by David Young
‘Who?’ asked Müller. Then she lowered her voice. ‘I hope it’s not Janowitz again. Or even worse, Wiedemann. I’m not in the best of moods right now. Certainly not in the mood to cope with either of those two.’
‘No,’ laughed Eschler. ‘Don’t worry. I think it’s someone you’ll be pleased to see.’
*
At first she didn’t recognise him. He was sitting with his back to her at a long table, with three other officers – presumably the Stasi operatives that Eschler had mentioned – sitting opposite him and facing her, but with their heads down sorting out what looked to be piles of newspapers.
It was only when one of the other officers looked up questioningly at her that he turned. Perhaps he immediately recognised her heightened emotional state, perhaps the tears were already stinging her eyes. But he was soon on his feet, though a little unsteadily, and when she wrapped her arms round him she could feel him wince.
Then the tears began to flow, and she hid her face in his jacket shoulder.
He ushered her away round a pillar, out of sight of the Stasi team.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, wiping a tear away, still unable to enunciate every syllable properly, but with much clearer speech than the last time they’d seen each other. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
Müller gripped the hand of his good arm, and stared levelly into his ice-blue eyes. The man she’d thought was dead in a forest in the Harz. The man she’d last seen reading a porno novel and attached to various tubes in a hospital, looking like he wouldn’t be back at work for months. But he was. He was here. Her deputy. Her now not-so-smooth-talking deputy. ‘Oh, Werner,’ she said. ‘I’m absolutely delighted to see you. I’ve just had one of the shittiest weekends of my life. So shitty I’m not really sure who I am anymore. I can’t believe you’re here. Reiniger said it would be months, perhaps a year, perhaps . . .’
‘Perhaps never. That’s what he thought. I just nagged him. But I’m not strictly speaking your deputy. I’m not allowed to go haring off with you on lunatic missions without back-up like last time. I’ve been given strict orders. I’ve got to stay here. In charge of these Stasi men.’ He gestured round the cavernous, bare room. ‘No windows. It’s going to send me mental. But I was going mental in hospital anyway. Though the nurses helped.’ He winked.
Müller rolled her tear-soaked eyes. ‘Same old Werner Tilsner. Still, it’s good to have you back. You’d better explain what’s going on.’ As she said it, her eyes were drawn once more to the expensive watch on his wrist – just as they had been so many times during the Jugendwerkhof girl murder case – the watch that she was convinced he’d bought, or been awarded, thanks to his freelance work for another of the Republic’s agencies. There was a good reason why People’s Police Oberleutnant Werner Tilsner, even in his enfeebled state, was allowed to take charge of a Stasi team. Because – even though he would never admit it – Tilsner was one of them. Part of the Firm. A carrier of the “sword and shield” protecting the Party. A Stasi operative just like the members of the team he was supervising, despite his official police detective’s rank.
If Tilsner knew what she was thinking, it didn’t trouble him. Instead, there was a trademark glint in his eye. ‘We’re moving the handwriting hunt up a gear. I’ve come up with a little scheme which shouldn’t contravene the Stasi’s guidelines, but should produce plenty more samples. And you never know, we might find the one we need. The perfect match.’
27
Organising the teams of Pioneers made Müller feel she was more of a schoolteacher – like her former husband Gottfried – than a homicide detective. The buzz of childish giggling and fidgeting lightened her mood. For the children this was a bit of fun: Tilsner’s idea of collecting old newspapers and magazines – ostensibly for paper recycling – from outside the various apartment blocks of Ha-Neu’s several Wohnkomplexe. But both the Young Pioneers, in their blue neckties, and the Thälmann Pioneers, with their corresponding red scarves, had the chance to earn good pocket money from it – paid from the budget of the People’s Police. The children weren’t aware of this – Müller and Tilsner were in plain clothes. The Pioneers would just assume that the two detectives were authority figures of some description or another.
‘Settle down,’ she shouted above the din in the Baltic restaurant, where the children had been told to gather for their briefing. For the most part, the Pioneers ignored her.
‘Shut up!’ roared Tilsner, his face apparently flushed with anger, struggling up from the seat where he’d been resting his fast-healing injuries from March’s Harz mountains shoot-out. That did the trick, and the restaurant quietened. Tilsner winked at his Oberleutnant. ‘You clearly haven’t got my touch,’ he whispered in her ear.
The two detectives began to divide the children into eight teams – one for each of the new town’s residential areas. They’d already agreed to make sure one team was entirely made up of the possibly more compliant Young Pioneers. Müller wanted to assign this team to Komplex VIII – in effect, the Stasi complex; or at least, the area nearest to Stasi regional headquarters in the north-east of Ha-Neu, where most Stasi operatives lived. She hoped Tilsner hadn’t yet got his head round the strange urban geography of the new town, and wouldn’t grasp what she was trying to do. It was a way to circumvent Malkus’s restricted list: the families of Stasi personnel that had been explicitly excluded from the baby health checks. For Müller, it was important that the more politically aware Thälmann Pioneers – older children who would soon go on to join the Free German Youth – were kept away from Complex Eight. They were more likely to be suspicious, more likely to discuss things with their parents. There was also a greater chance that their parents would themselves be connected in some way with the Ministry for State Security.
Once the teams – around twenty children strong – had been formed, Müller and Tilsner appointed a leader from each, and took them to one side for a briefing, sitting around one of the restaurant’s oblong melamine tables.
Müller spread out the red-covered street map of Halle and Halle-Neustadt, and placed paper discs with the names of each Pioneer team on the sections of the map corresponding to the various residential areas. Müller’s idea of giving each team the name of a flower had been vetoed by Tilsner. He favoured animal names. Unfortunately, the team that were given Complex Eight were the Donkeys. This provoked more name-calling and teasing between the children, with kids from the Tigers, Lions and Rabbits provoking the Young Pioneer team with hee-haw braying sounds.
This time Tilsner looked genuinely annoyed. ‘Be quiet, all of you. This is a serious, important project. If you continue to mess around we’ll have to inform your parents.’
As a hush finally descended on the group, Müller began to explain to them what they needed to do.
*
This wasn’t strictly detective work – certainly not for someone of her rank – but Müller wanted to get a feel for the newspaper collection operation at first hand. It was a good excuse to visit Komplex VIII.
The leader of the little Pioneer team, a blond-haired boy named Andreas, gathered his colleagues around the barrow they would use to ferry the paper in. As the children of Team Donkey stood to attention, Andreas recited the Young Pioneers’ slogan: ‘For peace and socialism be ready – always ready.’ The first part seemed to be ignored by the others, but by the words ‘be ready’, they all joined in. Müller felt a certain pride in this: community spirit, comradely spirit, was alive and well in the Republic. Even if their real motivation was the promised pocket money.
It was a short walk from the restaurant to Block 321, the nearest of the apartment blocks which belonged to Komplex VIII. This was at the southern edge of the residential area, near to the Magistrale and city limits of Ha-Neu, before the elevated road crossed the Saale, into Halle city itself. The Pioneers formed a walking crocodile of bright white and blue as they marched behind Andreas and his barrow, neckerchiefs fluttering in the summer breeze.
&
nbsp; Then they were inside the block and knocking on doors, asking residents if they’d seen the notices about the Pioneers’ waste paper collection. Accepting the donations of bundles of papers and magazines with good grace and thanks, Müller looking on with pride as Andreas and his colleagues performed their duties, unaware that they were part of an undercover police operation. An operation to recover one single handwritten capital letter on a crossword puzzle. An ‘E’ with upwards slanting cross strokes which failed to meet the downstroke. An ‘E’ that could have been written by the abductor of twin babies from Ha-Neu’s hospital. And all the time, Müller kept her eyes peeled: to see if anyone who answered the door was carrying a baby, a particularly small, premature baby.
One that matched the description and photograph of missing Maddelena Salzmann.
28
With the waste newspaper collection safely under way, Müller left Andreas and the other children to their own devices, and returned to the incident room. While the investigation was still making little real progress, at least it hadn’t been mothballed. The Stasi might be preventing her and her team from searching for Maddelena door to door, but Müller was trying to ensure she circumvented their restrictions as far as she was able to. The baby health checks, the waste paper collection, the upcoming meetings with the graphologist – Professor Morgenstern. All those initiatives offered the hope of a breakthrough. But every minute, every hour, every day, every week that Maddelena remained undiscovered, her chances of survival diminished. If the baby girl was even still alive.
Professor Morgenstern was – in the end – delayed only by a few days. As she went to greet him, Müller reflected that it was the delay in his visit that had given her the opportunity to visit her family in Oberhof. A visit she now almost regretted making. But it had at least provided her with a window to the truth: the truth about her long-glossed-over real parentage.
Morgenstern wasn’t how Müller had pictured him. He was a huge bear of a man, with wild curly hair, a wicked smile and giant hands – one of which proceeded to crush Müller’s fingers in a vice-like grip of welcome. Once it was released, she held her arm behind her back and tried to wiggle away the pain.
‘I’m delighted you called me down here from Berlin,’ Morgenstern growled through an unkempt beard. ‘Apologies that I couldn’t get here last week as I’d hoped.’ He looked round the room at Müller and her team: the core team of herself, Tilsner and Schmidt, the three outsiders drafted in from Berlin, just as Morgenstern himself had been. ‘Now, I understand you’ve got a sample of handwriting which you hope may help you crack a case you’re working on.’
‘That’s right,’ nodded Müller. ‘Comrade Kriminaltechniker Jonas Schmidt will talk you through it.’
Schmidt leant down and pulled various envelopes from his briefcase, from which he then took out a series of photographs. ‘It was this that I thought was particularly interesting.’ The forensic officer pointed to a monochrome photograph of the crossword puzzle which had been found inside the newspaper used to wrap up Karsten Salzmann’s tiny body. ‘See here.’ Schmidt pointed to the capital ‘E’s in the completed clue: three of them in the word DEZEMBER.
Morgenstern nodded slowly, studying the lettering. He looked a little like an American grizzly sizing up salmon in the rapids, twitching his head back and forth, about to strike. Müller had seen plenty in wildlife programmes on Western TV. Schmidt pointed out the distinctive way the ‘E’s had been formed, with the sloping pen strokes failing to intersect.
‘Hmm . . . yes, yes. I can see that. Interesting, and as you say, unusual.’
‘Unusual enough to track someone down from it?’ asked Müller.
Morgenstern sat back, resting his elbows on the chair arms and steepling his fingers together. He frowned. ‘That depends. Ideally, we’d have a longer sample of writing. A combination of lower- and upper-case letters would help us more. But . . . it’s a start. Better than nothing.’ He bent his head down again towards the photograph. ‘Have you only got this photo, or do you have the original?’
‘We do have the original, yes,’ said Schmidt.
Morgenstern sighed. ‘Could I see it, then? Do you have it with you?’
Schmidt blushed. ‘Yes, yes, yes, sorry,’ he blustered. ‘Of course.’ He reached down into the briefcase again, and this time brought out a stained, yellowing newspaper, inside a polythene evidence bag. Morgenstern reached to touch it, but Müller grasped his arm before he could.
‘Hang on. Let Comrade Schmidt put on some protective gloves first, then he can open it up for you.’
This time it was the turn of Morgenstern’s face to redden. ‘Of course, Oberleutnant. My sincere apologies.’
Schmidt – his hands now gloved up – unfolded the newspaper to the puzzle page.
Morgenstern peered at it, with his hands carefully tucked under his thighs, presumably to avoid the temptation of touching the evidence. ‘Interesting. I just wanted to try to gauge the pressure of the pen strokes – something you can’t really do from a photograph. It looks like it’s been done quite fiercely, angrily. Although it’s often dangerous to ascribe emotions to someone based on their handwriting. Do we know that this was written by your suspect?’
Tilsner snorted. Müller glared at him. If he was getting back to his old self after his hospital stay, fine. But she didn’t want the ‘ugly cynic Tilsner’ rearing his head in front of an important expert from the Hauptstadt.
‘We don’t, no,’ Müller replied. ‘Someone else could have filled in the crossword. The abductor could have taken someone else’s newspaper to deliberately throw us off the scent. But it’s something to be working with. The likelihood is that whoever wrote this . . .’ she traced her finger in the air above the letters, mimicking the handwriting, ‘. . . is somehow connected to the man – or woman – that we’re trying to find.’
Morgenstern’s ursine head resumed its rapid nod. ‘It will be difficult just with these capital letters, but the unusual “E”s are certainly a help. What have you done so far in terms of collecting handwriting samples?’
‘We’ve got teams of volunteers gathering old newspapers,’ said Tilsner.
‘And have you told them why?’
Müller gave a shake of her blond hair. ‘No. We’re under instructions to keep our investigation pretty much secret. The Ministry for State Security . . .’ Müller tailed off apologetically.
‘Ah. I understand. To be honest, it’s a good thing that your investigations are secret. If whoever dumped the body realised what was going on, they could seek to compromise the investigation. Fake writing samples, that sort of thing. What I will do is try to examine how these letters are formed. What sort of fine motor skills are being used. Everyone has a unique way of writing. Although this,’ Morgenstern glanced down at the crossword again, ‘is a fairly old-fashioned style. I would guess it’s been written by an older person, perhaps a pensioner.’
Tilsner frowned. ‘A pensioner? That wouldn’t really fit the usual profile of a baby-snatcher.’
The giant handwriting expert shrugged. ‘It’s not absolutely certain, of course. Whoever wrote this could have been taught to write by someone elderly. A grandparent, perhaps. Maybe home-schooled for some reason.’
‘No one in the Republic is home-schooled,’ Müller pointed out.
‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Morgenstern. ‘But our Republic is what – a quarter of a century or so old? Quite young. And you know what came before. When things were going wrong towards the end of the war, people were often home-schooled. And if the parents had been killed . . .’
‘Then a grandparent might step in to help?’ asked Schmidt.
‘Exactly.’ Morgenstern sat back in his chair, the wood groaning under his weight. ‘But that’s all just speculation. This, though,’ he jabbed his finger towards the partially completed crossword, ‘will be very useful. I will try to pin down the style characteristics. What system of writing the individual learned as a child. An
d then try to identify the individual characteristics – how the lettering differs from the original learned system. Although it looks like the capital “E”s may be our best way forward, it might be some other letter which provides our solution . . . if we ever get to that stage. You realise, of course, that this will be a Herculean task. Particularly if, as you say, the Ministry for State Security is placing limits on your inquiry.’
Müller gave a long, slow sigh. ‘We realise it’s not going to be easy.’
‘Collecting old newspapers, things like that, that’s a good idea. But I think you will need to do more. Government offices and the hospital, that sort of thing. All will have records. You yourselves, the People’s Police, will have some handwritten samples – complaints, statements, that sort of thing. Ideally you need something that can secure a handwriting sample from virtually everyone in Halle-Neustadt. And of course there’s always the possibility that your abductor is someone from out of town.’
‘What do you suggest we do in that case?’
Morgenstern gave a deep laugh that came from somewhere in his ample stomach. ‘Well, I know it’s not encouraged in the Republic, Oberleutnant. But I think your best option then would be to pray. Pray very hard.’
29
Müller’s next appointment after the one with Professor Morgenstern was strictly social: an evening rendezvous at last with the doctor from the Charité hospital in Berlin, Emil Wollenburg. This was the third time he’d tried to arrange a date. Müller had cancelled the first two because of the demands of the inquiry – the drink before she went to Oberhof, and the lunch that was supposed to replace it. If she stood him up again, she didn’t expect she’d get another chance. That said, it still all felt too early. She wasn’t even sure she wanted another chance, the possible start of a new relationship.