Stasi Wolf Read online

  Praise for

  STASI CHILD

  Winner of the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger

  Longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year

  Times Crime Book of the Month

  Telegraph Pick of the Week

  ‘Superb. A thrilling Cold War mystery that reminded me of Robert Harris at his best’

  Mason Cross, author of The Samaritan

  ‘Deft, assured storytelling, a compelling new detective and a fascinating setting – I was up late to finish it!’

  Gilly Macmillan, author of Burnt Paper Sky

  ‘One of the best reads I’ve had in ages. With its masterful intertwining of dual storylines and its stark portrayal of life behind the Berlin Wall, this is a cracking debut’

  David Jackson, bestselling author of Cry Baby

  ‘Deep and dark, this debut is utterly gripping, sucking you in straight from the get go. Fascinating backdrop, well observed characters and a corker of an ending. Superb’

  Nikki Owen, author of The Spider in the Corner of the Room

  ‘Chilling’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Extremely engaging’

  Sunday Express

  ‘Can’t get enough cold-war Germany after Deutschland 83? This is your latest reading companion’

  Shortlist

  ‘A promising debut, an astutely considered novel of detection and place, redolent of dread, paranoia and suspicion’

  Graeme Blundell, The Australian, ARTS

  ‘A self-confessed obsessive, Young’s period detail – what kind of tyre tracks Stasi official’s cars left – is impressive’

  Greg Fleming, New Zealand Herald

  ‘Reminiscent of Fatherland and AD Miller’s Snowdrops, Stasi Child heralds a bold new voice – and character – in historical crime’

  NetGalley Book of the Month

  ‘Stasi Child is a great read . . . David Young has researched the book extensively, and its believability shines through’

  Tripfiction.com

  ‘Captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of the communist regime . . . this gripping thriller, with an amazing ending, will have you racing through the pages’

  Pick Me Up Magazine

  ‘Perhaps if you loved Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, or enjoy the Bernie Gunther series, Stasi Child will be right down your Eastern European alley’

  Crime Fiction Lover

  ‘Young has recreated excellently the fear and paranoia that permeated East German society’

  The Crime Warp

  ‘Young has more than proved that his name will be one to watch in the future with this powerful, well-researched and intriguing thriller’

  Raven Crime Reads

  ‘Stasi Child is a great read, perfect for fans of historical crime fiction’

  Crime Thriller Girl

  ‘A well observed and exciting crime novel that reads with such fluidity and expertise it was a surprise to find out this was Young’s debut novel’

  BiblioManiac

  ‘Stasi Child is a deeply atmospheric and haunting read’

  For Winter Nights

  ‘I was in awe whilst reading this novel’

  Northern Crime

  ‘Gripping . . . an astonishingly powerful depiction of life in a totalitarian state’

  Buried Under Books

  ‘Storytelling doesn’t get much better than this. David Young is a bit of a genius’

  Liz Loves Books

  ‘Young creates this sensational setting with a headstrong female lead . . . a remarkable plot’

  Literature Works

  ‘A gripping read . . . The descriptions of the settings are superb’

  The Quiet Knitter

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Author’s Note

  A letter from the author

  A Chapter from the first book in the Karin Müller series, STASI CHILD

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Copyright

  For Stephanie, Scarlett and Fergus

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome to the second instalment of my Oberleutnant Karin Müller crime thriller series, set in communist East Germany in the mid-1970s. The story is set a few months after the conclusion of the first novel, Stasi Child, but – like the first book – it’s a discrete story within the series and I’ve tried to write it in such a way that anyone starting here will still enjoy it and not feel they’ve missed out by not reading the first book.

  Readers of Stasi Child found my introduction there to be useful, so apologies to them as this will repeat some of the same information.

  East Germany, or in German the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), was a communist state set up in the years after the Second World War, and very much dominated by the Soviet Union. It had one of the highest standards of living in the eastern bloc and although it was in many ways Moscow’s puppet, living there was very different, even if the politics were the same.

  My main protagonist, Karin Müller, is an Oberleutnant (or first lieutenant) with the state police, the Volkspolizei (literally People’s Police) – although as a murder squad detective she works for the CID arm, the Kriminalpolizei, or Kripo (or often just the ‘K ’, although I’ve not used that here).

  But looming large in the background is the East German secret police, the Ministry for State Security, more commonly known as the Stasi (a contraction of the German name).

  Throughout the text I’ve retained the German ranks for a flavour of authenticity – many are self-explanatory, but for full explanations/translations of these and other East German terms please see the glossary at the back of the novel.

  Please note some of the dates of real events used as the basis for this fictional story have been adjusted for the sake of the plot. For more details see the ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the novel.

  Many thanks to everyone who read Stasi Child, especially those who re
viewed it or blogged about it. It was lovely (and a little overwhelming) that so many of you contacted me to thank me for writing it. There was no need, but it was still great to get your letters and emails.

  For contact details and more background, please see my website at www.stasichild.com or follow me on Twitter @djy_writer.

  Thanks for reading!

  D.Y. (February 2017)

  PROLOGUE

  July 1945

  Halle-Bruckdorf, occupied Germany

  Your leg stings as you shuffle along the ledge to try to get comfortable. Frau Sultemeier has fallen against you during the never-ending night. Being squashed together with the others down in the disused mine gives a little warmth, a perhaps misplaced sense of safety in numbers. So you feel slightly disloyal as you move sideways to get some space – feeling your way in the blackness, where the sun’s rays never penetrate, even during the day. You daren’t put your foot down because you know your boot will be filled again by the cold, coal-stained water and the pain will be unbearable. You can hear it, sloshing around – the water that seeps in everywhere, into every sore and wound. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there.

  Sultemeier snorts but doesn’t wake. You almost wish she did. You want someone to talk to. Someone to calm your fears. Dagna could do that. Your younger sister was never afraid. The drone of the bombers, the explosions of the bombs, the fire in the sky, the dust clouds and rubble. Dagna just used to say: ‘We’re here. We’re still alive. Be thankful and wait for it to get better.’ But Dagna’s gone now. With the others. She heard – we all heard – the stories they told in the League of German Girls. About how the Red Army soldiers are worse than wild animals, how they will rape you again and again, tear you limb from limb. The others didn’t want to find out if it was true. So they’ve gone to try to reach the American zone.

  Another snort from Sultemeier. She wraps her arm round you, as though you’re her lover. Frau Sultemeier, the miserable old shopkeeper who before the war would never let more than two children into her shop at once. Always quick to spot if you tried to pocket a sweet while you thought her eyes were elsewhere. She, like most of the others here, was too old to run. And you, with your injured foot from the last British bombing raid, you can’t run. So you had to come down here with them. To the old lignite mine. Most of the brown coal round here they just tear from the ground, huge machines taking big bites directly from the earth, feeding what had seemed like a never-ending war. The war that was once so glorious. Then so dirty, so hateful, so exhausting. But you Kinder des Krieges knew about the disused underground mine – the cave, you used to call it – when you played down here before the war, you and your sister Dagna astonishing Mutti with how dirty you used to get. ‘Black as little negroes,’ she used to laugh, playfully patting you on your bums as you ran to the bathtub. Mutti’s gone now, of course. Died . . . when was it? A year ago, two? And you’ve still never seen a black person. Well, apart from in books. You wonder if you’ll ever see a real, living one. You wonder if you’ll ever get out of here alive.

  You see the flash of the torches first, then hear the foreign shouts, the splashing of boots in the waterlogged mine. Frau Sultemeier is awake immediately, gripping your shoulders with her bony hands. To protect you, you think. You hope. You feel the quiver of fear transfer from her body into yours through her fingers.

  Then the torch beam dazzling in your eyes, playing along the line of grandmothers, spinsters and widows. Women who’ve seen too many summers. Too many winters. All except you. Just thirteen winters for you, and this is your fourteenth summer.

  ‘Frauen! Herkommen!’ The Slavic tongue mangles the pronunciation of the German words, but the message is clear.

  Suddenly Sultemeier, the old witch, is pushing you forward. You realise her grip on you was not protectiveness at all. She just wanted to stop you running.

  ‘Here! Here!’ she shouts. The torch beam is back, trained on you. ‘Take this girl. She’s young, pretty – look!’ She forces your chin upwards, wrenches your arm away as you try to shield your eyes.

  ‘No,’ you say. ‘No. I won’t go. I don’t want to.’ But the Soviet soldier is pulling you towards him. In the harsh uplight of the torch, you see his face for the first time. His wild Slavic features. Just as the Führer described in his warnings. There is hunger there. Need. A hunger and a need for you.

  He shouts at you again, this time in Russian. ‘Prikhodite!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ you say. ‘I’m only thirteen.’

  ‘Komm mit mir!’ But he doesn’t have to order you, because he just drags you with him, through the waterlogged mine, your undernourished teenage body almost no weight to him at all, each of his strides sending darts of pain through your injured foot. You hear the laughs of his colleagues. ‘Pretty girl,’ they taunt. ‘Pretty girl.’

  Outside, even though it’s barely after dawn, the light is blinding. Soldiers. Soldiers. Everywhere. Laughing. Whistling. Blowing imaginary kisses. You’re trying to walk now, but each stride is more a stumble, and he has your arm locked in his like a vice. You feel the dampness where you’ve wet yourself.

  He’s taking you to the hut. The rusting corrugated-metal mine hut where you used to play with Dagna before the war, before all this hell. You were the pretend mother of the house, she your naughty daughter, always playing tricks to try to get you to scold her. He opens the door, throws you inside onto the floor, and then kicks the door closed again behind him.

  ‘Pretty girl,’ he says, just staring at you for a moment, echoing the animalistic approval of his fellow soldiers. ‘Pretty girl.’

  You edge backwards along the floor to the corner of the hut, across the dirt and debris. You see him undoing his belt, lurching towards you as his battledress puddles round his feet. And then he’s on you. Ripping your clothes, pinning your arms down as you try to scratch his eyes, thrusting his foul-smelling face towards you for a kiss.

  Then you give up. You just flop back and let him do what he wants. Whatever he wants.

  Almost as soon as he’s finished, he’s ready to start again. And then the door opens, and another soldier comes in. With the same hungry look. You realise, through the fog of pain, the shame, and the smell of unwashed man, that what they told you in the League of German Girls was right.

  The Führer was right.

  The Red Army soldiers are worse than wild animals.

  1

  July 1975

  East Berlin

  Oberleutnant Karin Müller fixed her gaze on the spotty youth sitting opposite her in the Keibelstrasse interview room. He stared back from under a curtain of shoulder-length, greasy black hair with an insolence which she feared wouldn’t serve him well in the remand cells of the People’s Police.

  Müller didn’t say anything for a moment, sniffed, and then looked down at her notes.

  ‘You’re Stefan Lauterberg, aged nineteen, of Apartment 3019, Block 431, on Fischerinsel in the Hauptstadt. Is that correct?’

  ‘You know it is.’

  ‘And you’re the guitarist in a popular music group called . . .’ Müller peered down at her notes again, ‘Hell Twister. That’s correct?’ The youth just emitted a careworn sigh. ‘Is that correct?’ repeated Müller.

  ‘We’re a rock band,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm.’ Müller made a point of noting this down, not that she really cared about the youth’s pedantry. She had some sympathy for him though. Just as he felt he shouldn’t be here, being questioned by a People’s Police officer, she believed jobs like this weren’t what she’d signed up for. She was a homicide detective. She’d been the first female head of a Kripo murder squad in the whole Republic. She’d done well – at least in her opinion – and now they’d moved her from the Mitte Murder Commission and rewarded her with awful little Vopo jobs like this. Jobs which should be being done by some uniformed numbskull. Müller sighed, un-clicked her pen, and laid it down on the interview table.

  ‘Look, Stefan. You can make this e
asy for me, or you can make it difficult. Easy, and you admit the offence, you’re given a warning and you’re on your way. Back playing with . . .’ she peered down at her notes again. She remembered the name of his group perfectly well, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. ‘. . . with Hell Twister, in no time at all. Or you can make it hard. Play the smart-arse. And then we’ll shut you in a cell here for just as long as we want. Any hopes of going to university, of getting a decent job, well, that will all be history.’

  Lauterberg snorted. ‘A decent job, Comrade Oberleutnant?’ The use of her rank was laced with sarcasm. ‘In this shitty little country?’ He shook his head and smiled.

  Müller sighed again, ran her hands back through her dirty blond hair, heavy and damp from the oppressive summer heat. ‘OK. Have it your way. Stefan Lauterberg, on Sunday, June the fifteenth this year you were reported by Comrade Gerda Hutmacher for making an unreasonable amount of noise in your family’s apartment with electrically amplified music. And when she complained to you directly, you made an anti-socialist joke. A joke about Comrade Honecker losing his watch under his bed. Is that correct?’

  The youth chuckled. He leaned forward and held Müller’s gaze. ‘That is correct, yes, Oberleutnant. He unfortunately loses his watch and thinks it may have been stolen. So he asks the Minister for State Security to investigate.’

  Müller placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her clasped hands. She hadn’t meant for Lauterberg to retell the joke, but clearly he was going to.

  ‘But if I remember correctly,’ he continued, ‘Comrade Honecker finds the watch, and rings the Minister to call off the investigation.’ Lauterberg paused for a moment, and stared hard at Müller. ‘So, aren’t you going to deliver the punch line, Oberleutnant?’

  Müller gave yet another weary sigh.

  ‘Shall I do it for you? The Minister replies: “Too late, I’m afraid. We’ve already arrested ten people – and they’ve all confessed.” ’ Lauterberg rocked back in his chair, laughing.

  Müller got to her feet. She’d heard the joke before, didn’t think it was particularly funny, and had had quite enough of Stefan Lauterberg for one day. Quite enough of her current job. ‘Guards,’ she shouted down the corridor. ‘Take this one back to his cell.’