‘What shall I be getting on with, Comrade Hauptmann?’ asked Schmidt, the words uttered in a slightly staccato fashion, like the ubiquitous noise of the hammer drills. He was still out of breath from rushing to the site. ‘I don’t want to be treading on the toes of the local team.’

‘Don’t worry about that, Jonas. I’ll talk to them. To start with, get as many photographs from as many angles as you can. We need to try to establish whether he slipped into the new concrete by accident, which seems unlikely, or whether it was something more sinister.’

The uniformed captain overseeing the extraction of the body from the concrete base must have heard the exchange during a pause in drilling, because now he was beckoning her over.

‘There’s your answer, Comrade Hauptmann,’ he said, pointing at the skull of Concrete Man, which had now been exposed even further. Müller knelt amongst the dust and rubble to get a closer look. The uniformed officer waved his finger from side to side, a few millimetres above the man’s cranium. The hair there was not just matted by dried cement, but by something dark and congealed that looked a little like burnt oil. Both police officers knew what it really was – dried blood. ‘He’s suffered some sort of blow to the back of the head. And in that position, it doesn’t look like it was just some drunk falling over legless. It looks like someone’s attacked him, from behind.’

Müller raised her eyes from the victim’s skull, towards the group of leather-jackets chatting and laughing by the entrance to the neighbouring newly erected concrete high-rise. What this site would also become in a few weeks’ time, once Concrete Man had been extracted from his cement grave. One of the Stasi men caught her eye, smirked and shrugged.

The manner in which the victim had met his end was probably no surprise to that little group. The fact that they had gathered here so soon – apparently to oversee the police operation – indicated they already knew not just of the man’s demise, but probably how it came to pass too. In fact, it wouldn’t be a surprise to Müller if one of their number had directly, or indirectly, delivered the final blow.

Chapter 2

2

Oberhof, Bezirk Suhl, East Germany

January 1982