by David Young
There was such vitriolic force in Franziska Traugott’s words that Müller found herself shrinking back. She glanced at Tilsner, could tell he was getting impatient, that in his view the woman had strayed from the point. But Müller could see where the explanation was heading.
‘So you can imagine how overjoyed Hansi and I were to discover I was actually pregnant with twins. We couldn’t believe it. It was like a miracle.’ Müller thought of her own parallel situation, the twins she’d aborted all those years ago, conceived in almost exactly the same set of circumstances, although her rape had been in the Republic. In one of the Republic’s institutions.
‘And then,’ Franziska Traugott was spitting out her words now with absolute fury, ‘then that bastard, that drunken bastard killed them. Damn nearly killed me too. How would you feel? That bastard is responsible for this. For all of this, I tell you. Everything.’
Müller took a deep breath, glanced at Tilsner and saw him give a small shake of his head. She knew what he’d be thinking. That the woman was simply trying to deflect the blame. The oldest trick in the book. But Müller, for the time being, was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again, Franziska?’
‘I don’t care if it’s nearly twenty years later,’ said the woman, quivering with anger. ‘I don’t care if I see him on his deathbed. I would recognise him from his eyes. He’d obviously been too drunk to turn on the car’s headlights. The only thing I saw, and then just for an instant as he was nearly on us, was the flash of his eyes in the glare of the streetlights. But people’s eyes don’t change.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ shouted Tilsner.
‘He had the eyes of a wolf.’
‘What? You’re talking nonsense.’
The woman shook her head rapidly from side to side. ‘No, no. It’s true. A wolf.’ Müller could feel her excitement rise. Franziska Traugott might be mad, was most certainly bad, but in this, Müller knew she was right.
Because Müller herself could picture them. Lupine eyes.
The sort of eyes that sucked you in, and watched, and watched, waiting for a weak moment to pounce.
Just like a wolf.
Exactly the same colour.
Amber.
The amber eyes of Major Uwe Malkus.
The Stasi Wolf.
63
Tilsner insisted it didn’t take them any further forward. In 1958 when the crash had happened in what was then Halle-West, before the new town had been built, Malkus had been protected from prosecution by his bosses at the Ministry for State Security. That’s why his name had been scratched from the report, before the correction fluid had been applied. So no one would ever know. Malkus had gone on and risen up the ranks and was now a Stasi major. It wouldn’t be any different today, argued Tilsner. In fact, now – in 1976 – he was more senior, and so much time had passed they’d be even less likely to make any case stick against him.
Perhaps Müller was being naïve. Perhaps her deputy was right. But she wasn’t so sure. She had seen Malkus, along with Janowitz, in the group of officers who approached Johannes’s horribly injured body in Oberhof, after he’d fallen into the snowdrift at the side of the Interhotel Panorama. She was sure she’d heard those muffled gunshots. The shots that finally killed her childhood friend. Müller wasn’t prepared to ignore all that – at least not without a fight.
Although Müller was determined to try to do the right thing, the just thing, she knew Tilsner was almost certainly correct in his assessment. But if there was any chance – any sliver of a chance – of bringing Malkus to justice for his drunk drive from almost two decades earlier, well, she knew she had to try to see it through.
*
Surprisingly, Oberst Frenzel listened to what the two Berlin detectives had to say without interruption. At the end, he didn’t dismiss their argument, but simply asked them to leave his office for a moment while he made a couple of telephone calls.
*
A few minutes later, when they were both summoned to enter, they saw the People’s Police colonel brandishing a signed, typewritten document as he sat at his desk.
‘I’d look after this, comrades,’ he said. ‘You’re never likely to see such a document ever again, in your whole careers. It may even be the only time it’s ever happened in the history of the Republic. Certainly I’ve never signed one before. It’s authority from me, as the leader of this People’s Police district, for you to arrest Uwe Malkus, a Stasi officer.’
‘Jesus wept,’ said Tilsner. Müller mimed punching the air, like a goal scorer in the Oberliga.
‘As I say, you’ll never see this again. The People’s Police never acts against the Ministry for State Security. We always cooperate. We’re on the same side. Luckily there are those in the Bezirk Halle branch of the MfS who are as eager to see the back of Malkus as I am.’
‘As you are?’ queried Müller.
Frenzel nodded. ‘You know I was unhappy when my own Kripo officers were kept off this case. When you two were brought in. Malkus was behind that decision. It’ll be nice to pay him back for it. But the key man was Janowitz.’
‘Janowitz? He’s the one who’s been trying to derail this inquiry from the start,’ said Tilsner. ‘He’s just as nasty a piece of work as –’
‘Careful, Comrade Unterleutnant. You’ve got what you want, but it doesn’t make you fireproof.’ Müller shot an angry glare towards Tilsner. They were so close to getting Malkus – she didn’t want him messing it up.
‘In what way did Hauptmann Janowitz help, Comrade Oberst?’ asked Müller.
‘Janowitz might seem dour and humourless, Karin, but he knows which side his bread’s buttered on. He was as uncomfortable as anyone with what Malkus did in Oberhof. And he witnessed the shots from Malkus’s gun, while covering his own back by advising against it. This gives him a chance to remove Malkus. And probably be promoted in his place.’
Müller watched Tilsner roll his eyes.
‘It’s the way things work, Unterleutnant,’ continued Frenzel. ‘You know that as well as I do. Anyway, Janowitz will meet you at the regional Stasi HQ entrance. Let’s hope Malkus hasn’t got wind of this.’
*
It was Müller’s first visit to the Ha-Neu Stasi building since the day after she arrived the previous July, when this whole slow-moving case was just beginning. But this time she wasn’t being summoned by Malkus for a warning shot across the bows. This time she and Tilsner held the trump card: the arrest authorisation from Oberst Frenzel.
Janowitz gave them a small conspiratorial smile as he welcomed them at the checkpoint at the edge of the Stasi compound. It was the first time Müller had ever seen the Stasi captain’s lips curl upwards except when she’d been pulled up for some alleged misdemeanour or another.
‘He won’t be expecting this,’ he said. ‘I can’t wait to see his face.’
*
The wide-open office door, the pulled-out drawers at Malkus’s desk, papers strewn across the top of it, told Müller all she needed to know.
‘Scheisse,’ yelled Janowitz. ‘Someone must have warned him.’
Tilsner raced across to the window. ‘There’s the bastard. Running towards the car park.’
Janowitz was immediately on the phone, sounding the alert, while Müller and Tilsner ran down the stairs and back towards the Wartburg. Just before they accelerated away, Janowitz jumped inside.
‘Any ideas where he’ll be heading?’ asked Tilsner.
Janowitz shook his head, then shrugged. ‘He lives right on the other side of Ha-Neu. Wohnkomplex VI. We could try that.’
Tilsner accelerated south, then swung round the corner onto the Magistrale, heading west.
Just then a radio message cut through the crackle.
‘Suspect’s Volvo surrounded near the centre of Ha-Neu. He’s escaped on foot towards the station.’
They spotted the abandoned Volvo up ahead by the roadside. Tilsner s
creeched to a halt directly behind it, then the three clambered out and raced across the square towards the underground S-bahn station. Müller felt her re-stitched C-section wound pulling and her head pounding as she struggled to keep up. They ran down the steps into the station, yelling for passers-by and chemical workers at the end of their shifts to make way.
As they got down to station level, they saw a commotion at the northern end of the platform, as Müller saw the lights of the train coming towards them through the tunnel. Suddenly, the bustling and shouting turned into high-pitched screaming.
Müller could see the horrified look in the driver’s eyes, even from this distance.
Time seemed to slow as – at the same time – they saw a body hurl itself in front of the train.
As they reached the end of the platform, Tilsner pulled the surrounding gawpers and rubberneckers out of the way. Müller advanced to the platform edge.
There – lying on his back under the metal train wheels – his torso sliced by the rotating steel, was the upper part of Uwe Malkus’s body. A cowardly Stasi officer who had taken the easy way out, rather than face the shame of his downfall.
His eyes staring, lifelessly, at the station roof.
Eyes that even now, in death, were a brilliant amber.
The eyes that, in Franziska Traugott’s simple terms, looked like those of a wolf.
64
A few days later
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come in with you, Karin?’ asked Tilsner, as they sat in the Kripo Wartburg outside a turn-of-the-century apartment block in Plagwitz, to the west of Leipzig centre. Tilsner had agreed to drive her the short distance from Halle – she didn’t yet feel up to driving herself – but she wanted to do the next bit alone.
‘It’s all right. It’s something I need to do by myself.’ She looked up at the building, with its discoloured render, wondering what it had looked like when first built – or what it would look like if the layers of brown-coal-stained crust were cleaned off. It was an imposing building, and the street – Karl-Heine-Strasse – had the feel almost of the Paris boulevards Müller had seen on Western TV. She pulled her jacket tightly around herself and then opened the car door and got out.
‘I’ll pick you up from here in – what – thirty minutes?’
Müller ducked her head down towards the still-open passenger door to reply. ‘OK. But stay for a few moments first, just in case no one’s at home.’ She hoped that wouldn’t be the case. They had deliberately come in the early evening, when the working day should already be over.
*
The front door to the apartment block was unlocked. Müller held it open as she rang the bell for apartment 3C, which corresponded to the name – Helga Nonnemacher – that Jäger had provided via his minions. A stern female voice shouted down the staircase from the third floor. ‘Who is it?’
Force of habit found Müller responding in her professional, rather than personal, capacity. ‘Oberleutnant Karin Müller. From the Kriminalpolizei,’ she yelled up into the gloom. As soon as she said it, Müller realised it would put the woman on her guard, rather than encourage her to be open with Müller. ‘But I’m here just in a personal capacity. It’s nothing to do with police work, there’s no need to worry. It’s about . . .’ What was it about? ‘It’s about family,’ shouted Müller, hoping it would be enough to secure an invitation inside.
‘You’d better come up, then. Third floor.’
*
Helga Nonnemacher regarded Müller with a serious expression, but ushered her inside. Her hair was grey, but neatly cut, and Müller imagined that – in her younger years – she had been an attractive woman. She still was, in an elegant but careworn way. Her cheekbones were well defined, so that – even though Müller estimated her to be perhaps in her mid-sixties – her skin was remarkably unlined. Müller saw something in the woman that was familiar. Something that reminded her of herself; of the teenage girl in that black-and-white photo taken soon after the end of the war; and of the mysterious woman who’d come calling on her adoptive family at home in Oberhof all those years ago.
Frau Nonnemacher invited Müller to take a seat in the neat lounge. The furniture was old-fashioned, the decor on the wall fading, but everything was tidy and clean.
The woman took a seat opposite Müller and then leant forward, her hands resting on her knees. ‘So if this isn’t official police business, what is it about? What did you mean when you said it was to do with family?’
Müller didn’t reply immediately. Her mind was racing on an adrenalin high. Is this her? Is this my real mother? But surely she’s too old to be the teenager cradling the baby me? She pulled the tin box from her jacket pocket. When she brought it into the open, the woman gave it a curious look. Almost a look of recognition, but also of something that spoke of sadness. Of loss. Of longing.
When Müller handed her the monochrome photograph, taken some thirty years earlier, there was no surprise on the woman’s face. Instead, Müller saw her dab at the corners of her eyes, left and right in turn, as she held the photo in her other hand.
‘You know who it is?’ Müller asked.
‘Of course,’ answered the woman. ‘My daughter, Jannika. With . . .’ Helga Nonnemacher’s words died in her mouth, replaced by a gasp. She covered the lower part of her face with her hand, and stared intently at Müller. ‘Oh my God!’ She looked down at the photograph again, and then up at Müller once more. ‘You’re Karin, aren’t you?’
Müller nodded, feeling a sudden rush of love for the girl in the photo. She’d assumed – since learning the truth about her adoption the previous year – that her first name had been given to her by her adoptive parents. Evidently, that wasn’t the case. No wonder that visitor to the guest house back in the fifties, when she was just a little girl, had known her name.
The woman shook her head in stunned wonder. ‘She would have been so proud of you, so, so proud.’
The words were like a stab in the gut for Müller. She found herself clutching her Caesarean wound. ‘Would have been?’ She had to force herself to say the words. She knew what they meant.
The woman got up from her chair and knelt by Müller, stroking her face. ‘I’m sorry, Liebling. I’m sorry. It can’t be the news you wanted.’
Müller tried to choke back the tears, her hormones already out of balance from the early, forced delivery.
Helga took both of Müller’s hands in her own, and squeezed tightly. ‘It was a very difficult time after the war. You can see how thin Jannika is here.’ She stroked her finger across the image of her daughter. ‘She had this faith that your father would come back, but he never did. It broke her heart. And then the Soviet authorities took her baby away – took you away. They broke her heart a second time. She never really recovered.’
Müller bit her bottom lip, squeezing the woman’s hands in turn, then took a long, deep breath. ‘So she’s –’
‘Passed away? I’m afraid so, dear. Back in forty-nine. Tuberculosis was the official cause, but I never really agreed with that. She just wasted away. When you were taken, it stole her will to live. I managed to track you down a year or so after her death by calling in a lot of favours. I travelled all the way to Oberhof. To try to persuade your adoptive mother to let me play some part in your life. You were the only family I had left.’ Then, curiously, the woman laughed and shook her head. ‘And now – twenty-five years later – you’ve found me. It’s a miracle. And Jannika would have been so proud of you. To see you now, a beautiful young woman.’
The woman was smiling, lighting up her features, so that Müller got a glimpse of how Helga Nonnemacher would have looked in her own youth. Müller could see herself – like looking through a time-warped mirror. And now – like a camera shot slowly brought into focus – she realised with certainty that Helga Nonnemacher was a part of her. She’d found her own flesh and blood at last. She’d found her home. Her true home.
‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Karin. A
t last. After all these years.’
Müller took a long swallow. ‘And you’re my grandmother.’ Despite the devastating news about the fate of Jannika – her natural mother – Müller raised a weak smile. ‘Oma,’ she laughed. ‘I will have to call you Oma.’
‘Don’t, don’t,’ said Helga, reaching out and embracing Müller, pulling her granddaughter into a tight hug. ‘I don’t feel old enough to be a grandmother. Not yet.’
Müller raised her eyebrows, then reached into her pocket for her purse, and drew out a small photograph – of her, Emil and the twins. ‘Then this might be even worse news,’ she grinned. ‘This is your great-granddaughter, and your great-grandson.’
‘Oh Karin, Karin,’ cried the woman. ‘I can see so much of Jannika in them. So, so much. She would have loved them. Loved them to bits, just as she did you, my darling.’ She stroked the photo, as though by doing it she could make some contact with her lost daughter, Müller’s mother, the mother that the detective would now never meet. ‘What are the names of the little beauties?’
Müller grinned. ‘You won’t believe it. They’re already nearly a week old, and they still don’t have names. My boyfriend and I can’t agree.’
‘Boyfriend, not husband?’
‘Not yet. So you’ve that to look forward to – if he ever asks me.’
‘Don’t stand on ceremony. Ask him. That was what I did with my Helmut.’
‘My grandfather?’
‘Of course. But he’s gone now, dear. In the war, like so many. The Eastern Front. I don’t like to think of it, what they must have gone through. And after that, and you being taken away, and Jannika . . . well, I just didn’t have the heart anymore. To start again.’ She fingered the photo of the twins lovingly. ‘But I never, ever believed I would be so blessed. To find you again, is . . . well, it’s a miracle. And I can’t wait to meet these two. Their Oma might be dead, poor things, but your Oma is here, and would be very honoured to do her best to fill my daughter’s place in your little family.’