by David Young
Two uniformed police officers entered, one of them cuffing the youth to his arm. Lauterberg looked at Müller in disdain as they passed her in the doorway. Then he turned his head, and spat at her feet.
*
Müller decided to walk the couple of kilometres back to her Schönhauser Allee apartment, rather than take the U-bahn or tram. The heavy summer heat – so oppressive in the confines of the Keibelstrasse police headquarters – was tempered by an evening breeze. But despite the more pleasant atmosphere, she couldn’t shrug off a sense of loneliness, of detachment. At the Mitte Murder Commission, under the arches of Marx-Engels-Platz S-bahn station, she and Werner Tilsner had been a little team. Lovers, one time only, but mainly good friends. But for the moment, Tilsner was out of the picture – laid up in a hospital bed recovering from a near-fatal shooting, with no news on when or whether he would return to police work. Keibelstrasse had many more officers within its walls, but Müller didn’t really know any of them well enough to call them a friend – except, perhaps, Kriminaltechniker Jonas Schmidt. The forensic officer had worked with her on the case of the murdered girl in the graveyard earlier in the year.
She crossed Prenzlauer Allee at the Ampelmann pedestrian signal, and kept up a rapid walk towards the apartment. With each stride she wondered whether her police career, at one point so promising, had now reached a dead end. And all because she’d refused Oberstleutnant Klaus Jäger’s offer to join him in the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi. She should have known it was the sort of offer you couldn’t turn down.
Arriving at her apartment block’s entrance, she gave a wry smile. The surveillance vehicle that had been there for weeks had finally disappeared. It was almost as though she wasn’t important enough anymore. And when she climbed the stairs from the lobby to the first-floor landing, the almost ubiquitous click of her neighbour Frau Ostermann’s door was also absent. Even Frau Ostermann could no longer be bothered poking her nose into Müller’s life.
She turned the key in the lock, and entered the apartment. Once a happy home for her and her husband Gottfried. Ex-husband. He’d been allowed – as an enemy of the state for his supposed anti-revolutionary activities – to defect to the West, where he was no doubt carving out a successful teaching career. She wondered how long it would be before the authorities would force her – a single divorcee – to move to a smaller apartment, perhaps even a police hostel. Müller shuddered. She couldn’t bear that. It would be like being back at the police college. She didn’t want any reminders of her time spent there.
Müller went straight to the bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and lay on the bed staring at cracks in the ornate plaster ceiling. She had to pull herself together. Make a decision. She could either stick with the police, try to get her career back on track, or she could get out. One or the other. She couldn’t face many more days trying to get idiots like Lauterberg, with their faux Western hippy attitudes, to confess to petty crimes against the state. It was more exhausting than a murder inquiry.
She took a deep breath. One of those days. It had just been one of those days – the sort you moan about to your husband or wife or family when you finally get back home, letting off steam, allowing the frustration to drift away. But Gottfried was in the past now, and that was partly her own decision. For the first time in as long as she could remember she spared a thought for her family. Not that they were any help – they were hundreds of kilometres south, in Oberhof, and if she hadn’t felt like going to visit them at Christmas, she certainly wasn’t about to now.
She thought back to events in the Harz mountains, towards the end of her last big case. How she’d tried to be the heroine, leading her and Tilsner into a trap that was within a hair’s breadth of seeing her deputy shot dead. Going in without back-up. Now Werner Tilsner lay in a bed in the Charité hospital, unable to speak, unable to walk, barely conscious much of the time.
She got to her feet. A shower and then go and visit Tilsner. That would remind her that there were those worse off than she was. Much worse off.
2
Even before she’d opened the door to his hospital room, Müller could see through the glass pane that Tilsner’s condition had improved appreciably. He was sitting up in bed, reading. It wasn’t an activity she would normally have associated with her smooth-talking deputy. As she opened the door, her surprise soon evaporated. Tilsner rapidly hid the book under his bedcovers, trying not to get his various feeding and drug tubes tangled in the process. Not before Müller had seen the cover: an erotic novel. Still acting true to form, then, she thought.
‘Ka-rin,’ he spluttered, still unable to form words properly, four months after the shooting.
Müller sat by the bed and took his hand in hers, careful to avoid the intravenous tube attached to the back of it. ‘It’s good to see you looking so much better, Werner. And reading, I see.’ She jokingly reached to retrieve the hidden book, but Tilsner pressed down hard on the bedclothes, then winced from the resulting pain.
‘Much . . . bet-ter, yes.’ He nodded. ‘Read-ing.’ He winked at her, showing little sign of embarrassment.
‘I wish I could say the same,’ she sighed. ‘Work’s a nightmare – I’d much rather be in bed reading a book.’ She shouldn’t really burden Tilsner with her problems. But she missed the day-to-day relationship with her one-time deputy.
‘How’s . . . things . . . at . . .’ The mangled sentence stopped. She could see the effort on his face, his chiselled jaw starting to reassert itself under the bloating from too many days lying in bed. ‘At . . . the . . . off-ice?’
Müller’s brow creased into a frown for a moment as she tried to make out what he was trying to say. Then it clicked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not at the Marx-Engels-Platz office anymore. I’ve been moved to Keibelstrasse. Someone else is in charge at the Murder Commission.’ She could hear the emotion and hurt in her voice, could see the empathy in Tilsner’s eyes. ‘They’ve got me doing the mundane jobs that uniform should be sorting out. I’ve been sidelined, Werner.’ She moved forward to whisper in his ear. ‘All because I wouldn’t agree to your friend Jäger’s job offer. Probably not the most sensible thing I’ve done in my life.’
Tilsner smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘You’re . . . bet-ter . . . than . . . that.’ Again, it took a moment for Müller to decipher the words that her deputy was struggling so hard to form. Once she’d worked them out, she grinned. ‘Don’t be too free with the compliments. That’s not like you at all.’
The squeal of the double doors to the room opening and closing made them both turn their heads. Tilsner had another visitor. Oberst Reiniger. The People’s Police colonel who’d originally recommended Müller for promotion, who’d protected her in the previous investigation when she’d thrown the rule book out of the window, but who had now rubber-stamped her move to the Keibelstrasse headquarters. Müller wasn’t particularly pleased to see him, but he seemed in a jovial mood.
‘Good to see you sitting up, Comrade Unterleutnant,’ he said to Tilsner, drawing up a chair on the opposite side of the bed to Müller, the buttons on his uniform straining as his belly threatened to burst from his trousers. She watched as he performed his usual ritual of brushing imaginary fluff from his epaulettes, drawing attention to the gold stars of his rank. While Reiniger’s eyes were admiring his own shoulders, Tilsner tried to mimic the motion, although the tubes prevented him from doing it particularly effectively. The devilment was still there. He is recovering, thought Müller. Reiniger looked up, just as Tilsner dropped his hand back down to his lap. ‘At this rate,’ said the colonel, ‘we’ll have you back on your next Kripo case in no time at all.’
‘Not . . . with-out . . . Ka-rin!’ Tilsner’s face grimaced – whether from actual pain, or the difficulty of emphasising his point, Müller wasn’t sure.
Reiniger frowned, and looked quizzically at Müller. ‘What’s he saying, Karin? Can you make it out?’
; ‘I think he said “Not without Karin”, Comrade Oberst.’
She watched Reiniger’s face redden. ‘Yes, well, that won’t be happening for the time being. It’s out of my hands, I’m afraid.’ Then Reiniger held Müller’s gaze. ‘Actually, Karin, I’m glad I’ve caught you here. We need to have a word.’
Tilsner seemed to be about to try to utter another sentence, but before he could get it out, Reiniger rose to his feet and gestured with his eyes to Müller – indicating they should continue the conversation away from her deputy’s ears, in the corridor.
He waddled off towards the doors with his peculiar penguin-like, head-down gait, the walk that gave the impression to Müller and whoever else was watching that whatever mission he was on was more important than the last.
As she rose to follow, her eyes met Tilsner’s, and they exchanged grins.
*
Reiniger beckoned Müller over to a row of bench seats along the hospital corridor, sat down, and began to speak in a low voice.
‘I might have guessed you’d be here. I came over to Keibelstrasse, but they told me you’d already left for the day.’ Müller knew it was an admonishment. But she’d reached the point where she didn’t care. ‘We’ve a problem, Karin. I think you might be just the person to help us out. It might be a way of getting you back on a murder inquiry team. I take it you’d like that?’
Müller was immediately suspicious. She’d been left alone in the doghouse of Keibelstrasse for a reason. Why was the colonel now trying to lure her out?
Despite her doubts, she nodded slowly. ‘What is it, Comrade Oberst?’
‘They’ve got a difficult case down near Leipzig. Bezirk Halle. Halle-Neustadt, to be precise. You know it, presumably?’
Müller nodded again. ‘Of course, Comrade Oberst.’ She’d never visited, but she knew it from television programmes and magazines. It was, to some extent, the pride of the Republic. Eventually almost a hundred thousand citizens would be housed in the brand new town immediately to the west of the city of Halle. A hundred thousand citizens in their own apartments. Row after row of high-rise Plattenbauten: concrete slab apartment blocks – with the best community facilities in between. The socialist dream in its living, breathing form. The communist East showing that it could do things better than the corrupt, capitalist West.
‘We’ve had to keep this quite hush-hush,’ said Reiniger, his eyes scanning the hospital corridor to make sure no one else was listening in. ‘But a couple of babies have gone missing. Twins. The Ministry for State Security is involved, trying to keep a lid on things.’ At that, Müller’s heart sank. She didn’t want to be part of another investigation where she was at the beck and call of the Stasi, however much she craved leaving the drudgery of Keibelstrasse interrogations behind. ‘They want a female People’s Police detective to help. Your name was mentioned. It will be a chance to get back on the horse, Karin. You’re a good detective. I know that, you know that. What happened with Jäger . . . well, that was a little unfortunate. But it’s a good sign your name’s getting mentioned again.’
Müller sighed. ‘The thing is, I’ve become a Berlin girl, Comrade Oberst. It’s my home now, my city. I’m not sure I want to work outside the Hauptstadt. Isn’t it something best left to the local detectives, rather than bringing in someone from outside?’
Reiniger breathed in slowly, putting even more pressure on his uniform’s straining buttons. ‘Let’s put it this way, Karin. If you ever want to rise above the rank of Oberleutnant then you’re going to have to say yes occasionally. You’re going to have to take on jobs you might not particularly want to do, in places you may not particularly want to go. This is an opportunity. But there can be no errors of judgment like last time. Your performance will be monitored closely – and, as you can imagine, not solely by the People’s Police.’
‘Can I at least think about it?’
‘Briefly, yes. But you can’t discuss it with Tilsner.’ The police colonel rose from his seated position and waited for Müller to join him by the glazed doors of Tilsner’s hospital room. He gestured with his eyes towards her deputy, who seemed to be surreptitiously trying to read his book again. ‘I don’t want him getting all excited, thinking he’s going to be going there with you, and discharging himself. He’s getting better, as you’ve seen – the physical wounds are almost healed. But he’s nowhere near ready to return to work. He lost so much blood so rapidly the doctors say it led to a minor stroke. In time, he may still recover completely. And obviously our hope is that it will be in a relatively short period of time. But for now he needs speech therapy, physiotherapy . . . possibly even psychotherapy . . . It will be a matter of months, at the very least, before we can even start to consider a return to work.’
Müller nodded. Then there was a moment’s silence, with the two of them standing, shuffling from foot to foot, as though Reiniger was waiting for something.
‘So, have you thought about it, Karin?’
She started. ‘I meant think about it properly, get back to you with an answer tomorrow?’
Reiniger sighed. ‘I don’t have time for that. I said I’d get back to the People’s Police in Halle by the end of the day.’ He glanced at his watch, then met her eyes again. ‘In other words, about now.’ Müller gave a short laugh, and shook her head in amazement. ‘Oh, and one thing I should tell you, Karin, which may help make up your mind. It’s not just a missing persons inquiry. One of the babies has been found. Dead. And not from natural causes. This is a murder hunt. If you agree, we’ll appoint a new deputy for you – from outside the local area, like yourself. The important thing for you, Karin, is that you will be back in charge of your own Murder Commission.’
Reiniger eyeballed her. He held all the trump cards, and knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. It was what she wanted. What they both knew she wanted. To get back to the job she loved.
‘Yes, then,’ she sighed. ‘You always knew I was going to say yes, anyway. But can you tell me more about the case?’
Reiniger gave a weak smile. Müller knew he’d got what he’d come for. ‘You know all you need for now. No point in me muddying the waters. They’ll give you a full briefing when you get there.’
Müller frowned. An investigation which her boss wasn’t prepared to talk about – except in the sketchiest of details – sounded potentially troublesome. And the need to bring in someone from Berlin, highly suspicious. But in her current situation, even the troublesome and suspicious was more attractive then the boredom of doing little more than pen-pushing at headquarters.
*
After saying their goodbyes to Tilsner, without revealing what the sudden urgency to leave was all about, Müller and the colonel made their way through the hospital corridors towards his car. As they turned a corner, Müller suddenly saw a friendly face. Wollenburg – the doctor she’d met earlier that year, across a particularly harrowing autopsy table. They smiled at each other, but kept walking. Müller couldn’t resist a glance back – he was as handsome as she remembered. At that exact moment, Wollenburg did the same, and their eyes locked once more. He broke off from the group of doctors and nurses he was with and ran after Müller and Reiniger.
‘Do you have a second, Comrade Oberleutnant?’ Wollenburg asked.
Müller looked questioningly at her superior officer. ‘You can have one minute, Oberleutnant,’ said Reiniger. ‘One minute only. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.’
‘What was it you wanted?’ asked Müller, after Reiniger had walked off. ‘I’m in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Well . . .’ The doctor paused, his face reddening. He looks very sweet when he blushes, thought Müller. ‘I was just wondering . . . Erm, I saw you no longer wear a wedding ring, Oberleutnant.’
Müller was surprised at the comment. But it was surprise tinged with a hint of excitement . . . and embarrassment. She looked down at her ring finger, then met Wollenburg’s eyes with a quizzical expression.
‘Well . . . this is
a little . . . um, awkward, I must confess,’ he continued, stumbling over his words. ‘I was just wondering if you might be available for a drink sometime, or to go to the theatre, or . . .’
Müller’s face softened. He was quite cute. She placed her hand on his arm. ‘I’d love to. But I’m afraid I’m being transferred to Halle-Neustadt for a period. I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
The doctor nodded, and gave a broad smile. ‘Halle-Neustadt, you say? Hmm. Well, that might still be a possibility.’
‘Why, you’re not suddenly being sent there too, are you?’
Wollenburg cocked his head. ‘Stranger things have happened.’ He turned towards where his colleagues were waiting. ‘Anyway I’ve got to rush, but I’ll be in touch. Soon, I hope. I expect I will be able to contact you via the Halle-Neustadt People’s Police office. Is that right?’
Müller smiled, then walked off in the direction in which Reiniger had disappeared – without giving Wollenburg a definitive answer.
3
The next day
Reiniger’s one concession to Müller was to accede to her request to take her own forensic officer with her from Berlin, and drive down south in an unmarked Kripo Wartburg – similar to the one she and Tilsner had used at Marx-Engels-Platz. Kriminaltechniker Jonas Schmidt had, in many ways, saved her neck in her previous murder investigation, not to mention saving the life of at least one young girl. She was glad to have him at her side once more.
The autobahn journey from Berlin was one she knew she should have taken more frequently, to go to visit her family in Thuringian forest. Yet she’d avoided it, time and time again, usually using the excuse of her murder squad work. Even at her lowest, after the split from Gottfried, she hadn’t confided in her mother, brother or younger sister. In Halle-Neustadt that visit would be harder to put off, she knew. And why did she want to put it off? It was something indefinable. The sense that her home was now Berlin and that in the mountain village of Oberhof – indeed within her family itself – she’d somehow never properly belonged. Down the years there had been odd incidents which had left Müller yearning for the sort of mothering she knew that some of her friends had received. The warm, smothering love of a mother, wrapping you in a cosy bath towel, rocking you on her knee as she sang a lullaby. It was something Müller had witnessed her mother do with her sister Sara, but never with her. Was that just jealousy – that Sara, as the baby of the family, got better treatment? Or was it just that she and her mother had never got on, and never would? Many of her memories were of arguments, rather than expressions of love. The look her mother had given her when she questioned her about the disappearance of her childhood friend Johannes and his family. The half-remembered visit from a kindly-looking woman who for some reason wanted to see her – Karin – provoking something like rage on the part of her mother. Despite all that, Müller knew that sometime during this investigation, however it played out, she would have to continue this journey further south to the family home.