A Darker State

by David Young

  *

  We travel south towards the Fernsehturm in the centre of the Hauptstadt. Seeing it always lifts my spirits, reminds me of better times, queuing up with Mutti and Vati soon after it opened. A wide-eyed boy of ten, proud that his father – an important scientist with the People’s Police – could get the family priority tickets. And then whooshing upwards in the space-age lifts, looking up through the glass ceiling, marvelling at the wonders of modern technology as we accelerated towards the two-hundred-metre-high viewing platform. Looking out over Berlin for the first time: Karl-Marx-Allee heading east towards our friends in the Soviet Union; the Spree winding its way through the city; the jagged outline of the Wall. From up there you could see mysterious Westberlin, somewhere I wondered if I’d ever be allowed to visit.

  I remember the security of holding my father’s hand, of feeling important doing so. I feel much the same now, riding on Jan’s brand new motorbike, the most coveted spot in our little convoy. The line of bikes turns now onto Karl-Marx-Allee itself, heading east – although Jan hasn’t revealed our destination. I squeeze my arms ever tighter round his waist, hunch in towards him, feeling at last as though I belong. He takes one hand off the handlebars and squeezes my arm – just for a moment – as the motor hums between our thighs. A gesture of friendship, from someone I’m proud to call a friend.

  4

  Six months later (September 1976)

  Senftenberg, Bezirk Cottbus, East Germany

  Another side benefit of their promotions and working for the new Serious Crimes Department was that Müller and Tilsner had been billeted in the most luxurious hotel in the area, the Interhotel am See. Tilsner was all for trying out the swimming pool and sauna before their evening meal, but Müller wanted to go over what they knew about the case so far – and in any event wasn’t in any hurry to show her messy caesarean scars to her deputy. They’d healed, of course, but the fact that her babies had been delivered by an amateur – albeit a trained amateur, in the shape of her former childhood friend, Johannes Traugott – had left its mark. She wouldn’t be hurrying to show herself off naked in the spa area.

  The scars were almost a form of branding that the previous case had left on her body. Next year, if she managed to get a suntan on holiday, they might start to fade. With the higher salary that went with her promotion, she, Emil, the twins and Helga could afford a holiday by the coast – perhaps the Black Sea in Bulgaria.

  Freshly washed and scrubbed after their day of looking at a dead body being chopped into pieces, Tilsner sat down next to her at a table in the hotel’s bar area.

  ‘What are you drinking?’ asked Tilsner.

  ‘A Vita Cola, maybe? With ice.’

  ‘Do you want anything more exciting in it?’

  She shook her head. Since her unexpected pregnancy, the taste of alcohol had left her feeling slightly queasy.

  Tilsner went up to the bar and returned with a beer for himself, Müller’s Cola, and two smaller glasses filled with a colourless liquid.

  ‘I need something stronger after seeing all that blood and guts today. If you don’t want yours, I’m sure I can manage both.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Tilsner smiled. ‘Blue Strangler. Your favourite, remember?’

  Müller made a retching gesture.

  ‘I remember you doing that for real in that graveyard.’

  ‘No, you’re mistaken, Werner. I had a very bad cold. I was simply coughing up phlegm.’

  Tilsner laughed, then downed the shot in one, banging the glass back down on the table, provoking looks of disapproval from neighbouring drinkers in the rather upmarket bar.

  Müller examined the drink in front of her for a moment, then picked it up and followed suit. As the fiery liquid hit the back of her throat, she fought the urge to cough. ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to slam down the glasses. That’s a fascist thing, isn’t it?’

  Tilsner just shrugged and took a swig of beer. ‘Where’s Jonas?’

  ‘In his room. I tried to get him to come and join us, but he says he has to make a phone call home. He says he’ll be down for dinner, but may be late.’

  Tilsner emitted a long sigh. ‘He’s no fun any more. Not that he ever was much fun. But he used to be able to talk a hole in anyone’s belly. Now he’s as silent as the Mona Lisa. It all seemed to start back in Halle-Neustadt, didn’t it?’

  Müller nodded. ‘Family trouble. Well, teenage boy trouble, I think.’

  ‘He’s never shown him enough discipline. That’s the problem. Now if it were my son, Marius—’

  ‘You’re suddenly a paragon of family virtue, are you, Werner? That’s not the way I’ve always seen you.’

  The jibe seemed to hit home. Tilsner reddened slightly and shrugged. ‘Anyway, I don’t think he knows anything we don’t know. And he’s wrong about his Cyrillic theory on the tattoo as well.’

  ‘And you know that for sure, do you?’

  ‘I do, Comrade Major.’ The tone was sarcastic, but Müller let it slip by. They knew each other too well to bother with Comrade this, Comrade that, except when they were being light-hearted.

  ‘And were you ever going to enlighten me, or was this a choice bit of information you were saving for someone else?’ Müller glanced openly at the sparkling western watch on Tilsner’s wrist. The one that had become a standing joke. ‘The organisation that provided you with that luxury timepiece, for example.’ The timepiece that, to Müller, had always been an overt signal that Tilsner’s police pay was being augmented from somewhere, perhaps the Ministry for State Security.

  Tilsner sighed again and held his forehead with his hand. ‘Jesus, not that again. Change the record, please. Of course I was going to tell you.’ He reached into his jacket and pulled out a Polaroid-style photograph. ‘One useful thing Kriminaltechniker Schmidt did do for me before he went off to sulk in his hotel room was take this photo of the tattoo.’ He handed it to Müller.

  She examined the strange symbol. It did indeed look something like a letter from the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets, not that Müller was an expert in the former. But her schoolgirl Russian lessons told her it wasn’t really close enough to the Russian ‘L’ – capital or lower case.

  ‘And while you were prettying yourself up before dinner, I was actually working. They’ve got all the latest technology in the office here, including a photocopier, and in the children’s library I found a book I was looking for.’

  ‘The children’s library?’

  Tilsner nodded. ‘An Oberliga football annual. Last year’s. With details of all the members of the top league, their club crests, etc. Although it’s a good thing it was last year’s issue.’

  Müller had little interest in football. Winter sports were more her thing. She just wanted Tilsner to get to the point, quickly. This was becoming like one of Schmidt’s elongated explanations. ‘And?’ she prompted, impatiently.

  From his other jacket pocket Tilsner pulled out a photocopied design, which he’d cut into a circle about two centimetres in diameter. Then he laid it out next to the photo of the tattoo.

  Müller immediately saw that the tattoo’s symbol exactly matched the first part of the photocopied football logo. The only two letters that were obvious to her in the rest of the logo were an ‘A’ and an ‘H’, but eventually her eyes saw the word that was being spelt out.

  ‘S-T-A-H-L? So, steel? What’s that got to do with football?’

  ‘They’re Eisenhüttendstadt’s Oberliga team, BSG Stahl – or rather they were the town’s Oberliga team.’

  Eisenhüttenstadt. The Ironworks City. On the banks of the Oder river, just before the border with Poland on the very eastern edge of the Republic. ‘Were? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Relegated last season due to an illegal payments scandal. Not just one division, but kicked right down to the regional third division. It’ll take them years to recover, if they ever do.’ Tilsner rocked back on two legs of his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, looking very
pleased with himself. ‘Allegedly they were guilty of giving illegal cash backhanders to some of their imported Yugoslav stars. Although the word on the street is it was more to do with the patrons of my team, Dynamo Berlin, getting jealous about their success.’

  Despite her lack of knowledge of, or interest in, a sport involving grown men kicking a leather ball amid a sea of mud, Müller did at least know that Dynamo were known as the Stasi team – the pet project of its head, Erich Mielke. There’d been rumours of various underhand things going on to undermine rival teams when they became too successful and threatened Dynamo’s dominance.

  ‘That’s all fascinating, but hardly relevant.’

  Tilsner held his arms out wide. ‘Who knows, at this stage? It may prove very relevant. In any case, what we do know from this,’ he pointed at the photo of the tattoo, ‘is that the victim had some connection to Eisenhüttenstadt and its football team. So in the absence of anything else, till we see if the dental records or fingerprints give us a match, this at least gives us a starting point.’

  Müller nodded slowly. ‘Well done, Werner. So how quickly can you go there?’

  ‘Well, I could go tonight and take Schmidt with me. But grumpy guts will no doubt have some sort of excuse lined up. How about first thing tomorrow morning?’

  ‘That would be good. Unfortunately, I have to go back to the Hauptstadt first. We’re starting to move into our new flat tomorrow.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘It’s vacant and we’re getting under each other’s feet at my place. It’s chaotic. So there’s no point in delaying.’

  ‘And where exactly is your new flat?’

  ‘Ah, didn’t I tell you? Strausberger Platz.’

  ‘What, one of those fancy apartments right on the square? I thought they were reserved just for high-ups?’

  ‘It’s on the side. So only a partial view of the square. Still lovely though. So while I was in two minds about accepting this promotion, it does have some benefits.’

  ‘And how did your hospital doctor boyfriend react to the news you were going back to work?’

  Müller shrugged. ‘Men in this Republic expect their women to work. Women expect to work. The trouble is, men expect their wives or partners to be good little housewives too.’

  She wasn’t going to give Tilsner a blow-by-blow account of Emil’s actual reaction. When she’d phoned him after her meeting with Reiniger and Jäger, to say he’d been less than enthusiastic was an understatement. Despite the impressive new Strausberger Platz apartment, their tetchy words had escalated into a full-blown row – and ended up with him slamming down the phone.

  Müller gathered up the documents and handed them back to Tilsner. ‘Anyway, we’re not here to chat about my living arrangements. What I suggest you do is go to the local People’s Police HQ and check all the missing persons files as a first step. Then perhaps go to this football club, although if he’s simply a fan he’ll be one of thousands, I suppose, so they may not be able to help. If I can, I’ll drive across from Berlin tomorrow night. You can make the decision whether we base our incident room in Eisenhüttenstadt itself, or where the main regional police HQ is.’

  ‘And where is it, do you know?’

  ‘Presumably Frankfurt.’

  ‘Frankfurt?’ exclaimed Tilsner.

  ‘An der Oder, idiot. Frankfurt an der Oder. Not the one in the West, obviously.’ Then she saw his wink. He’d been pulling her leg. Müller threw him a sarcastic smile. ‘As far as I know, Eisenhüttenstadt is in Bezirk Frankfurt.’

  5

  The next day

  Karl-Marx-Allee, East Berlin

  Another perk of her new job was that they actually had removal men helping Müller and Emil to move into the new apartment. So, while Emil was orchestrating proceedings, she decided to escape and join Helga on a walk with the twins – one of the many her grandmother was having to take them on to keep them from under everyone’s feet.

  ‘You don’t mind, do you, Liebling?’

  Emil smiled, and gave her a brief peck on the lips. ‘We’ll be fine. Maybe you should pop back before too long to check we’re putting everything in the right place. But until we’re sorted out, it’s not really any place for the twins.’

  As she wheeled the double buggy along Karl-Marx-Allee, she fretted about her babies staring back at her. Children that she’d been told for years she was physically unable to conceive, because of what had gone on at that police college all those years before. Children born in shocking circumstances that could easily have led to their deaths – and hers. Yet now she had chosen to leave them and go back to work.

  In the apartment in Strausberger Platz she’d almost said no to Reiniger. Almost. But the lure of a bigger home for her family, the attraction of the double promotion and the challenge of a fresh start had found her signing the documents under the police colonel’s watchful eye.

  She hadn’t been surprised when – even before the ink was dry – Reiniger made a telephone call urging someone to come and join them for a celebration schnapps. That someone had, of course, been Jäger, and as they’d downed their shots, Müller couldn’t help feeling that she was drinking with the Devil. The way Jäger had surveyed her home with an almost proprietorial air had made her shiver.

  And when the three of them had finally exited the apartment block, her sense of disquiet turned to dread. A Barkas B1000 camper van was parked directly outside, and the occupants’ lazy attempts to hide their surveillance camera behind partly closed curtains almost seemed like a deliberate provocation. But that was how it was going to be. When she’d signed on the dotted line she’d known what it would entail.

  *

  ‘I’d give anything to know what you’re thinking,’ Müller’s grandmother said as they walked along.

  Müller didn’t want to share her misgivings. ‘I was just reflecting on how lucky I am, I suppose, Helga.’ She turned and smiled at the older woman, who most people here in Berlin had taken for her mother, rather than grandmother. That had been the only dark cloud about discovering her true past: her natural mother was dead – she had died heartbroken a few short years after giving birth to Müller as a young teenager. Her child had been taken away to be placed with another family just days after being born. Müller still hadn’t managed to trace her real father – perhaps she never would.

  ‘Are you happy about the new flat?’ asked Helga. ‘I got the impression that Emil felt I was getting under his feet in the old apartment.’

  Müller stopped for a moment and looked her grandmother in the eye. ‘I don’t think that was the case. But we’ve plenty of room now anyway. You being with us is a godsend – don’t ever think otherwise.’

  Helga smiled and nodded, reaching down to adjust the blanket covering the twins. Müller started pushing the buggy again, heading for a café with outside tables and a view towards the centre of the Hauptstadt. Towards the Fernsehturm – and the West.

  ‘How has he reacted to you going back to work?’

  ‘It was always what we expected. Nothing’s changed really. But I’m so grateful you’re here, Helga. We couldn’t manage without you.’

  Helga reached down, pinching Johannes and Jannika each on the cheek. ‘It’s a privilege for me, Karin. You know it is. After all that’s happened, for us to find each other . . . for you to have these two little darlings . . . well, it’s nothing short of a miracle. So I will do all I can to help, don’t you worry. But I do wonder if things might be more settled for you and Emil if you were married.’

  For Müller, it was too soon to contemplate that. ‘A good thing always needs to take a while,’ she replied, taking sanctuary in an old German proverb. The wounds of the break-up of her marriage to Gottfried still weren’t fully healed. As far as she knew, he was safe in the West, building a new life. But she had still only ever received that one, typewritten, signed letter. Perhaps any other letters he had sent had been intercepted by the Stasi? The reason he’d been allowed to go to the West, aft
er all, was that he was considered an enemy of the Republic and someone to whom Müller, as a servant of the state with the People’s Police, should not be married.

  Helga’s question about Emil, though, was a fair one. Was he her future, or had their relationship started on the rebound?

  They’d lapsed into silence, and had now reached the Ampelmann crossing near the café. As they waited, Helga cleared her throat.

  ‘I know it’s not my place to say it, Karin, but sometimes – to throw a proverb back to you – no answer is also an answer.’

  Müller felt a momentary flash of anger, and knew it was evident in her reply. ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  Helga held up her palms. ‘As I said, I know it’s not my place. And I’m not trying to interfere. I only want the best for you and these little darlings. All I meant was that in this case you could perhaps say “no question is also an answer”. If he doesn’t ask you, perhaps that tells you all you need to know.’

  Müller didn’t give her grandmother the satisfaction of a reply, even though she knew the woman meant well – and was probably correct in her warning.

  Instead, she changed the subject. ‘Look. There’s one table free outside. Let’s hurry and get it.’

  *

  The thorny subject of Müller’s relationship with Emil was avoided for the rest of the family’s short outing. But her worries around her new position were reawakened as they returned to Strausberger Platz and approached the apartment block’s entrance. A telltale twitch of the curtains of the camper van parked outside. Even an innocent stroll with her children and their great-grandmother was being watched. Watched and, no doubt, recorded.

  *

  Later that day, after the removal men had finally gone, she, Emil and Helga were having a late lunch surrounded by crates of unpacked items from the old flat.

  Müller had put Jannika and Johannes in their cots – but neither would settle. Emil, too, now seemed to be in a foul mood.