by David Young
Wohnkomplex VIII, Halle-Neustadt
Oh glory of glories. She is so pretty. So cute.
I still cannot really believe it, even though Hansi had warned me it might be like this. The condition – the pressure of my growing womb – had cut off my blood supply. In effect I’d fainted – so they had to sedate me. I’m told it was touch and go in the hospital. Like last time, when apparently I’d been knocked out after my fall over the building materials, the concrete pipes I think it was, I was completely out of it when I gave birth. By Caesarean, of course.
I rub my tummy as Heike sucks on her bottle. This time I’ve given in to Hansi. Yes, I’d rather have fed her naturally. But I accept something went wrong last time, with Stefi. Hansi was insistent that this time I should do what he says. And I still feel a little guilty. About Stefi. And about kissing that barman at Weissensee.
The other thing that’s slightly odd is that Heike is so small. A tiny little thing. She’s pretty. Well, she is to me. But her face is so pinched. She looks a bit like an eagle chick. And so, so tiny. The doctor says it’s because she came a few weeks early.
*
This time I don’t go to the normal baby clinic. Hansi arranged for me to go to the one behind the wall, in the special Ministry area – he’s important enough for that to happen now. He says Heike will go to the Ministry’s kindergarten too, when she’s a bit older. Hansi’s being so good to me. Bringing me everything I need, doing all the shopping. Because Heike was premature, he says it’s not a good idea to take her out shopping with me in Ha-Neu centre. Keep contact with other people to a minimum, that way there’ll be less chance of her catching something.
‘There, there, precious,’ I whisper to Heike, as she starts crying. I think she’s got wind from sucking the milk from the bottle too quickly. Greedy little thing. I give her just the lightest of taps on her back. And there, a big burp. ‘That’s better, darling. Isn’t it?’
39
Three months later: October 1975
Halle-Neustadt
Jäger’s revelation preyed on Müller for the rest of the day, and made it hard to concentrate. That the army on that day had bothered to note down a five-year-old girl’s angry comment was bad enough. The fact that a record of her outburst had been kept, and relayed back to her more than twenty years later, beggared belief.
As she returned to Emil’s apartment in Halle market square that evening, she toyed with the idea of discussing it with him. Then she immediately dismissed it. Perhaps she had fallen in love, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be on her guard. The fact was, Emil’s move to Halle had been horribly convenient. His seduction of her all too quick and easy. What if he had been sent to watch her, from close quarters? What if Jäger suspected her – with her Oberhof links – of being a member of this so-called Committee for the Dispossessed? She wasn’t, of course. In fact, sometimes she wondered if she was too loyal a supporter of the Republic. But in her heart, she still believed in socialism. The greater good for the greater number. She was even prepared to overlook some of the Stasi’s methods if that helped the Republic survive and prosper. But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be wary.
Müller and Emil had just settled down to begin the evening meal he’d cooked when she heard the siren. She ran to the window to see what was going on. A group of uniforms rushed out of a couple of police Wartburgs, their flashing lights illuminating the Handel monument with eerie pulses of blue. There was a gathering of people outside a restaurant. At the centre, a distraught girl, who looked to be in her late teens. Then the apartment phone rang. Emil held up the handset.
‘It’s for you. It’s Unterleutnant Tilsner. He says it’s urgent.’ Emil threw her a reproachful smile. A look that said to Müller: This is how it’s going to be, isn’t it? If we stay together. This is how it’s going to be all the time. ‘I’ll put your food back in the oven.’
Müller picked up the phone.
‘Have you heard?’ Tilsner asked over a crackly line.
‘I think I’ve just been watching it.’
‘Right by you. In the market place. Another baby’s been snatched. I’ll drive over straightaway and meet you there.’
*
Müller had always wondered about the accepted practice in the Republic of leaving infants, in their prams, outside shops or cafés. Yes, usually at least one of the mothers stayed to watch them – as in the Andereggs’ case from a decade earlier – but no one was as vigilant as a child’s actual mother.
As people milled around, the uniform teams appeared to be trying to get details from a teenage girl who looked to be sobbing into her boyfriend’s chest. Only when the girl turned did Müller realise who it was: Anneliese Haase, mother of baby Tanja – the girl from Wohnkomplex VI Müller had visited on the first day of the ‘nutrition campaign’. Without checking, Müller could remember her block number: 956. The apartment: 276. Perhaps health visitor Kamilla Seidel’s superstitions were correct after all, but not in a good way.
Anneliese’s face, streaked by mascara-stained tears, creased into confusion as she saw Müller, and the deferential way the police officers treated her.
‘You . . . you’re . . . you’re not a health visitor at all, are you?’ she said accusingly. ‘Where’s my baby? What have they done to my baby?’
Tilsner grabbed the girl gently by her shoulders and moved her away from the throng of onlookers. ‘Keep your voice down,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’
‘Let’s take her to Emil’s flat,’ Müller said to her deputy. ‘It’ll be quieter there. I’ll ask Emil to make himself scarce. I just want to get Anneliese away from this lot before she shoots her mouth off any more.’
Anneliese tried to shrug herself out of Tilsner’s grip as they moved her off, while the uniforms prevented her boyfriend or any of the others in the crowd from following. ‘Where are you taking me? I haven’t done anything wrong. Someone’s stolen my baby. My Tanja. Why aren’t you chasing after –’
The girl’s protests stopped as Tilsner yanked her arm up behind her back. ‘Be quiet. I won’t warn you again. We just want to ask you some questions, get everything clear, away from that mêlée. That’s the best way of getting Tanja back safe and sound.’
*
After having his evening meal interrupted, Emil looked glum at being told by Müller to spend an hour or so at a bar while she and Tilsner used his apartment to interview Anneliese. But – grim-faced – he complied with his police officer girlfriend’s request.
Anneliese herself looked frightened – eyes darting everywhere, still obviously confused about who Müller actually was, given the detective’s deception of three months earlier.
‘You’ll realise by now that I’m not a health visitor, Anneliese. I’m a detective. But you must under no circumstances tell anyone else that I was involved in that nutrition campaign. Do you understand?’
‘Y-y-yes,’ the girl stuttered.
Müller got her notebook and clicked her pen. ‘Now tell us exactly what happened this evening. Do it slowly, and try to remember everything. I’m sure we will find Tanja safe and well. But we will do it sooner if you are completely honest.’
‘W-will I g-g-get into trouble?’
Müller sighed. ‘What’s important is finding your little girl. Why were you here at a bar in the centre of Halle? It’s a long way from your home. Wohnkomplex VI is on the far side of Halle-Neustadt.’
‘My boyfriend. He works the other side of Halle. This is where we meet – it’s about halfway.’
‘Why did you bring Tanja with you? Couldn’t you have left her with a relative or a friend for the evening? Couldn’t you have got a babysitter?’
This question prompted more tears from the girl. ‘I did have a babysitter arranged. My aunt. But her son was ill at the last minute. She had to take him to the hospital, and said she couldn’t sit for Tanja after all.’
‘Couldn’t you have found someone else?’ asked Tilsner.
<
br /> The girl shrugged, then hid her face in her hands.
‘What’s done is done, Anneliese,’ said Müller more gently. ‘But why couldn’t you keep Tanja with you in the bar?’
Anneliese brushed her hair off her face and breathed in slowly, as though trying to keep herself calm. ‘I did take her in with me at first. Then she was crying. I tried to breastfeed her, but someone complained. So I took her into the toilet, fed her a bit there until she was sleepy, and then put her to bed in the pram.’
‘Outside?’ asked Müller.
Anneliese said nothing for a moment, as though she couldn’t face what she’d done. ‘Yes,’ she eventually replied. ‘But I made sure she had the rabbit soft toy as a comforter, and went out regularly to check. Every five minutes. I’m not a bad mother, honestly.’
‘Is your boyfriend the father?’ asked Tilsner.
The girl shook her head.
‘Do you have any contact with the father?’ continued Tilsner.
Again, a shake of the head. ‘He’s gone back.’
‘Gone back where?’ asked Müller.
‘To Vietnam.’
The revelation silenced Müller and her deputy for a moment. Tilsner threw her a puzzled look.
‘Has he ever made any attempts to contact Tanja?’ asked Müller. ‘Could he have secretly come back to the Republic and attempted to take the baby to Vietnam with him?’
‘No. He doesn’t even know she exists. He was a student at the university, on the Halle-West Campus. It was just a quick fling and I stupidly got pregnant. He was sharing an apartment in Wohnkomplex VI. He’d finished his studies but was staying on for the summer – summer last year.’
‘And you never told him he was a father?’ asked Tilsner in astonishment.
‘I don’t even have his address. I just know he lives in Hanoi somewhere – the other Hanoi, the real one, in Vietnam.’
Müller rubbed her chin. The father was obviously a dead end, then. What about the boyfriend?
‘What’s your boyfriend’s name?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to involve him. We haven’t been going out very long. It’s hard for a single mother to find a man.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ snapped Tilsner. ‘Officers at the scene will already have his name. He already is involved. We are trying to help you find your baby. A baby you put at risk by leaving her outside while you canoodled inside the bar with your latest love interest. So just answer our questions. All of them.’
The girl stared at Tilsner, open-mouthed. But in Müller’s opinion, her deputy was quite right to try to shake her up a bit. ‘Come on, Anneliese,’ she said. ‘Spit it out.’
‘It’s Georg. Georg Meyer.’
‘And how is he with Tanja?’ continued Müller.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is he accepting of her? Loving towards her? Would he rather you didn’t have a baby?’
‘He’s good with her. But . . .’
‘But what?’ asked Tilsner.
‘Well, any young guy . . . I’m sure they’d rather find a girl without a baby. What are you trying to say? That Georg has deliberately arranged for someone to get rid of Tanja? That’s ridiculous.’
Müller shook her head vigorously. ‘No. We’re not trying to say that at all. We’re just looking at all possibilities. So Georg was happy enough to be going out with you, even though Tanja sometimes cramped your style, restricted what you could do?’
‘Yes. There was no problem.’
‘Did he realise that she was half Vietnamese?’ asked Tilsner.
‘No. It’s not obvious. At least not at the moment. She just looks . . . well, she just looks really cute. Adorable.’
Müller thought back to the visit to Anneliese’s flat some three months earlier. What the girl was saying was true – Tanja had stood out as a particularly cute baby. An adorable baby. Adorable enough for some woman – some woman desperate for a child of her own – to steal her. But was that what they were dealing with here? A straightforward case of baby-snatching? And did it have any link to the case involving the Salzmann twins, or to the skeletons of the Andereggs’ babies in Rothstein’s demolished abortion clinic? Surely so many cases of child abduction had to be linked, and couldn’t just be coincidence? But if so, why had Maddelena been returned safe and sound?
A cough from Tilsner brought her back to the present. ‘Do you have any enemies that you know of, Anneliese?’ she asked. ‘Anyone who might want to do you or Tanja harm?’
The girl’s face creased into a frown. ‘Not that I know of. Unless –’
‘Unless what?’ prompted Tilsner.
‘Well . . . there is Georg’s ex-girlfriend.’
‘What about her?’ asked Müller.
‘She was really angry that he dumped her to go out with me. We saw her the other day in Halle. She launched herself at me. Georg had to hold her back. Then she started shouting at him. What was it she said? Oh yes: Watch out, bastard. I’ll get you back sooner or later.’
40
Müller could tell Emil was angry with her, perhaps understandably. Once Tilsner and Müller had finished with Anneliese, they contacted the Halle People’s Police uniform division and gave them the details of Georg Meyer’s ex-girlfriend, asking them to take her in. They’d let her sweat a bit overnight in a police cell before interviewing her the next day. But Emil didn’t come back after the hour or so that Müller had suggested he take for a drink. It was nearer midnight before he finally turned up, stinking of beer.
While someone like Tilsner seemed to be able to hold his beer, and became jolly and flirtatious when drunk, Emil Wollenburg appeared to be more like Gottfried once he’d had too many. Morose but with a hair-trigger temper. It was a side of him Müller hadn’t seen before, and she didn’t particularly like it.
Once he’d finished berating Müller for using his flat as an interview room, and for wrecking their supposedly romantic dinner for two, Emil slumped in a chair at the dining table and held his head in his hands.
‘I’m not sure this is going to work,’ he said, peering up at her.
‘It’s a two-way thing, Emil. We knew when we started it there would be days like this – for both of us. If you had an emergency at the hospital it would be just the same.’
‘I certainly wouldn’t be using your flat as a makeshift operating theatre.’
Müller felt her face warming with anger. ‘That’s unfair. The poor girl’s baby had been snatched. I needed to get her into a calm environment, just for thirty minutes, so that we could make sense of everything. You didn’t need to stay out until midnight.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Hmm what?’
‘Well, it’s just not the same, is it?’
‘Same as what?’
‘The same as when we started going out together. You seem frazzled all the time. Moody. And what’s with all the clutching at your stomach and being sick?’
Müller pulled out the dining chair opposite her boyfriend and slowly sat down on it. ‘I don’t know what that is. It’s worrying me. And having you shouting at me like this won’t help.’
Emil laid his hand tenderly on her arm, finally realising how unreasonable he was being. ‘Sorry. I was acting like a spoilt brat.’
‘So what do we do now?’
He smiled at her. ‘Bed? It’s the universal panacea, after all.’
Müller laughed, grateful that he’d attempted to defuse the tension. But what was wrong with her? She wished she knew. It had been going on for too long. She felt another wave of nausea rise up.
‘It’s happening again, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘You know, Karin, I think we ought to get you checked out. I’m fairly certain I know what’s wrong, even though you swear blind it’s not possible.’
She stared into his eyes, her alarm mounting. ‘What?’
‘You’re pregnant.’
*
If going to bed – and all that it entailed �
�� was a universal panacea, then it didn’t work for Müller. Emil soon rolled over and was snoring, presumably content in his own mind that physical intimacy had helped to smooth out their row. But Müller couldn’t get out of her head his categorical insistence that somehow – flying in the face of everything she’d been told by every other doctor she’d seen – she had fallen pregnant. That her ‘illness’ was simply morning sickness. Could it be true? If so, how? And was it something she even wanted? The row before bedtime with Emil had surely demonstrated that their relationship wasn’t yet ready to be blessed with a child.
The ringing of the phone in the living room cut short her agonising.
‘I’ll get it,’ she said, as Emil groaned and pulled the pillow over his ears.
In the event, it was indeed for her – not him. Tilsner again.
‘It’s all kicking off, boss, I’m afraid. Anneliese must have blabbed.’
‘Where?’
‘Outside a dormitory in Wohnkomplex VIII. A Vietnamese guest workers’ dormitory.’
*
Müller raced there in the Wartburg, across the bridge over the Saale, blue light on and siren blaring.
She was unsurprised that by the time she got there, the area seemed to have been secured by several leather-jacketed heavies, who were already leading away a mob of male and female demonstrators, tearing their protest banners out of their hands.
‘Turn the blue light off please, Karin. We don’t want to make this more of a drama than it already is.’ It was Jäger, who’d sidled up to her unseen almost as soon as she was out of the car. ‘Do you know what this is about?’
Müller could guess, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit it to Jäger. She was angry, though, that Anneliese didn’t seem to have heeded their warnings. The Stasi’s fears that the baby abductions might cause unrest seemed to be being borne out. She saw one plain-clothes operative shine a torch on one of the protest banners he’d confiscated. ‘GIVE OUR BABY BACK’. She was glad that – in the darkness – Jäger wouldn’t be able to see the embarrassment which she was sure was writ large over her face. But he’d seen the words on the banner, just as she had.