Until the Debt Is Paid (7 page)

After hearing Chandu call his name, Jan rushed up the stairs and into the bedroom. The decor echoed the upscale main story, with elegant floors, polished wood cabinets, and tiny halogen spotlights recessed in the ceiling. Only a set of branching deer antlers over the bed, which didn’t seem to fit at all, disrupted the cold, stylized look of the place.

Chandu got up from the floor and held out a slim, leather-bound photo album.

“Where’d you get that?” Jan asked, taking the book into his own hands.

“There’s a hidden compartment near the head of the bed. I just had to remove the board that covered it.”

Jan whistled. “What clued you in?”

“Where you think I stash my piece?” Chandu said. “In the fridge?”

Jan carefully cradled the book. A photo album. Its brown leather was worn. He opened it and studied the first shot. A young woman, practically a girl, stared fearfully into the camera. Her right cheek was swollen. Under her left eye was a gaping slash. Blood was running out of her nose, and her upper lip was split open.

“My God,” Chandu said. “She’s fifteen at the most.”

Jan turned pages. Another girl had been messed up the same way. Her blonde hair, wet with sweat, hung over her forehead. Her eyes expressed the same fear he’d seen in the first girl.

Chandu wiped his hands on his pants, as if touching the book had sullied him too. “Good thing that pig’s dead, or I’d be paying him a little visit.”

Disgusted, Jan shut the album. “We got what we wanted. Let’s clear out of here and continue this back home.”

He held the album under his arm and went downstairs. He’d seen a lot of sick crap in his day, but finds like this always left him shuddering a little. At least they now had a clue. This judge, he had a dark past.

Chapter 5

Once they were back in the car, Jan’s new cell rang. He held the little phone to his ear. “Yup.”

“Hi, Mister Yup,” Zoe said. “Can I talk to Jan?”

“Cut the crap.” He heard her snickering. “What’s the latest?”

“They found the murder weapon.”

“Where?”

“At your place.”

“My house? They went all through my apartment and didn’t find anything. All clear.”

“Not in your apartment. In the basement instead. In your neighbor’s storage room, to be precise.”

“What?” Jan said, startled. “But the storage rooms are locked up.”

“True. That’s why investigators didn’t find the weapon right away. When your neighbor went down to grab some potatoes this morning, her key fell right out of her hand. Seems she saw a blood-smeared hammer.”

“Did you analyze it already?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I don’t have great news. The hammer has blood from Judge Holoch as well as your fingerprints. Wounds on the corpse match size and shape. This hammer is definitely the murder weapon.”

“Fucking hell,” Jan said.

“You’re in a tight spot, yes, and it’s getting tighter. Of all the cases I’ve worked over the years, yours is the most clear-cut. They catch you, they’re going to lock you up and throw away the key.”

“Someone wants to pin it on me.”

Zoe sighed. “That may be, Janni, but we haven’t found any evidence to suggest you’re innocent. I’d love to help you, but the more I try, the tighter the noose around my neck if it gets out that I’ve been talking to you.”

“I’m a homicide detective,” Jan said, his voice rising out of frustration. “If I’d killed the judge, I would not have left my own car parked outside the crime scene and then tossed the murder weapon in my neighbor’s basement storage. You have to give me that much.”

“It’s an investigator’s dream, I’ll give you that. What killer pulls every stupid move in the book? But you can’t build a defense around that.”

Jan rubbed at his eyes, weary. “Okay, Zoe. Thanks for the info. We found a book of photos at the judge’s house, deviant stuff, shots of battered young women. Chandu and I will go through them all. Maybe we can ID a girl, then I’ll report back in.”

“Till then, Mister Yup,” Zoe said and hung up.

Jan picked up the album. The photos were their only evidence. If this clue was a dead end, he was done for. He would just have to turn himself in, hoping. Maybe he’d get a milder sentence that way.

Each photo told a horrific story. The women were brutally beaten, but worse than their wounds were their eyes. Broken. Empty. Without hope.

Jan found it hard to look closely at the pictures, although his friend Chandu seemed capable of examining each photo precisely.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Jan said.

“I’ve seen this too often. Lots of prostitutes get beat up by their johns or their pimps.”

“You think these are prostitutes?”

“I know at least three of them are. There are a couple others I’ve seen around too. Besides, what other woman would undergo this kind of beating and end up being photographed—and never report a word to the cops?”

“Maybe some of the girls were secretly involved with the judge and didn’t want it getting out,” Jan said.

“Young things like that don’t go having affairs with an old fossil like Holoch. Maybe one girl with kinky preferences, but definitely not twenty of them. These girls were paid for.”

“Where can we find them?”

Chandu flipped back a few pages. “The first one was Manu. Nice girl from the country.” He sighed. “She came to Berlin for an education. Met the wrong guy, he got her addicted, she ended up on the street at twenty-one. Three years later, she was drifting dead down the Elbe.”

He flipped pages. “Jasmina.” He pointed to a photo of a woman with eyes swollen shut from blows. “She’s from the Czech Republic. Was turning tricks for this nasty scumbag while living in a cellar hole in Marzahn. Eventually she disappeared, never seen again.”

“You think all the women in these photos are dead?”

“Manu and Jasmina are, I know that for sure. But this one here,” Chandu said, turning the page, “I saw two weeks ago. Sarah, works an illegal streetwalk over in the poorest part of the Wedding District. We’re lucky, we’ll find her there.”

Jan grabbed his jacket. “Come on.”

A lead, finally.

Patrick held his pistol out in front of him as he went up the grimy stairway. The wooden steps were worn and splintered, the walls smeared with graffiti. Overhead, the decrepit ceiling plaster was peeling off, and the whole place reeked of vomit and urine. On the second floor, a couple was having a shouting contest. If that wasn’t nerve-wracking enough, the barking of a ferocious dog was interspersed with an infant’s screams.

This was one of those Berlin buildings no one would ever enter by choice, but Patrick had a good reason. He’d traced the car Jan had climbed into during his escape; the trace led to this address. Considering how expensive that Mercedes had looked, Patrick could hardly believe the owner lived on such a run-down street.

He waved over two officers in bulletproof vests. One of them carried a metal battering ram. Without speaking, they positioned themselves next to a door. Patrick checked the safety on his pistol and nodded to the officers. The lock broke with a dull bang, springing open the door. The three men stormed inside.

“Berlin Police!” Patrick shouted. He stepped on an open blue trash bag and turned his face away in disgust. The little studio apartment was piled up with garbage. Cockroaches roamed over food scraps and empty beer bottles. It stunk of mold and feces. Rats scurried around between the shelves. In the middle of this shambles, a man lay on a tattered couch. He stared at the newcomers through bleary eyes. Patrick aimed his weapon, but the man just waved at him, smiling.

“He’s no threat,” one of the officers said. “Guy’s all doped up.”

Patrick lowered his pistol and navigated his way to the couch. Luckily he’d just gotten a tetanus shot.

“My name is Patrick Stein,” he said, showing his badge. “Berlin Detectives. You’re Peer Runge?”

“Yo, boss,” the guy said. “Sit on down, help y’self.” He pointed to a large pile of blue pills and a spoon that looked like it had been cooking heroin.

Patrick wrinkled his brow. He’d seen a lot of things, but no one had ever offered him drugs before. But he wasn’t about to arrest this guy for possession. All he wanted were answers.

“Do you know a Jan Tommen?”

“Never heard of him, boss, but if he’s a friend of yours, then bring him on over and we’ll party.”

Patrick sighed and stuck his pistol in his holster.

“Take this drugged-out idiot down to the station,” he ordered the officers. “I’ll question him once he’s come down.”

Patrick worked his way through the trash to get back outside. In frustration he kicked away a beer bottle, which clanked and shattered against the wall. The guy was just a goddamn drug dealer who hadn’t even noticed that his car had been stolen. And given the bender the guy was on at the moment, Patrick couldn’t hold out hope that his memory would be stellar.

“The first round goes to you, Jan,” Patrick muttered. “But I’m already getting warm.”

As Chandu slowed the car, Jan looked out the window at the desolate neighborhood. He hated run-down areas like this. The buildings’ gray walls were smeared with graffiti, and not the artful kind. The glass windows of one of the now-closed storefronts had been replaced with plywood, and then pasted over with cheesy ads for an upcoming André Rieu concert at the O2 World arena. The bare trees looked hardly alive, and an uprooted “No Parking” sign lay out on the street. Near the curb, young women lounged around in way-too-short skirts. Their thick makeup masked the grief on their faces as their eyes followed the traffic. Jan watched a car roll to a stop alongside one of the young women. The driver opened the door, and she climbed in without a word.

Jan had been investigating scenes like this for a long time, but he still felt a little pang whenever he saw such young girls out on the sidewalk. No one deserved such a life.

Chandu drove at a snail’s pace, eyeing each girl closely. “There,” he said finally. “The blonde.”

After a moment, Jan spotted a fair-haired woman leaning against an old plane tree. She wore a white skirt, a bright tube top, and knee-high boots with spike heels. Her tired stare was directed at the roadway.

Chandu stopped the car next to her. The girl tossed her cigarette, came out to the street, and forced a smile.

“Hi,” Jan said, returning the smile.

“Youse a pig?” she asked in thick Berlin dialect.

“U
h . . .
” Jan hesitated.

The woman rolled her eyes.

Chandu leaned to Jan’s side. “Get in, Sarah.” He held out a hundred-euro bill for her. “We just want to chat.”

The woman looked around warily, as if no should see her talking to them. Then she tugged down her skirt, grabbed the bill, and climbed into the back.

“My pimp catches me talkin’ to pigs, I’m dead.”

“We won’t keep you long,” Chandu reassured her as he drove off. “You can be back hooking in five minutes.”

“Whatever.”

Jan said, “Miss, we just have a few questions about how long you’ve been working here.”

The woman snickered. “Youse really are a pig.”

“How can she tell?” Jan asked Chandu.

“There’s a sign on your forehead,” he said. “You can’t help it.” Chandu adjusted the rearview mirror so he could look the girl in the eye. “I’ll answer the man’s question, if you don’t mind.” He turned to Jan. “She’s been around for going on five years.”

“How old are you?” Jan asked her.

“Twenty-four.”

“Sarah,” Chandu warned.

“Nineteen,” she corrected, her voice dropping an octave.

Jan shook his head. The girls were getting younger and younger. What a life they must have had to be tossed out onto the street at fourteen. He hated to imagine the kind of horrible parents they’d dealt with or the twisted scumbags they’d gotten to know.

He would’ve liked to have given Sarah another chance, found her somewhere to live, sent her back to school, and made a new life possible. But from his time as a patrol cop, he knew that that was just a romantic dream. The streets pulled these girls back in.

“You know Judge George Holoch?” Chandu went on.

Sarah’s cold, apathetic expression turned fearful. “How come?” Her eyes darted around as if she was looking for a way to escape.

“Take it easy, Sarah,” Chandu said. “You know that they bashed in the judge’s skull?”

“He deserved it, fuckin’ swine.”

“The thing is, we want to find out who it was.”

“It wasn’t me, but if I woulda gotten the chance? I woulda slit him open.” Sarah pressed her lips together tight. She had trouble keeping back her tears.

“We know what he did to you,” Jan said softly. “And, yes, he did deserve to die. But we need to learn more about him and hi
s . . .
preferences.”

“Hopefully youse got a strong stomach.”

“When did you meet him for the first time?”

“I only met the sick fuck once. I was new to it, he was probably the fourth or fifth customer I’d ever had. I was impressed by his crib, but my pimp was barely out the door before he started hitting me. Just a slap at first, then harder and harder. With his fist, in the face, in the gut, till I was on the floor crying. Then he kept at it with a cane, till I passed out. Hours later, I woke up in some park in Neukölln. Clothes all ripped to shit, four broken ribs, and three less teeth. With all the swelling I had on my face, I couldn’t work the street for six weeks.”