by David Young
*
When Müller returned to Emil’s flat at the end of the day, she suddenly felt much worse. The room appeared to be spinning, and she sat down, clutching her stomach, seconds after coming through the front door.
‘I’ll be OK in a moment,’ she said, as Emil rushed to her side.
‘No,’ he said, getting some apparatus out of his bag, and then pressing his fingers to her face and hands. ‘It looks like you’ve got some swelling. I need to check your blood pressure.’
‘Why?’ asked Müller, putting her hand to her brow. A sharp headache had suddenly started. ‘What’s wrong? I’m sure I’ll be fine after a sit down.’
Emil wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm just above the elbow, and then began to pump the rubber bulb. He listened with his stethoscope as he released the pressure, and Müller saw his face crease in anxiety as he checked the reading.
‘It’s too high,’ he said. ‘We need to get you looked at.’ Then he felt gently around Müller’s wrist, forearm and the sides of her face.
‘It’s nothing serious, though, is it?’ Müller found herself twisting her hair with one hand. Emil carefully pulled her arm down.
‘Don’t do that. You always do that when you’re anxious. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, but we ought to go to the hospital to check.’
*
Müller allowed her boyfriend to drive her to the hospital. Her head felt like some great weight was pressing down on the top of it, and Emil’s anxious looks were making her worried. She found herself constantly swallowing, fighting a tightness in her throat.
Once in the hospital, Emil’s connections meant they were seen almost immediately.
A plump friendly nursing auxiliary fussed over Müller, urging her to lie back on the bed, and getting her files ready for the doctors. As Emil went off to get one of his colleagues, Müller saw the woman staring intently at the file, as though shocked by something.
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ asked Müller.
The woman closed the file quickly, a slightly guilty expression on her face, thought Müller. Or perhaps there was something wrong, but it wasn’t this junior worker’s place to tell Müller.
‘No, no, dear. Your man’s just gone to get one of the duty paediatricians. I was just checking your notes. Everything’s fine. They’ll be with you in a moment.’
As Emil returned with a white-coated doctor, the woman rushed from the room.
He frowned at Müller. ‘Why was she in such a hurry?’
‘I don’t know,’ Müller replied. ‘Just some nurse who was getting me comfortable.’
The doctor started to perform the same tests that Emil had back in the apartment. Taking her blood pressure, pushing down against her skin, then checking her eyes.
He picked up Müller’s file and flicked through it, and then placed it down firmly on the bedside table.
‘Karin,’ he said finally. ‘It looks as though we’ll want you to stay in hospital for a few days while we run some further tests.’
Müller clutched at her stomach. She’d felt the baby move a few moments ago – surely there was nothing wrong? ‘What is it you’re worried about?’
Emil took her hand and held it gently, massaging her fingers. ‘It’s probably nothing, but there appears to be some slight swelling and your blood pressure’s on the high side. You’ve got the symptoms of possible mild pre-eclampsia.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a fairly common side-effect of pregnancy,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll need to take a urine sample to check for protein. What we want to do – given your medical history – is admit you to hospital for a few days just to check everything is OK. It really is very common and nothing to worry about.’
Müller had desperately wanted to stay at work until the very last moment. She felt she owed it to Anneliese Haase, to the Salzmanns – the Andereggs, even. She and Tilsner had so far failed them. Müller wanted to put that right. But for now her police work would have to wait. She turned onto her side in the bed, and feebly punched the side of the pillow by her head in frustration.
48
Müller’s initial alarm at the hospital admission – her fears that once again she might lose her chance of having a child – abated as days passed, and her blood pressure settled. But the medical professionals didn’t seem in any hurry to discharge her. With only a month to go until her due date, Emil explained that one option might be a Caesarean section; it wasn’t something Müller wanted. He also started to try to tell her more about the ultrasound and what it had found. Müller stopped him mid-sentence.
‘I told you, Emil. I don’t want to know anything about it. Not whether it’s a girl, a boy, any possible disabilities they’ve picked up on – nothing. I want this child. Whatever will be, will be.’
*
Amid the boredom of reading trashy novels and magazines borrowed from the hospital bookshelves, Müller was pleased when – on the third day of her stay – Tilsner was allowed to visit. Emil had kept him away before for fear that Müller would once again throw herself into work. She persuaded him that keeping her mind occupied would be good for her.
‘You look better than I expected,’ said Tilsner, smiling. ‘Don’t you just want to pump it out now and have done with it?’
‘It’s still nearly four weeks till I’m due. Anyway, apparently the state I’m in –’
Tilsner held his hands up, palms outward, as Müller gestured towards her groin. ‘No. That’s enough. I didn’t come here to talk about female anatomy, thanks.’
‘Don’t be such a baby,’ laughed Müller. ‘Anyway, it looks likely that I’ll be having a Caesarean. They think a natural delivery would be too risky.’
‘Fantastic,’ said Tilsner. ‘That’s a result, I’d say. Koletta wanted me there and I gave in. Marius was a so-called natural delivery. There was nothing natural about it. All the blood, the pushing and pulling, I thought his head was going to ex—’
This time it was Müller’s turn to put her hand up in a ‘stop’ sign. ‘I thought the idea was you were visiting me to take my mind off things. Not to remind me about the horror of childbirth.’
Tilsner grinned. ‘Sorry.’
‘So, any progress?’
Tilsner cocked his head. Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out an olive-green cardboard file. It looked to Müller like it had seen better days; the green at the edges had faded from exposure to light over what looked to have been several years.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Something Wiedemann turned up which he said you might be interested in looking at.’ Tilsner started leafing through the file until he got to the relevant place. Then he rotated it and passed it to Müller.
She rested it on the blanket covering her baby bump, and began to read.
‘It’s an accident report. A road accident report. From Halle. In 1958? What possible relevance has this got to anything?’
Tilsner snorted. ‘To be honest, probably nothing. We’ve been up so many dead ends in this inquiry already, it’s no doubt just another one. But it’s not just any road accident report. It was a fatal accident.’
‘And?’
Tilsner turned the page for Müller.
‘Well, it may be nothing. But the victims were twin babies. The parents survived, but the babies died.’
Müller tried to concentrate on the report but her brain felt woolly, her thoughts confused. ‘So why is it relevant to our inquiry?’
Tilsner shrugged. ‘Fairly early on in the inquiry, we asked Wiedemann to look for any strange reports of baby deaths or baby abductions, particularly involving twins. As you know, in terms of his Party duties, he’s nothing if not assiduous. Although actually he’s not a bad sort once you get to know him. Wicked sense of humour. And he can drink me under the table. He mentioned this in the bar. He was a bit reticent at first. Wants us to treat it very carefully.’
‘Why?’
‘Look at the
outcome.’
‘There is no outcome. It’s been taken out of the People’s Police hands.’
‘Exactly. Like that case on Rügen. The complaint by the Jugendwerkhof girl’s grandmother. What was the phrase?’
Müller looked down at the file. ‘ “Suggest refer this to the Ministry for State Security” – that’s what it says here too.’
‘And there’s no other conclusion to the case. No prosecution, nothing. No details or name of the other driver. Even the names of the dead babies and their parents have been obscured with correction fluid.’
Müller’s brow creased in confusion. ‘Even so, this is a road traffic accident. It’s not a baby abduction case.’
Tilsner raised his eyebrows. ‘Aha. Not so fast. Our friend Comrade Wiedemann did a bit more digging, didn’t he? There’s another police report from the same evening.’ Tilsner turned a few pages of the file, then pointed at the entry for Müller. ‘Read that one. Same evening, a couple of hours after the accident.’
Müller read it, as instructed, trying to make sense of the letters which seemed to dance in front of her eyes. A dull pain from inside her skull pressed against her forehead. She breathed in deeply, and wiped her face with her hand.
‘Are you OK, Karin?’ asked Tilsner. He reached to take the file back. ‘I’ll go if this is too much for you.’
Tightening her hands on the folder, Müller shook her head. ‘It’s OK.’ She forced herself to concentrate. It was the report of another road incident. A car with a badly damaged front grille and a broken headlight had been stopped while driving in Halle. The occupant had explained he had been in an accident, and was simply taking the vehicle to a safe place. The Vopos concerned had allowed the driver on his way without taking further action, even though they’d reported smelling alcohol on his breath and that his eyes seemed unfocussed. A large section of the report had again been covered with correction fluid. Müller held it up towards the window, hoping that with light shining through, a name would become clear. But once again there was nothing. Like the streets that criss-crossed this strange city, these police reports that might help provide a breakthrough in the case had been rendered nameless. But, this time, she had a pretty good idea whose name was missing.
49
Five months earlier: 22 October 1975
Komplex VIII, Halle-Neustadt
Of course, I should have had more faith in my lovely husband, because – oh joy of joys – she’s back now in my arms.
Hansi promised it would only be a few weeks, and it was. The Ministry hospital must have worked miracles, because she looks so much better. She’s put on a lot of weight and – my, my – isn’t she the prettiest thing. I don’t know where she gets her looks from. Certainly not from Hansi. And not from her mother either. She is just the absolute definition of cute, and it’s wonderful to have her back. I can’t stop marvelling at her little button nose, her perfectly symmetrical face – now where did that come from? – and the lovely, healthy colour of her skin.
There’s just one thing that concerns me slightly. Her eyes. They look different, somehow. I must ask Hansi about them.
*
Ha! My man is so clever. He could have been a doctor – well, he did train as one to begin with, before becoming a chemist, so perhaps it’s not surprising. Anyway, I’d kept my concerns about her eyes to myself. What I was worried about – if truth be told – is that she might have Mongolism. A very mild version, because of the eyes. But Hansi put my mind at rest. He says lots of normal babies are born with what they call epicanthal folds – it’s a bit of skin covering the upper eyelid. They should disappear in time. I was silly to worry.
50
Five months later: March 1976
Halle-Neustadt
Müller hadn’t expected things to move so quickly, and she’d wanted Emil to be here, but he wasn’t. A doctor she hadn’t seen before was explaining the procedure. How there would be nothing to worry about. They would give her a pre-med injection to calm her before taking her down to the operating theatre. The nursing auxiliary was preparing it now.
When the woman turned, she smiled encouragingly at her, and Müller was relieved to see a familiar face. It was the same auxiliary who’d been looking at her medical files that first day in hospital. At least she would know Müller’s details, why they had to be careful given the detective’s previous gynaecological history.
‘Couldn’t we wait at least until my boyfriend gets here? Have you told him?’ Müller asked, as the auxiliary rubbed her upper arm with a cotton wool ball soaked in something cooling.
The doctor looked into her eyes through his black horn-rimmed spectacles. There was something familiar about his eyes, although the rest of his face was hidden by a surgical mask. ‘He knows and is on his way, don’t worry. But your blood pressure’s deteriorated. We can’t afford to wait. We need to deliver your baby now.’
The nursing auxiliary strapped a ligature around Müller’s arm to locate a suitable vein, and then Müller felt a sharp prick, and almost immediately became drowsy. She’d had a pre-med before when her wisdom teeth had been taken out. She knew it was a bit like feeling slightly tipsy. That nothing mattered. That’s how it felt at first. But something was pulling her. Pulling her towards a black hole. She fought against it, fought for consciousness, but she couldn’t, and she was sucked deeper and deeper until unconsciousness claimed her.
51
Tilsner had grown utterly fed up, and envied Schmidt’s early departure a few months previously. From day one, down here in Halle, they seemed to have been wading through treacle. There was no clear motive for the crime, no obvious suspects, and no real prospect of coming to an end any time soon. Tilsner had also had more than a bellyful of Halle-Neustadt itself. A city with identical apartments for all its citizens might have seemed a good one at the time of Halle-Neustadt’s conception – but it wasn’t really Tilsner’s collar size.
All the time, he was having to report everything back to Jäger’s man at Normannenstrasse. He much preferred dealing with Jäger himself, but his former partner in crime – so to speak – had landed himself a cushy new job in the Caribbean. So it was one of his underlings who got the reports. He suspected Karin knew all about it, or that Jäger had told her. She was, after all, always teasing him about his Rolex.
Tilsner had half expected the said underling to warn him off looking further into the strange car accident from 1958 that had got Wiedemann so excited. But, after apparently liaising with Jäger himself, Tilsner got the message back that he had free rein. Dig as much, and as far, as he wanted to. The message seemed to be that the Ministry for State Security was as fed up with the Halle babies case as Tilsner was: they wanted an end to it, whatever the consequences.
*
What Tilsner needed was names – names to fill in the deliberate gaps in both reports. The names of the dead babies and their parents, the name of the driver of the other car. The names that had been obscured. He was hoping the forensic science department of Halle city Kriminalpolizei would be able to help.
‘You do know we were deliberately kept out of this inquiry,’ said the Kripo captain when Tilsner made his request.
‘I know. It seemed odd, us being brought in from the Hauptstadt. To be honest, I wish we never had been. It’s a nightmare of a case. But I’ve a little theory as to why you’ve been kept out of things.’
The Hauptmann stared at him, stony-faced. ‘Oh yes? And why’s that?’
Tilsner shrugged. ‘I can’t say for definite . . . let’s just say I think it may be something to do with these incidents.’
The Halle Kripo captain snorted. ‘What? A traffic accident from back in the fifties? You’re pulling my leg.’
Tilsner smiled. ‘No. I could be wrong, of course. But the only way we’ll find out is if you allow your forensic scientist to examine the reports. I’m sure there must be some way of scraping this correction fluid off and revealing the names beneath. Tell you what, if I’m wrong, I’l
l buy you a drink.’
‘A bottle.’
‘A bottle?’
The Hauptmann gave a slow nod and a sly smile. ‘Of whisky. Single malt. Or if you can’t get that, then a bottle of Doppelkorn would do.’
Tilsner sighed. ‘OK. Even though that sounds suspiciously like bribery to me.’
*
Forensic officer Petra Stober immediately had Tilsner wishing he’d come over to the Halle police science labs at an earlier stage in the inquiry. She was tall, blond and gorgeous. About as much of a contrast to the corpulent Jonas Schmidt as it was possible to get. Evidently this Kriminaltechniker didn’t spend her free time studying and sampling the many different varieties of Wurst available in the Republic.
‘It’s obviously my lucky day,’ he smiled. ‘Heaven seems to be missing an angel.’
The twenty-something woman rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘Who are you? And what do you want? Other than a kick in the balls . . .’
Tilsner explained that Hauptmann had given him permission to avail himself of her services. He pulled the fading olive-green file from his briefcase, and then flicked through to the relevant reports.
‘See here. All the names have been concealed with correction fluid.’ Tilsner unclipped the pages from the file, and then handed them to her.
Kriminaltechniker Stober switched on a desk lamp, held one of the pages up against the light, then reversed the paper.
‘Hmm. Not going to be easy. They’ve put the fluid on both sides of the paper.’
‘Both sides?’
‘Hmm. The weight of a typeface from the fifties would normally make an indentation in the paper. We’d have been able to read the names backwards from the other side in a mirror. To prevent that, they’ve covered the reverse with fluid too.’