too. The mother was in prison. That’s why Mariana came to us.’

  ‘That was standard practice, wasn’t it?’ Haller asked.

  ‘Absolutely! When a woman committed a crime against the state, her children were taken into care. Well, they had to be, you see. You couldn’t have them staying with the family. That would be a bad influence. They’d never grow up right.’

  I’d kept my mouth firmly shut until now, but I could stay silent no longer. ‘But Mariana, she wasn’t like them, is that what you’re saying? She wasn’t bad …’

  ‘Oh no,’ Färber cooed indulgently. ‘She was adorable. So pretty, with that lovely smile … Hansi used to say it broke his heart to look at her because she reminded him so much of his own daughter. I think she was his favourite of all the children, whatever he said. Do you know what happened to her? I’ve often wondered. It was all so crazy at the end. The Wall came down. The country fell apart. The children just seemed to drift away, like ghosts. No one knew what was happening.’

  I saw Haller give me a silent, barely perceptible ‘no’ signal and feigned ignorance. ‘No, I’m afraid not. But how about Mr Tretow. Have you kept in touch with him?’

  ‘Oh, he’s far too important these days for the likes of me! No … he was another one who just seemed to disappear. One day he was wiping the floors and keeping the old hot-water boiler going, same as usual. The next he was gone. But as I say, that’s how it was … I think of him too, now you come to mention it. It was such a happy time we all had back then …’

  The interview petered out with a few more reminiscences of Färber’s youth. As we made our way from the coffee shop Haller asked me, ‘So what did you make of her?’

  ‘She was obviously in love with Tretow, though I’m not sure if he was with her.’

  ‘Agreed. And what she said about the rumours, how they weren’t true: what was your opinion of that?’

  ‘Well, if we hadn’t just met Old Fredi, I’d have been tempted to agree with her. If anything had been going on, the way East Germany was, someone would have reported it. But we know that Fredi did report the rumours and was told to mind his own business.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So the Stasi, or whoever, knew exactly what was happening – whatever it was – and chose to ignore it.’

  ‘Why?’ Haller asked, his question followed by a high-pitched beep as he unlocked the BMW’s doors.

  ‘Two reasons I can think of. One, that they didn’t give a damn what happened to those kids because half of them were the children of criminals …’

  ‘If the victims are not important, that is a reason not to make a serious investigation, maybe. That is true everywhere in the world. However, is it a reason to order someone to ignore reports of a crime completely? No. So what is your second answer?’

  ‘Because the person committing the crimes was protected. For some reason, Tretow had friends in high places.’

  ‘I agree, that is the obvious conclusion,’ said Haller, looking in his rear-view mirror as he prepared to pull away. ‘However, how can it be true? This man was a caretaker, a janitor. You heard what Färber said. He was walking up and down the corridors with a bucket and a mop. Why would anyone protect him?’

  ‘I haven’t the first idea.’

  ‘Me neither!’ he admitted, with a chuckle. ‘Or, to be exact, I have no idea that is supported by evidence, by facts. I can guess, of course, however that is not enough. So we need to find someone who might be able to tie these loose ends. Someone who also knows what happened to Mariana, and who can explain why her parents were in prison in the first instance.’

  ‘Well, I wish I knew who that person was,’ I said.

  ‘You do. It is the mother, Bettina König.’

  ‘But she refuses to talk.’

  ‘To you, maybe. However, it is possible that she will feel more comfortable with me. I come from the same country. I am not the man who took her daughter from her.’

  ‘But I didn’t do that!’

  ‘Of course not. Still, she may have told herself that is what happened and she may blame you in some way, even if it has no good reason, for the trouble her daughter is in now.’

  ‘Oh come on, that’s crazy …’

  ‘No, it is the natural reaction of a mother who is sick with worry for a daughter she has not seen or talked to in many years. In any case, there is another reason why I do not think you should come with me on this interview. One day, God willing, you will be reunited with your wife …’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘And when that day comes, I think you will both want to reconnect with her past, her family here. So it is better that her mother can think of you as her son-in-law, not as some kind of interrogator. Let me ask the questions.’

  ‘So what can I do while you’re interviewing the mother? I know you don’t want me getting into trouble, but there’s got to be something. I can’t just sit in my hotel room all day.’

  ‘Oh yes, there is something all right,’ said Haller. ‘Something you will remember for the rest of your life …’

  MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY HEADQUARTERS,

  NORMANNENSTRASSE, BERLIN: DECEMBER 1989

  Barely a month had passed since cheering crowds had smashed the first chunks of concrete from the Berlin Wall, but already the headquarters of the Ministry of State Security had been reduced from arrogant, oppressive efficiency to total, panicking chaos. Order and discipline had collapsed, replaced by fear, self-pity and a desperate frenzy of self-preservation. Groups of sullen but still passive East Berliners had started gathering round the perimeter of the sprawling complex, as yet unable to break the habits of a lifetime and take decisive action against those inside it. For
the Stasi within, all normal duties had been suspended as every available man and woman set to work to destroy the evidence of the previous forty years of brutality and oppression. In the canteen all the talk was of what would happen if the growing mobs ever discovered that there was nothing whatever to stop them rising up, walking into the complex and tearing everyone in it limb from limb.

  Hans-Peter Tretow thought it was pathetic. The very people who were still intent on covering their tracks, who lived in such fear of their people’s revenge, were in the same breath bemoaning the tragedy of the Wall’s collapse and reassuring one another that their lifetimes of service to the communist state had not been in vain. Could they not see the glaring contradiction staring them all in the face? Tretow was at least honest with himself. He knew what he’d done and what the consequences would be should any proof of it enter the outside world. He also knew that the same information that had gained him a degree of power when the Wall was up would protect him when it came down. And so he was on a mission both to secure what he required, and to deny it to anyone else.

  As Tretow walked down the corridor to the office where his control agent worked, he passed a sweaty, red-faced man in jeans and a cheap, garishly patterned ski jacket struggling under the bulk of a large cardboard box. From the picture on the side, Tretow saw that it contained a shredder. The man caught him looking and rolled his eyes. ‘Can you believe it? All our shredders are burning out. I had to go to the West to get another one.’

  Tretow could not stop himself from laughing. Without their ability to bully the rest of the population, these people were revealed as clowns. And what was even more delicious was that they had no idea how funny they were.

  The Stasi man stopped and glared at him. It occurred to Tretow that this particular man might, even now, be able to make his life uncomfortable, so he held up his hands in a gesture of appeasement and said, ‘Sorry, mate. It just seemed crazy, the idea of the Wessis, of all people, selling us shredding equipment. Here, let me give you a hand.’