The next thing I know I’m pinned down by something heavy on my legs.

The orange glow from outside the house is inside now.

Bits of dust and debris are falling on my face like raindrops and I’m looking up at the sky.

Then screaming. Mother, Father, both yelling in pain. But nothing from Fred.

I see him, still held in my mother’s arms, peacefully asleep I think.

I try to get to my feet but I can’t.

Then my mother is wailing. ‘Arthur, Arthur!’ she’s screaming. ‘He’s not breathing. He’s not breathing.’

Chapter 17

17

Dresden

February 1982

Tilsner’s search of Lotti’s apartment, after Müller had been taken to hospital by the ambulance, had yielded some other useful information – even though the raiders had got there before them. The principal thing they could work with was an address for Lotti’s parents, if they were still alive. At one stage before the war, they had run the Pension Schönblick in Bad Schandau. Perhaps Lotti was lying low there given all that seemed to be going on in Dresden. Certainly, she hadn’t returned to the apartment in Sonnenstein – Tilsner had made sure a uniformed People’s Police officer would be stationed outside twenty-four hours a day with instructions to detain her if she turned up.

*

As soon as they exited the People’s Police HQ and made their way to the Wartburg, Müller’s internal antennae started twitching. She glanced round. No one there. Perhaps she was being paranoid.

But as they began driving through Dresden’s still partially snow-covered streets, Tilsner indicated her fears were not ill-founded.

She saw him glance in the wing mirror, then the rear-view mirror.

‘Company?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Do you want me to try to lose them?’

‘No,’ she decided. ‘We’re not even sure who they are. Is it Bahlow’s lot? Or someone else? Maybe we ought to encourage them and then face them off. Do you think Bahlow was lying when he insisted he had nothing to do with me being hit over the head at Lotti’s apartment?’

‘Actually, I got the impression it was a surprise. I don’t fully understand what the Stasi’s motives are – but they want us on this case, they want us investigating, otherwise it would have been easy enough for them to take it over completely. Perhaps they’re just using us. Perhaps they want to flush someone out – and we’re the way of doing that.’

They wound their way by road along a similar route that Müller had travelled the previous day by train. As she watched the Dresden suburbs pass by, she found her head beginning to throb again. She opened the pack of painkillers the hospital had given her and popped another two into her mouth.

‘You can’t just treat those things like sweets, you know,’ warned Tilsner.