Müller exited the Dresden People’s Police headquarters building on the western, Frauenkirche side for her twenty-minute walk to the train station. She could have driven, but she wanted to get a feel for the journey taken by the purse owner – if indeed she was the other party in the argument witnessed by Petra Abt.

The two buildings looked utterly incongruous next to each other. The solid modernity of the police HQ, some eight storeys high, each lower floor slightly wider than the one above so the building had a stepped appearance, like an unfinished Aztec temple. Adjacent to it, the blackened stump of the Frauenkirche – once one of the glories of a glorious city – now left as a ruinous reminder of the excesses of imperialist and fascist ideology, and those nights of Anglo-American terror bombing. To Müller it was a pitiful sight. She understood the need to remember, and to be constantly vigilant against fascists and counter-revolutionaries. But to let it rot surrounded by a car park full of Trabants and Ladas seemed plain wrong. Either demolish it and clean up the area, and build something new like the nearby Palace of Culture – the Kulti – with its beautiful mural, The Way of the Red Flag. Or rebuild it and let Dresdeners revel in its beauty once more. This halfway house solution seemed just too sad for words.

*

The twenty-minute S-Bahn ride was a mere nine stops’ worth, mostly through Dresden’s suburbs. But towards the end of the journey, a couple of stops before Pirna itself, the line closely followed the sinuous path of the Elbe river, and Müller could sit back and enjoy the view.

When she finally reached Pirna, she wondered about quizzing the station staff, but decided she’d be better employed finding the bus to Sonnenstein, and starting her inquiries there. Once she found the bus, she bought a ticket and started to quiz the driver, while trying not to distract him – as he seemed unwilling to stop, other than at designated bus stops to let passengers on and off. His punctuality was evidently more important to him than assisting the police with their inquiries.

Müller did, however, manage to extract some useful information. There were three drivers who shared the route – and they would all usually do weekday evening shifts together, with a slightly different arrangement to cover weekends. The evening shift was from approximately 4 p.m. to midnight. From the time the woman who owned the purse had bought the ticket – 4.58 p.m. on the Monday evening according to its date and time stamp – the driver was able to hone in on which of the three shift workers would have issued it.