‘Thank you so much for coming round specially, Wolfgang,’ said Rosamund. ‘As Karin says, we will give it serious thought and let you know. Won’t we, Karin?’

Müller nodded. But she knew she had a sour expression on her face. This was something she really didn’t want.

*

On the drive back to Dresden, Müller found herself regularly having to wipe the moisture away from her eyes. It was hard enough leaving the children behind now, knowing they were safely with Rosamund and her adoptive family, knowing they were being cared for. How much harder would it be if she agreed to Herr Mayer’s plan to hot-house them at the sports boarding school? The thought was almost too much to bear. And yet . . . And yet here she was, driving more than 250 kilometres away from them. Leaving them behind again for the sake of her work. What sort of a mother was she?

When she finally arrived back at the police apartment she shared with Tilsner and Schmidt, she was exhausted and depressed. Thankfully, Schmidt had gone out to meet with his own family visiting from Berlin.

‘You look completely done in,’ said Tilsner. ‘I thought it was supposed to be a weekend’s rest back in the bosom of the family.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ countered Müller. How had she allowed her life to become such a mess?

‘Is there anything I can do?’ asked her deputy.

She looked at him. Into his ice-blue eyes. The ones she’d found so attractive when they’d both been so much younger, starting out with her as the new head of the Mitte Murder Commission, in the centre of the Hauptstadt, and he as her number two. That first time they’d ended up in bed together after downing too much vodka in the bar in Dircksenstraße. The night that had preceded the start of the graveyard girl case. Life here in Dresden – their latest emergency posting, covering staff shortages in the local Kriminalpolizei – had been so much more mundane. Nary a murder worth speaking of, but an endless round of missing people – who often turned out to be Republikflüchtlinge, or would-be escapers from the Republic – suspicious deaths which weren’t that suspicious, and a few domestics that had escalated too far, usually thanks to citizens’ prodigious consumption of various forms of alcohol.

‘There is something you can do, yes,’ she said.

She grabbed him by his belt buckle and dragged him to her bedroom. He wasn’t exactly unwilling. She just wanted to use him. Use him to hammer away the hurt of leaving her children behind. He seemed happy enough to play the role. Lovemaking? No, that was too high a concept for this.

This was just sex. Sex used as an emotional anaesthetic.

Chapter 3

3

ARNIE

Bad Schandau, Germany

Summer 1938