Free Stasi Child by David Young Page B

her look of terror. ‘Are you alright, Comrade Oberleutnant ? Perhaps this location wasn’t such a good idea. I must admit, I usually come here in the summer months. I didn’t realise it would be so windy.’
    Müller breathed in deeply. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she lied, her stomach feeling as though it was about to drop out of the bottom of her body.
    The Stasi lieutenant colonel nodded, and opened the folder. ‘The pathologist, Professor Feuerstein, has come to some startling and slightly awkward conclusions.’ He turned a couple of pages. Müller found herself once more wanting to avert her eyes from the photograph of the girl’s mutilated face, but that was the page Jäger had settled on. ‘You see the smooth, almost shiny, melted appearance of the skin here, right at the side of where much of the face has been torn away?’ Müller squinted at the photo, and to the section Jäger was tracing with his finger. ‘It’s the result of coming into contact with a strong acid. In this case sulphuric acid, from a car battery.’
    Müller frowned. ‘She’d been in some sort of accident, then? Or are you saying this was done deliberately?’
    ‘Feuerstein doesn’t comment on that. To be honest, he doesn’t have to. He believes the skin came into contact with the acid post mortem.’
    ‘So, deliberate? To hide her identity after she’d been killed?’
    ‘Almost certainly, I would think.’ Jäger nodded.
    ‘And what about the injuries to the rest of her face? Were they caused by a dog, as you were saying at the cemetery?’
    Jäger shook his head, and gave a slow sigh. ‘No. You can probably guess. Her face was deliberately ripped apart, after acid was thrown onto it. And her teeth were pulled out, one by one, with iron pliers.’ Müller gave a small gasp and raised her hand to her mouth. ‘Feuerstein found rust residue on her gums.’
    ‘That poor girl. So whoever it was tortured her first?’
    Jäger again moved his head slowly from side to side. ‘No. The teeth were again pulled out post mortem.’
    ‘Someone has gone to great lengths to prevent identification of the body.’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Jäger. ‘And that is going to make your job exceedingly difficult. Because that is exactly what you, Tilsner and Schmidt need to do. Find out who this girl was. That’s what I want you concentrate on. And we need to be careful not to publicly challenge the official version of how she met her demise.’
    ‘But clearly, Comrade Oberstleutnant , you cannot still believe that she was shot by western guards as she was trying to escape to the East?’
    Jäger said nothing for a moment, so that all that filled the silence was the screeching of the cabin, as it gently swayed backwards and forwards. Like the screams of a girl, thought Müller.
    ‘That is still the official account of her death,’ Jäger said finally, a flat note in his voice. He reached into his inside pocket and drew out an envelope, ‘This authority for your missing person’s search may help you.’ He pulled out the sheet of paper and showed it to Müller.
    She frowned. ‘I don’t need the approval of the Ministry for State Security for a missing person’s search.’ And why, if Jäger didn’t want them to be tracking down the girl’s killer or killers, was he so keen that the body should be identified at all? Surely the Stasi would be better off drawing a line under everything?
    ‘That’s true,’ admitted Jäger. ‘But look at the signature.’ Müller saw it had been signed by Erich Mielke, just as the authorisation had been at the autopsy. ‘It may prove useful to have this in certain circumstances, Oberleutnant Müller. It will also serve as a reminder . . . about the limits of your permitted inquiry.’
    ‘And those limits are?’
    ‘To concern yourselves with the missing person, the girl. Rather than the perpetrators. Though I dare say –’
    ‘What, Oberstleutnant ?’ prompted Müller.
    Again the Stasi lieutenant colonel